Interview with Michelle Johnston author of 'Tiny Uncertain Miracles'
Author of ‘Tiny Uncertain Miracles’
Available now from your favourite booksellers
Publisher: 4th Estate AU (HarperCollins AU)
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INERVIEW
Please tell us how Tiny Uncertain Miracles first came to be. Did the spark of inspiration begin with an image, a voice, a concept, a dilemma or something else?
The spark of inspiration, and I’m a little embarrassed about this, came floating out of the void the night of my 2018 launch of Dustfall, my first novel. Although I’d wanted to set a story in the strange labyrinthine tunnels snaking through the underground of the hospital where I work, none would come, until this ridiculous premise shoved its way into my head. A (somewhat disgraced) scientist, who is using bacteria to produced protein (a perfectly normal thing to do) comes into work one day to discover his proteins have begun making gold. Honestly. What sort of spark of inspiration is that?
Can you give us a short overview of Tiny Uncertain Miracles?
Marick is our protagonist – a failed priest and discarded family man – and he takes a job as a hospital chaplain (which he’s not all that good as, either). Soon into his tenure he comes across a scientist – Hugo, a man as lost as Marick himself – who believes he has discovered the impossible in his laboratory. It’s the story of their burgeoning friendship and the exploration of why they both take the positions they do in trying to understand this peculiar occurrence. Is it science, alchemy, magic, a hoax, or, weirdly, a miracle?
How has your profession as a medical doctor helped with the writing of Tiny Uncertain Miracles? Are there any other personal experiences that assisted with the story’s creation?
It was wonderfully freeing to write about the traumas and medical tragedies in a hospital from the point of view of a chaplain, rather than through the eyes of a doctor – taking my knowledge, but transmogrifying it inside the mind of somebody very non-medical. I’ve worked in the underbelly of a trauma centre for over thirty years, so have experienced a vast palette of human responses to the sudden, the unexpected, the traumatic, the life-altering. I guess this is simply part of my DNA, which has gone on to infuse the way I write character, and story.
Tiny Uncertain Miracles contains some incredibly wise phrases in many unforgettable scenes. Which scene or chapter was the hardest to write and why?
Thank you! To flip that around, the easiest to write were the scenes in the depths of medical despair, the head injury, cardiac arrest, the organ donation. These parts of the stories were obviously sitting there, needing to come out in some lyrical way, and it was a joyful thing to give them poetic shape. The hardest, were the more plot driven occurrences, what happens on the outside – making it all stick together so the narrative could follow some sort of path, no matter how rocky.
Mirack is on a tumultuous journey to faith and hope. What part does his friend Hugo play in all this (without giving anything away)? Also, provide three words each to describe these two men and what makes them unique?
To reach the major theme – why do these men believe what they do – they both had to have an entire life trajectory to deliver them there. Our beliefs, no matter how strange, are built on strata and layers of experiences from the day we exit the womb, and so it is with Marick and Hugo. Marick, the man of God (ish), is the one to take the scientific point of view, while Hugo, the scientist, and who grew up with an Indian mother who had told him from a young age he had the ‘fingerprints of fate’ on him, is much quicker to believe in a mystical explanation.
Marick is unconfident, bumblingly compassionate, and steadfast
Hugo is biased, driven and curious
Who is your favourite character in Tiny Uncertain Miracles and why?
It would have to be Dolly, the hospital volunteer, a pint-sized, immaculate, no-nonsense woman whose life-long desire is to donate a kidney, and who leads a guerrilla attack when the administration team introduce computers to replace the meet-and-greet girls.
What is the key life lesson/theme and/or deeper-meaning/message in Tiny Uncertain Miracles?
Essentially it is whatever the reader takes from it – that question is now theirs to answer. For me, it is why do any of us believe in the things we do? As well as asking, what constitutes a miracle these days?
How long did it take you to write Tiny Uncertain Miracles? Did you run into any obstacles and, if so, how did you overcome them?
From go to woe it was approximately four years. There were a good number of drafts (please no counting – it’s mildly shameful how many times I rewrote the story, trying to get it right) before settling on Hugo and Marick to carry the tale. Many characters were cut, left swinging on life-ropes somewhere in the wilderness of my mind and in my notebooks. At one point there was a gorgeous drug rep from Moscow, Indiana. Not sure where she is now. Obstacles are the life-blood of any published book. Rejections, wrong turns, loss of faith in one’s own writing ability, comparison to others, that old refrain - you’re not good enough, the usual constant nagging companions of the writing world.
