Category Archives: Research and Writing

Crossing the Bridge With John Brown

Written in Brooke Wilensky-Lanford, Research and Writing, War
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Ruined railroad bridge at Harper's Ferry, W.Va., 1862.

Ruined railroad bridge at Harper's Ferry, W.Va., 1862.

By Brook Wilensky-Lanford (Wonders & Marvels Contributor)

Recently, I  reviewed Tony Horwitz’s new book, Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid that Sparked the Civil War, for the San Francisco Chronicle. As history readers, you probably know Horwitz’s previous work Confederates in the Attic, telling the Civil War story through its modern-day re-enactors, or  A Voyage Long And Strange, following in the footsteps of pre-Mayflower explorers.

In these books, Horwitz writes in the first person, dramatizing historical events through his own physical presence.  Someone once said the job of the writer is to build two bridges: between yourself and the subject, and between the subject and the reader. For Horwitz, the two bridges were the same.  He let you in on his own experience discovering the subject.

But Midnight Rising, an account of the life, defeat, and eventual martyrdom of the revolutionary abolitionist John Brown, is entirely in the third person.  In the prologue, he explained: “I could tread where Brown’s men did, glimpse some of what they saw, but the place I wanted to be was inside their heads.”  It’s always impressive when a seasoned writer tries out new things, and it got me thinking about my own process.

My own book, Paradise Lust: Searching for the Garden of Eden, covers almost 200 years of history. Several people advised me to write it in the first person. But it just didn’t seem right–I wasn’t there in 1881, when the first president of Boston University said that the Garden of Eden had been at the North Pole! Like Horwitz, I was less interested in commenting on my characters than in trying to get inside their heads.

I ended up compromising: the first three sections are in third-person, and the final section, in the present, is in the first person.  But Midnight Rising makes me wonder about this.  In his acknowledgements (which I always read first!) Horwitz mentions crossing the bridge at Harper’s Ferry by night, as Brown’s men did.  So he did go and do all the on-the-ground research, he just didn’t include it as part of the narrative.

Would you ever put yourself in a story about the past? If so, when?  And how does your on-the-ground research inform your in-the-past storytelling?

 

Brook Wilensky-Lanford is the author of Paradise Lust: Searching for the Garden of Eden, which was a New York Times Editors’ Choice in August. Her reviews and essays have appeared in Salon, Lapham’s Quarterly, The San Francisco Chronicle and The Boston Globe. A graduate of Columbia University’s nonfiction writing MFA program, she lives in New Jersey.

 

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“We’re Still Here!”: Slang of the Roaring Twenties

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By Joseph Wallace

"We're Still Here!": Slang of the Roaring TwentiesWhen you’re writing a historical novel, there’s one simple but crucial rule: Make sure the language rings true. Don’t , and your readers will be fleeing for the exits, laughing at you as they go.

Early on in researching my 1920s-set novel, Diamond Ruby, I learned that the slang of the era was extremely rich and risqué. People said, “Cash or check?” for “Do I kiss you now or later?” and “Bank’s closed” when the answer was a categorical no. A convertible car was a breezer, and a struggle buggy was a car with a back seat, where you…struggled.

Unsurprisingly, in the age of Prohibition, slang words for being drunk were everywhere. You weren’t merely tipsy, you were spifflicated, canned, corked, tanked, zozzled, owled, ossified, or fried to the hat.

So the source material was abundant (you can see more expressions here). The problem was using it. Every time I tried, it came across as stilted, silly, fake. As if each use carried invisible quotation marks.

I finally figured out why: Because 1920s slang did come with invisible quotation marks. It wasn’t an organic language. It was an invention, created by people whose goal was to forget the past and remake themselves.

The Roaring Twenties was, at heart, a child of the 1910s. All its wildness, the outlandish flapper fashions and headline-grabbing gangster capers and days-long parties were a reaction to two cataclysms of the previous decade: the long, brutal slog of World War I and the great influenza epidemic of 1918.

Those who survived both knew how lucky they’d been – and how fragile life was. Slang was just one small but crucial part of the frenetic seize-the-day spirit that followed.

