There is a story about which I have always marveled. It concerns Charles Dickens, the great 19th century novelist. If I remember correctly, it happened when he first became famous with The Pickwick Papers and he was writing David Copperfield. A large, boisterous party was being held in his honor at his home. At some point, he excused himself, explaining he had a deadline to meet, and retreated to his study to write. The partygoers, refusing to accept this excuse, carried his desk down to the party. Midst the loud revelry, he wrote on. How he could do so I cannot imagine! I like, need, quiet to work. Deep quiet. Silence. Nothing, not even music. Since I live in a busy household, I even have rifle-shooting earmuffs to block out sound. I only want to listen to the words I write. The more I listen, the more I hear. The more I hear, the more the reader will hear.
City of Orphans in Spanish
In the mail today came the Spanish edition of City of Orphans, with the translated title, Ciudad de Huérfanos. [Editorial Bambú--Spain] My knowledge of languages other than English is woefully ( sadly) deficient. I cannot therefore, speak to the translation, but it is a handsome hardbound edition, truly stitched, complete with headband, a bound-in, green ribbon page marker (something I love) and an unusually fine illustration for the cover art. Many of my books have been translated (True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle is in some twenty languages.). The Korean Crispin: The Cross of Lead, which is fully illustrated, is very beautiful. These translated editions fascinate me, in part by the way they depict the story. They also allow me to wonder how young people in different cultures respond to my stories. Now and again, I get letters from these kids, and they are always delightful. Once, in Denmark, a girl told me how Bright Shadow was her favorite book. There is something very special about reaching across the globe in this way. Deeply rewarding.
Going backward
Years ago, my friend Natalie Babbitt and I were talking about current projects, when she said, “I’m at that stage, you know it, when I am not sure how to go forward, so I’m just rewriting.” I did know it. It happens often. The best way to describe the process is that when you are stuck, the writer finds his/her way forward by going backward. That is, by reworking, defining, shaping what you have done, you hope to find insights as to what should happen. In essence, you are asking your story, your characters to tell you what to do. If you have written true (as Hemingway might have said) there should be a logic about what comes next, how your story unfolds, concludes. That is where I am now with my current project; trying to get to the end, by going back to the beginning.
Dorothy Canfield Fisher Children’s Book Award
Last week I learned that my most recently published book, City of Orphans, was nominated for the Vermont children’s choice award, which they call the Dorothy Canfield Fisher Children’s Book Award, (she was the author of Understood Betsy). It’s a big thing for writers who are nominated for these awards. It means that many more libraries, school and public, will put the book on their shelves. Many more kids will read the book. These awards are unique because the kids pick the winner. To win is a special honor, deeply satisfying. These childrens’ choice awards are a reminder of what the whole enterprise of children’s books is all about—the kids. [By the way, Dorothy Canfield Fisher was a very interesting and important person, worth learning about.]
Time
What role does time play in a work of fiction? A book like my Fighting Ground is broken up into time bits (not chapters) and lasts little more than twenty-four hours. The events of my recently published City of Orphans occur during one week. My soon to be published Sophia’s War begins in 1776 and then jumps to 1780 for the major part of the story. That jump in time is crucial. Sophia goes from being a twelve-year-old girl to a fifteen-year-old young woman. She looks, acts, and thinks differently because of those passing three years. Still, the events of her younger self have a huge impact on what she does when older. While not often thought about, the passage of time is often a key element in a story. In a suspenseful book, time itself can be the engine which drives the story forward. Time can allow characters to change, develop, grow—or decline. Contrast how time works in novels and movies. Is not time in novels more like real time? It takes time to read a novel. Does the time it takes to read a novel add or subtract from the work?
Reading out loud
For me, the hardest part of writing a novel is the constant rereading of my own work. I do it repeatedly, truly countless times. As I do, I make all kinds of changes, big and small. It is during this process that the book takes on a unity, a clear direction, a sharp focus, and the strong movement toward a meaningful ending. Sometimes huge changes take place. Sometimes only small, but vital, changes. How can I keep the book fresh to my own eyes and mind? In all honesty, it is not easy. One of the simplest ways, is not to work on it. Walk away. Come back another time. Work on something else. Sometimes the computer helps. Change the font. Margins. Background color. However, I have learned the best way to get a sense of my own work is to read it aloud. It is as the poet Robert Frost once said, “The ear is the best reader.” My wife is usually the first willing listener. I often invite myself to a school and read the whole book—over a series of days or weeks—to a class. For better or worse, it is amazing what I hear.
