Of Course, You Can Read My Manuscript, Dear. (Gulp.)

By Kim

Since finishing the manuscript for The Oak Lovers I’ve been through several rounds of critique and revision. I’d like to think I’ve developed a thick skin, that I can take most of what is thrown at me graciously, and consider comments carefully before deciding if I agree with them or not. I turned into a quivering mass of raw nerves, however, when I handed the novel over to a certain reader yesterday.

I sat at my desk pretending to work. Behind me I heard a lot of typing. This reader is not the type to give many “roses” and so he must be finding a lot of “thorns.” He likes science fiction, fantasy, espionage and high-octane stories with big body counts. The Oak Lovers has no alternate universes, car chases, gore, or doomsday scenarios. It’s a (gasp) love story, and the only political intrigue takes place within the Toronto art circles of the early 20th century.

I paint with words. My husband, Mr. PhD-in-physics, prefers to think in equation form.

Madonna Ahrens circa 1910

I knew he wouldn’t be familiar with a single historical figure in the book other than Carl and Madonna, and he only knows them because Carl’s art hangs on our walls and he sees their photographs on our walls. This artfully-posed nude photograph of Madonna playing a cello hangs within sight of his desk. When he encounters a sex scene, will he picture her a little too clearly and feel he must keep his eyes forever averted from that wall?

If an agent hates my book, there are always other agents. If my husband does, I’ll be heartbroken.

Five chapters in, he called me over to his desk and went over his comments. As I suspected, literary references went over his head. There aren’t many, they aren’t obscure, and they make sense in context, but the unfamiliar names tripped him up. He called the story “enjoyable” though, and he’s neck deep in the courtship phase, which will be the least interesting to him.

Much of what he brought up won’t be a problem in my genre and tripped up none of my other readers. I don’t discourage him from marking up the book, though. The fact that he points things out and takes the time to comment on more than a stray typo proves he loves me enough to read carefully, even if it isn’t his type of book. It shows he’s taking an interest in my work and has a vested interest in my success.

To my writer friends: At what point do you show your work to your spouse? What has your experience been?

Seeing it all

By Pamela

I'm a very visual person. I can remember names and dates pretty well if I hear them, but when I write something down, I can recall it even better.

I know some of us at What Women Write depend on visual cues to help with our writings.

Kim is neck-deep in writing her great-grandparents' life story, and since her great-grandfather Carl Ahrens was a painter, she has some pretty powerful images to inspire her with her writings. As she describes a painting Madonna (her great-grandmother) inspects over the shoulder of her future husband, I know Kim is most likely studying the painting herself as she writes--either viewing it on her website or staring at it as it hangs on her wall.

About this particular Carl Ahrens painting, she writes: 

I grew up with this painting hanging on my living room wall. The canvas was filthy, web cracking everywhere. The colors were drab, the frame beat-up, but when my parents offered to give me one of Carl’s paintings for my 21^st birthday, this was the one I chose, the largest oil they owned at the time. The sticker on the back of the frame indicated that the title was Summer, and it was at an exhibition in 1931 priced at $450. That was a lot of money back then and, each time I looked at it, I sensed there was something special under decades worth of dirt. In 1999 I took it to a conservator recommended by the Dallas Museum of Art and got it cleaned and restored. The photograph actually does it no justice at all. This is the first of his canvasses that I ever saw in the state Carl painted them—grime yellows the varnish and dulls the pigments over time. There are over fifty distinct colors, including purple. Other cleaned paintings have revealed shocking dabs of hot pink, which I certainly didn’t expect to see in such masculine paintings. A hint at Carl’s sense of humor?

 

I stood in front of the painting and cried. It made me re-examine my life and the lack of creativity in it at the time. Looking at it made me itch to write his story. It also made me pick up my own sketchbook again.

 

An interesting thing I learned while researching for The Oak Lovers is that the real Summer doesn’t hang on my wall. In 1934, Carl promised his friend Prime Minister Mackenzie-King a painting in exchange for his help in securing passage to England. Carl was too sick to paint anything he deemed worthy of sending, so he changed the date on Summer and put it in a new frame. The painting that now sits in a vault in the National Archives was once in the frame currently hanging on my wall!

As Susan weaves the multi-generational story that revolves around a Kentucky bootlegger, she draws visual inspiration from a nearby bookcase. About it she writes:

This bookcase houses my collection of a few books from Thomas Merton, Silas House and some poetry from Wendell Berry. I also have a stack of research books including The Kentucky Encyclopedia, A New History of Kentucky, and some short works written by people I know from home. There are a couple of books on bourbon there, too. I have books on writing by Lamott, Hemingway and Stephen King on the second shelf. It has two bourbon bottles from Maker's Mark Distillery (one that I dipped in wax myself and one with a personalized label that was a gift from a friend), my rosary from the Abbey of Gethsemanie, and coffee cups from The Bourbon Trail. In there somewhere is a coaster with the recipe for the perfect mint julep, some pottery from Louisville Stoneware, and pebbles from a Kentucky creek that I know.

