Merilyn Simonds: From being an observer as a child to intuitive storytelling in writing

Writer Merilyn Simonds

Merilyn Simonds is an internationally published author of 22 books, including the novel The Holding, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, and the Canadian classic nonfiction novel, The Convict Lover, a finalist for the Governor General’s Award. The Convict Lover blends historical fact with creative storytelling to recount the story of a clandestine correspondence between a convict and a young schoolgirl in 1919.

Among Merilyn's best-selling nonfiction is A New Leaf, the story of her gardens north of Kingston, and Gutenberg’s Fingerprint, a meditation on reading, writing, and the future of the printed book. Her most recent book—Woman, Watching, which won the Foreword Indies Editor’s Choice Nonfiction Award for 2022—is an innovative memoir/biography of Louise de Kiriline Lawrence, an extraordinary recluse who changed the way we see birds. Merilyn's memoir, Walking with Beth: Conversations with my 100-Year-Old Friend is forthcoming from Random House Canada in September, 2025. Here is Merilyn Simonds on how her childhood epxeriences shaped her personality, and her intuitive storytelling in writing.

Merilyn Simonds: How living in Brazil shaped her writer's voice

The cover of Merilyn Simonds' new book, Walking With Beth

OCW: What life experiences have shaped your writing style?

MS: My family moved to Brasil when I was 7. Being surrounded by a foreign language, immersed in a foreign culture, left me at a very young age with an understanding that not all people and places were the same. Just as important, it made me an outsider, an observer. I have come to believe that most writers experience something that sets them on the side-lines, observers rather than participants of life.

The evolution of confidence: 40 years of honing craft through reading

OCW: Has your writing evolved over the years? If so, how? Through writing experience? Reading a lot? Writing courses or communities? A combination, or something else?

MS: I have never attended a writing course of been part of a writing group. My teachers were books, in the beginning and now. I read like a writer, studying how an author achieves certain effects. The intimacy and musicality of language that is a hallmark of my writing has always been there, although honed now after 40 years of writing and publishing. What has changed is my courage to embark on subjects and experimental techniques: with age and experience my confidence has grown. Ellen Seligman used to say, “You never write the same book twice.” I take that as a compliment.

OCW: Can you trace any common themes across your writing?

The stone in my shoe, psychologically, is the intersection of past and present. How do past actions, past circumstances worm their way into the present. How do present attitudes and beliefs colour the perception of the past. Is it possible to break free of this entanglement? If we could, what is lost? What is gained?

Intuitive storytelling in writing

OCW: Are you a plotter or a pantser?

MS: I have tried all my writing life to be a plotter, without success. I thought this would be the path to writing more quickly. Instead, it slowed me down. My first drafts are always intuitive, following the characters and the story as they appear to me. I write the first draft longhand, on only the right side of a notebook page, flipping back to add notes about where a character should enter first, etc.

This draft goes into the computer, worked on as I type. When this is printed out, I become something of a plotter, charting (if only mentally) the course of the story to see if it makes literary sense or if there is a better way. This cycle of edit on paper, typing drafts goes on for usually 15 drafts before the book is finished. The process is the same for fiction and creative nonfiction.

OCW: Do you edit as you write, or write and edit later?

MS: I do both. As I write I am always upgrading words and syntax, making nots to add characters and scenes. My process is fluid and intuitive. Once all the characters are in the right place and the scenes are more of less evolving as they should, I let the manuscript rest for a few weeks, then do a read-through and a major edit based on what I discover. After that, I do specific edits: character development for each character, setting for consistency. I even do a colour edit where I place coloured post-edits whenever a colour is mentioned then check to make sure the psychological/symbolic value of the colour is consistent. Although I have tried to write more quickly, somehow I always else up with around 15 drafts.