Meet the Author: Lana Starchuck

My interview with Lana Starchuck went to many interesting places. It’s not every day you talk to someone who’s written a book and completed almost 1,000 skydives. (I’m so afraid of heights I can barely climb a ladder—you won’t catch me jumping out of a plane anytime soon!)

Lana shared her advice on dealing with rejection, facing your fears, and the role of mentorship in building a writing career.

​Lana Starchuck is an award-winning playwright, author, speaker, skydiver, and editor who aims for the right balance of nature, exercise, and humour in her life to stay aligned. She writes and edits books, and has a background in theatre, journalism, education, and creative writing. She’s a Western Zodiac Leo, a Chinese metal pig.

Her short story collection, Moving Parts (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2015), was shortlisted for the 2016 ReLit Awards. News and reviews from her first book can be found here. Her writing has been published in ELLE Canada, Taddle Creek, Geist, and Little Bird Stories Volume I and II, as well as reprinted in the Little Bird Anthology (Invisible Publishing, 2023). She is a regular contributor to Parachutist Magazine (USA Sport Parachuting Association’s official magazine), CanPara (Canadian Sport Parachuting official magazine) and LiisBeth.com.

Tell me about your journey to writing and publishing books.

It started quite a while ago, because I trained as a theater actor. I went to theater school, had a false start once upon a time in Saskatchewan, and then I went back and I finished a diploma in Montreal.

I wasn't getting acting work at the time. I started writing plays, and so I would give myself work, right? Roles for myself. I loved writing plays, and I did a couple of them, and then sort of let the writing go for a while and made some changes.

I moved to Toronto, and then I met Sarah Selecky from a newsletter. There was a creative writing course, and I'd been doing some journaling when I traveled. I did The Artist’s Way (affiliate link*) a little bit. I took a course with her, this little workshop in her living room, and I was hooked.

I started writing all these short stories. I took a couple more workshops with Sarah. I came to her and said, “I have a bunch of stories. I don't know what this is. Is this a manuscript?” And she said, “Yep, it is.”

What really got me going was a residency at the Banff Center for Creativity, back in 2013. Game-changer. That was nice. I've been there three times and can't say enough good things about it.

I would use contests for deadlines. That can fall into the helpful tip jar: How to get how to get things done, and how to have goals.

I didn't win very many at all. It was a lot of rejection. I write about rejection as well, because it's part of the whole process and we shouldn't take it personally, you know? Which is easier said than done, but it is a real thing.

I've also been behind the scenes on contests, and it is so subjective. You can only have one winner or three, or whatever it is.

That’s how I got the book published: Rejection, rejection, rejection, rejection, won a tiny little contest at the University of Toronto and more rejection, rejection, rejection, rejection, rejection, rejection, book deal.

So, there's hope for anybody out there doing any kind of creative project.

How did you move from fiction to nonfiction?

There's a novel that is ready to be edited or published or looked at by anyone. I've gotten it out there to a few publishers and agents and to some healthy passes as well people saying, “It's a good book, but it's not for us.”

That's encouraging. I'm going to keep at it, and I'm thinking about self-publishing, going down that road.

So, the nonfiction came from two parts. I took a Seth Godin course, his marketing seminar, a couple of years ago, looking at what I might do for my career and my side hustle.

I came up with this thing called courage coaching, which has since morphed into keynote speaking on becoming fearless, using my skydiving experience and career.

I’ve done almost 1,000 skydives. I do group formations. That's what I speak about. How that relates to writing, it's almost the same guiding principles or secret recipe, which is not so secret.

All the things, like focus, discipline, perseverance, patience, practice, failure, lots and lots of failure, getting back up, mentorship, humility, confidence, trust, awareness, the whole recipe. It's really kind of the same for writing, skydiving, business, relationships, new endeavors.

Here I am, writing about my failures. I literally mocked up a cover and taped it to somebody else's book. I want to call it What Happens When Your Parachute Doesn't Open? And Other Successes.

What do you want someone to take away once they've read your book?

I want people to reframe their relationship with failure and perspective, and with risk and with death and time.

This is a new part of it that's come to light recently. My dad died in 2012 and later that year, my parachute didn't open. It was like his death, oddly, gave me a surprising amount of strength, and maybe subconsciously, maybe consciously, a wake-up call.

He was 73 years old, not that old in the grand scheme of things. What are you going to do with your time? It's got to be strategic. I'm 53 now. That was 13 years ago, and the older I get—I think menopause has a role to play in this too—it's like, okay, I'm just going to do this, try this, see what happens.

That has kind of been my modus operandi for quite some time, but it feels like it's gaining momentum. When I look back on all the failures I've had, it's about reframing the failure into learning.

That doesn't even mean success. We can define success on our own terms.

COVID really sort of flipped the tables on that as well, on what we define as success. Reevaluating where you spend your time, your values, what you want to do with your life.

