Christina Myers: Stop Talking Yourself out of Your Book Dream

Christina Myers is a writer, editor, and former journalist. She is the author of the novel The List of Last Chances, winner of the Canadian Book Club Award for Fiction and longlisted for the Leacock Medal for Humour, and editor of the award-winning anthology BIG. An alumnus of the Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University, she now teaches creative writing through SFU’s continuing studies. She is a member of Da’naxda’xw First Nation and lives in Surrey, British Columbia. Follow her on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Christina Myers

Photo by Wendy Lees

In this interview, Christina discusses how her community around her helped inspire her new work of nonfiction, Halfway Home, her hope for readers, and more!

Name: Christina Myers
Literary agent: Emmy Nordstrom Higdon at Westwood Creative Artists
Book title: Halfway Home: Thoughts from Midlife
Publisher: House of Anansi
Release date: May 21, 2024
Genre/category: Nonfiction; essay; memoir
Previous titles: The List of Last Chances (2021)
Elevator pitch: From first bra to first hot flashes, the essays in Halfway Home consider and reconsider the lessons we’ve learned through media and culture—and often from each other—about our bodies, gender roles, aging, parenting, and our own futures in an uncertain world, as we reach and move through midlife. With warmth and wit, tears and laughter, Halfway Home is a reminder that none of us are walking home alone.

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What prompted you to write this book?

One of the ways I’ve always made sense of my world is by talking to friends and mentors and the people around me about their experiences—in what ways do we differ, in what ways are we the same? I’ve navigated much of my life this way—puberty, early career, motherhood. And nowhere had I discovered as much commonality as in midlife, all of the uncertainty and emotions I was experiencing, the women around me were too, and all in the midst of so much upheaval and change in the world. I thought, How many of us are thinking about these things, alone—and maybe it will help to hear you’re not alone at all?

How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?

About three years from the start of writing a proposal to when it’ll be on shelves. The final book looks very close to what I envisioned—even the order in which the essays appear is almost exactly as I’d planned. But I did end up writing about a few things I hadn’t thought I’d be brave enough to tackle. Once the work was underway, I found a little more courage than I had expected and so those topics found their way into the book, too.

Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?

This book reinforced what surprised me in my first publishing experience, which is how much work comes after a publisher picks up your manuscript. We think of the writing as the biggest part of creating a book, but what comes after that—from the editing to the layout, to the promotion, etc.—is such a lot of work for both the writer and the publishing team.

Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?

I was surprised (pleasantly) by how straightforward the writing process was when I had the entire book laid out chapter by chapter in the proposal. It really felt like I had given myself a map and every day I just had to sit down and take another step on the route laid out on that map. I could see what was ahead and how much I had accomplished, and it made the writing process so much more productive.

What do you hope readers will get out of your book?

That the only thing we can count on is change—in our lives, in the world, even in our own ideas about ourselves. We just keep changing. And the best way to navigate that is with other people, by sharing, by being vulnerable and making mistakes, and learning new ways to be.

If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?

Stop talking yourself out of your book dream. Stop asking “what if” and filling in the answer with the worst-case scenarios, like “What if I can’t finish this?” and “What if no one wants to publish it?” Instead, start asking “what if” and filling in the answer with the best possibilities: What if I finish writing this book and it’s great? What if it gets published and readers love it? What if I get the chance to write more books? The former will slow you down and make you doubt yourself; the latter will convince you to keep going.

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