Why We Write by Meredith Maran

 

 

 

I just picked up Why We Write: 20 Acclaimed Authors on How and Why They Do What They Do by Meredith Maran and I've been enjoying the entries on the various authors tremendously. (I admit I've been skipping around instead of reading straight through.) 

Most writers have tried to answer the question at some point, either formally on a grant application or informally, of why they write.  Some will say there is a “right” answer but I believe it is a very personal answer, and in this book we hear those answers from 20 well-known authors. 

For authors, you may also glean some ideas from the portion about “how” they do what they do. Years ago, Terry McMillan picked up a job application for McDonald’s and fills it out for every single character in her books.  She goes further though. “I create a five-page profile for every one of my characters so I know everything about them: what size shoes they wear, if their hair is dyed, if they bounce checks, have allergies, what they hate about themselves, what they wish they could change, if they pay their bills on time.”

Now, maybe this isn’t completely necessary but I can sure see the benefit.  I’ve always been something of a “method” writer, getting inside the character and writing from the inside out.  I need to know whether my character would really do the things that I’m writing for them.  Will it ring true for the reader?  I figure if I really know my character, I can put them in a situation and I will know what they will do, how they think and how they will react.

I think it would be of interest to anyone who wants to know more about these particular writers or how writers work in general and there’s a good variety of authors – Isabel Allende, David Baldacci, Jennifer Egan, James Frey, Sue Grafton, Sara Gruen, Kathryn Harrison, Gish Jen, Sebastian Junger, Mary Karr, Michael Lewis, Armistead Maupin, Terry McMillan, Rick Moody, Walter Mosley, Susan Orlean, Ann Patchett, Jodi Picoult, Jane Smiley and Meg Wolitzer.

It’s a fascinating look and, potentially, a useful one.



Foreign Devil Girl in Hong Kong by Ruth Epp

Foreign Devil Girl in Hong Kong

By Ruth Epp

Ruth Epp knew she wanted to go to China from childhood.  She didn’t know exactly what sparked the call but it was there as long as she could remember.  Her chance came in 1959, at age 22, when an English missionary born and raised in China, Vera McGillivray, invited her to come out. 

At first she was simply excited, but she would be gone for five years and eventually she realized how much of her family life she would be missing, on the other side of the world for so long. 

I had never thought of all that would be happening in my family during the five years I expected to be away – weddings, babies, graduations, illnesses, maybe even deaths – and I would be too far away to know and share these things with them. I wouldn’t even have a phone!

Still, Ruth stayed true to her early dream and prepared herself for the journey.  There were certain things she couldn’t prepare for though, such as arriving a whole week ahead of schedule and having to find Vera with the help of the first engineer from her ship and a taxi driver who spoke very little English.

Ruth found her way and as she went into the village with Vera, she describes the experience as a homecoming, “I had the strangest feeling that I had come home and that I belonged in this place – a place whose name I didn’t even know how to pronounce.”

I was struck by the connection she drew between feeling embarrassed as a teen for not having much as the child of a preacher but now feeling embarrassed for having so much more than the people she was living among.

“The closer I got to my neighbors, the more I saw that though I couldn’t help very much with the problems that poverty caused, the love and life that came from Jesus could make a huge difference in their heart and spirit.  And I was here to help them find him – through talking about him, and by real friendship and acts of love and kindness when they needed it.”

Learning the language was certainly not easy, “The young guys at church who knew some English would hoot with laughter at my mistakes.  It was friendly laughter, and they were on my side, but I still hated to be laughed at.”

It takes some time for Ruth to learn not just the sounds and intonation of words but the cultural literacy.  One day she says thank you for a compliment and is laughed at for her “conceit.”  Miss Wong explained, “That’s not the way it is with us. If you go around thanking people for compliments, everyone will think you are proud and conceited.  You should always say that whatever they admired is no good, not pretty, etc.  Then they will know that you are humble and modest.”

