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Interview with Tracy Chevalier
Submitted by Laura on Mon, 12/10/2012 - 16:01
Please welcome Tracy Chevalier to On the Bookcase! This Q&A reveals the secrets behind her novel, The Last Runaway.
Your previous novels were all set in Europe. What made you decide to choose America, and more specifically, Ohio, as the setting of The Last Runaway?
I moved to England right after I graduated from college, and have spent 28 years getting used to living in Europe. During all that time I’ve felt a bit of an outsider, even though I now have a British passport and an English husband and son, and have lived in England longer than anywhere else. That outsider status helped me when it came to writing: when you’re standing on the sideline rather than playing in the game, you perhaps have more perspective. Now it seems I’ve been away from America long enough to feel less attached, and more objective, so I am ready to write about it.
I chose Ohio specifically because it was the state where the Underground Railroad was the most active. It was also a crossroads state, with lots of movement from south to north and from east to west. Ohio served as a gateway for easterners heading west. It’s still an interesting state, with a curious identity different from the rest of the country. A mix of east and Midwest, it is often presented as the boring place everyone wants to leave, yet it has the power to elect a President. In fact, seven Presidents have come from Ohio, as well as Neil Armstrong, Orville Wright, Steven Spielberg, Toni Morrison, Gloria Steinem. I think it’s a fascinating state.
Of course it helps that I went to Oberlin College, so I know the setting a little. Since its founding Oberlin has been a radical place, admitting African Americans and women among its first students, flying the flag for progressive thought. It was an important stop on the Underground Railroad. In fact, there is one of Toni Morrison’s Benches by the Road in Oberlin, marking it as a place of historical significance for African Americans. I happened to be at Oberlin when she unveiled the bench in April 2009, and that was what first gave me the idea to write The Last Runaway.
Why did you choose to feature a young Quaker woman as your protagonist?
A couple days after I saw Toni Morrison unveil the Bench, I went to a Quaker meeting, where people sit together in silence. I went to a Quaker camp as a kid, and I still go to Meeting sometimes. There I kept thinking about the Bench by the Road, about the incredible journeys African Americans had to make to escape slavery and find freedom, and how Quakers helped them along the way. It made me wonder if I could make my main character a Quaker, and what it would be like to write a heroine who is very quiet and who always tells the truth (Quakers are not meant to lie).
Many readers might be unfamiliar with the role Quakers played in the Underground Railroad. Did women like Honor Bright really exist?
Honor herself is made up, but lots of Quakers worked on the Underground Railroad. The “President” of the Underground Railroad was a Quaker called Levi Coffin, who lived in Cincinnati and then Indiana.
Indeed, the abolitionist movement was largely begun by Quakers. Slavery went against their belief in the equality of all people, and in the 1820s they began organized protests that grew into abolitionism.
What do you think are the most common misconceptions about the Quaker religion/Quaker society?
People often mistake Quakers for the Amish. Both are Protestant sects, but the Amish are much different from Quakers, eschewing modern technology (electricity, cars, etc.) and keeping separate from society. When you think of a man with a beard and flat hat and a woman with a white cap, riding in a horse-drawn buggy: that’s Amish.
Quakers were and are much more worldly: they used to dress plainly but not radically (the Amish, on the other hand, prohibit buttons, using pins instead), they used new inventions, they often lived and worked among non-Quakers. Quakers were known to run honest businesses, and some English Quaker families (Cadbury, Sainsbury) became very wealthy, which is also not how most people would characterize them.
I expect people also think of Quakers as not being much fun, as they didn’t drink, dance, play games. (That has since changed!) It’s true they were rather more sober than other communities, but they had their moments.
What did you find most surprising during your research for this novel?
I spent a bit of time in Ohio, of course, and one of my favorite moments was visiting an Amish farm. As I mentioned above, the Amish and Quakers are very different, but I needed to look around a farm that was still run in a 19th-century way, and an Amish farm was perfect for that. A farmer woman named Maddie took me around all the farm buildings and to see the animals, and patiently answered my 21st-century city-girl questions. Bare feet, a huge family, bare rooms, hundreds of chickens, jars and jars of vegetables, mud, animal stench, the biggest damn barn full of hay, a massive corn crib: I was in heaven in terms of research. I couldn’t take photos, so I just stared.
The most surprising and upsetting part of my research was discovering that, as principled as they were, Quakers were as fallible as others. Early Quakers kept slaves: who knows how they justified that with their beliefs. Moreover, though there were some black Quakers, for a time they were expected to sit on the “Negro pew,” separate from white Quakers. I was stunned by the unquestioned prejudice. On the other hand, it made for a much more textured novel, since the book is really about principles compromised by reality. Quakers may have wanted everyone to be treated equally, but they did not want their daughters sitting next to black men, and didn’t consider this a contradiction. Curious. That sort of thing has made The Last Runaway more complicated, and more subtle, I hope.
Why does quilting play such an important role in the story?
I always look for things that characters can do in my books. People made stuff much more than we do now, and those activities can be quite revealing of character. Quilting is one of those skills that most women possessed, and it seemed the perfect activity to focus on, as English and American women both did it and yet came up with such different styles. English patchwork is sober and precise, American appliqué more garish and quicker to make. Then there are the African American-style quilts arising out of hardship and a make-do, improvised attitude that have found their apogee in the Gee’s Bend quilts now so celebrated. They couldn’t be more different from English patchwork, and it was a handy way of pointing up differences in the characters in The Last Runaway.
I worked hard to avoid making quilts into a metaphor – life as a patchwork, blah blah blah. Instead I tried to focus on the making itself, the planning and stitching, the social side of it, and the practical warmth. Also quilts as commerce: how many a bride needed, what they are worth in terms of time. I loved all that stuff, it’s gritty rather than sentimental.
Of course in order to write about quilts, I had to learn to make them myself. I do that with every book: fossil hunting for Remarkable Creatures, button-making for Burning Bright, painting for Girl with a Pearl Earring. It makes it easier to write about when you do it yourself.