I told somebody, I want to put the fun back in funeral to sort of lighten up the discussion, the conversation about death. Because, yeah, spoiler alert, that is one experience that we will definitely all share.

How do you sit down and put words on the page?

I also do journalism, and I do corporate writing and marketing, and that kind of thing, too. I tend to put everything out first. I actually write by hand. I enjoy using notebooks.

This is how I wrote my collection. That's how I wrote my novel. I have ten of these things for the novel. I like to write by hand.

I use freewriting. I enjoy an outline, but I allow myself to stray from that outline, too. I wrote a book proposal for this book, which I was resisting for quite some time, but now that's done, and I'm feeling so good about it. Now I have the structure, and I'm able to play within that structure.

In the morning, ten minutes. No matter what I say, no matter what I really try to do, I write for ten minutes in the morning with my coffee. Sometimes it ends up being longer. Sometimes it ends up being shorter.

If I wrote one sentence per day, if that's all I had, I had to just touch the thing. Just keep at it. It's remarkable what the brain remembers. It's like a muscle. I use fitness training to influence the writing.

What connection do you see between fitness and writing?

I work well with a container. I’m working with an advisor/coach person now, and she says that I'm quite unstructured, which I kind of resist, but I know she's right.

I have too many projects going on at the same time, but I end up doing the one I want to do. I have this big, long list, and then I do the things wherever they are on the list, and the ones that don't get done don't necessarily need to get done.

I’m not even answering the question here, but it reminds me of what I studied with Annabel Lyon at that Banff residency, and that's how she wrote.

She wrote a novel. She had all the chapters, and she would write the one she wanted to write. If she got to one she didn't want to write, she would skip it and write everything else. Oftentimes you didn't need that one, the one you didn't like.

Zsuzsi Gartner was a good mentor, and she said, “When you're not sure what to write, what should you write next? Write the one you're going to have the most fun with.” If it's a short story, if it's an article, if it's whatever you're working on.

The fitness thing, it's a muscle, right? It's working. The more you do it, the better you get. That's with baking, basketball, knitting, push ups, or writing.

How has mentorship supported your writing?

I can say that I would not be where I am today. I would certainly not have this book and the draft without the mentorship. Early on in my writing career, somebody told me that if you want to be a writer, just hang out with writers.

It seems simplified, but it's true. It's true. You start and it’s a fearful thing to get past. It's like trying to take my own advice to my younger self. I went to this salon group. There's a really amazing group in Toronto.

The Toronto women's writer salon might be over 100 people, at least 80. It's a Google group, and we have met in person over the years. They'll have a topic, and somebody will host and have food and whatever.

Sarah Selecky said, “Of course you should join the salon.” I went to this stranger's house, bottle of wine in hand, knocked on the door by myself, and I thought, “I don't belong here. I'm not a writer.”

I had just been working with Sarah, and she's like, “Yep, go talk to them, ask questions.” And sure enough: “Come on in. What are you working on? What are you doing? How can we help?”

One thing led to the next, and I've been in that group for 10 plus years. It's incredible, the support. I am a huge proponent of mentorship, finding it and being a mentor. It's this circle of life.

How did you talk yourself into going when you felt like you didn’t belong?

I think something deep within, it's that trust. It's an inner trust, confidence that you might not think is there. If it scares you a little bit, that's probably a good signal.

I was scared. I was nervous. Even my ex-husband at the time was like, “Oh, just get out the door. Go. What are you gonna do?”

Being scared was part of it, for sure. Feeling the fear and doing it anyway. Eleanor Roosevelt, I think, said, do one thing every day that scares you, or do the thing that scares you. It might be a sign.

Not something that terrifies you, but I think a healthy fear is a good thing. Nervous. That good nervous, so you have that energy, because deep down, I think we all know we have the answers within us.

A lot of us will put it off or not do it, or make up excuses and or convince ourselves not to do it.

How do you teach people to take risks when opportunities arise?

That's a good question. I'll pull a page from my mentor, Sarah Selecky. She says the thing you think you shouldn't do, or you shouldn't write, or that feels scary or embarrassing or inappropriate or unreasonable, try that.

I don't know if it can be taught. I do that when I'm teaching. I say “I can't really teach you anything. I can guide, I can support, I can encourage, I can motivate. I can show you models. I can show you illustrations and examples.”

But it's really up to the individual to take that risk. Starting small is another thing too. You don't have to bare your soul.

George Saunders is a huge influence, too. He says to write your characters into a corner. Write them into places where you don't know how they're going to get out.

Experiment. Have fun, because that's what you can do with fiction. I'm getting excited talking about it because I haven't written fiction for so long.

We're moving through a nutty time. So you may as well write, you know? Can you write anything that's stranger than what's happening? I don't know. Try to top it. I would read it.

