We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Corine Marie. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Corine below.
Corine, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?
It was not a good idea for me to date during my formative years. Obtaining love from a boy felt too critical. Separating from my mom and dad and entering foster care at a young age left me desperate for connection. I wanted a person in this world. I was looking for someone who understood me and made me feel stable. I put too much pressure on my mates to love me in a way that parents loved their children. I had a void too big for any boy to fill. My mental health needed intensive care. I was that girl who entered relationships and relinquished the most precious parts of me in exchange for love. When those relationships ended with me receiving less than I desperately desired, I felt swindled out of my invaluable treasure. I had no one, and I had no self-respect. I became suicidal. Fortunately, my attempts weren’t successful.
In my darkest moments, an intangible embrace provided my only consolation. Therefore, I began welcoming the intangible world. My mental health improved greatly when I opened my mind to the intangible, since the mind is nonphysical. I began giving intensive care to those unseen parts of me–my self-esteem, self-respect, self-worth, and self-love. Everything I desired from someone else, I learned how to give it to myself. It was through loving myself that I was able to eliminate the sense of desperation and fill the void in my life, allowing me to build healthier relationships.
When writing this book, I reimagined the younger version of myself on her journey to self-love. The character Aubrey is in many ways a representation of me giving advice to my younger self. I didn’t want Aubrey to experience the same traumas as me. I needed her to navigate her world in a way that she would overcome unscathed. That is my hope for every person reading this book. May you value yourself in a way that leads an abundant life. May you be rich because you know your worth. May you romanticize self-love more than loving anyone else.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
In her writing process, Corine discovered that personal imagination can be a practice of internal healing. A quiet girl with loud thoughts, young Corine had a lot of friends she liked to laugh with. They did most of the talking, and she listened and observed. Throughout this time, she kept a journal—writing poems, thoughts, and elaborate stories—some of which featured her birth mom and who Corine imagined her to be.
In 2014, as a married adult, Corine kept having the same recurring dream: a guy and a girl, and the girl kept refusing his marriage proposal. But why? The pieces began coming together from her memory. She realized a connection between the dream and the relationship anxieties of her own life: Corine’s ideas about love still needed reconciliation.
Corine strongly derives her work from her own experiences. In her book A Small Piece of Her Heart, the female protagonist, Aubrey, has a relationship with her mother that, while not an exact replica of Corine’s, bears similarly challenging circumstances. Corine finds common ground between her personal life and the lives of her characters. For Corine, writing allows her to invoke memories and observations into the development of her characters.
Over time, Corine understood the process of using fiction to rewrite her past life experiences. You can subtly address past mistakes with newfound wisdom. You can “re-imagine the self.” Aubrey declares this realization toward the end of A Small Piece of Her Heart.
“But you can write yourself a better future—and this time, make sure your character has character, fascinate us with your plot, then leave us speechless with your ending. And remember, not everyone deserves a role in your story…”
Corine writes with her daughter in mind—a picture of her younger self. She considers her own life lessons and those of others who impacted her, then asks: How could this have been better? What is the lesson here? These lessons inform the re-imagined landscape of her stories, in which the characters represent alternative ways of knowing and being.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
When writing, it is difficult to be creative when you put too much focus on grammar. I would often get stuck trying to remember the grammar rules I learn in school years prior. It got to the point that I couldn’t write because I was too worried about if I was doing it right or not. I ended up spending my writing time on google trying to refresh my high school English lessons. It wasn’t until I gave myself permission to just write creatively and then hire an editor for the technical part that I was able to enjoy the writing process. I had to unlearn grammar and focus solely on telling the story in my head. That lead to a finished book.
Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?
I wrote and published my first book in 2016. Since then AI technology has improved significantly. There are tools like Grammarly that make self editing so much easier. Also, tools such as Chat GPT and Wordtune that I can use to help me rewrite sentences or elevate my sentences that make the creative journey much more pleasurable.
Contact Info:
- Website: CorineMarie.com
- Instagram: @LoveCorineMarie
- Facebook: @LoveCorineMarie