Found Objects

By Julie

I've wondered if other writers take as much pleasure as I do in a certain part of the research I undertake while writing a manuscript. I'll go ahead and call it found objects. These are objects that inspire, reinforce, enhance, and commemorate my writing.

Sometimes they're items I come across accidentally--or maybe serendipitously--that don't serve any real purpose other than reminding me of the work I'm doing. In this category is an infuser mug I bought at World Market when I was writing a story with a character who was a Japanese war bride, pictured here (the green one with the red lid).

After I bought it, I intentionally looked for items to represent each of my main characters in that novel, intending to keep them on my writing desk to help me stay on task. Too bad I didn't finish that novel, but it was fun finding the objects and displaying them for a while. Maybe the characters will make their ways into other stories eventually, and the energy and money I spent won't have been wasted. Another of those objects was an early 20th century era Catholic prayer booklet for mothers, which I found on eBay along with a vintage rosary. I was fascinated to discover carefully cut out flower art and a lace bookmark inside the booklet, as well as hand-marked spaces for someone to personalize it. I wondered who did that. Maybe it was simply an unused gift. But maybe someone started it for herself, then never finished it. A lost baby? Who knows, but my imagination was off and running.

Some of our readers might remember when I did a giveaway before Calling Me Home released of a necklace I found on Etsy. I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw how perfect each of the items attached to the necklace was in telling the story I'd written in a nutshell.

I'm working on a new story right now, one I'm very excited about, and feeling more confident than I have in ages that it could be the "right" one. (How many times have you heard me say that now? But seriously, I'm all about writing the "right" story, so I'll keep hammering away until it happens.) I've been doing research until my eyes cross. I've read everything I can get my hands on about the topics contained within. I've written pages I'm pleased with, and pages I've deleted in disgust.

In the process, one of those "found objects" appeared this week. I confess my heart rate sped up a bit as I opened the package that came Thursday afternoon, a few days earlier than expected. Inside was a book I'd ordered, carefully wrapped in brown paper. A book published in 1931 -- a first edition, no less. I crossed my fingers it wouldn't smell too much of mold, as so many of my old books do. It was in good condition for being almost a century old, and I was thrilled to open the pages and find not only text, but slick pages with photos. A book that tells much more of the story I'm researching than I could ever find online or at any library in the area. Not only that, but it was the only copy I found for sale anywhere. One copy. I have to assume it was out there waiting. :)

I turned to the first page and began reading, and the sense I had of actually holding history in my hands was different than anything I've experienced yet while working on this story. I can't tell you more about it right now, but today, I feel very lucky about this "found object."

What about you? Share with us in the comments about "found objects" you have come across that have enhanced your writing or reading.

There's more than one way to ...

By Julie (and really, by Elizabeth, too)

Following up to Pamela's Monday post, here's a photo of the group (minus Kim--ironically our ONE Mainer) at the Dallas Museum of Art Monday evening, posing with Elizabeth Strout after her on-stage conversation with Skip Hollandsworth, author of the Texas Monthly article about our favorite Texas bad boy and co-author of the Bernie movie script. Strout wrote the beloved, Pulitzer prize-winning novel in short stories, Olive Kitteridge, and is now touring in support of The Burgess Boys, a novel that returns the reader to Shirley Falls, the fictional Maine town she originally visited in Amy and Isabelle.

Elizabeth LYND (popping her head into the picture there at bottom right) and I had an interesting conversation following the event. During the Q&A, someone from the audience asked about Strout's writing process. Elizabeth L. asked her to expand on part of her answer. Strout had mentioned that she writes in notebooks and hundreds or thousands of individual sheets of paper inevitably end up everywhere--some to be used, some to be discarded. Elizabeth L. was curious how much went in the wastebasket, and Strout explained that a LOT of it ends up there, or filed away somewhere, not in any real organized fashion, perhaps to be used in something else.

While in line, I mentioned to Elizabeth L. that someone almost always asks the writing process question during the events I've done for Calling Me Home. I jokingly said, "Does it matter?" What I meant was that each writer seems to have a different process; no across-the-board method works for every single one of us. I wasn't saying it wasn't an important question, but rather that what works for me won't work for you, or Elizabeth, or Pamela, or Susan, or Joan, or Kim, and so, in a way, my process or Elizabeth Strout's process is irrelevant to anyone else.

But Elizabeth L. came back with a really good point. She said (loosely quoting), "It matters because it says to me, well, if this process works for Strout, and this other process works for Julie, and this other process works for Jamie Ford or Cheryl Strayed or Chris Cleave or ... you know ... then maybe my own, mixed-up seeming process can work for me. It gives me permission to have my own process if all these other successful writers have achieved publication with so many different processes."