This insight – that all this wonderful slang was created as a way of saying, “We’re still here!” – gave me the key to writing Diamond Ruby in the truest voice I could. In an essential way, it even allowed me to understand the madcap, tragicomic spirit of the time.

Diamond Ruby

About the author: Joe Wallace has been fascinated by the Roaring Twenties since he first decided he wanted to go there and meet James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart. He got to explore that world when he researched and wrote his first novel, Diamond Ruby, which is set in a 1920s New York City teeming with gangsters, rum-runners, and other colorful characters. He is currently at work on a Ruby sequel and an apocalyptic thriller definitely not set in that era.

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The Problem of Scope

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1914 Map of the Garden of Eden in outer Mongolia, by Tse Tsan Tai

By Brook Wilensky-Lanford 

My first book, Paradise Lust: Searching for the Garden of Eden, is a history of people who’ve looked for the Bible’s Garden of Eden on Earth. They all start with the same four verses of Genesis and all end up at a different place. Each chapter of my book follows a different theory. I organized the book chronologically, so I could let history and context help move the story along. The variety of interpretations was part of the larger story I wanted to tell.

But just how large was the story?  One of my Eden-seekers, a Chinese Christian exiled in Hong Kong during World War I, tried to overthrow China’s last imperial dynasty, the Qing. (His Garden of Eden was in outer Mongolia.) How much did I need to know about Chinese dynasties? Another, the first president of Boston University, believed adamantly that the Garden of Eden was at the North Pole. What did I need to know about 19th century polar exploration? My mentor, biographer Patricia O’Toole, always soothing, shared with me her “rule of three.” For an event you know nothing about, read three major works about it, ideally from different perspectives, and then move on. With 14 chapters each with numerous background events, I had enough reading for three years.

Even so, in talking about the book, I come up against holes in my knowledge. I quoted the prolific St. writing that Genesis should be taken literally; apparently he later wrote that Genesis is an allegory. Fair enough. My expertise isn’t in Augustine, it’s in the search for the Garden of Eden—obscure though that may be. I had to reconcile myself to the fact that I can’t read everything.

How do you decide what is “foreground” and what is “background” in your story? Do you think of yourself as an expert?

Brook Wilensky-Lanford is the author of Paradise Lust: Searching for the Garden of Eden, which was a New York Times Editors’ Choice in August. Her reviews and essays have appeared in Salon, Lapham’s Quarterly, The San Francisco Chronicle and The Boston Globe. A graduate of Columbia University’s nonfiction writing MFA program, she lives in New Jersey.

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Arresting Beauty: Julia Margaret Cameron

Written in Beth Dunn, Research and Writing, Women and Society
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Call I follow I follow let me die

Call, I Follow, I Follow, Let Me Die

By Beth Dunn (Wonders & Marvels Contributor)

I longed to arrest all the beauty that came before me, and at length that longing has been satisfied.”

-Julia Margaret Cameron

Julia Margaret Cameron was widely regarded as the ugly duckling of her family. Born in India into a clan of famously beautiful women, the daughter of a British officer of the East India Company, Julia was always considered plain and uninteresting.

And indeed, for most of her life, she seemed destined to bear this out. She was married early to a man twice her age, and they continued to live quietly in India for the first ten years of their marriage. Then he retired and they returned to England, where they settled into the next chapter of the comfortable, if unspectacular existence that had been charted out for her.

But then, on her 48th birthday, Julia received a camera as a gift from her daughter.  And at that, she was off and running.

It wasn’t particularly easy to be an amateur photographer at the time. Materials were costly, models were hard to come by, and the laborious process of developing and printing the work involved long hours and at least a passing fondness for chemistry.

But Julia was fortunate in these things — she had money, she had time, and she access to models by way of her own children and servants, and even to celebrities by way of her sister, who hosted a regular salon in Kensington that brought the cream of the literary and artistic world together on a regular basis.

Annie Philpot

Annie Philpot

Her portraits were ethereal, soft-focus, and sensual. She produced close-cropped portraits of children and young women, as well as dreamy allegorical and historical tableaux, all in the pursuit of “arresting beauty,” as she would write later, as if she wanted only to preserve her subjects in amber for all time.