Did you have any special incidents or any unusual revelations that filled you with awe during the writing of Tiny Uncertain Miracles?
I am fortunate that I seem to have a brain attuned to awe. Perhaps it’s the nature of my day-job. This whole life thing seems miraculous – us, our bodies, our decisions, other people, the daily heartbeat of the planet. All that’s required is not to succumb to the unnoticing (a risk for us all, I believe). When you’re really in tune to this absurd, crazy life, you can discover clutchfuls of novel ideas by coffee time of a morning.
Have you always wanted to be a writer? What motivated you to venture on this path? Please share a little about your publication journey.
I’ve always thought I had the heart of a writer, the soul of a poet. The problem was, for about two decades, I didn’t write a thing. Sure, I was trying to learn how to be a half-decent doctor, and parent two (gorgeous) children. But nothing on the page, which I regret. I did always read voraciously, and will still read anything, as long as it’s quality writing. I am in awe of sentences that make me swoon. I’ve always wanted to do that for others, perhaps as a gift to readers, and on the very rare occasion I can produce a sentence of excellence, it’s like crack cocaine, and I want to keep coming back and trying for more. I am of the apprenticeship model of writing – learning on the job, as well as a serial-dropper-out-of online classes and workshops. The only real quality you need to get published is utter pig-headedness anyway, and a bit of an ear for the prosody of prose. Mostly it’s about never giving up. And I mean never.
What is the most difficult part of your artistic process? And are you a pantser, planner or a mixture of both?
If plotting is on the left of a scale, and pantsing is on the right, I am so far over on the right I make Trump look like a communist.
Your writing is very lyrical. Do you like to read or write poetry?
I adore poetry. Love it like the dawn. I try to read poems at multiple times throughout the day, and I always keep a chapbook in my scrubs pocket (which, I admit, I rarely get to pull out and read at work, but it sits there like a talisman, hope, a reminder of beauty). Like taking exercise breaks while sitting, poetry breaks keep my brain on some sort of wordily musical level.
What books or authors have influenced you the most in your writing?
Too hard. But I’ll try. Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Penelope Lively. Lauren Groff. Rebecca Solnit. Zadie Smith. Virginia Woolf. AA Gill.
What are your top five novels that you read in 2022 and recommend?
Hydra by Adriane Howell. Night Blue by Angela O’Keefe. Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr. Sea of Tranquility by Emily St Mandel, A Country of Eternal Light by Paul Dalgarno (I had an ARC!! Lucky, lucky me), and Bukowski in a Sundress by Kim Addonizio because there’s no way on god’s green earth I could limit it to five – shall I go on?
If you could cure any disease, what would it be? Give the reason for your selection and how it would change the world as we know it. (Those who would benefit from it might see it as a modern miracle!)
Good, good question. It would be addiction. Because not only would that solve a great deal of domestic violence, intergenerational trauma, accidents, family breakdowns, and crime, it would require huge societal restructuring, including definitively addressing poverty and inequality, so a win-win, I say. Plus my job would be a hell of a lot quieter.
Do you have another writing project in the works? If so, please share a little about it?
My next book is written and has flown back to the publisher. This one is a huge detour – a non-fiction book. It is about critical care through a literary lens. Written for the lay public it is a journey through the mad, awe-inspiring ways our bodies can go wrong, and often as not, get better, with a side salad of life as an emergency physician, and what goes on behind the scenes.
Thank you, Michelle for being my guest! Readers get a copy of this brilliant book (out now) and visit Michelle Johnston’s lovely website for more information.
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About the Author:
Dr Michelle Johnston is a consultant Emergency Physician who works at an inner city hospital. Mostly her days consist of trauma and mess. Also, she writes.
She studied medicine at UWA, and gained her Fellowship with the Australian College for Emergency Medicine in 1998.
She loves caring for patients and teaching, but is terminally confused by health bureaucracy and is an expert in meeting avoidance.
She believes there is a beating heart of humanity, art, and beauty within the sometimes brutal reality of the Emergency Department, and she has dedicated her career to finding that sweet spot between creativity and critical care medicine.
Books are her other oxygen, and writing her sustenance.
