Tara Laskowski has had an impressive career. As former editor of the prestigious literary magazine SmokeLong Quarterly, she helped to shepherd some of the best contemporary flash fiction (stories of 1,000 words or less) to publication. Her own short stories have been published in numerous magazines and anthologies, and her debut novel, One Night Gone, won the Agatha Award, the Anthony Award, and the Macavity Award. The New York Times described her second novel, The Mother Next Door, as “a polished and entertaining read,” and her new novel, The Weekend Retreat, received advance praise from Publishers Weekly, which called it a “satisfying mash-up of Succession and Agatha Christie.” Yet despite her years of experience and many accolades, Laskowski says she still struggles with the novel-writing process.
“My first novel was the easiest to write,” she tells Shondaland. “I didn’t have an agent. I didn’t have a deadline. I was writing and having fun. It didn’t matter if it took 10 years or a year. When I look back, I’m like, ‘Ah, that was such a beautiful time.’ But [with] the second book, a few things happened. The pandemic hit, I was trying to get the book done, and I had a deadline — and I’m a control freak about deadlines. I think that messed with my creative process a bit. I had outlined my second novel and had it approved by my editor — we sold the book on that proposal — and I didn’t realize that I could veer from the outline. I was very faithful to the outline, even though alarm bells were going off that maybe this isn’t quite working. I ended up throwing out that whole draft and starting from scratch.” She says she did the same thing with her third book, getting far into a draft before realizing changes needed to be made. Ultimately, Laskowski says, The Weekend Retreat took about a year and a half to write, though much of that was spent writing the unused draft. She says her goal for her next book “is to not write an entire draft and throw it away.”
Regardless of the time it took to complete the book (or the headache-inducing process Laskowski went through to write it), The Weekend Retreat is an enjoyable, page-turning thriller. A locked room-style novel, it focuses on the uber-wealthy Van Ness siblings, who, along with their spouses, gather at their lush family winery in upstate New York for an annual birthday celebration. But over the course of the weekend, tensions rise, secrets are revealed, and lives are destroyed, with a few of the characters not making it out alive.
Laskowski recently chatted with Shondaland via video call about her writing process, her advice for aspiring novelists, and how her years of editing flash fiction prepared her for writing novels.
SANDRA EBEJER: Congratulations on your book! Where did the idea for The Weekend Retreat come from?
TARA LASKOWSKI: That’s a good question! [Laughs.] It’s been so long. I was actually thinking right before this, “I should probably open and look at the book …” Because it was a really hard book to write, so when I turned it in, I literally shut my brain down. I’m like, “I don’t want to think about you anymore.”
My novels always start with setting. I need to know where the book is taking place. From the very beginning, I knew I wanted to do a book at a winery. I wanted to do this locked-room style of a thriller where people are in a place and can’t get out. And when we visit wineries, they feel so remote. You’re driving down these twisty roads, and your cell phone service goes out. And so, I was like, “That would be a really cool place to set this locked-room mystery because you’re naturally not having cell phone service.” It’s a remote enough place that you can make it feel like a locked room. I knew I wanted it to be a close-knit group of [characters]. Originally, I thought there would be a group of friends that go to this winery, but then, for various reasons, I switched it to this family. I started thinking about this idea of a wealthy family and the whole thing that comes with any family, where you’ve got all these tensions, and you’re [in the] spotlight, and people are watching what you’re doing. It seemed like a great mix of things to do.
SE: As I was reading the book, I thought about how we seem to have this fascination with very wealthy, very miserable families. I thought about Succession and Fall of the House of Usher and even a few actual, real-world families who are ridiculously wealthy and yet notoriously unhappy. I’m wondering if you had any of that in mind when you wrote this book.
TL: Yeah, I was definitely thinking about the Trump winery. I’ve gone there — not to the Trump winery, but that area — and I passed by the giant gold sign. So yeah, I was thinking about those kinds of families. Like the Kennedys — all these wealthy families that have these scandals in their backgrounds. They have so much money that they don’t know what to do with themselves. I didn’t have a specific family in mind, but I was doing a lot of research on crazy, f--ked-up families [laughs].
SE: What made you decide to write the book in the first person?
TL: I love first person. All my books have been first person. I tried to write my second novel in a close third, and it just didn’t feel creepy enough, so I changed it. I like getting into someone’s head. I feel like their voice comes out for me in a different way when I’m writing first person than close third. I think it would have been a lot easier in some ways to have had this story told in third, but that’s just the way the characters’ voices came to me.
SE: When you’re writing, especially when you’re writing in first person and you’re bouncing from character to character in each chapter, do you flesh out the characters before you begin? Or do you develop them as you go?
TL: In this case, I developed them as I went. And I honestly don’t recommend that to anyone [laughs]. It’s really hard. I ended up going back and adding in so much because I was learning about the characters as I was writing them. I think it would have been a lot easier in some ways, since this is such a small time frame of a book and the characters are so important, for me to have spent more time doing character sketches and figuring out a lot of questions that I ended up figuring out as I was writing. It was a more painful process for me because I would get so far, and I’d be like, “Oh! That’s why she’s doing this.” And then I had to go back and layer in some things. So yeah, I think I learned something from the process of writing this one — that I really need to spend some time figuring out characters before I start drafting.