What do you hope readers take away from The Last Runaway?
Though I try to avoid being prescriptive in my books, with this one I hope readers will have a better sense of how hard it is to live a principled life in the face of practical realities. We all like to think we will do the right thing when faced with injustice, but it can be hard to take a stand. Someone usually pays for it.
Also, people are not really “goodies” or “baddies.” Villains usually have a balanced side to them, and good people can be irritating and hypocritical. It’s not all black and white.
Any plans to return to America for the setting of your next novel?
I loved writing about America, but I am not yet sure where my next book will be set. I’m not entirely sure it will all be set in the past, either. All I know is that it will feature trees. I’m toying with the idea of following trees that were transported back and forth between the USA and Europe, but it’s still early days.
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Tracy Chevalier is the New York Times bestselling author of six previous novels, including Girl with a Pearl Earring, which has been translated into thirty-nine languages and made into an Oscar-nominated film. Born and raised in Washington, D.C., she lives in London with her husband and son.
"1-On-One" with author Emily Colin
Submitted by Laura on Thu, 11/29/2012 - 13:13
Advice, confessions, reflections, fantasies, delights and flashes of brilliance from Emily Colin, author of The Memory Thief.
Is it possible to be a good writer without being a good reader?
I really, truly don’t think so. I don’t have a BFA or MFA in creative writing, so a lot of my personal education about how to craft a sentence or build strong characters has come from reading. I’ve read voraciously all my life, and it’s had a huge impact on my ability to write, edit and revise. When I was younger, I wasn’t able to analyze why something moved me or didn’t—but I certainly took note, and I read my favorite books over and over, the way people will listen to a particular song or watch a movie that strikes a chord in their hearts. Today, I still read certain books repeatedly—to see how an author accomplished a plot twist, built suspense, or set a scene. Other writers are, I think, our best teachers; but we have to be willing to learn, to approach the page with an open mind and a critical eye.
Long ago I read a piece by Stephen King—I can no longer remember where or in what context—where he said that writers read others’ work with either ‘a grinding envy or a weary contempt.’ (I’m paraphrasing here, so forgive any liberties I’ve taken with the original prose.) I’ve found this to be true; there are times when I read something and find it to be unbearably clumsy, and other occasions when I know, with painful clarity, that I couldn’t have accomplished what someone else has set down on the page.
For me, reading other writers’ work is a crucial part of how I learn, how I expand my artistic horizons and deepen my understanding of language. And when I speak to groups of writers who are just starting out, this is what I tell them: Read, read, read. Find out how others make the magic happen; it’ll help you more than you know.
Have you ever belonged to a reading group?
I do belong to a reading group. I started a book club over ten years ago, when I first moved to Wilmington, NC—a small coastal city where I knew no one except my four-month-old Rottweiler mix. Unable to find a group of folks whose interests resonated with mine, I started a women’s group focused on volunteerism, music reviews and literary discussions. All these years later, the women’s group has dissolved, but the book club is still going strong—with several of the original members. In fact, the only folks who’ve left the club have done so because they moved away—and one of them misses it so badly, she’s planning to attend our meetings via Skype!
What advice do you have for reading group members when it comes to selecting books for discussion?
Hmmm. This is a tough one, because so much depends on the membership of the reading group and their focus, as a whole. I suppose I’d say this: Choose books that will make you think. Select titles that you wouldn’t normally read, because of their genre, subject matter, or something else entirely. Stretch yourself as a reader; expand your boundaries. In my book club, it works well to choose a mix of titles—heavy and light, fiction and nonfiction—so we don’t get burned out. We’ve read a very wide range of titles—everything from Twilight to The Color Purple to the graphic novel Persephone. Nothing’s off-limits, and I think that’s what makes our group so much fun.
What book(s) are you reading now or planning to read?
I am in the midst of Kim Harrison’s new book, Into the Woods: Tales from the Hollows and Beyond. My son and I are listening to the audiobooks of the Artemis Fowl series; right now we’re in the middle of The Time Paradox. On my to-read bookshelf are The Tiger’s Wife, by Tea Obreht, J.K. Rowling’s The Casual Vacancy. I’m finishing Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl. Oh, and on my wish list: FL Fowler’s Fifty Shades of Chicken. I need some new recipes!
If you were stuck on a deserted island and could only bring one book with you to read, what would it be and why?
Could I bring a series—does that count? Because if so, it would definitely be Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series—which has seven titles in it thus far, with an eighth slated to come out in 2013. For one thing, each book is so darn long; I’d be occupied for quite a while. And for another, her writing is layered and rich, with complex, intersecting storylines and a good deal of historical information. I’m not typically a history buff, so I’ll admit to skipping over those sections in pursuit of the story itself. Marooned on a deserted island, I’d have no excuse but to read every word!
If I couldn’t take Outlander—then maybe Brian Selznick’s Wonderstruck. The illustrations are amazing, and I’ve always loved the Museum of Natural History in NYC—my old stomping grounds.
Have you ever read anything you're too embarrassed to admit (except in this interview)?
Ha ha. Oh gosh, so many things. Let’s see. The entire Fifty Shades of Grey series, of course. Multiple books by Nicholas Sparks, even though I wind up more depressed when I’ve finished them than when I began. The latter volumes in Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake series, despite the fact that, for the most part, they have devolved into orgies featuring wereanimals of all descriptions, vampires and a zombie animator turned slut. I have a dreadful habit of needing to see a series through to the end, even if it’s degenerated horribly from its original incarnation. Case in point—having read all four Twilight books (there’s an admission for you) I just went to see Breaking Dawn in the movie theater. I paid over ten dollars to watch a movie with the following opening line: “We’re the same temperature now.” Seriously—I have a problem.
Favorite book when you were a child?