And of course that’s why I love 19th century portrait photography — because it does preserve the faces of the past with an immediacy and an intimacy that even the best oil or pastel can’t give you. Most portraits from this era, in fact, can give you that startling jolt of recognition, of seeing human eyes peering back out at you from the past, which makes old photography so compelling.

But Julia Cameron’s photography takes it a step further, because her work allows you to see into the mind of the person standing behind the camera.

You have an absolute sense that here is somebody who knows what she is trying to capture, and she’s willing to go to any lengths necessary to get it down, to lock it in time, and save it for future eyes to see, to marvel at, to comprehend.

While much of Julia’s work survives today because she was meticulous about registering and copyrighting all of her work, much of it has also been preserved because of its subject matter.

In many cases, her portraits of the great figures of the day are the only — or in some cases, the best — that survive. Ellen Terry, Charles Darwin, Lord Tennyson, Robert Browning, William Rossetti — her lens opened and closed on a brief moment of time in each of their fascinating, turbulent lives.

Sir John Herschel

She found a friend and mentor in Sir John Herschel, son of the famous astronomer of an earlier generation, who introduced her to the intricacies of photography and who shared with her the very latest scientific advances in the new medium. She took his portrait, too.

It took almost one hundred years for Julia’s work to begin to receive the recognition it deserved, when a 1948 book celebrated her early contributions to the field.

Prior to this mention, she had been included in the 1886 Dictionary of National Biography, in a brief sketch of her life that was written by her niece and frequent model, Julia Prinsep Stephen, who would later become somewhat better known as the mother of Virginia Woolf.

The Victoria and Albert Museum in London has an extensive collection of Julia Margaret Cameron’s work, most of which you can access and browse online. The V&A will also feature works by Julia Margaret Cameron in an exhibit to celebrate the new Photographs gallery, opening on October 24, 2011.

(Hat tip to Essie Fox, The Virtual Victorian, for reminding me of Julia Margaret Cameron’s work, and for the news about the upcoming exhibit.)

Beth Dunn is a writer and novelist with a fierce attachment to 19th century history, literature, and decorative arts that is rapidly approaching the obsessive. She blogs at An Accomplished Young Lady, where she generally lets it all hang out. I mean. In a totally appropriate, 19th-century kind of way.

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Research at 13,000 Feet: The Incan Agricultural Legacy

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By Cynthia Graber

This summer, I spent a few weeks traipsing around Peru, in part to learn more about the agricultural techniques of the Incas. The first two stories from that reporting trip recently appeared, about the ways in which ancient Incan farming practices can help the descendants of the Incas face food insecurity and climate change. The print story was published on the Smithsonian Magazine’s website, and a radio story aired on the public radio show The World.

I found this story as I was pulling together ideas for a trip for the radio show I worked for at the time, the World Vision Report (which would also be funding the journey). Then, suddenly, the show was canceled. Still, I remained fascinated by the topics, so I found other interested radio and print venues. In May, I flew off to Peru.

One story in particular grabbed my attention: I read a newspaper article from the 1990s that referenced the work of Cusichaca Trust, a nonprofit founded by British archaeologist Ann Kendall. Kendall and her associates studied Incan agricultural systems in Peru, their terraces, irrigation canals, and systems of planting. And they’ve been working to bring these systems back to life in the Andes today.

I discovered that the nonprofit had since spun off a local development group, called Cusichaca Andina, and that they were one year into a two-year World Bank grant to fight the effects of climate change. I was struck by the premise that history can help us meet the future.

I’m fascinated by agricultural traditions and history, and the Incas were expert farmers. They had to be; they ruled a gargantuan empire that sprawled over some of the most diverse and at times forbidding ecosystems. And now, hundreds of years later, we’re learning that these techniques were significantly more effective in the Andes than anything that has been developed since.

I tagged along with Cusichaca Andina and met development workers, farmers, and construction workers who were rebuilding an ancient irrigation canal. The altitude hit me hard, and the narrow roads that wrapped around the steep mountainside left me breathless with fear. Still, I was able to view first-hand the ways in which local communities are learning from their ancestors. And I ate some mighty tasty potatoes.

