Poetry Friday, Week 16: Part I: Interview with Joanne Rossmassler Fritz

 Heidi at my juicy little universe is hosting today.
It's Earth Day weekend and such a great reason to celebrate besides all the poetry goodness.
Have you checked in with the 2024 Progressive Poem?  For Friday, April 19 Catherine Flynn at Reading to the Core.
Today I have an encore interview for Double Feature Friday (in fact the other interview is also an encore interview.  In  2021, I had the pleasure of interviewing Joanne Rossmassler Fritz with her debut book, Everywhere Blue. Today I am interviewing her about her new book, Ruptured. It is a very personal story as Joanne took her real life experience to create a story about a father, a mother and a daughter, a medical emergency, and a secret that could impact their lives

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JRM: I remember in your previous interview that you shared how you were working on Ruptured. Would you like to expand more on how you came to write this book?
JRF: It took me quite a while, Jone. As you know, I'm a survivor of two ruptured brain aneurysms, twelve years apart. I knew I needed to write about it, but when I first tried, years ago, it wasn't working for me. I had attempted two different approaches, both from the POV of a high-school student who has a brain aneurysm rupture (and of course it would have been a YA novel). One was prose and one was verse. But I found it hard to write either one because I was still too close to the experience emotionally. In the spring of 2021, I had a "eureka" moment and realized I needed to take a step back and write about a girl whose mother has a brain aneurysm rupture. Once I tried that, it all fell into place.

JRM: I felt the tension between Claire and her mom. I sensed the discomfort between the two adults and how Claire was experiencing it. How did you create these characters that are so real and the situation so heartbreaking?
JRF: Thank you for saying that! I spent a lot of time thinking about the characters, and taking notes in a red notebook. I knew I had to make them different from myself and my husband, because this isn't an autobiography. And I don't have a daughter in real life. I have two grown sons. So Claire was completely invented. Of course, there's a bit of me in Claire. I suppose there's a bit of me in each of my characters. You need to get inside the character's head and imagine what they would do in each situation.
As for the situation being so heartbreaking, thank you for saying that! I knew I needed more tension than just the Mom's rupture. A rupture happens suddenly, and then it's over, so to keep the tension going, I came up with the idea of Mom telling her daughter a secret. I worried about it at first. Would a Mom really tell her 13 year old daughter something this personal? Would this make the character less likable? But my editor accepted it and we worked together to make the Mom more relatable.

JRM: I was expecting a character to have a ruptured brain aneurysm, I was not expecting the secret Mom shared with Claire.  What a weight to carry especially as an only child. In your plotting and writing did you start with “I will have a character with a ruptured brain aneurysm and build  around it? Or did you have an idea of a teen with discontented parents and build around it? (I guess I’m asking about process)
JRF: Great question! As I said above, I started with the idea of the Mom having the rupture, so everything had to progress from there. And by inventing Claire, it gave me the distance I needed to write the story.
JRM:  What led you to set the story in Maine?
JRF: This one is easy! Both of my ruptures coincidentally occurred in Maine, each time while we were on vacation. I never considered any other setting. In fact, in the beginning, I expected the entire story to take place in Maine. But as I worked on it more, I realized the timeline meant Claire needed to go to school, and Aunt Bobbi was the perfect person to take her home to Pennsylvania, and stay with her.  

JRM: Would you have a draft example and its final poem to share the changes?
JRF: Yes! Here are two versions of Fever Memory from p.39-40:
From Draft 2 (the first time the poem appeared):

Fever Memory
Staring at Mom’s face,
I remember
when I was three or four
and woke up in the night,
hot,
confused,
scared.
My fingers had grown
to huge fat sausages.
I couldn't do anything
with them.
They were far too big
and awkward,
the rest of me
far too small.
 
I whimpered,
crawled out of bed.
needing my mother.
 
But my parents’ closed bedroom door
looked impossibly far away
down a too-long hallway.
And tiny,
that door,
so tiny.
 