I was nodding (vigorously!) and saying, "Yeah, you're absolutely right." I made a mental note to add something about that the next time I answer a writing process question.

After all, as I said to Elizabeth Lynd, there is more than one way to skin a cat.

(What does that really mean? I've always wondered ...)

A Week of Aprils

By Julie

I've been in a nostalgic mood this week. Tuesday night, Susan and I and my friend Gail went to hear Anne Lamott speak on her first stop of her tour for the paperback of Some Assembly Required. Later, Gail and I tried to remember which of us blogged about seeing her several years ago. I was curious what I'd said if it was me, or what Gail said if it was her. What were we thinking about then? It was five years ago, almost to the day, in April 2008. It really does seem like just yesterday. That's not just a cliche here.

I never found a post about that night from either of us, though I'm almost positive one existed. But the search led me to scroll through lots of old posts on my blogs, current and past. I wondered what I was thinking about in April 2008, then in other Aprils. It was strangely affirming to come across these thoughts and to see the progression of seven Aprils:

April 2007, I wrote:

Something interesting we are talking about in my voice class this week (Barbara Samuel's online class). We are getting down to the last few weeks and one of the questions she asked today is (something like) "What question is it you're trying to answer in your writing?" In other words, what motivates you to write most everything you write—what question is answered when you get to the end of every book you write? I think I know my big question, and it's been apparent in each of the adult manuscripts I've worked on so far, but I want to narrow it down a little more. More or less, I'm writing stories that ask the big question, "How far do you go for the people you love?" As a subset, "When do you let go, and when do you hang on, and HOW do you hang on, no matter where it takes you?"

April 2008:
I was in a rut with the manuscript I was writing (that did not sell, though I tried). It didn't appear I wanted to talk about writing much—it was all I could do to actually write. I began keeping a log each day of "Five Beauties"—five things I observed that tickled my senses, hoping, I'm guessing, that these simple observations would jar me out of that rut.

April 2009:
I wasn't blogging at all, anywhere. I was about to query the manuscript I'd finally finished. I must have been full of hope and big dreams and hugging that information close, afraid to jinx myself—never dreaming that a year later, I would have mostly given up on that story and started something brand new.  

April 2010, I wrote:

So, here it is April 21, and I'm [only] up to about 10K new words on my story. But I'm not crying. In fact, I'm pretty excited about those words and how they're flowing, even if they're flowing rather slowly. Sometimes, I think, a lazy river runs the deepest.This story is kind of a different genre for me. It's still all about relationships and families, but I threw a historical element in there for the heck of it (well, and because it's the story that's been gnawing at me for about three years!). I never dreamed how much that would slow me down, though I'm not complaining. I've had many stops and starts, fine tuning the settings and time periods and voices.

April 2011:
I'd finished writing Calling Me Home, and was closing in on revisions. I blogged about query comps—what to use as "comparable works" in query letters to catch an agents attention. I was all business again, but I can detect the optimism behind my words--full of hopes and dreams again, that Calling Me Home would indeed be the story that landed me an agent, and then a book contract. I worried about using comps that were too "big," or not quite the right genre. (The irony now is that one I rejected—The Notebook—shows up in my most commonly quoted blurb. It's everywhere!)

April 2012:
I interviewed Jacqueline Luckett on the blog. I'd sold Calling Me Home, it was already in production at St. Martin's. But it turns out that simply selling your book does NOT automatically silence those voices in our heads. We still wonder and worry. I asked Jacquie this:

Something I deal with as a debut author—more than I probably even care to admit—is fear and self-doubt. You can worry about so many things as a writer: how your books will sell; how they will be accepted by the media, by readers, by … ; whether everyone will wonder what the heck you were thinking when you decided to write the book. Have you experienced this, too? How did you deal with these emotions? Any advice for newly minted authors you wish someone had given you? 

She shared her own struggles with doubt and fear and had some good advice.

And here it is now, April 2013:
Calling Me Home released almost two months ago. Talk about time flying. It's been a fun ride so far. In fact, I am finding I'm much more relaxed in the months since the book released than I was in all the months building up to it. This is a good thing. But I'm also starting to feel the very real tension of having a new book inside me that wants to be released, and in the process, I'm finding myself cycling through many of these same emotions. It's helpful to look back and see how many times I was able to rebound and recoup after periods of fear and doubt, and how I was by turn optimistic and introspective, waxing and waning.

It's also encouraging to realize that, in the midst of all those changes, I'm still working at answering the same big questions—questions I wrestled with in my first full manuscript, the one that didn't sell, and in Calling Me Home, the one that did.

"How far do you go for the people you love?"
"When do you let go, and when do you hang on, and HOW do you hang on, no matter where it takes you?"

Writers, have you found your big questions? Are you trying answer them?