This is an InspiringVoices book from Guideposts and the focus is her missionary work in Hong Kong but it never felt preachy to me.  This book is written from the perspective of her cultural experiences, living in a new country during a time when knowledge of other cultures was a little more limited than it is today.  It is a gentle and humorous read about a young girl experiencing a new culture for the first time, a thoroughly enjoyable read.

My Foot is Too Big for the Glass Slipper by Gabrielle Reece with Karen Karbo

My Foot is Too big for the Glass Slipper: A guide to the less than perfect life

By Gabrielle Reece with Karen Karbo

When I picked up this book, the title caught me.  I started reading and it all sounded a little too wonderful.  I started to think maybe it was going to be like a reality TV show. Then I was struck by her sense of humor.

“We didn’t even make it to the fifth anniversary before our sexy fairy tale turned into one of those unwatchable Swedish domestic dramas that makes the audience want to throw themselves off the nearest bridge.”

For those who don’t know, Gabrielle Reece is a six-foot-three professional athlete and looking at pictures, you might think she is perfect but she candidly lets you know that she is a real person.

“My arms and legs are so long, sometimes it feels as if I have twice as many moving parts as the average woman... In a few minutes I’ll stand up from the chair I’m sitting in as I write this, and there’s no guarantee I won’t trip over my feet between the desk and the door.  It makes me anxious.”

The more I read, the more down-to-Earth it became with great advice for life.  There were many things I’ve learned too that we all need to be reminded of from time to time. 

“I took every slammed cupboard personally… His mood, the one that would make me feel unloved, would be long gone, but I’d still be feeling the sting of it, the injustice.  I’d still be experiencing his mood, long after he was out of it.”

I think that’s pretty normal for a lot of women, and maybe some men too.  She goes on to say that she would never say anything, that she would tread lightly instead of venting herself and getting it out and over.  Of course, after four years, she couldn’t take it anymore.  She filed for divorce.  He tried to talk her out of it but she was done.  Six months later he showed up to pick up his snowboard and she realized she’d made a mistake.

“Laird and I got back together.  For another year or two, we circled each other, unsure.  We were like survivors of some natural disaster, grateful to be alive, but dazed by the wreckage.  The foundation was cracked, the roof had leaks, the windows were smashed out.  Repairs always take longer – and cost more – than you might first imagine.”

They had a couple kids and hit another rough patch but made it through.  She quotes Anne Morrow Lindbergh - “When you love someone, you do not love them all the time, in exactly the same way, from moment to moment.”

I remember reading an article some time back about how men tend to pull back then lean in cyclically in a relationship.  Paradoxically, women then want to lean in when men are pulling back.  It’s hard to just relax. 

“Nothing makes you superficially more happy than the first flushes of love, but in the ever after it’s all about dealing with your lover, with understanding what makes him tick, surviving his crappy moods, and working together, always, to preserve what you’ve got and nurture a deeper, more profound and grounded love into the future.  Happily schmappily.  I don’t think so.”

This book is like a very chatty and level-headed series of blog posts or essays, covering many of the topics that are important to women today as wives, mothers and human beings.  She covers pregnancy, having a baby and motherhood.  She’s an athlete so she devotes some time to talking about working out, the many benefits of exercise and starting/maintaining a fitness regimen.  She talks about the sisterhood of women and creating a supportive group, preferably inter-generational.

God bless her, I think she hits the nail on the head with food and dieting. 

“Don’t do it.  I don’t care if you’re eighty-seven pounds overweight.” 

I can now fully endorse this book.  She adheres to the principle of eating healthy but having the fun food on occasion too.

“When you put something in your mouth, always know why you’re doing it…  if you’re going to eat that triple fudge salty caramel brownie, really eat it.  Stop texting, give it your full attention, lick your fingers, sigh, and moan.  Enjoy the hell out of it.” 

I agree. 

There’s some things I’m not going to touch on here, because it’s just between us girls.  This is some thoroughly modern reading on what it takes to make a marriage work, parent and live a balanced life in this day and age.  I appreciated it.  I hope you will too.

Check out Gabrielle Reece’s blog at http://www.gabriellereece.com

River Inside the River by Gregory Orr

I’ve found another poet and fallen in love with his words.  “You didn’t know about Gregory Orr?” you ask in astonishment.  I hang my head.  No, I didn’t. 