Thriller
The word thriller seems to have come into the English language at the end of the 19th Century. Ken Follett cites the 1903 novel The Riddle of the Sands (Childers) as the first modern thriller. I’d suggest The Turn of the Screw. James Patterson, by way of definition, speaks of the thriller’s “intensity of emotions,” the building of “apprehension.” I’m interested because I’m working on a thriller. Not easy. As I try to shape the emotions to build apprehension, I must focus, cut, sharpen, deepen. If I slip, if the pace slackens, if it gets confusing, the reader won’t turn the page. Sometime the term “page-turner” is used negatively. But what writer doesn’t want the reader to turn the page? If one is speaking of young readers, what could be better than turning them into turners of pages? Many of my readers tell me my best thriller is Wolf Rider. It’s based on something that really happened. But that’s a turn of another page.
Salted peanuts
The other day, when talking to a fifth grade class, a boy asked, “How do you know when to end a chapter?” A good question. A good book has a complex structure, with different structural beats. Those beats might be the turn of the plot, a great sentence (or paragraph), a shift in mood, an emotional high (or low) point, a revelation for the reader. You can think of others. One of the strongest beats is the chapter ending. It should be a pause that makes you (the reader) not want to stop. Yet, it is often the pause that allows you to stop, to muse upon what you just read, to catch your breath, to go to sleep. It must be perfectly balanced so as to allow the reader to absorb what has just happened, yet encourage continuation. My style tends toward the “cliff-hanger” chapter ending. (That word comes from the mid-20th century world of movies.) When I wrote Beyond the Western Sea, my longest book (680 pages), I structured it so that each short chapter would (hopefully) compel the reader to continue to read on. My editor and I used the metaphor of a bowl of salted peanuts. You cannot stop eating them—or in this case, reading the next chapter—until you’ve gone through the whole bowl—or book. Mindful of this I just restructured the book on which I am working.
Miss Spelling
If you are a poor speller, does that mean that you are a poor writer? F. Scott Fitzgerald was a famously poor speller. Does that make spelling unimportant? It is a question of communication. Take this sentence: I went walking with the dog. Using the same letters you could write, I went walking with the god. Quite a difference. In my experience, there are few very good spellers, including me. (An agent of mine told me that one year I won the Publishers’ Fitzgerald Poor Spellers Award.) There are so many poor spellers, in part, because English is a huge mix of different languages. The Oxford Dictionary folks suggest that there are a quarter of a million distinct English words! I doubt anyone can spell them all correctly. For that matter, I doubt anyone knows them all. Long live the Oxford Unabridged! With so many English words, the language lends itself to puns (a form of misspelling), which I adore. A skunk walks into a courtroom. The judge cries out, “Odor in the court!” Did I tell a stinky joke or misspell something? Depends on what I was trying to communicate. Two of my books, The End of the Beginning, and A Beginning, a Muddle and an End, are full of such jokes. Some have suggested these books are philosophical. Others that they are just silly. Take your pick. Either way, they are spelled correctly. I hope.
Changes
I have written before about book titles. Changes, changes. Now my editor and I have settled on a new title for my forthcoming book. It came about this way. When I was writing the book I had a working title, The Field of Battle. It derived from a line in the book, something that Thomas Jefferson once said. That quote however, was taken out of the book, so that title did not make much sense. Then came Deception. It was a good title, except, as it turned out, there are a number of books with that title. One cannot copyright a title, so we could have used it. But the publisher felt it wasn’t strong enough for the book. Much mulling, and now a new title: Sophia’s War: A Tale of the Revolution. It required some changes in the text of the book to make it meaningful. That done, there it is: Sophia’s War: A Tale of the Revolution.