About the author: Cynthia Graber is a print and radio reporter who specializes in science, technology, agriculture, and anything else that captures her imagination. Her work has been published/broadcast via a number of venues, including Scientific American, Smithsonian magazine, the Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, The World, Living on Earth, and a variety of children’s magazines. She’s a recipient of the AAAS Pinnacle of Excellence award for science journalism. You can read more at http://www.cynthiagraber.com.

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Location Research in 140 Characters or Less

Written in Beth Dunn, Historical Fiction, Research and Writing
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Map of London

By Beth Dunn

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m addicted to the internet. I spend pretty much every minute of the day online, unless I’m sleeping, driving, or exercising. But it’s not all funny cat videos and screencaps of sexy British leading men in cravats.

It’s also surprisingly useful for doing in-depth location research when I’m writing. Social media lets me spend lots of time in lots of different places at once, and more than once, it’s helped me decide where to set a story.

You might think that’s putting the cart before the horse, but it’s not. I’ll let my old graduate school advisor tell you why.

Vienna is lovely in the summer

When I was in grad school for geology, lo these many years ago, one of the first things I needed to do was decide where I was going to do my field work. So, being a logical, methodical kind of person, I thought long and hard about what my research interests were, checked the literature, and made a list of topics that I thought might be fruitful for new contributions in the next year or two. Then I made a list of some of that places where that research might be done, and showed it to my advisor.

She scanned my list, sighed deeply, and handed it back to me. Then she asked me a question.

“Where do you want to spend the next five summers of your life?”

I might have blinked. She went on.

“See, I like my creature comforts, I like to know I can get a decent hotel room and a good meal, so I do research in Europe. I’ve done field work in the desert, and I hated it. If I read my dissertation now, I’d be able to feel the sand grit between my teeth again in an instant, and I’d want to punch something. If you want to love your work, choose a place that you love. Trust me: There are interesting questions to answer everywhere.”

I glanced down at my carefully assembled list. Only one of the places I had come up with even sounded slightly appealing to me, on reflection.

“Vienna,” I said.

She smiled. “Vienna is lovely in the summer. And the museum is open later than most. Excellent. Write it up. I’ll see you next week.”

So I did my field work in Vienna.

Now, I ended up not pursuing the life of a paleontologist, as you’ve probably already guessed. But my advisor’s words have stayed with me. It sounds frivolous on the face of it, but obviously she was right — if you’re going to be spending lots of time in a particular place (real or imagined), you’d better be damn sure you like it there.

But as a geologist, I needed to physically visit a place in order to research it. Nobody else was going to climb those mountains and bash a rock hammer against some limestone and ship it home for me. I needed to get on the plane and do it myself.

Fiction writing leaves us a few other options. Writers have long used other books, of course, to research their locations. Maps, timetables, local histories, biographies — the list goes on, and it’s a familiar one.

But the internet opens up a whole new world for location research. Social media — Twitter in particular — has been phenomenal in helping me better understand a place I’ve never been before, often in very fine detail.

Twitter is great for field research

My  stories take place in England, so I maintain Twitter lists of a bunch of different groups of people, all composed of Twitterers based in England. I follow a Bath list, a Bristol list, a London list, and a Yorkshire list of folks on Twitter, because I’m currently writing stories that take place in those locations.

I can hear you scoff:  Just how helpful is it to know what people in Bath are having for lunch? Or to learn that there’s a chronic problem with rubbish collection in Norwich? Or that traffic is absolutely mental today on the M1?

Well, it’s actually a lot more helpful than you might think.

First, listening in on conversations on Twitter gives me a great sense of the vernacular of a place. You’d be surprised how well regional differences in speech come through in just 140 characters. And how little these cadences are likely to have changed over time.

Second, I can ask questions about simple things if I’m curious. Folks are usually happy to reply to things like “How long a walk is it from the High Street to the waterfront?” or “What’s the weather usually like there at Christmas?”

Third, I’ve now got friends I can meet up with when I do buy that plane ticket and do the serious, hands-on research. And there’s nothing like knowing a local for really getting a feel for a town. I’ve met up with teachers, librarians, baristas, and garbage collectors in my travels.