It’s not all spun sugar and gossamer

p. 69

What’s in a poem?  Everything in life and the human heart including “deepest grief and even horror.”

The problem for me in talking about a collection of poems like this is that my brain feels like it has moved into images and feelings.  It’s difficult to convey.  I want to simply read you the poems I read and say, “See?  Isn’t that wonderful?”  Alas, I cannot in a blog so I will try to explain what I loved about this collection.

As with many collections of poetry, so much is conveyed in such a short volume, only 124 pages, and with only the utterly necessary words.  There are not even titles for the individual poems in the second and third sections, just titles for the three sections of the book and within the first section.  I have heard it said that musicians play notes but great musicians play the silence between the notes as well.  Here, there is lots of space and silence to help shape the poems.

In the section titled Eden and After, Orr reimagines Genesis, in poetic form.

To Choose

God planned a static planet

With plants that bore

No offspring - as if

Acts had no consequence.

p. 27

This created different layers of confusion for my mind.  Was it presumptuous or imaginative to put words in God’s mouth and thoughts in his head?  Does he even have or need those things?  Since God is not a human, is it anthropomorphizing him? 

Eve’s feelings on exploring the world she now inhabits are revealed in two poems –

To Go 

Who wouldn’t be alarmed

To see the tulip’s

Fleshy petals

Wilt and fall?

… How it was definitive,

Beyond recall. 

p. 32

To Say/To Save

As she spoke aloud

Each flower’s name

She felt her saying save

p. 46

I’ve been exploring the idea from Joseph Campbell that the infinite is here and now, that if each moment is being, has been and will always have been, then recognizing fixes it in memory and makes it infinite.  I felt like this last poem caught that idea.

The section titled The City of Poetry is the type of poetry I find more comfortable - more words,  images and thoughts, though still spare.

I read page 56 to 57 about the three main difficult passages in his life and how a book of Keats helped Orr get through the third.  I wondered if this was a personal recollection or a character he had created so I went searching and found the following article.  (Yes, he did kill his younger brother in a hunting accident when he was twelve and his mother did die two years later and he was abducted and imprisoned in rural Alabama during the sixties.)  You can read more about Gregory Orr’s poetry and life here -

THECAGED OWL: NEW AND SELECTED POEMS, POETRY AS SURVIVAL, AND THE BLESSING

Impermanence is celebrated in the section titled River Inside the River

Even the things that seem to stand still

Flow slowly into other forms.

p. 93

Comparing a cat to a love-sponge and a dog as a fountain of love seems so apt to me in the poem on page 99.  I love the fluidity of using he and she for the same character/person “the beloved.”  I find that fascinating and I wonder what he meant by it.  It makes me think of how I sometimes imagine God to be either/neither male or female.

And at last, he made me cry on page 111.

First, there was shatter.

Then, aftermath.

Only later and only slowly

We gathered words

Against our loss.

But last was not least,

Last was not least of these.

This book was a wonderful experience.  I hope you take it.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

By Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

When I was a teenager, I really enjoyed writing letters - long newsy letters with quotes from movies, television, books and songs, mostly to my grandmother and a few friends who lived some distance away.  The letters this story is told in are similar, though there are a number of short missives sent by cable or messenger because it is late 1940.  The problem is that the phones and phone lines are in disarray because of the war. 

Juliet becomes the toast of England after World War II when her humorous newspaper articles about life during the war, written under the nom de plume, Izzy Bickerstaff, are collected in a book and published.  Now she is looking for a new topic to write about. 

Dawsey Adams, from Guernsey Island, has come into possession of a Charles Lamb book that had once belonged to Juliet and still has her address in the front.  It isn’t easy to come by anything after the war and so Dawsey writes to Juliet asking for help in locating more Charles Lamb books, beginning a correspondence and friendship that will eventually lead Juliet to Guernsey Island. 