The Emily of New Moon series by L.M. Montgomery, hands-down. My middle name is Anne, and for my second birthday, one of my friends gave me the first Anne of Green Gables and Emily of New Moon books—in an effort to be cute, I suppose. I liked Anne, to an extent; but Emily mesmerized me. I still have those books, and I reread them from time to time—maybe I should’ve included this in the answer to your previous question!
If you have children, is this the same book you read to them? If not, what is your favorite book for your children?
I have a seven-year-old son who is dyslexic. It’s very important to me that he loves literature, despite this—so we do a lot of reading together, and listening to audiobooks as well. My favorite books for him are the ones he adores, since it makes me so happy to see him engaged and spellbound by a story. So far we’ve had the best luck with The Lord of the Rings; Harry Potter; Artemis Fowl; and a series by Patricia Wrede called Dealing With Dragons.
Favorite heroine in literature and why?
Hmmm. I don’t tend to think about books this way—but maybe Emily of New Moon, since I’m thinking of her? She’s brave, she’s creative, she’s not afraid to be different; she finds strength in loneliness. Ask me again tomorrow; I might have a different answer.
Favorite hero in literature and why?
Today, Harry Potter. I have a habit of rooting for the underdog.
Favorite first line from a book?
From Stephen King’s The Gunslinger: “The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”
Book that changed your life?
Anne Rice’s Interview With a Vampire, both for its own sake, and for the merciless ribbing I took from a literature professor in college when I admitted that I loved Anne Rice’s writing. This was in the first creative writing class I ever took, during my junior year at Duke, and the professor gave me such a hard time over the course of the semester that he succeeded in destroying my faith in my own writing and my judgment, to boot. I didn’t write again creatively for many, many years after that class—not, in fact, until I sat down to craft the first words of The Memory Thief.
Words to live by?
I’ve got a bunch. Here’s a quote by Albert Einstein that I love: “There are only two ways to live your life. One is as if nothing is a miracle. The other is as if everything is a miracle.” And one by Tolkien: “Not all who wander are lost.” I love this quote by Oscar Wilde: “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
Here’s one by Mark Twain that always makes me laugh: “Go to heaven for the climate and hell for the company.” And then this one, by Cicero, which your readers might appreciate: “A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
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Emily Colin lives in North Carolina with her partner, their son, two reprehensible canines, and a betta fish. In her other life, she serves as associate director at DREAMS of Wilmington, a nonprofit organization that provides multidisciplinary arts programming for youth in need. The Memory Thief is her first novel.
"1-On-One" with author Jessica Keener
Submitted by Laura on Tue, 10/23/2012 - 15:01
Advice, confessions, reflections, fantasies, delights and flashes of brilliance from Jessica Keener, author of Night Swim.
1. Is it possible to be a good writer without being a good reader?
Hard to imagine how--
2. According to a report of the Independent Book Publishing Association, over five million American adults belong to reading groups. What, do you believe, is the basis for this country’s love for literature and books?
The power of story. Stories get us through our days, our weeks, our lives. When we talk with our friends, we share stories to help us understand a problem or overcome a challenge. This is why literature will never go out of favor. We need stories like we need blood and air.
3. Have you ever belonged to a reading group?
Absolutely.
4. What advice do you have for reading group members when it comes to selecting books for discussion?
Pick books you truly want to read. Look for a feeling of community and excitement around your selection. Also, consider a variety of sources for your choices—online book sites (like this one), recommendations from friends, local newspapers, Oprah, favorite book bloggers.
5. What book(s) are you reading now or planning to read?
I’ve just finished several books that I highly recommend: The Suicide Index, which is a memoir by Joan Wickersham; The Call, a novel Yannick Murphy; Moving Waters, a debut story collection by Racelle Rosett; Dawn Tripp’s third novel: Game of Secrets; A Free Life by Ha Jin; We The Animals by Justin Torres. New books in my reading queue include Maryann O’Hara’s debut novel, Cascade, and Ilie Ruby’s second novel: The Salt God’s Daughter.
6. If you were stuck on a deserted island and could only bring one book with you to read, what would it be and why?
The impossible question! But I think it might be Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, a novel I’ve read about seven times now. I’m a sap for stories that deal with emotional roadblocks and struggles in relationships and how individuals manage these obstacles that are either in their control or not in their control. Austen’s novel deals with complexities of family life, but also society’s constraints that interfere with freedom of choice—freedom to choose who we love and how we live. Her characters are challenged to reach beyond who they are or think they are. There’s also a surprising wash of forgiveness in this story that’s riddled with people who, like humanity, are constantly tripping over their own foolish, impulsive, misinformed decisions.
7. If you could have dinner with 3 writers (dead or alive) who would they be and why?
I’ll choose three writers no longer living: Flannery O’Connor, Helen Arendt, and Shakespeare (if he is, in fact, one person). I admire O’Connor’s potent, visionary qualities that she brings to her fiction and her essays. She has a spiritual, otherworldly essence that I’m attracted to. Arendt is the person who helped me understand how genocide happens. In her seminal work: Origins of Totalitarian, she helped me see how group dynamics can lead to fatal social sickness and perversions. Shakespeare-well, he helps me understand different personality types and through drama has taught me how common emotions like jealousy can erode humanity’s spirit and destroy us. All three are passionate and unflinching about our human condition.
8. Have you ever read anything you're too embarrassed to admit (except in this interview)?
I don’t think so.
9. Favorite book when you were a child?
Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White; The Yearling by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings; Beautiful Joe by Marshall Saunders (aka Margaret Saunders); Grimms’ Fairy Tales; A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle; and Hurry, Hurry by Edith Thacher Hurd. (Sorry—I couldn’t pick just one.)
10. If you have children, is this the same book you read to them? If not, what is your favorite book for your children?
No. My son (now nineteen) loved Paul O. Zelinksy’s The Wheels on The Bus. It’s been chewed on, ripped and wrinkled, but we have so many wonderful memories reading that book to him.
