About Morgan Magauran:
Morgan Magauran listens to and questions the stories we tell ourselves. Her debut series, Rumored Woman, weaves the deeply personal with the universal, inviting readers into the territory of authenticity, faith, and belonging. Morgan resides on an island in the Pacific NW, where the rains and sea share their secrets with her.
What inspires you to write?
Paying attention to what's unresolved in my heart fuels my writing. I enjoy living with perennial questions like—Who am I? Why am I here? Questions that don't have easy answers are my companions. I've been living with the question, "How much is enough?" for more than two decades, and in 2020, another question started accompanying me, "How important are the things we cannot see?"
What authors do you read when you aren’t writing?
Rainer Maria Rilke, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Terry Tempest Williams, Mary Oliver, Tom Cowan, Niall Williams, Pascal Mercier, Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Neil Daimon, Margaret Atwood…
Tell us about your writing process.
I'm a 'panster' first and an 'outliner' second. Pantsers fly by the seat of their pants. After the story feels complete, I create an outline to check my intuition on chapter breaks and recall what happened. My love of tension infuses the characters' lives and dialogue. I pay attention to how the story wants to unfold and rarely let myself edit until the story finds resolution, roughly around 100,000 words. Then, countless editing passes begin, cleaning up my sentences, changing chapter breaks and scenes, cutting at least 10,000 words, and maybe even the ending before it's sent to beta readers. Writing a story takes me a few months; editing can take years.
After incorporating feedback from beta readers, I work with a sensitivity reader because I delve into issues of racism. Next, it passes through a team of editors I've assembled for a developmental edit, copy edit, and proofreading. I'm always in the tension of editing what's written and writing the story's front edge.
For Fiction Writers: Do you listen (or talk to) to your characters?
Mostly, I listen to my characters. They tend to bend my ear in the shower, during beach walks, or while I'm driving. It's often incredibly inconvenient to write in those moments, so I've taken to keeping a little notebook and pen in my back pocket or texting myself lines that capture the essence of their message. I love it when they surprise me. In those moments, I wonder, where is this story coming from?
What advice would you give other writers?
Pay attention to tensions, dilemmas, and questions with no easy answers.
How did you decide how to publish your books?
For over a year, I ignored the pressure from friends to read what I was writing, and then I ignored their recommendations to publish it. I never had a goal of writing a series. My newly discovered love of writing was an unprecedented experience of joy, and I didn't want anything to disturb it. Besides, I had a day job. It wasn't until they started quoting my characters back to me, indicating different choices they were making in their lives, that I entertained the notion. After a career focused on transforming organizations and capitalism, the potential to impact people's inner lives enticed me. Since I had zero interest in looking for a publisher, I decided to publish it myself under a pen name, Morgan Magauran. However, I fundamentally underestimated the amount of work it entailed and how much it would keep me from writing on the front edge of my story.
What do you think about the future of book publishing?
Platforms like Substack will continue to evolve publishing and democratize the relationship between the reader and writer, eliminating the traditional power of the publisher to gate keep stories.
What genres do you write?: Women's Fiction, Allegory, Magical Realism, Mind Body Spirit
What formats are your books in?: Both eBook and Print
Website(s)
Morgan Magauran Home Page Link
Your Social Media Links
Goodreads
LinkedIn
All information in this post is presented “as is” supplied by the author. We don’t edit to allow you the reader to hear the author in their own voice.