As Juliet and Dawsey correspond, the story of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and, by extension, the occupation of Guernsey by German soldiers during the war is revealed.  (Guernsey is an island in the English Channel, actually much closer to France than England.)  The titular literary society comes about one evening as an excuse for some islanders out after curfew, to keep the Germans from jailing or killing them. 

I actually listened to this book in the car, as I do many books, and the recording had the benefit of multiple voices - two men and three women.  I think it made the story go more quickly and brought the characters to life in a way that was a little bit lacking in the hard copy, though I don’t agree with the few detractors that say there was no variation among the voices of the characters.  There was, decidedly.  The literary crowd of Juliet, Sidney and Susan have a wider vocabulary and use more complex sentences.  Amelia Maughery is a little old fashioned while Dawsey is plain but straight forward and uses correct English.  Isola and Eben frequently do not use proper English. 

Take, for example, a paragraph from Amelia Maughery, very proper, “I realize that our name, the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, is an unusual one and could easily be subjected to ridicule.  Would you assure me you will not be tempted to do so?  The Society members are very dear to me, and I do not wish them to be perceived as objects of fun by your readers.”

Then, Isola Pribby writes to Juliet about the Brontes, “Their Pa was a selfish thing, wasn’t he?  He paid his girls no mind at all – always sitting in his study, yelling for his shawl.  He never rose up to wait on hisself, did he?  Just sat alone in his room while his daughters died like flies.”

 

This is a quiet story of a channel island during World War II.  People try to get by, stay out of trouble, make do with what they have and get on with life as best they can.  They even fall in love, but the war intrudes. 

Juliet does come across as young, privileged and an idealist, rather a Pollyanna, even though she has gone through World War II and also lost her parents at an early age.  She’s a pleasant enough character but I’m not sure it sounds right for what she’s been through.  On the other hand, that is perhaps what it was like.  You saw horrors and had to get on with life.  At one point, Dawsey asks her about a “Doodlebug” cartoon he had seen after the war and Juliet explains that Doodlebugs are what the Ministry of Information called Hitler’s V-1 rockets.

“They came in the daytime, and they came so fast there was not time for an air-raid siren or to take cover.  You could see them; they looked like slim, black, slanted pencils and made a dull, spastic sound above you... when their noise stopped, it meant there was only thirty seconds before it plummeted.  So, you listened for them.  Listened hard for the sound of their motors cutting out.  I did see a Doodlebug fall once.  I was quite some distance away when it hit, so I threw myself down in the gutter and cuddled up against the curb.  Some women, in the top story of a tall office building down the street, had gone to an open window to watch.  They were sucked out by the force of the blast.”

Her explanation is rather matter of fact but the simple facts hit hard when you understand.  There are moments about the occupation of Guernsey and the war in England that are hard to take and made me tear up, but they are mixed in so that it is not too hard to bear. 

Overall, it is a cheerful book, though the topic is serious.  I would recommend it and even more highly recommend the audio version, the cast reading the letters are tremendously entertaining.

Summer Reading 2 – Maybe This Time by Jennifer Crusie

Summer Reading 2

Maybe This Time

by Jennifer Crusie

         

It’s been a long time since I was first introduced to Jennifer Crusie.  I remember  a friend being extremely enthusiastic about the latest Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer book.  I tried one and didn’t really care for it.  The collaboration just didn’t work for me.  (I tried their latest, Wild Ride, and it still doesn’t.)  However, if you’re looking for a quick, fun, romantic read then I highly recommend books written by Jennifer Crusie, on her own.

 

I remember reading Anyone But You several years ago - Nina Askew doesn’t think it would be appropriate for her to date the young ER doctor downstairs but her beagle/bassett mix, Fred, obviously does.  It was a fun, light, read.

 

I rediscovered Jennifer Crusie recently and devoured several of her books in just a week.  Trust Me On This has Dennie chasing the biggest story of her career while Alec is a Federal agent after a con artist.  It’s a case of mistaken identity and intentions that makes for anguish and laughter.

