Theanna Bischoff was born and raised in Calgary, Alberta. Before moving to Toronto to pursue graduate studies in Psychology, she completed a BA Honours Degree in Psychology at the University of Calgary with a Concentration in Creative Writing. Her research has explored how women experience a cancer diagnosis, as well as the development of creative writing skills in adolescents. Cleavage, her first novel, will be released in April 2008. See below for a preview of this great title.

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Find out even more about Cleavage -- click here for Theanna Bischoff's interview on CJSW.

Cleavage: The Push-Up Version

Theanna Bischoff on writing Cleavage

History

I fold and refold the Okanagan map in my hands, blue river veins. As a child, I would repeat my own name over and over until it sounded foreign on my tongue. Maybe it can work backwards too—if I say ex-boyfriend enough, it will start to sound familiar.

Cleavage emerged originally as a short story which was the final assignment in a creative writing class at the University of Calgary. Originally, it centered primarily around the road trip taken by Leah and Justin, and the awkward drive home after having broken up. While working on Cleavage, I’d just started researching my psychology undergraduate thesis in psycho-oncology – the psychology of having and dealing with cancer. I think the primary goal of a writer is to create and explore complexity, and an illness certainly intensifies emotions, both negative and positive; it also creates a lot of reorganization and renegotiation of one’s life. Combining a cancer diagnosis at a young age with an unstable long-term relationship between two incompatible twenty-somethings gave me lots to work with; so much so that, when the short story version of Cleavage was handed in, the feedback I got said it read more like a novel waiting to happen. The goal of the following year’s class (Novel Length Manuscript) became making it happen.

Fact vs. Fiction

Once, during a particularly angsty bout of teenagehood, Sabine stole all the tampons from my purse. This was the three and a half days after the boy I like performed a song during a school pep rally, the sort of ‘wah-wah’ rock ‘n roll with another girl’s name in it. I went down into the ravine behind our house and sat with my feet in the stream for a long time, twiddling the sludgy leaves with my toes. I remember being totally eight-tenths of the way to killing myself.

I’ve told friends that I’ve met since writing Cleavage that they’re lucky they met me afterwards, because I can guarantee they’re not interwoven into the novel in some way. Much like Cleavage is a patchwork quilt of Leah’s life and thoughts, the novel has served as a hodge-podge of my own experiences. Those who know me very well can find pieces of my life within the novel: I did live in a shady basement suite (nicknamed the Hobbit Hole for its low ceilings); I did once visit a psychic who forgot my name mid-session; my parents are divorced; I do own a cat; I do ride the C-train facing the opposite direction; I do read the Sun as opposed to the Herald. Those who know me will also likely find pieces of themselves and significant moments, albeit disguised, interwoven within the text. I won’t embarrass anyone by saying what parts belong to whom.

At the same time, I made a point to deviate from real-life events in specific ways. While my psycho-oncology research was on ovarian cancer in older adults, I chose breast cancer for Leah and made her young so that her story remained distinct from the narratives in my thesis. Additionally, Leah was a fun character to write in that she and I have a few significant differences, such as her fear of intimacy, and her lack of ambition and motivation toward her job. Furthermore, I’ve never experienced a serious illness. Having cancer gives Leah permission, in a sense, to do and say a lot of things that aren’t typically acceptable. Modern society really emphasizes rationality and keeping one’s emotions in check, but with Leah, I was able to really explore the dark side of a person’s psyche, and the cynical things we all think but don’t say aloud.

Cancer

I am sick of the pink ribbons. Slap a pink ribbon on stationery, stuffed poodles, bracelets, toques, car windshields, lapels. Silly, smiling women walking for a cure, shouting empowerment in the air, clutching their mothers and daughters to their chests. They think the pink ribbons are points – collect enough and breast cancer will disappear. They don’t understand. This game has endless levels. You can play as long as you want.

I’ve referred to Cleavage as my anti-thesis because the research I did that year essentially talked about life lessons learned from cancer, and how one can triumph over and grow from this diagnosis. However, the women I interviewed also expressed the view that talking about their negative feelings and fears was discouraged, and that the “Pink Culture” of women’s cancers focuses more on ribbons and raising money as though this will somehow make all the bad parts of cancer go away. While some individuals may be able to integrate a cancer diagnosis into their lives and make sense of it, having an illness is still a serious, life-changing stressor that, as I’ve said before, severely complicates one’s life. In Leah, I wanted to express the dark side of cancer and the pain it causes (essentially the view that cancer patients often feel they need to hide to protect their family and friends).

Early Drafts / Deleted Scenes

In its short story version, none of the characters had names except for Leah, and characters who had died or were about to die (e.g., Adelaide Kaltenbach, Leah’s cat Eightball, the list of the sick at church, etc.), to emphasize Leah’s self-identification with death. However, this proved problematic as the story got longer. It gets confusing, for example, in cases of dialogue between two individuals of the same gender (at which point one starts to run out of distinguishing pronouns). Cleavage was probably half to three-quarters completed when Leah’s friends and family acquired monikers.

At one point, I also experimented with a scene from Justin’s perspective, which my editor effectively squelched, as it was too discordant with the rest of the text.

Characters

Our two-year anniversary falls during the last two weeks that I have two breasts. Justin finds his old clarinet and plays the opening notes to a vaguely familiar song, so sweet and gentle that I cry. He says, “Thank God for high school band.” We eat soft Cheetos under the kitchen table, using sheets as the walls to his makeshift fort. He eats with his left hand and keeps his right on my sacrificial breast. “I’m Cheeto ambidextrous.”

Justin was, by far, the most difficult character to write. My classmates, who served as my editors for the year, were ambivalent towards him, depending on the chapters I handed in that week. One week he was “too sweet,” and then, when I tried to remedy this, he was, “too much of a jerk,” and people were starting to ask why Leah was with him in the first place. Interestingly, I think the class’s ambivalence towards Justin mirrored how Leah feels about him. He’s too charming and cheerful to hate, and yet too annoying and immature to really be that fond of. I can say that my own feelings towards him changed as the book progressed, too.