I can assure you, garbage collectors give excellent street tours.

Social media is great for meeting people, forming relationships, and establishing professional ties. But it can also give you an ear to the ground in a bunch of different locations at once, providing you with an unmatched opportunity to get a sense of a place, an insider’s view of a town, and a local guide when you’re passing through.

It’s like remote sensing for writers. I dig it.

How do you use social media — or even just the internet in general — to help you in your research?

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Enough is Enough: When Does the Research End?

Written in Research and Writing
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By Ellen F. Brown

Margaret Mitchell

Margaret Mitchell - Courtesy of the Atlanta History Center

I’m often asked how writers know when their research is finished. This is a question that every writer – fiction or nonfiction – faces. Gone With the Wind author Margaret Mitchell certainly did. I don’t think she was ever satisfied that her research was complete. She submitted the GWTW manuscript months late because she insisted on re-checking a seemingly endless list of historical details ranging from what time of day the news arrived of General Hood’s defeat to what ladies’ shoes were made of during the blockade. She was especially careful with war scenes. Mitchell said she wanted them ‘”air tight so that no grey bearded vet could rise up to shake his cane at me and say, ‘But I know better.’ ” Even after the manuscript had been submitted and the presses were rolling, the author continued to fact check.

My co-author and I also struggled with this issue when writing our Mitchell biography. There was far more information available than we’d ever imagined – admittedly a good problem to have. I enjoy research and would have been perfectly happy to muck around in the documents indefinitely. But, with a deadline looming , we couldn’t keep at it forever. We eventually had to start writing if only to have a sense of how better to define the scope of the research. So, after an initial period focused on fact-finding, the research and writing became parallel projects. They co-existed until the bitter end. Like Mitchell, we were conducting interviews and scouring documents while reviewing page proofs.

To be honest, I’m still researching. Sources continue to send new tidbits of information. And, in the course of work on my next book, I’ve stumbled across interesting GWTW items I hadn’t seen before. So, when does the research end? I suppose it’s when the publisher says so. But, for research-loving writers like myself, enough is never enough.

About the author: Ellen F. Brown is an award-winning freelance writer from Richmond, Virginia. Her first book, Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind: A Bestseller’s Odyssey from Atlanta to Hollywood, co-authored with John Wiley, Jr., offers a behind-the-scenes look at one of the most popular and controversial novels in publishing history.

Margaret Mitchell's Gone With the Wind: A Bestseller's Odyssey from Atlanta to Hollywood

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What’s Your Research Work Flow?

Written in Research and Writing
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The great response to last week’s post about writing groups (I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends) has really gotten me thinking that–in addition to sharing great stories in history–we might do some more talking about the ups and downs, joys and challenges, of writing on this blog.  I sure could use your wisdom and encouragement as I work on my next book proposal…and in return, you can count on whatever modest wisdom and encouragement I can offer on my end.  Writers unite!

So in this spirit of sharing, let’s talk work flow.

After I finished Blood Work, I vowed that I would never again do a major research project without first figuring out a research/writing work flow.  I wrote the draft of Blood Work on my PC and a few months in started using OneNote, which I liked but also found incredibly frustrating at times.  (Notably, that I could not export easily my data and the search function felt a little clunky.)

When the PC died just days before the book was due to my editor (post about that here), I decided to switch to Mac.  The learning curve was huge–and was made worse since I was in the thick of revisions.  Everything I did, computer-organization-wise, felt ad hoc.

Not any more!

So for this latest book, I’m pleased to report that I may have found a work flow!  And of course, it has to have a few cool technological bells and whistles (not surprising to anyone who knows me well…)  But most importantly, I’m seeing how it’s all going to work for me.

I started by doing a lot of research on how other writers and academics organize their work.  This was a really helpful summary of available tools (for Mac users mostly–there has to be something similar for PC users).

