Writing a book sounds so lofty. When you tell friends and acquaintances about your project, they oooh and aahh. But they don't know about all the peaks and valleys that go along with serious writing. People really don't want to hear more than the basics of what the story's about, anyway -- maybe a sentence or two, at that. They don't want to hear about how you get up at four in the morning to write for an hour so that you can get to your real job at seven; how you are often at an impasse in your story, thinking, is anybody going to want to read this, or is this terribly boring? Or how you labor over choosing just the right word, consulting your laptop's thesaurus, and when that one seems inferior, you run to the bookshelf and thumb through the really thick thesaurus on the hunt for that elusive perfect word -- only to return to your original word. Or worse, an extremely common, one syllable word instead. Writing is constant analysis.
What your friends and acquaintances also don't understand is that when writing works, it's like fireworks on New Year's Eve. It's elation.
It's falling in love.
I just fell in love with a new character, when my story took on a mind of its own. I thought I had it down. I knew where the twists and turns were, and it was exciting, all right. But frankly, it bored me. Because those twists and turns had already been written by history. Subconsciously I felt I had to stay within the bounds of the story as it had been written in time, even though I knew my characters would put their own spin on it.
But when a baby is born to a minor character, and this minor character tells Angeline that she will have to take care of the baby if anything happens to her . . . suddenly the story takes a turn I didn't know about. This baby puts a wrinkle on things that sure wasn't there before! What is it they say -- a baby changes everything.
And suddenly I'm seeing fireworks.
Call me obsessive compulsive. That's what I look like some days, writing this story like my life depends on it while the groceries, once again, aren't purchased, the bathtub isn't scrubbed, and those appointments that should have been made, haven't.
So what's the big deal about this story?
It's Angeline. She won't leave me alone.
Okay, that's really weird, considering she's been dead a whole century now. I'm not into hauntings or ghosts, I'm really not. But when I visited the Cherokee museum where her father, the famous William Holland Thomas, was on exhibit for his many accomplishments, most notably saving the Cherokees from total removal from North Carolina, I began to wonder about his daughter, Angeline. She's the one from whom my husband is descended. The more I found out -- she's illegitimate, and half-Cherokee, half white (through Will, of course) -- the more I found that I didn't know. Mystery shrouds this woman. Because she is the illegitimate offspring, the legitimate family refers to her politely as "adopted". The timing of her "adoption" happens to coincide with the Cherokee Removal. Hmmm. Interesting that this white man, who himself had been adopted into the Cherokee tribe as an honorary member and was working almost around the clock to see that they were not removed from their rightful home, chose this time to bring his illegitimate daughter into his own home that he shared with his very virtuous mother. Was he fearful that she would be forced to go on the trail? And by the way, where was her own mother in all this?
All these questions swirled in my mind a couple of years ago when we visited North Carolina. I felt such a sense of . . . well, her . . . I felt an urgency to do something. I needed to tell her story.
The only thing was, I didn't know her story.
After months of frustrating research on a woman who was simply a name on a page, it occurred to me . . . why did I need her story? My questions provided a good framework for a story of my own invention. The skeleton of facts, with muscle, tissue, blood and breath born of fiction.
Thus, Green Corn and Porch Music was born.
So what's the big deal about this story?
It's Angeline. She won't leave me alone.
Okay, that's really weird, considering she's been dead a whole century now. I'm not into hauntings or ghosts, I'm really not. But when I visited the Cherokee museum where her father, the famous William Holland Thomas, was on exhibit for his many accomplishments, most notably saving the Cherokees from total removal from North Carolina, I began to wonder about his daughter, Angeline. She's the one from whom my husband is descended. The more I found out -- she's illegitimate, and half-Cherokee, half white (through Will, of course) -- the more I found that I didn't know. Mystery shrouds this woman. Because she is the illegitimate offspring, the legitimate family refers to her politely as "adopted". The timing of her "adoption" happens to coincide with the Cherokee Removal. Hmmm. Interesting that this white man, who himself had been adopted into the Cherokee tribe as an honorary member and was working almost around the clock to see that they were not removed from their rightful home, chose this time to bring his illegitimate daughter into his own home that he shared with his very virtuous mother. Was he fearful that she would be forced to go on the trail? And by the way, where was her own mother in all this?
All these questions swirled in my mind a couple of years ago when we visited North Carolina. I felt such a sense of . . . well, her . . . I felt an urgency to do something. I needed to tell her story.
The only thing was, I didn't know her story.
After months of frustrating research on a woman who was simply a name on a page, it occurred to me . . . why did I need her story? My questions provided a good framework for a story of my own invention. The skeleton of facts, with muscle, tissue, blood and breath born of fiction.
Thus, Green Corn and Porch Music was born.
I love bluegrass music. True, some of it is corny as all get out. But my Ipod is loaded with Cherryholmes' brand of bluegrass, and that gets me in a better mood, guaranteed. I also love the Bruce Hornsby and Ricky Skaggs collaboration, and can you say Allison Krauss? But oh my gosh: Cadillac Sky . . . now there's a band! Wow.
I sure wasn't raised with any of this fun music, but the first time I heard a fiddle played alongside a common tune my ears thought they'd died and gone to Heaven. And then when I married into a hillbilly-descended family -- well, I guess it was just a homecoming of the soul. My father-in-law and his cousins have regaled me with stories of their grandpa (Papa Jeppy) and his family playing their various instruments on the porch or in the front room in the hills of North Carolina. How I wish I'd been there all those years ago! Thankfully, Papa Jeppy and his kin went to the big city and made a recording of their mountain music in the forties, and we have it saved on a CD for prosperity. It's amazing. My husband, Jeppy's great-grandson, an accomplished musician himself, has a long legacy of music making in his genes.
This tradition of porch music plays a prominent role in my novel. How can it not? Music in Appalachia is paramount. To understand the history of the music of this region and its effect on the culture, listen to John Norris Brown's podcast from the Hillbilly Savants' blog.
Hi. Welcome to the random thoughts of a writer, reader, librarian, mom, wife, and hurried person. Right now, of course, my mind is a total blank. What does a person write on a blog? It's not like I don't have experience on this kind of thing -- check out my other blogs: wellreadbooks.edublogs.org; extraordinarybookreader.blogspot.com, and teresasbookbuzz.blogspot.com. But I've always hidden behind another name, or when I didn't, it was only my partial name. Egads, I've put my whole name out there for the whole world to see. For Pete's sake, what was I thinking?
Well, I'll tell you what I was thinking: I wanted to claim the space for myself before somebody else did! I'm writing a book that hopefully will be published within a couple of years -- and hopefully it will do pretty well. And I want to claim this little bit of cyberspace for myself for whenever anybody cares to check out what I might have to say. Make sense? I'm thinking for the future.
The book I'm working on, in my spare time (in other words, time that I take away from other things like laundry, cleaning, and looking organized) is called Green Corn and Porch Music. A title I came up with that probably won't be on the cover of my book, when it comes out, because publishers/editors are much more adept at coming up with titles than I am. In fact, I'm pitiful at it. I stand in front of the newly released hardcover books in the bookstore and marvel at the pithy titles that make me want to grab them up off the stand, even if I don't have any time at all to actually read those books. Which I don't, not until summer time, when school's out. Right now I'm into audiobooks -- they are my passion. I spend two hours in the car daily, and I wouldn't get anything read at all if it wasn't for audible.com and my trusty ipod.
So what am I listening to now? Eclipse, by Stephanie Meyer. Third book in her Twilight series. It's helped me with that teenage voice that I'm trying to hone in my own writing. Plus, it's a cool read.
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