I have a photo of my grandparents together from a political fundraiser in the 1970s, another more recent shot of my grandmother (now 90), photos of me with my mother and sisters, and pics of my children. You might also find the photos of us gals from our two retreats. It looks rather cluttered but everything there is significant (to me).

This is right next to my monitor, so the reference books are invaluable when I need a quick answer on a timeline or date (example: When was the last reporting lynching in Kentucky?). Books by Kentucky authors are inspirational. The pictures of my family keep me going... and the bourbon bottles remind me that when the book is completed I will have something to celebrate!

My current WIP has been ignored for far too long. So this week, after seeing some amazing new releases by new-found friends and drooling over their covers, I decided I needed some visual inspiration. While the bookshelves in my office hold similar trinkets--pictures of family and sister-friends, books I adore--what I needed this week was to visualize my story as a book. If I could see the final product (hold it in my mind, if not my hands), then possibly I would begin to see the potential that putting the final words on the pages will bring. While I'm realistic enough to know that most authors have minimal input when it comes to their cover art--and many titles are changed during the publishing process--for today this is how I see my book.

What inspires you?

Ghosts of Christmas Past

By Kim

As a place to celebrate Christmas Gananoque was ideal. We had a Christmas tree to outdo all Christmas trees, our friends skied over from the island, the turkey was cooked just right; all in all a perfect day. Carl made me cookie cutters for Christmas cookies; I had every known animal, almost, and I made them with a little ring of dough at the top, through which we ran fine wire, and they hung all over the tree. Ducks, reindeer (those took some care in the baking), pigs, elephants, cats, chickens, geese, I could go on indefinitely. Those on the lower branches were the sole property of our cat, Peter. It was funny to see him nonchalantly reach up with his paw and knock one down, then lie under the tree and eat it. His Christmas package was always the same; a box of puffed rice wrapped as any other Christmas gift and tied with a red ribbon. He attended to the unwrapping with perfect ease. I can’t say he cleared up the mess afterward, but neither did the children.

Madonna Ahrens on Christmas in Gananoque, Ontario. (1917)

When I first read these lines written by my great-grandmother, I could smell a hint of cinnamon and nutmeg in the air. I remembered those cookies; my dad made them a few times in my own childhood, always lamenting that he did not have his grandfather’s animal cutters. He stopped making them around the time his mother passed away. Perhaps the memory of her rolling out the dough grieved him, though he never spoke of it.

It was Christmas time when I began researching for my book on Carl and Madonna Ahrens. I had a small child of my own by then and desired a way to bring the past alive for her in a way a three-year-old would appreciate. Aunt Siegie happily supplied me with the Imperial cookie recipe, and mentioned that she had some of Granddaddy Carl’s handmade cookie cutters. She sent me tracings of them so I could see what they looked like, and my Dad used the pattern to make a copy of the rooster. I’ve made the cookies every year since.

Christmas is a season of nostalgia, so perhaps it’s not so unusual that I’d feel especially close to the ghosts of Christmas past at this time of year. Making Granny Madonna’s cookies allows me a connection to family I never had the chance to know in life. My kitchen smells the same as Madonna’s would have when she made them. Like my grandmother, I think they taste best after being dipped into hot chocolate. This year, in memory of my aunt Siegie, who passed away this past April after a four year battle with cancer, the first cookie I reached for was the pig. Among the things I received after her death was a box containing cookie cutters in the shape of a goose, rooster, squirrel, camel and pig. The first time I used them I saw a flash of Siegie seated at a table flanked by her mother and Granddaddy Carl. Madonna stood behind Carl, her hands on his shoulders, cheek resting on the top of his head. All were young, healthy, and laughing. While I miss Siegie very much, I couldn’t bring myself to feel sad.

In honor of the memories of Carl, Madonna, Tutu, and Siegie, I share this recipe with all of you and hope you have a wonderful holiday.

Imperial Cookies (From the kitchen of Madonna Ahrens)

1/3 cup butter

1 cup sugar

1 egg (well beaten)

¼ cup milk

2 cups flour

2 tsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

2 tsp vanilla

½ tsp nutmeg

½ tsp cinnamon

Cream shortening (with fork or pastry cutter)

Add sugar, egg, milk and vanilla and cream again

Sift together remaining (dry) ingredients

Add dry ingredients to butter mixture ½ cup at a time

Cover and chill in refrigerator for 24 hours. [Madonna must have put it in the snow before they had electricity.]

When ready to bake, take some dough and roll out on a floured board as you would a pie crust. [Kim leaves it a bit thicker for softer cookies.]

Use cookie cutters to cut out cookies. You can re-roll the dough, but try to place the cutters as close together as possible. The dough can get tough if you reuse too much. [Kim adds fresh dough in each time she re-rolls.]

Lay cookies out on a cookie sheet. Cook at 360 degrees until they are lightly browned on the bottom. [Eight minutes works for Kim.]

Let cool and enjoy – especially with hot chocolate!