11. Favorite heroine in literature and why?
Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and Prejudice. She has intelligence, wit, passion, and yet—she is flawed, stubborn, blind about herself when it comes to love, and able to make amends and forgive.
12. Favorite hero in literature and why?
David Copperfield. He was also flawed and blind, too; yet honest and searching; and despite life’s difficulties, he never became bitter. He maintained his dignity and faith in the goodness of others.
13. Favorite first line from a book?
”Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.” David Copperfield
14. Favorite last line from a book?
Don’t have one.
15. Book that changed your life?
The Origins of Totalitarianism by Hannah Arendt.
16. Words to live by?
Be true.
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Jessica Keener has been listed in The Pushcart Prize under "Outstanding Writers." Her fiction has appeared most recently in Connotation Press: An Online Artifact, Night Train, and Wilderness House Literary Review. A recipient of a Massachusetts Cultural Council Artist's Grant Program, and second prize in fiction from Redbook magazine, her feature articles have appeared in The Boston Globe, Design New England, O, The Oprah Magazine and other national publications. Night Swim is her debut novel.
Author On the Bookcase: Christopher Tilghman
Submitted by Laura on Thu, 10/18/2012 - 12:05
Please welcome Christopher Tilghman, author of The Right-Hand Shore, to On the Bookcase! He tells us how his upbringing inspired this novel.
I grew up in the Boston area, the son of a publishing executive, but from my first years my family spent the summers on our ancestral farm on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. This is a low, flat landscape where the land ends and the water begins almost seamlessly; all the vistas are longitudinal, broad fields, the sweep of rivers and inlets, near distant points of land where loblolly pines still cling to life on uncertain footings, and in the far distance, the Chesapeake Bay (above, the view across Chester River to Hail Point, 1910). The first Tilghman, a Catholic refugee from England, waded ashore in 1657, and Tilghmans have remained there ever since, fortunes rising and falling, clinging to their own part of the New World.
By the late 1940’s when we started going there, the farm — the main house, the dairy, the barns and outbuildings, the grounds — had fallen into decay. Indeed, it had fallen back into the nineteenth century, with farming done as much with mules as tractors, milking by hand with the iconic milk buckets set out in the sun for pickup, no electricity. When we summered in the main house, which was called the Big House, we scavenged a crude but comfortable existence out of the forgotten detritus of a once very fashionable estate. If we had any question about what had gone on there in the past, all we had to do was walk into the family graveyard, ten feet from the house. What information those gravestones did not provide was lushly and constantly filled in by the stories and the legends that seemed as much a part of this farm as the buzz of the locusts in the trees, the sting of jellyfish in the river, and the sweet tang of cow manure whenever the wind came out of the east.
In my new novel, The Right-Hand Shore, my character Edward Mason spends an entire day listening to tales and ends up feeling “mauled by the past.” For my brothers, and me this immersion in stories was a more gradual process, but all-pervasive. Some of these stories, about suicides and watchful ghosts and betrayed ambitions, were within the purview of the Big House and my privileged forebears. And some were tales of loved ones sold South during slaveholding times, of the rising tide of Reconstruction and the abyss of Jim Crow, all told in whispers by the black families that mostly in bondage and servitude, had shared every piece of the history, side by side, day in and day out, with the Tilghmans for 300 years.
The Right-Hand Shore opens with its own conclusion: a meeting on a porch in a vast estate on the shore of the Chesapeake Bay in1920. What is happening involves the same set of circumstances of my earlier novel Mason’s Retreat: the dying maiden owner of the estate, Miss Mary Bayly, is interviewing distant cousin Edward Mason in an attempt to determine whether she will bequeath the farm to him as a direct descendant of the original Mason immigrant. Mason’s Retreat moves forward in time from this meeting; The Right-Hand Shore goes back in time to discover how this situation has come to pass.
Of all the family tales I have drawn from in both these novels, this is the one that is most factually accurate. It was in this manner that my grandfather, a bit of a rogue and an infinitely self-centered man, secured the ownership of the farm in 1918 from his cousin, Miss Susan Williams. “Miss Sue” was a fabulously wealthy Baltimorean recalled to this day as reformer and philanthropist on both shores of the Chesapeake, but remembered less warmly by descendants of her servants and laborers as a harsh mistress. This sentiment was summed up in an insult scratched in a pane of glass: “Susan Williams 2-faced.” Miss Sue hung over my childhood experiences on the farm just as the trials and mysteries of Miss Mary hangs over The Right-Hand Shore: how did it come to this, a wealthy society lady from Baltimore running a dairy farm across the Bay?
In The Right-Hand Shore we learn that Mary had a brother, Thomas, who, as the son, was the designated heir to the estate. In the novel, had he still been on the scene, there would have been no reason for Edward Mason to assume ownership, and Edward and his family would have been spared some of the sorrows that occur in Mason’s Retreat. But the brother is no longer available, and in the novel, we discover why.
So it was in my family history that Miss Sue’s brother set in train some of the events in my life. The facts are in a clipping from the local newspaper: in September of 1895 a young man named Otho Williams, heir to the Tilghman estate, shot himself to death in a second-floor room overlooking the family burying ground. He was unmarried and left no issue.
The newspaper article suggests that this tragic event may have been a terrible accident whilst cleaning a firearm, but no one in my family and in the communities around us would have any of that: Otho Williams shot himself because he had fallen in love with a black servant and he was not allowed, by family or law, to marry her. As a child in the 1940s and 1950’s, the suggestion of a family suicide – complete with a bloodstain still visible on the floor under the straw matting – was rather titillating, but the theory that he had done it because of a forbidden love for a Negro woman just did not seem that remarkable. Falling in love seemed to me the sort of thing that might have happened on this place in the past, where blacks and whites, workers and owners, had lived and died in such intimate daily intercourse. What joined us was simply a matter of place, and the stories grew out of this land.
Visit Christopher's website for pictures!
