Tess Callahan: Trust Your Own Instincts

Tess Callahan is the author of April & Oliver. Her essays and stories have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Writer’s Digest, National Public Radio, AGNI, Narrative Magazine, AWP: The Writer’s Notebook, Newsday, The Common, the Best American Poetry blog, and elsewhere. Her TEDx talk on creativity is titled “The Love Affair Between Creativity and Constraint.” Tess is a graduate of Boston College and Bennington College Writing Seminars and teaches creative writing and meditation. A dual citizen of the United States and Ireland, she lives in Cape Cod and Northern New Jersey with her family and number one life coach: her dog. For more information, visit www.tesscallahan.com, and follow her on X (Twitter), Facebook, and Instagram.

Tess Callahan

Photo by Brendan Paul James

In this interview, Tess discuses returning to familiar characters with her new literary novel, Dawnland, the difference between well-meaning advice and listening to your own instincts, and more.

Name: Tess Callahan
Literary agent: Anne Edelstein, Anne Edelstein Literary Agency (in affiliation with Ayesha Pande Literary).
Book title: Dawnland
Publisher: Little A
Release date: September 3, 2024
Genre/category: Literary Fiction / Domestic Fiction / Family DramaSet on the idyllic shores of Cape Cod during a tumultuous vacation, is a family drama rife with secrets and betrayals that explores love of all kinds—romantic, doomed, familial, fatalistic, erotic. Fans of Ann Patchett and Mary Beth Keane will enjoythese flawed characters teetering on the edge of break up and break down.
Previous titles by the author: April & Oliver
Elevator pitch: Set on the idyllic shores of Cape Cod during a tumultuous vacation, Dawnland is a family drama rife with secrets and betrayals that explores love of all kinds—romantic, doomed, familial, fatalistic, erotic. Fans of Ann Patchett and Mary Beth Keane will enjoy these flawed characters teetering on the edge of break up and break down.

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What prompted you to write this book?

For characters who live in my head, April and Oliver are a bit pushy. They come to me in my dreams, while walking the dog, or in the shower. I thought I’d put them to bed after my first novel, April & Oliver, but they had other plans. In writing Dawnland, I wanted to explore the unlived part of me they represent, the human longing for meaning and connection, and the high cost of truth.

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

In the realm of novel writing, time moves according to its own gestational clock. Dawnland’s five-year evolution coincided with that of a hickory nut I found in the road, overwintered in my refrigerator, and planted under grow lights in the spring. Like those first ecstatic scribbles of my novel, the tiny sapling quickly broke through the soil robust and hungry. Leaves unfurled with breakneck speed.

I set the seedling on my deck to harden up and showed my first draft to my critique group. Unaccustomed to wind and rain, my little sapling flopped around. She lost a few leaves but shored up her core. My writing group helped me to slow my crazy proliferation of words and focus on strengthening structure. My seedling made it through her first season stronger for having weathered the elements.

The next year I planted the hickory in the ground with a wire mesh to protect her from rabbits and lawnmowers. I continued working on Dawnland, slowly surrendering my preconceptions to the will of my characters, who gladly took over the wheel. I was relegated to the backseat. The sapling leafed out, not with the extravagant foliage of her babyhood, but with small sturdy leaves. I was impatient. I felt the book should be finished already. I lamented my little tree’s puniness.

The following year the tree did not leaf out. No foliage. No photosynthesis. She was nothing but a twig in the ground. Simultaneously, my book seemed to stall. I put it aside and worked on something else. My fabulous agent, Anne Edelstein, encouraged me not to give up. Nevertheless, my little stick tree appeared to be a goner.

Hickories are known for their extraordinary taproots. Two feet above ground can mean 10 feet below. To my amazement, the tree budded the following spring. The little pignut had spent an entire year troweling for the water table. I took my novel out of the drawer and discovered that my subconscious, too, had been digging in the dark, sinking a taproot.

Suddenly I had the clarity to treat the manuscript like someone else’s work. I cut 500 pages to 300 with little effort. The scaffolding that felt necessary in the initial drafts fell away. Five years after planting the hickory nut, the tree is now having a vigorous growth season. She taught this impatient writer that an organic process cannot be rushed, and inner work precedes outer.

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

After it was accepted for publication, Dawnland changed in two significant ways.

The first was the ending. An insightful teacher and beta reader, Alan Watt, questioned the ending, which felt a bit convenient. Annoyingly, I sensed he was right. I sat with my unease, walked with it, meditated on it, marinated in it during the twilight hours before waking. Once bidden, a new ending materialized, one that felt both more authentic and harder to write. I went to work. In the time it took for my contract to arrive, I rewrote the last third of the book and sent it to my editor. Thankfully, she applauded the changes.

The second revision had to do with structure. Not wishing to slow the story’s forward momentum, I had struggled with flashbacks. My editor, Laura Van der Veer, took apart the novel like a jigsaw puzzle and suggested putting it back together in a new order. Voila. Everything flowed more smoothly.

There’s an illusion out there that books are solitary creations. Editors, beta readers, copy editors, proofreaders, agents, publicists, and cover artists all contribute to the finished artwork. I’m grateful to everyone who helped me bring Dawnland into sharper focus.

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

Dawnland started out as a sequel to April & Oliver. Deep into the process, I was told by someone in the publishing industry that too much time had passed for a sequel. Dutifully, I changed the characters’ names. Near publication, a beta reader (the same one who questioned my ending) pointed out that anyone who happened to read the first book would recognize the characters. Not to mention that for years readers had been asking for a sequel to April & Oliver. Feeling foolish, but recognizing my mistake, I changed the characters’ names back at the 11th hour. I’m so glad I did! Fellow writers, I encourage you to weigh well-meaning advice carefully (including mine here) and above all trust your own instincts.

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

When we meet someone with whom we have a spiritual connection, we know it. These connections can be nurtured, starved, ignored, trampled upon, or deepened. They can also be numbed through addiction. April and Oliver have a connection, and the option to explore or reject it. Our personal growth and expansion can unfold through so many means—art, nature, animals, adventure, even illness. One of the most powerful portals of all is the crucible of relationship, not the idyllic fairytale kind, but messy, honest, challenging, intimate exchange. I hope readers will come away from Dawnland with an eye toward where those portals of connection live in their own lives and gather the courage to dive in deeper.

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

Read the best writing you can lay your hands on. Experiment with workshops, writing groups, and teachers. But most of all, let yourself fall headlong into the fictional dream of your characters. Sit in the backseat and notice where they take you. Don’t worry if they are terrible drivers, if they get lost, or total the car. Read David Wagoner’s poem, “Lost.” Lost is where you want to be. Don’t help your characters find their way to safety. Instead, watch them do and say things you would never have dreamed. You’ll know you’ve breathed life into them when they start disobeying you. Buckle your seatbelt and be amazed by where they will take you.

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