It took awhile, but I’m feeling  comfortable using Devonthink Pro as my database (the learning curve is pretty steep).  I’ve reread the manual and have read lots of different web posts by academics who use the program for their research.  This thing is amazingly powerful.  Steven Johnson also has done a good job explaining why the database can be so dang useful:

http://boingboing.net/2009/01/27/diy-how-to-write-a-b.html

http://www.stevenberlinjohnson.com/movabletype/archives/000230.html

A few other helpful posts about Devonthink here as well:

http://parezcoydigo.wordpress.com/2008/11/13/devonthink-for-historical-research-part-ii/

http://www.wordsinspace.net/wordpress/teaching/student-resources-2/note-taking-and-abstracting/

I dove into the French Revolution book proposal head-long about a month ago, when the travel for Blood Work started to let up,  I started by rereading some concise histories of the French Revolution.  The first book I read was not available online–so I typed interesting/important snippets from the book into DTP (using a similar approach as Johnson, with a folder for each title and RTF files for various snippets).  Another book was available on Kindle, so I was able to highlight the passages I wanted to retain and then import them into the database, using Amazon’s online page where I can see all of my highlights in one place.

Now a full month into the process, I’m starting to be able to do the artificial intelligence/”see also” cool things that Johnson talked about.  But more important, I’ve moving closer to a better understanding of where I want to go with this project.

As I take notes, I’m careful to input the full bibliographical reference into Zotero, along with a hotlink to the Devonthink folder where I am keeping the snippets from the book.  In each snippet reference, I add the short citation {Smith, 2010, 12-15} that I’ll need when I write and, later, create a bibliography using Zotero.

As I read/import snippets, I’m keeping a file in DTP called “Brain Dump”.  That’s where I put random think-aloud notes, along with a DTP link to the snippet that got me thinking about whatever I was thinking about for later reference.

At the end of my research sessions, I then head over to Dr. Wicked Write or Die and set the goal for 500 words.  I then dump those words into Scrivener, which I will use as my writing platform once I get a bit farther along on the concept/narrative structure for the book.

I’ve been really surprised to see just how long it -doesn’t- take to get those words out.  Granted, right now most of those words are think-aloud about where I am on honing the topic.  But the process has allowed me to see that there are many more puzzles in this project that I first noticed.  And I’m delighted by this.

All of this probably sounds much more complicated than it is really is, if you’re not familiar with these programs.  But believe me, a little organization goes a long way (no, HUGE way) toward moving this project along and putting together what I hope my editor will see as one fantastic book proposal.

Eager to hear your thoughts!

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Diving In…Again

Written in Research and Writing
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What a great ride the book tour for Blood Work was…nearly 3 months on the road. Lots of adventures, lots of stories to tell, and I met so many great new friends along the way.

I’m returning with great memories of book signings, NPR interviews, CSPAN Book TV, and lots of great print reviews for the book (The Economist, Boston Globe, starred review Publisher’s Weekly, etc).

But honestly, it feels so good to be home.

I’m getting a chance to catch up on errands, long dinners with friends and family, and the myriad other tasks that I left undone while I was away.

But still, as they say, you’re only as good as your next book.  And so I dive headlong into the process. And strangely, I feel gleeful about it.  Probably because I understand the process better than I did last time around.  And most definitely because I know I can do it now.

If things had gone according to the ideal plan that I had set for myself, I would have finished the next book proposal last fall–during that quiet moment between page proof and finished book.  That obviously didn’t happen.

I spent three months researching the topic that I thought would be the next book:  a biography of a very well-known 19th century French doctor, Louis Pasteur.  Pasteur’s life is interesting and, of course, his discoveries impact our daily lives still now.   I brought in an undergraduate research assistant to help me cull the 1,000s of articles and books already out there on Pasteur.  I started to structure the book narrative, though scribbles and random brainstorms.

In the end, I decided that I really didn’t feel like I could live exclusively with Louis for several years.  And that made the decision for me.  I couldn’t write this book. Back to the drawing board.

I know that some authors worry that maybe their latest book is the last book they have in them.  Definitely not the case for me. Research and writing are in my blood.  I can’t imagine not having a large project on my plate.

But the biggest dilemma that I faced was not the topic itself, but rather, whether I was willing to let the next book take over my life, as the last two had.  To be honest, I spent weeks after I finished the Blood Work manuscript putting my daily life back together again. To write that book, I literally went underground; I forgot to shower; I forgot to eat.  The only time that I would snap out of the book-writing stupor was to spend time with my daughter in the evenings after school.  And still then, it would take me some time to make the mental shift.  (I’ve written about that here.)