Christopher Tilghman’s life has revolved around his family’s farm on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. His new novel, The Right-Hand Shore and its sequel Mason’s Retreat tell the multigenerational story of a farm on the Eastern Shore modeled after his own. His other books include the novel Roads of the Heart, and the short story collections, In a Father’s Place and The Way People Run. Chris is a Professor of English and Director of the Creative Writing Program at the University of Virginia. He and his wife, the writer Caroline Preston, divide their time between Charlottesville and the Eastern Shore.
Author Squared: Tatjana Soli & Meg Waite Clayton
Submitted by Laura on Thu, 09/27/2012 - 09:37
AUTHOR SQUARED
Tatjana Soli
Meg Waite Clayton
Two Authors chat about writing, books, and everything in between...
I am so excited to welcome Tatjana Soli, author of The Forgetting Tree, and Meg Waite Clayton, author of The Wednesday Sisters, to On the Bookcase! Take it away ladies!
MWC: I can't tell you how many people I've told about meeting you on the bus up to Sewanee, Tatjana, and finding that not only were we in the same workshop, both working with Tim O'Brien, but also that we were both writing novels about female photojournalists at war. Were you as terrified of working with Tim as I was? My husband shamed me into it, saying if I was writing a war novel (which at the time I was) and I wasn't woman enough to risk serious feedback from such an amazing writer on the subject, perhaps I should turn in my pen. Or my keyboard, as the case may be.
TS: Terrified wasn't the word for it. Not only was I having difficulties writing a first novel — and worrying if I could do it — but I was writing about a subject that was very far from my own experience. This was Tim O'Brien's war, and let's face it, he has arguably written the best novel about that war. So I had doubts times a hundred. He's a pretty no-nonsense teacher and in the private conference I did what I always advise my students not to do — I asked him if I should trash the whole thing. If he had said yes, I would have burned (more dramatic than deleted) the manuscript and not looked back. The manuscript had serious structural issues, but he said stick with it, work it out if it's important enough to you. He gave me permission to use the material which is something I badly needed. I owe him an intangible — he gave me the courage to continue. It still took another five years to get the book published.
Okay, my turn. Meg, you impressed me so much with your attitude. You had already published a novel, but you were there to learn, no "I'm a published author and you aren't." I remember asking you something like, well, what do I do if I can't sell this book? In my mind, this meant I couldn't sell any future book. You said, write another! You are now publishing your fourth novel! What's your advice over the span of a career, for creating a body of work? And this is my personal question because I'm envious, how do you manage being so prolific? Give us an idea of your schedule.
MWC: I about spit out my coffee over a piece in the New York Times the other day suggesting that in the e-book era authors need to write two novels a year. I am such a slow writer. And even when I open my finished books, I can see so many things I could have done better if I'd just taken a little more time. So I don't feel prolific and I certainly don't feel body-of-workish. I still have so much to learn. And the blank page still terrifies me. Once I've got a first draft — no matter how terrible it is — I come to writing so much more easily.
I have these rules for myself for writing first draft. I used to say "8:00 to 2:00, or 2,000 words." When my sons were young, that was my writing schedule, accommodating their school schedule. I'd drop them at school, then sit down and write until I had 2,000 words or the clock clicked over to 2:00 and it was time to pick them up. If I had 2,000 words by 10 a.m., I could do whatever I wanted for the rest of the day. But if I had 2,000 words by 10 a.m., really I would never get up; the lit gods are really smiling on me when I'm writing that quickly, and I like to please them.
I see in retrospect how the limited time I had when I started writing helped me build a discipline. I remember when Nick started preschool and I had three hours three mornings a week just to write — what a luxury that was. Now, with my sons off at college, I wake up thinking about writing and make myself coffee and dive in, sometimes as early as 5 a.m. I take a break to read the paper with my husband, and then work till 2:00. I try to keep moving forward and get a first draft as fast as I can. I make notes for what needs to be fixed as I go along, but I don't usually do the fixes until after the first draft is done. I work longer hours when I'm editing. And still I can't produce a book a year, much less two.
I wrote my first two books without being under contract, my second two under contract. I have mixed feelings about writing under contract, but I do work faster under fear of deadline. How about you?
TS: Two novels a year is crazy. Okay, maybe if you are doing genre where the plot is fairly predictable but still. No. My goal is to have a novel out every two years, and I consider that extremely ambitious. See, I'm already trying to weasel my way out of it! A new book out every 2-3 years. Every project is so different in terms of time. If a book requires mountains of research, the months can really add up.
I've experimented with everything in terms of writing rules: in the morning first thing, a certain number of hours, a certain word count. I always tell my students that you have to learn your own creativity clock. All of us work differently. After breakfast, I get myself to the desk. Rough drafts at most three pages a day, six days a week. 2000 words a day, Meg!? Now I'm really jealous. In the past, when I tried to do, say, five or seven pages, I found the quality towards the end suffered. Then the next day was spent fixing the previous day's mess. The other scary thing is that I'd be empty the next day, and it would be hard to start up. Three pages is my magic number to give it my all, but still have fuel for tomorrow. When it comes to revision, eight to ten pages is doable. For revision, I use a trick I learned from Ellen Sussman in an article she wrote. I set a timer for an hour (she did 45 minutes which was too short for me), then take a break of twenty minutes. During that break, I always do something physical— housework (the glamorous life of a writer), exercise, or food (that's always a good one). I did lots of baking last summer. I try to do four hours a day of revision.
This all sounds so basic, but I find you have to trick yourself, or reward yourself, to spend time in the seat. I'm a great procrastinator, and of course much of that is due to fear. Fear that the writing won't match what's in my head. Fear about finishing it and having it go out in to the world (Will my friends, editor, agent, readers like it?). Keeping it at home until it's perfect (as if that will ever happen) is a great temptation. Writing a novel is about an accumulation of days as much as anything else.
Deadlines used to frighten me. With my first book, I literally worked day and night to make the deadline. On the second book, in addition to adding a bunch of new material, I had to travel for promotion on the first book. I wasn't going to make the deadline, and I told my editor that. She was wonderfully understanding, and I'm happier with the book because I took that time. 
