Meet Rebecca McKanna
Rebecca McKanna was born and raised in Iowa. Her debut novel,Don’t Forget the Girl, was nominated for the2024 Lambda Literary Award in LGBTQ+ Mystery and the2023 Strand Magazine’s Critics Award for Best Debut Mystery. It was awarded the2024 Indiana Authors Award for Genre Fiction. Her short stories have been anthologized in The Best American Mystery Stories 2019 and recognized as distinguished in The Best American Short Stories 2019. She has been published inColorado Review,Michigan Quarterly Review,The Rumpus,McSweeney’s Internet Tendency,Third Coast,Joyland, and as one ofNarrative‘s Stories of the Week, among other publications. She is an associate professor of English at theUniversity of Indianapolis. She lives in Indianapolis with her husband and a mini-schnauzer named Hans Gruber.
Rebecca will be teaching “Writing Mysteries & Thrillers,”and “Revising a Novel Draft by Draft,” and participating on the panel “A Little Give and Take: Responding to Reader Responses to Our Work.” She is also on the manuscript evaluation team.
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All attendees will receive available session materials and have access to the recordings for 90 days following the event
Q&A with Rebecca
MWW: Sometimes the revision process feels like it’s “One step forward, three steps back.” What advice can you give writers struggling with this to help them stay on track and motivated?
RM:Novels are made in revision, so I think remembering this is a necessary part of the writing process. I often picture it like tailoring clothes. If you’re altering a dress, and you’ve only taken in the waist on one side, the rest of the dress is going to look really awkward until you’ve finished. In the same way, your novel is going to look worse for a bit before it looks better. That’s absolutely normal and a sign you’re really digging into revision.
MWW: I love reading mysteries and thrillers, and am intrigued by the process. Do you have to begin with the ending in mind, or do you find yourself as surprised as the reader sometimes by what comes out onto the page?
RM:
Every writer is different, but for me, I often have an ending in mind, and then the characters have a different plan. So yes, I’m often as surprised as the reader by what the final ending looks like.
MWW: What’s the best way to navigate receiving contradictory feedback from readers on a draft of your work?
RM:If possible, set it aside for a while. This will allow you to come back to it with fresh eyes and let you weigh the contradictory feedback from a more objective place.
MWW: What book (or resource) on writing craft do you recommend most often?
RM:Lately, I’ve been recommending Matt Bell’s Refuse to Be Done, which is a brilliant book about novel revision.
Join us this July 10 – 12, 2025 at the Ball State Alumni Center in Muncie, Indiana—or virtually, from the comfort of your own computer—and see for yourself the wonderful things MWW has to offer!
All attendees will receive available session materials and have access to the recordings for 90 days following the event
Learn More About the Conference and Register
All attendees will receive available session materials and have access to the recordings for 90 days following the event
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It might seem weird to have the Brady-Bunch Zoom screen filled with people not talking to each other, but please trust me: It works. It creates an accountability; it creates a space where your sole purpose is to get words down on paper. I might allow for a *little* chit-chat 🙂
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