 

Bet Me was a delightful and incredibly funny, sweet and sexy book. Minerva Dobbs is a bit off beat but very practical.  Her logical choice for a boyfriend dumps her and a bet pairs her up, rather angrily at first, with Calvin Morrissey.  They part ways after dinner, intending not to see each other again, but something keeps drawing them back together.  I loved this one.

 

The most recent book I read was Maybe This Time.  I’ve always enjoyed ghost stories and this falls into that category as well as romance. 

 

Andie shows up at her ex-husband, North’s office, wanting nothing more than to hand back the alimony checks he has been sending every month for nearly ten years.  She never wanted the money and she’s ready to move on so she intends to cut her last ties with him.  She’s planning to get remarried.

 

North, much to his own surprise, asks for her help.  Two years ago he became the guardian to two children when his cousin died.  He left the children with their aunt but she has since died.  North has sent several Nannies but each one has come running home with her tail between her legs.  He offers Andie ten thousand a month to spend a few months with the kids, bring their education up to par and bring them home.  Andie won’t even have to contact him, they can communicate through his secretary.

 

Andie agrees to one month.  Ten thousand dollars would get her out of debt before she gets married.  She leaves, “before he could say or do anything else that made her forget she was done with him.”  Of course, it isn’t over until it’s over.

 

With so many books written by herself and several more with co-authors, it will take you a good little while to run out of reading material.  They are just plain fun.

Summer Reading - The Last Original Wife by Dorothea Benton Frank

The Last Original Wife
By Dorothea Benton Frank

 

Dorothea Benton Frank has become one of my favorite authors for summer reading. She came to my attention over 10 years ago when my sister shared the first Lowcountry novel, Sullivan's Island. Part mystery, part Chick Lit, it introduced the author's main setting and theme – the Lowcountry of South Carolina and a woman in her prime facing a life changing circumstance of some kind. The woman typically heads home, to the Lowcountry, to find the emotional fortitude to face her situation.  The Lowcountry of South Carolina is also often reflected in the titles– Sullivan’s Island, Plantation, Isle of Palms, Pawley’s Island, and Folly Beach.

Leslie Anne Greene Carter is the main character of Frank's latest novel, The Last Original Wife. An unusual facet of this novel is that it's told in alternating chapters from Leslie and her husband, Wesley.  It is heavily weighted toward Leslie’s point of view but we also get Wesley's point of view and get to see how it changes over the course of the book.  Wesley may be "the bad guy" but he's not a totally bad guy and he grows over the course of the novel, just as Leslie does.  Unfortunately for the marriage, they are growing apart.

The novel starts out at the offices of a high priced therapist in Atlanta where a woman begs Leslie to sell her Leslie’s time with the therapist after finding her husband in bed with two of his daughter’s teenage friends.  Leslie tells her she can have the session if Leslie can have the name of the woman’s plastic surgeon and, by the way, divorce the bastard.  “Take all his money.  Every last nickel.  None of that divide by two bullshit.”  They exchange cards and the woman decides she doesn’t need the session after all.

Leslie and Wesley's own inciting incident is a vacation to Edinburgh, so Wesley can play golf, where Leslie ends up falling through an open man hole while taking pictures.  Wesley doesn’t notice until twenty minutes later when he gets back to the hotel with his friends.  Wesley blames Leslie for her accident and Leslie is angry at Wesley for leaving her alone in the hospital with his friend’s new young wife while he goes golfing. I suppose if falling in a manhole and breaking your teeth and arm as well as gaining numerous cuts and bruises while your husband walks on doesn't wake you up, then nothing will.

Leslie decides it's time to take an extended vacation down to see her brother, Harlan, in Charleston. There she reconnects with an old flame, and reads up on Josephine Pinckney, who owned the house where Leslie's brother lives. She is called home when Wesley is diagnosed with cancer and she agrees to go take care of him during his biopsy surgery. Wesley tries to convince her to come home permanently and the novel comes full circle to visit the therapist we saw in the beginning.

This novel is sort of like a gossip session with girlfriends that you don't have to feel guilty about because the characters only exist in the book. There's a lot going on. Light, but not too light, a perfect summer read. Enjoy!