So, Meg, you definitely do have a body of work. You've gone deeper into the material of The Wednesday Sisters with the upcoming The Wednesday Daughters. Is this intentional or serendipity? Does an idea just grab you, and you go for it? How many novels are percolating in the back of your mind right now? How has the writing process changed for you from the first one till the latest?
MWC: I didn’t say I GET 2,000 words a day! Most days, I’m watching the minutes tick over to 2:00 so I can call it a day. I also wander from my desk regularly. I don’t set a timer, but I’m considering that now. Generally, I’m going in search of coffee or chocolate. The good news is new research suggests it’s much healthier to stand or walk for a minute every 20 minutes or so, and that chocolate is not only full of anti-oxidants, but may even help you loose weight!
On The Wednesday Daughters … I actually thought I’d closed the door on a sequel to The Wednesday Sisters with the epilog in that book. But I pitched a new book to Ballantine that, in synopsis, anyway, sounded very like Allegra Goodman’s The Cookbook Collector, which Dial (like Ballantine, a division of Random House) was releasing later that year. They asked me to toss out other ideas, and one I came up with was a sequel of sorts involving the daughters. It was almost an afterthought, but they loved the idea, and I loved the idea of exploring something that was both familiar and not.
One of the big differences in the process for me now is that when I wrote my first novel, I had no clue where an idea for a second would come from, or if it would come at all. So I was loathe to let go of the first. Now I want to chuck the one I’m working on for the new book idea standing at the edge of the dance floor, waiting for the music to change. I wish I could write faster, or there were more hours in the day.
I LOVE the title of your new one, The Forgetting Tree, and just can’t wait to lay eyes on it. It looks like it might be very different from The Lotus Eaters?
TS: Chocolate to lose weight! That’s all I can concentrate on. I’ll take a quick trip to the kitchen and be right back… Okay, that was nice.
I laugh when you write that you had no clue where the second novel would come from. I was exactly the same. I thought maybe I didn’t have another novel in me, which is another scary thing people say, along with the idea that it is normal to get writer’s block at some point. Once someone plants these ideas in your head, they become self-perpetuating. So even though I’d written many short stories, after The Lotus Eaters I felt drained. Now I know that’s normal. I also know that no matter what you are writing, you should always have your antenna up for the next story.
When my first novel was finally under contract, I could think of nothing else. It felt sacrilegious to already be thinking of or writing the next book. All the people wiser than me (and they are many, including you, Meg) kept asking what was next. That question was exactly the right one — the greatest gift you can give yourself as a writer is to always be working on the next project.
The new book is very different than the first one. I had just finished my MFA and had the post-graduate blues. I wanted to set myself very different challenges than I had the first time — I didn’t want the research burden of another historical novel. After writing about war, I wanted to explore the lives of women. I wanted to narrow the action to take place mostly in a single location. These kind of arbitrary boundaries sometimes force you to push a story to a level you might not have gone to otherwise.
Book clubs often ask me if I’m going to write a sequel to The Lotus Eaters. You are kind of doing that with your next book, The Wednesday Daughters. There is a revisiting, but also moving on. Are you enjoying that process? What’s been unexpected about it? Finally, should we throw a big blowout bash when we’ve both published book number FIVE?! Of course I’m joking, but I also would never have imagined us having this conversation back on that bus going to Sewanee, would you? I never mind the hard work because I feel so lucky to be doing what I love.
MWC: Revisiting old friends in fiction turns out to be much like revisiting old friends in real life. Writing The Wednesday Daughters has been something like sitting down to talk with you, Tatjana. Familiar and comfortable, but also amusing and fresh. And “unexpected,” as you suggest. One of the unexpected things was how the daughters — young children and very minor characters in The Wednesday Sisters — are surprisingly formed as characters there. It’s much like you say about developing The Forgetting Tree: when you limit the choices in some ways, you open up your time to explore more deeply what is there.
Mac jokingly proposed that what I should write next is “The Wednesday Wedding”! We laughed, but I did find myself thinking… And I have learned never to say never in this world because honestly, like you, I never imagined I would be as lucky as we both are now.
And no joke about #5! Although maybe saying that will jinx us.
One of the luckiest things about being a writer, of course, is that I get to read some amazing books even before they are published. And with that, I propose we close this conversation so I can open The Forgetting Tree and dive in. The only question I have left is how many swanky awards it will collect!
TS: And I’m looking forward to The Wednesday Daughters next summer. It has breakout bestseller all over it.
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Tatjana Soli lives with her husband in Southern California. Her New York Times bestselling debut novel, The Lotus Eaters, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, a New York Times Notable Book, and won the 2011 James Tait Black Prize.
Meg Waite Clayton is the author of The Language of Light, a finalist for the Bellwether Prize. Her stories and essays have appeared in Runner's World, Writer's Digest, and literary magazines. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan Law School and was a Tennessee Williams Scholar at the Sewanee Writers' Conference. She lives in Palo Alto, California, with her husband and their two sons.
Author On the Bookcase: Mette Jakobsen
Submitted by Laura on Wed, 09/05/2012 - 10:38
Please welcome Mette Jakobsen, author of The Vanishing Act, to On the Bookcase! Mette tells us how a documentary inspired her new novel!
When I started writing The Vanishing Act, a twelve year old girl named Minou appeared in my imagination as a fully formed character. I had her voice from the moment I realized that she was knitting scarves in a lighthouse tower at night. I fell in love with her straight away.
Of course a writer makes conscious choices when creating a work of fiction, but the process also contains a wonderful element of surprise.
The earliest thing I remember authoring was a very long story for a year five assignment. It was about a migrating bird and it filled an entire notebook. The story was so sad that I sobbed as I witnessed, with an equal amount of horror and fascination, the poor bird lose its entire family one by one, all through tragic circumstances.