How do you read for influence?

That's another thing I learned from Sarah, and I believe she learned it from Zsuzsi. If you can't see it, you can't be it. It’s like little girls playing hockey. If you can't see it, you can't be it.

So, once you read a book that is maybe a bit of an alternative structure or a new voice or a strange thing, like George Saunders, for example—he's not everybody's jam, but he's my jam. Julie Hecht, way back when I discovered her, I was like, “You can write like this?”

It opened up a new avenue to me, like I could be this kooky, weird person, to write what felt like nontraditional writing. Miranda July, or Rufi Thorpe’s Margo’s Got Money Troubles (affiliate link*) are others I recently discovered.

I like the way George Saunders talks about copying people. You can copy as much as you want, but you're still not going to be them. I'm never going to be George Saunders, but I can certainly use his influence.

What do you find makes a good editor?

I love editing. I love it. I've also learned from really good editors. Annabel Lyon was a very good editor. The editor I had at Arsenal Pulp Press for my collection was great.

Margaret Webb, when I was getting into journalism, edited some of my work. I take what I've learned from them, how I like to be edited, and pay it forward to people I mentor or or work with, and it seems to work.

What I always appreciated was direct. I like a fairly heavy hand. I want something useful. Nobody wants their time wasted. It was really nice to have people with the right amount of encouragement too. There's a balance there.

More often than not, that's the best way. Find the thing that's working and say, “More of this.” It's not helpful to say, “Make this better.” That's not great feedback.

That’s what Annabel did for me. She reinforced my own confidence. We'd be going over some story, and then she would be like, “This part here? Fix it. You know what to do.” It's a nice place to get to, but you have to earn that from both sides.

What's next for you creatively?

Oh, that is a good question. I have to write this book. So that's next. That's next. The proposal is one thing. I'm sending the proposal out, but I'm also writing the book. Whoever wants the next bestseller, here's where they can get it. If not, I'll do it myself.

I have been thinking about what's next after that, to go back into fiction. I've had this idea that’s influenced by The Elegance of the Hedgehog (affiliate link*).

That is one of my favorite books of all time. I love that book so much!

We didn’t even talk about that! How weird is that? Okay, so you know what I mean about the vibe and tone and influence. I haven't even finished reading it, but so many people recommended it to me.

It’s one of those books that I don't even want to finish. It’s even got all the little Post-Its in where I made notes.

What I like about it is there's a character in my short story collection, and my novel is an extension of one of the short stories. This next thing would be the adventures of one of the cool characters.

I had one of those defining moments back at the Banff days. It was the first workshop I did there, and I submitted this short story, and it was kind of vanilla, boring, whatever. We workshopped it.

Then we had a reading one night. I had experimented with this little offbeat character. I did a reading from that. After the reading, someone was like, “Write more of that please.” Because it was more me.

I was open to showing myself and taking those risks and that's what resonated. It is better writing. It’s all the things I tell everybody else to do.

What would be your number one piece of advice for another writer?

As silly as it sounds, writers write. You could tattoo that on your arm.

It sounds so simple, or even pedantic, but it's true. So many people say, “Oh, I could write a book, oh, I had this idea.” Yeah, okay, well, where is it? Where's the writing?

Where's the crappy piece that needs to be edited, the ugly vase that needs to be reshaped into a nicer piece of pottery?

Writers write. There's no shortcut. There's no way around it, even in the age of AI, whatever is going to happen with that. We're still humans, and we still love these words.

The other thing is consistency. I do fall off the wagon with my own. But I’ve done that 10 minutes a day. Just try this. It’s the same thing with yoga or whatever, and it’s not every day. Don't beat yourself up if you miss a day. But it does seem to be a trick.

If you want to, you'll find the time. Because we can find time for all sorts of stuff. We manage to find time for the things that we really want to find time for.

What's the best book you've read recently?

My friend Heidi Reimer wrote an amazing book called The Mother Act (affiliate link*). The other is This Accident of Being Lost (affiliate link*). Leanne Betasamosake Simpson is an indigenous Canadian. Really amazing book.

​Big Swiss by Jen Beagin (affiliate link*)—I discovered her through a friend, and that's kind of out there. Another good one for influence.

I’m also reading Margo’s Got Money Troubles, by Rufi Thorpe (affiliate link*). I haven't finished it yet, but it’s so good.

For nonfiction I'm reading Mel Robbins' The Let Them Theory and Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks (affiliate links*). I also listened to Matthew McConaughey Greenlights, which I really enjoyed (affiliate link*).

Meet the Author interviews are lightly edited for clarity.

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I loved talking with Lana about her journey into writing. Her use of contests to create deadlines (and acclimate herself to rejection) is such a powerful strategy for getting words on the page and increasing the odds of publishing something!

What will you take away from this interview?

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