My biggest question as I was sniffing around for another great book topic was: How can I write this book and still have a real life?  And if I didn’t think this was possible, was I being fair to myself and my family?

In the end, I feel pretty good that I’ve put some new strategies in place to make sure that I keep a good balance between writing and my world.  I’ll talk about that in another post (heads-up: it includes an iPad and apps.)

And to my delight: I have settled on a topic that I’m so fascinated by and one that I know that I could spend the next two years researching and writing about. So I’m keeping my fingers crossed that my editor will love the topic too.

I can do this.

In closing, I’d like to share a quote from fellow Nashvillian Anne Patchett on writing the next book from her All Things Considered interview this weekend:  ”Every single time I’m writing a book, I get to a certain place where I think, ‘I cannot do this. I can’t pull this off. And the only thing that keeps me going is the knowledge that I have always pulled it off before.”

Wonders & Marvels readers:  Does any of  this sound familiar to you?  Have you finished a project only to dive right back into another?  What obstacles do you face?  How do you handle them?  And if you’re a writer, I’d also love to hear about your strategies as you get back up on the horse.

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On Writing and Empty Nests

Written in Research and Writing
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By Holly Tucker

So, by now, most Wonders & Marvels readers know that I’ve been in the depths of writing a book called Blood Work: A Tale of Murder and Medicine in the Scientific Revolution.  It’s about a murder trial related to the first blood transfusions–which were in the 17th century and which were animal-to-human (I’m serious).

Along the way, I’ve found myself marking milestones in the publication process in interesting ways.

The first memorable moment was when the book proposal went to auction.  An auction means that several publishers are interested–so the literary agent sets a day and time as the deadline for all contract offers.  I was so distracted and nervous the day of the auction; I couldn’t hold a thought in my head.

Finally, I gave up.  I took my daughter and a few of her friends to Chuck E. Cheese.  I fell into this strange zen in the ear-splitting noise as I knitted a basic scarf in one of the uncomfortable parent booths.  Needle in the loop, yarn around, pull through, needle in the loop, yarn around, pull through.

When we emerged from the cacophony several hours later, I got “the call.”  And it was very good news.

The next year and a half was something of a blur.  I fell deep into the world of seventeenth-century France and England–and emerged only to eat, sleep, and (sometimes) bathe.  Or at least that’s how it felt.

The days leading up to the delivery of the manuscript were intense beyond belief.  They ended with the most beautiful sound: the POP! of a cork on the bottle of wine I had been saving for over a year, just for that very moment.  I wrote about that here.

Revisions followed, which were followed by more revisions, which were followed by copyedits and then first pass pages.  (First pass pages are what academics usually call “proofs” or “galleys.”)

I’ve spent the last two weeks admiring for the first time my book in print (it’s beautiful).  At the same time, I looked for every wart I could find.  Every mistake, every typo, every inept turn of words.  I raced to the post office yesterday so I could overnight it to my editor.  It’s on her desk now…she just emailed to tell me she received it.

It feels incredibly weird to have let the book go.  To let it journey on its own through the rest of the publication process.  I’ll have another go at it when the finished galleys come it.  But, there, the changes will be miniscule–if there are any at all.

I’ve spent the past several hours cleaning up my study.  Nearly a hundred library books are loaded in the car to be returned to my university library.  Nearly 15 binders with reproductions of 17th century manuscripts and articles have been moved to the shelves in the closet.

Around our house, we call it “double dip feelings.”  I felt this wonderful sense of peace and pride as I cleaned up books, notes, drafts, and scribbles that I have been living with for several years.  I also felt this sense of strange emptiness.  I let the feeling sink in as I marveled at the empty shelves.

Then, quietly and with a strange reverence,  I brought out a few new books.  Ones that have long been on my “to read” list….ones that I need to write the next book.  Better buckle my seatbelt.  The ride is getting ready to start.  Again.

Fellow writers, how did you feel when your own book grew up and moved out of the house??



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