Inspiration still arrives as a wonderful gift. Characters, snippets of storyline, and ideas come to me frequently. Some of these ideas might fit into what I am working on, others are put into a file I have named ‘Storeroom.’
I had been working on The Vanishing Act for a while when Minou appeared. Her arrival helped develop the rest of characters: her philosophizing papa, her imaginative mama, the pretzel making priest, as well as the magician and his scruffy circus dog No Name. With Minou’s arrival the plot developed, and so did my idea for the location of the story; a tiny island in the middle of an endless sea.
In addition to my cast of characters I added a dead boy who washes up on the beach. The boy has to stay with Minou and her papa for three days until the weekly delivery boat arrives.
This idea came from my ‘Storeroom.’ A few years earlier I had seen a documentary called Black Sun, featuring a painter who lost his sight during a violent break-in. The burglars threw acid in his face.
The painter recalls recovering in hospital, head and eyes bandaged up. He said that strangers came and sat at his bedside. They told him intimate things, confessions of sorts. In his reflections the painter puts it down to the fact that he wasn’t able to see.
I found this interesting at the time and wrote a few notes around it. Later, when writing The Vanishing Act, I used the idea of having a non-seeing, as well as non-responding character, who brings out confessions and deeper longings in Minou and her papa.
Writing to me is such a wonderful profession. It’s demanding and requires a lot of planning and strategizing, but a very pleasurable part of the process is being open to inspiration when it arrives; fleeting and sometimes ethereal.
My writing has changed since I filled an entire notebook as a child, but the element of surprise is still there. I still get up in the morning thinking ‘I wonder what my characters will do today?’
Thanks Mette! With themes of mystery and coming-of-age, The Vanishing Act makes for a great book club discussion.
Mette Jakobsen was born in Denmark in 1964. She holds degrees in philosophy and creative writing and is the author of several plays. The Vanishing Act is her first novel. She lives in Sydney, Australia.
Author On the Bookcase: Oksana Marafioti
Submitted by Laura on Wed, 06/27/2012 - 13:15
Please welcome Oksana Marafioti, author of American Gypsy (July 2012)! She encourages everyone to write, whether it is just thoughts or a full length novel.
Most of us have written since we were kids. We hoard journals in shoeboxes at the backs of our closets, unfinished manuscripts rubber-banded and hushed under our beds, stories we rediscover accidentally that remind us we always wanted to write.
And have you noticed that when the inspiration strikes, you often talk yourself out of it? Maybe you jot down a few notes, several pages, but in the end find a way not to finish?
Just when you think it’s gone for good, the inexplicable desire to write returns. It haunts you like a poltergeist, so volatile that you must give in and write a little to draw a semblance of peace back into your life, to prevent your family from dumping you at the nearest asylum. The urge never goes away, though, because you can’t exorcise it, and for a good reason.
This is something you absolutely must do.
If not, you’ll just keep getting signs (forgotten journals underfoot, irksome cravings, stories circling like vultures inside your head in the middle of the night.) And the source of this continued unrest dwells within that very first time you felt the need to create. What was it? Can you recall? You might have to dig very deep and very far back to the recesses of your memory, but you’ll find it eventually. It wasn’t about the money or fame, but something more complicated and remarkable and therefore, more like you.
Once you locate the source all the excuses in the world will seem fickle, and, hopefully, you will resign yourself to the fact that you really don’t have any other choice but to write something. And finish it.
To someone else your voice is hope, wisdom, truth, imagination, happiness. At times that someone is you, but no matter. The important thing is you’ll sleep better at night once you’ve surrendered. And your loved ones will get back the now completely sane rational you!
For a little while, that is…
Thanks Oksana!
Oksana Marafioti moved from the Soviet Union when she was fifteen years old. Trained as a classical pianist, she has also worked as a cinematographer. She lives in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Author On the Bookcase: Jyotsna Sreenivasan
Submitted by Laura on Wed, 06/20/2012 - 16:51
Please welcome Jyotsna Sreenivasan to On the Bookcase! Jyotsna tells us why she wrote her latest novel, And Laughter Fell from the Sky, with Edith Wharton's The House of Mirth in mind.
My new novel, And Laughter Fell from the Sky, was inspired and influenced by a classic novel first published in 1905: The House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton. While some readers find this connection to a classic novel fascinating, others question why an author would base a new novel on an existing novel.
Why, indeed? Why not make up something completely new?
Here is my answer: writing is a form of communication, just as talking is. We don’t learn to talk in isolation. We learn to talk by listening to others speak, practicing speech ourselves, receiving feedback, listening some more, and practicing some more. We are influenced by the speakers around us to adopt a certain accent, vocabulary, and choice of topics.
It’s natural that, as writers, we are influenced, consciously or not, by other books and written materials. We learn to write by reading, practicing writing, receiving feedback, reading some more, and writing some more.
We all know that many of Shakespeare’s plays were inspired and influenced by the work of other writers. Romeo and Juliet was probably based on a long poem called The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet by Arthur Brooke. King Lear was likely influenced by another play called The True Chronicle History of King Leir. In turn, Jane Smiley based her novel A Thousand Acres on the King Lear story. And of course there are zillions of books out now based on Jane Austen’s work.
I recently read another new novel based on The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. The Innocents by Francesca Segal follows Wharton’s novel very closely in terms of characters and plot. Segal even imitates Wharton’s introspective, leisurely writing style. Still, Segal manages to infuse her characters – part of a close-knit Jewish community in London – with their own souls, and for me the story was brought alive in a new way in Segal’s book.
My novel is not as close to The House of Mirth as The Innocents is to The Age of Innocence. For one thing, I did not aim to imitate Wharton’s prose. I wanted to include more dialogue and fewer inner thoughts, and I wanted to avoid authorial explanations. My characters are based more loosely on Wharton’s characters, and in some cases offer a contrast to the corresponding Wharton character.
