Unprepared: Marisa Richards talks about how to change the writing of her new novel

Another guest of author Marissa Richardt

Marisa Ricchart is the author of the critically acclaimed YA novels Underwater, After Alms (2020), and A SHOT AT NORMAL (2021). She holds an MA in Professional Writing from the University of Southern California and dual degrees in English and American Literature and Creative Writing from the University of California, San Diego. Before becoming a published writer, Marisa worked in academic publications, taught high school students in writing, and shellfish straws. These days, you might find her huddled on your laptop in a coffee shop or swimming in the ocean.

I have a bad habit of surrounding my characters. In my first novel, Underwater, Morgan Grant was scared of the desert, dreading leaving her apartment as she navigated between survivor’s guilt and PTSD after a mass shooting at her high school. In aftershocks, Ruby Babcock stumbles in the rubble of a sink after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake strikes southern California. The installations of these two books act like the soundtrack of a movie in my head: “First Reichardt took you underwater, now takes you … underground.” The inclusion of warning music.

While I was writing Ruby’s survival story, I would find myself embarrassingly twisted on the floor of my living room, trying to figure out the logistics of my buried surviving main character reaching her phone in the back pocket of her jeans. . Her arm slit along a sharp, jagged piece of broken Formica table and collapsed on it from above. I imagined how much Ruby could shake her feet and hands. Just how many inches can it turn left and right. How hungry she was. How cool. How scared. It was a scary space. I quickly recruited out of it.

But the fear remained.

The aftershocks forced me to face how unfortunately I was unprepared for a natural disaster. Like Ruby, I grew up in Southern California and still live here now. The “great” is not a matter of whether, it is a matter of time. However, somehow, like many of my friends, I wasn’t as proactive as I could have been. I felt self-care for not thinking about it. But this approach was completely irresponsible. As a result of facing my concerns, I now own a well-stocked earthquake set from Judy. It’s a portable backpack in the shape of a backpack and provides three to four days of supplies for my family. We also have a family plan. Meeting place. Soon from out of state we’ll check with all of him if local phone lines get jammed. I have medication. Cash. Tampons. I never let my gas tank run low. So many things I don’t want to think about, but I have to.

I am still far from the expert. I do not claim to be an expert. I did a lot of research on aftershocks, interviewing emergency room doctors and American Red Cross volunteers. I read about the Northridge, California earthquake in 1994 and the Loma Prieta earthquake in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1989. I’ve researched about Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana and the many ways the response effort went wrong. And then I had to take these bits of knowledge and use my imagination because even though I did all this research, I still couldn’t really know. I have never experienced a 7.8-magnitude earthquake before. I was never buried alive.

But writing aftershocks made me realize that catastrophic events are always possible.

As I write this, I look out of my window at a deadly orange sky resulting from hundreds of wildfires raging across California. The Air Quality Index reads as unhealthy today. And here in Los Angeles isn’t as bad as it is for my friends and family in San Francisco, Santa Cruz and Oregon. Or what my mother-in-law suffered in Alaska last year, when fires raged for months and erupted on the edge of her property line.

However, I still knew I needed to be on the inside.

I know I’m lucky to be able to be on the inside.

But, like Ruby, I felt trapped for so long. COVID-19 forced us to stay home and lie down. But it’s hot, stuffy and crowded in my tiny beach bungalow. And everywhere I look, it seems, there is a reminder that things are not well. And humans make it worse.

Hardly a week goes by when there is no news of a catastrophic event somewhere. Earthquake, wildfire, or hurricane. Drought. Flood. Mother Nature tries to tell us something. Be nice to me, I hear her say as I look across the ashes falling from the sky and land on my car like snowflakes.

I guess aftershocks came to me because it felt like something I have to say.

Like something I had to admit.

I must be better.

I have to do better.

So even though it was scary to write aftershocks, and even though it was scary to face what-ifs, I’m glad I did. Because knowledge can save lives.

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