I cried louder.
And then
Mom appeared
far away and small.
Too small.
Impossible to reach.
 
Until a second later
she was there
next to me,
helping me back
into bed,
smoothing a cool hand
across my forehead,
whispering calm quiet words,
soothing me.
Loving me.
 
My mother.
 
Now,
looking at her,
pain stabs my heart.
She loves me.
She’s always loved me.
 
Get better, Mom.
I need you.
 
We need you.
 
And here's the final version, from Draft 4 (much shorter, as you can see, thanks to my editor's suggestions!): 
Fever Memory
 Staring at Mom’s face,
I remember when I was
three or four
and woke in the night,
hot,
confused,
scared.
 
My fingers felt like
huge sausages.
I couldn't do anything
with them.
 
I whimpered,
crawled out of bed,
needing my mom.

But my parents’ closed bedroom door
looked impossibly far away.

I cried louder.
 
Then Mom appeared,
​helping me back into bed.
She pressed a cool hand
to my forehead,
whispering quiet words,
calming me.
 
Loving me.
 
Get better, Mom.

JRM: How did you come up with the lighthouse as an image?
JRF: This is also easy. Maine has many lighthouses, and I've always loved them, mostly for what they symbolize, but also because of the majestic look of them. I'm fascinated that, before modern technologies existed, in order to avoid treacherous rocks along the coast, the only thing sailors or boat captains had to go by was the bright light from a lighthouse. And a real person had to live there and keep the lanterns lit.  Do you remember Keep The Lights Burning, Abbie by Connie Roop? I've always loved that book! In today's world, any active lighthouses are now automatic and no one lives in them. In fact, most of them aren't used at all anymore. But they're still beautiful. And they still symbolize hope to me.

JRM: I love how the book ended, hopeful and yet not totally wrapped up with a pretty bow. Have you had readers speculate about what happens next? JRF: Thank you! And yes, I have! It always surprises me. It's kind of cool that once we write a book, it doesn't belong to us anymore, and readers take what they want from it. (And I like to end all my books that way. Everywhere Blue ended that way too, not totally wrapped up.)
JRM: The theme of family dynamics is apparent as it was in Everywhere Blue. I love the incorporation of Aunt Bobbi. I had an aunt that my teen self really related to. Who were your mentors?
JRF: I had two aunts, who never married or had children, so in a way it was like having two extra parents! They took me traveling to places like New York City, for Broadway plays and museums. It was a lot of fun.

JRM: Do you have a favorite scene or quote from the book? If you were to give a reading, what might you read to the audience? Was there a surprise for you in writing this novel?
JRF:  A surprise? I think all of my books surprise me a bit, because I'm not a plotter. I'm a pantser. So as I work my way toward my end goal, something inevitably surprises me. There are poems in this book that I had no plan to write, but as I struggled my way through the first draft, I knew it needed more. And the poems popped into my head. 
It's hard to pick one favorite scene, but I do have a personal reason to love the poem Stairs on p. 242, because that's exactly what my devoted husband did for me. My memory was beginning to return then, and I can still remember climbing the stairs sideways, one step at a time, with my husband a few steps below me in case I stumbled.  
And my favorite quote is still the tagline: "Is it wrong to grieve for someone who is still alive?" Originally, that was the first line of the opening poem.  
If I were to give a reading, I'd probably read the first five poems or else I'd read Trompe L' Oeil on page 61. 

JRM: What are you currently working on?
JRF: Another Middle Grade verse novel. It's not very far along yet, so I don't want to say too much! I can only say that it returns to an environmental theme, in the woods. And this time, it's a middle child, feeling squeezed in a large family.

Thank you so much for this interview, Joanne.  I hope others get a chance to read this book.  And PF Friends, if you would like to win a signed copy, just drop a comment.  Joanne is graciously donating a copy to readers of this blog.

There is still time to share your favorite poem or poet by filling out this form. We all have more than one poem or poet we love, probably we have many mentor poems. Don’t overthink it, just share one.

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Favorite Poem or Poet Anyone?