SE: Of the characters in this book, are there any whom you were particularly fond of or found the most fun to write?
TL: I love them all, even though they’re all despicable people [laughs]. They’re all such assholes. I really like writing villains, [and] in some ways, they’re all villains. They’re all such jerks, but yet I feel like I can relate to them as well. They have these vulnerabilities about them. And even though they’re wealthy and privileged and they make terrible choices, I like to think that I at least showed why they are acting the way they are. Even if their moral code is twisted and crazy, at least it’s there, and they believe that they’re doing the right thing. So in some ways, I relate to all of them, even though they’re jerks. But Harper was the most fun to write because she’s so sarcastic. I love writing dry, sarcastic people. She just says whatever’s on her mind, which is totally the opposite of me.
SE: Are you a plotter or a pantser? Do you know where the story is going, or do you let the story surprise you as it unfolds?
TL: I think I’m that middle ground. What do they call it?
SE: Plantser?
TL: Something like that. What I’m doing right now for my fourth book is I’m writing the back-jacket copy. I’m trying to get, overall, what the story is [and] the moving parts of the whole thing. I think that helps me have a very, very bird’s-eye-view framework. So, I need to know the framework generally. And then I like to know the three beats that are coming so I can write to those. Then, once I get to that point, I stop and think, “Okay, what are the next three beats ahead that I need to do?” I need to know where I’m going, vaguely. And that metaphor, I’m sure you’ve heard, where you’re driving in the road at night and your headlights can only show you so far down the road — that’s what I need to know, up to the end of those headlights, where I’m going.
SE: I love that you created a playlist for the book. Do you listen to music as you write? What comes first, the music or the story?
TL: I don’t listen to music. I can’t write in coffee shops either. It has to be quiet. So many people love the coffee shop vibe, but inevitably, if I’m trying to write in a coffee shop, there’s one group sitting right next to me having a super-loud conversation that I can’t stop listening to. I like to be in my office, and I like it to be quiet. But the playlist is a fun exercise to do. I did it for my last book as well. It’s just fun to think about the mood of the book and the different types of themes that come out.
SE: You were a longtime editor of a flash-fiction journal. Flash fiction seems like it would be easy but can actually be quite difficult to master. What did editing that genre teach you about the craft of writing, and how do you use that knowledge when working on your novels?
TL: For me, short stories and flash fiction come easier than writing novels. I do agree with you. I think it’s really hard. Sometimes people think, “It’s only a page. How hard can it be?” But it’s hard to distill [a story] down. I think, for me, the attention to language and description and word choice is so important in flash. I mean, obviously, it’s important in any kind of writing, but I think readers forgive less when the piece is so short, so you really have to make sure that every word counts. I think that helps a bit in novel writing because I focus on those sharp details. When you’re writing a novel, you don’t want 17 pages of exposition and description of the landscape. But you can put just a little bit in — enough that people aren’t going to totally skip over the description, but enough that you can make it sound good and make it pretty and intriguing. So, that focus on language and detail has really helped.
SE: On your website, you have a blog called What Scares You?, which features interviews with other authors. How did that come about?
TL: I’m a Halloween baby, and I love horror stuff. I was thinking I wanted to do something on my website to highlight authors, just to have a wider community of chatter in that way. But I didn’t want to do the same old, like, “Tell me about your book.” I [thought] it would be interesting to talk to people about what scares them. It’s interesting to me to have those conversations, and I love reading the interviews when they come in. It’s like, “Oh, yeah, that’s really cool. That scares me too.” Or “I love that movie!” It’s been interesting to see the themes that keep cropping up, like what people are scared of. So many people have been traumatized by the movie Jaws! An entire generation of thriller writers are thriller writers because of Jaws. But also, just how unique fear is and where it stems from. I think about it in the same way as humor. Like, what you find funny is so unique to you, and what you find scary is also that way, even though there are these universal truths about what we fear as humans.
SE: I’m going to ask one of the questions you ask other writers, which is “What is your greatest fear as a writer?”
TL: I think it’s a tie. Not having the opportunity to do it anymore because publishing is such a strange business. And also, just running out of ideas. Am I going to just one day not have any more ideas? It’s kind of a scary thing.
SE: Those are both good. What is your advice for aspiring novelists?
TL: Go do anything else [laughs]. Just kidding. I mean, you have to grow a thick skin and be persistent. It’s such a hard, long process and pretty thankless in many ways. Building a community is good, not in a networking way but just genuine friendships. My community of writers helped so much, even just bitching about terrible writing days or helping, like, “I recommended you for this podcast.” There’s so many doors and wonderful things that happen when you have a genuine community of writer friends.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Sandra Ebejer is a New York-based writer who has contributed to The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, Greatist, Flood Magazine, and The Girlfriend from AARP. Find her on Twitter @sebejer.
Get Shondaland directly in your inbox: SUBSCRIBE TODAY