*If you’re interested in pairing modern novels with classics, here are some resources:
Ten Books Based on Shakespeare Plays
Modern Jane Austen Sequels and Spinoffs
Top 10 Books Inspired by Edgar Allan Poe
The daughter of Indian immigrants, Jyotsna Sreenivasan was born and raised in Ohio. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous literary magazines and she has received literature grants from the Washington, D.C., Commission on the Arts and Humanities. The author of several nonfiction books published by academic presses and the creator of the online Gender Equality Bookstore, she lives in Moscow, Idaho, with her family. And Laughter Fell From the Sky is her first novel.
Choose Kind Campaign Inspired by R.J. Palacio's "Wonder"
Submitted by Laura on Mon, 06/18/2012 - 12:30
Choose Kind is an anti-bullying campaign inspired by R.J. Palacio's debut novel, Wonder. Random House Children’s Books invites you to share your story and pledge to Choose Kind every day.
I won't describe what I look like. Whatever you're thinking, it's probably worse.
August Pullman was born with a facial deformity that, up until now, has prevented him from going to a mainstream school. Starting 5th grade at Beecher Prep, he wants nothing more than to be treated as an ordinary kid—but his new classmates can’t get past Auggie’s extraordinary face. Wonder, now a New York Times bestseller, begins from Auggie’s point of view, but soon switches to include his classmates, his sister, her boyfriend, and others. These perspectives converge in a portrait of one community’s struggle with empathy, compassion, and acceptance.
In a world where bullying among young people is an epidemic, this is a refreshing new narrative full of heart and hope. R.J. Palacio has called her debut novel “a meditation on kindness” —indeed, every reader will come away with a greater appreciation for the simple courage of friendship. Auggie is a hero to root for, a diamond in the rough who proves that you can’t blend in when you were born to stand out.
Maybe Mother-Daughter book clubs will choose the book for their next discussion!
R.J. Palacio is a graphic designer by day and a writer by night. She lives in New York City with her husband, two sons, and a black dog named Bear. Wonder is her first novel.
Author On the Bookcase: Patricia McArdle
Submitted by Laura on Mon, 06/11/2012 - 11:42
Please welcome Patricia McArdle, author of Farishta, to On the Bookcase! She explains why she wrote her novel as well as why she thinks it is it important.
The paperback version of my novel Farishta is has been released on line and in bookstores. No fanfare, no parties, no interviews—but I have received several more requests to meet with book clubs in person—and I’ve also started meeting with book clubs via Skype, which means I can attend meetings anywhere in the world.
A big thanks to “Reading Group Choices” for recommending Farishta as a book club selection.
I understand that a lot of Americans are tired of hearing or even thinking about our long involvement in Afghanistan, but I believe we must learn as much as we can about that nation, it’s people, and the foreigners who have gone there to fight, to help rebuild Afghanistan, to make money or to further their own national interests.
This war is not over. Today I am in Oceanside, California. Farishta is a finalist in the 2012 San Diego Book Awards competition and I attended the awards dinner Saturday June 9th with my family and with my fingers crossed. As I sit here writing, I can hear (even feel) the explosions coming from nearby Camp Pendleton Marine Corps base, where men as young as 18 are training for combat. Some of them will go to Afghanistan in the coming year. Some will be injured. Some will die. Some will come home with hidden psychological wounds that won’t manifest for years. We must understand why this war is happening and we must understand the consequences each time our nation decides to go to war. It is my hope that Farishta can help contribute to this understanding.
Farishta takes readers to parts of Afghanistan they won’t hear about in news reports. It introduces a cast of characters: American, British, Russian, French and Afghan, all of whom are fighting their own inner battles. I was deeply moved by many things I saw and experienced during the year I spent in northern Afghanistan with a British Army infantry unit. I discovered solar cooking, which has become my obsession. I met Afghan women who are battling for basic survival and dignity, whose children spend their days gathering twigs for their mother's cooking fires and whose daughters are still being married off far too young and against their will. I witnessed the incredible waste in many of our reconstruction efforts. I saw a country blessed with abundant solar and wind resources, which remains dependent on the millions of gallons of diesel fuel that must be trucked in across the Amu Daria River in the north or through the Khyber Pass from Pakistan in the south.
When I came home after a year in that country, I was afraid for almost six months to take my dog out for a walk after dark in our very safe neighborhood, something I had done for years before I went to Afghanistan. I was even afraid to pick up litter on the sidewalk, because I thought it might explode in my hand. My problem was minuscule compared to the serious PTSD suffered by thousands of our soldiers and by Afghan civilians—all of whom have been touched by the violence of this war.
One of the inspirations for Farishta was James Mitchner’s Caravans. In that novel he wrapped mountains of information about the Afghanistan of the 1940s inside an exciting story of conflict, love, loss and adventure. My goal with Farishta was, like Michener, to attract readers who might never pick up a non-fiction book about Afghanistan. Last year one of my daughter’s friends wrote this: “Pat, I have been reading your book and it is wonderful. I love being able to tie your life into your characters. Truthfully, I thought no one would ever get me to read a book related to Afghanistan or the war, let alone the government! I couldn’t be more interested in what I am reading!” This comment makes me think I may have succeeded.
I hope many more readers will find and enjoy Farishta. It’s in more than four hundred libraries, and it’s available in paperback at bookstores and online. Please go to the contact page on my website if you’d like to invite me to join your book club for a discussion of Farishta.
Thanks Patricia! With themes of women's lives, personal challenges and history Farishta is a great book club pick!
Patricia McArdle is a retired American diplomat. Her debut novel Farishta, which won the 2010 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Grand Prize for General Fiction, was inspired by events that occurred during the year she spent in northern Afghanistan with a British Army unit. From 1979-2006 she worked overseas and in Washington D.C. as a member of the U.S. diplomatic corps. Before joining the Department of State she served for three years as one of the first two female Naval Officers at a remote U.S. communications base in Morocco. Prior to her military service, she spent two years as the only Peace Corps volunteer in a small village in central Paraguay.
