Cottage country's winter magic is the star of Robin Lefler's romantic comedy Reasonable Adults
Robin Lefler worked in the tech industry for many years before she wrote her first novel, Reasonable Adults. The writer from Kitchener, Ont. wrote the majority of her debut rom-com throughout the COVID-19 pandemic in her car, outside her kids' bedrooms and on walks with her dogs — wherever and whenever she could find a moment to write.
Reasonable Adults is a warm and humorous novel about a young woman named Kate Rigsby who takes a job at an artists' retreat in Muskoka cottage country after her life begins to unravel. She imagines three idyllic months in an artistic wonderland — accompanied by her dog Eric — as she plots her next chapter. But when she arrives at Treetops Creative Retreat things aren't at all as she expected. As the cold winter months — and the reality of her new job — sets in, what Kate thought she wanted begins to shift alongside the changing weather.
Lefler spoke to CBC Books about how she wrote Reasonable Adults.
Finding pockets of time to write
"I am one of those people who has written the first 10 pages of, goodness knows who many books. This was my first time writing one the whole way through. I decided to write what I know — which is someone in their early 30s trying to figure out what adulting looks like."
"I wrote a large portion of Reasonable Adults sitting in the hallway outside of my kids' bedrooms — for about an hour and a half every night. The rest of it was mostly written in my car, in a parking lot around the corner during the pandemic — it was my vehicular weekend office! My husband would stay with the kids and I would drive out of sight and sit there and write until I was either too cold or I needed a washroom badly enough to come back.
I wrote a large portion of Reasonable Adults sitting in the hallway outside of my kids' bedrooms.
"It was very much finding those pockets of time. When I had 10 minutes between meetings at my day job, or writing in my head walking the dogs and then hastily jotting it down to be fleshed out later. I've heard of people doing this and I thought it was impossible, but when it's the only option, it works."
A winter Muskoka rom-com
"I loved the idea of a winter Muskoka story — it felt like a less explored facet of the Muskoka experience. Not that there a ton of Muskoka rom-coms! There is something so special about the isolation and the nature. In the book, Kate is really taken aback by this other side of it — she assumed it would be miserable and cold, with nothing to do — and it's actually a very different and magical place.
I was really into the idea of these isolated communities and groups of people who can't escape each other easily — but with a humorous twist.
"I was into the idea of these isolated communities and groups of people who can't escape each other easily, but with a humorous twist. I wanted something that someone would be happy to pick up at the airport and read on a flight and feel that was a good investment of their time. I didn't want anything too heavy. I wanted it to be fun, but still smart and somewhat introspective."
Keeping track of ideas
"I have a paper notebook and I like to put ideas there. I find it satisfying to see a messily scrawled idea. I then have a generic everyday notebook filled with weird jokes that I don't know where they fit in, or people's names or scenarios that would be funny or interesting to write about. Then I like to have a fresh notebook for each book I'm writing, that I will use for ideas specific to that story.
"I do like having it handwritten in the early stages. It seems less committed in that state whereas if I'm putting it on my computer it suddenly becomes business and like it must be a real thing!"
Support of a writing group
"In November 2019, I had just gone back to work after maternity leave with my daughter. I was reading a lot of Kelley Armstrong and it happened that she was doing a workshop locally in Waterloo. I decided to go to the workshop and I met two women there who invited me to join their writing group — which meant I had to write something! And that 'something' became Reasonable Adults.
Having people and a supportive community to keep saying 'this is worth continuing' and 'you need to finish it.'
"It took me 18 months to write Reasonable Adults — and that was with some big breaks. A third of the way through was when I realised that for the first time I was going to write a whole novel and see if someone would publish it. It was a turning point in my mindset, of that commitment and the confidence that I got from my writing group.
"There is so much else going on in life so it's easy for this to be the one thing that slips. Having people and a supportive community to keep saying 'this is worth continuing' and 'you need to finish it' and harassing me — in a loving and kind way — when I wasn't doing anything, was a life turning point for me."
Robin Lefler's comments have been edited for length and clarity.
