WHAT CAN MEMOIR LEARN FROM HISTORICAL FICTION?
REVISIONS TO MY WRITING LIFE –In an unusual summer coping with the fallout from COVID 19, I found planned opportunities for book sales wiped out. Erased from my calendar were all art fairs, conventions, speaking engagements. The tiny book business of promoting Parsing the Dragon: A Memoir disappeared. I already knew my writing career carried the label of “nonessential.” Many times, I’d experienced how the world of creativity, the world occupied by artists, writers, painters, poets, musicians, actors/actresses, took a hit when faced with a world recession, depression, war, crumbling markets, and now a pandemic.
What was left? I cooked—daily meals and some breads, cakes. I filled our freezer with frozen meals while I mulled over the remnants of my writing life. I could continue with my BLOG and monthly book club. I’d been asked to help with literary contests. I pulled out unfinished book projects and began to write up some proposals. I prepared to republish an earlier book until the illustrator backed out. I read incessantly, books of all kinds.
As soon as Mary Pugh, Programs Coordinator for the Orcas Island Library, received my June BLOG on Historical Fiction, she called and asked me to put together a program on Memoir and Historical Fiction and how those could enhance a family story. (See my June BLOG on Historical Fiction with a definition and some suggested books as examples.)
And that is how on the evening of August 17th I spoke through Zoom to members of the Orcas Island Library in Eastsound, Washington. I took Mary’s challenge and meshed the genres of Memoir and Historical Fiction to show how both can inspire, provide ideas, and stimulate your own story. Since March, I have participated in a number of Zoom events but OIL offered me the first time to present. My daughter Becca helped me prepare a slide show using books as teaching tools from both genres.
Just in case you are unclear, “genre,” is a title for books of a certain type such as romance, memoir, science fiction/fantasy, historical novels, historical books, mystery/thriller, young adult, children’s, poetry, short stories, and other categories. My belief is that casting books into a genre makes it easier for cataloging at bookstores and libraries by publishers.
For a writer, the main purpose is to tell the story in the best possible way. Sometimes, a writer’s story doesn’t fit in any genre (such as my book The Butterfly ChaSu.) This makes publication more difficult. For me, the story is the important factor, not the genre.
Orcas Island is our second home, which is where my husband Rich and I found ourselves sheltered in place for several months when COVID 19 struck our state. The house on Orcas took more than 20 years to materialize but was completed only a few years ago. The island is reached by ferry, boat or plane and travel was restricted so we felt safe and secluded among the tall firs above the water, despite our frustration at trying to receive television reception and drinking water that needs to be filtered.
My June BLOG shows good examples of Historical Fiction but following are some memoirs I found that once written, became historical markers.
THE YEAR WE WERE FAMOUS by Carole Estby Dagg, Clarion Books, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011. The author, former librarian for Everett, Washington, tells a family story of her great aunt and great-grandmother who accepted an East Coast publishers’ challenge to walk across America from Mica Creek, Washington to New York City in l896. The publisher would reward them with $1,000. This is their amazing story.
DEAREST ONES by Rosemary Norwalk, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1999. This author, also from the Seattle area, writes of leaving home in San Francisco to serve as a volunteer with the Red Cross during World War II. At age 25, she discovered herself, found love and contributed to the War efforts. She wrote this story at age 80 relying on her letters and journal entries to help her remember experiences from her 20s. She married her wartime sweetheart in 1946, and they lived for some years in St. Louis before returning to the Northwest. They were married more than 50 years. Her stories are part of history.
UNDER A WING by Reeve Lindbergh, Delta Trade Paperbacks, 1998. Youngest daughter of famous parents, Charles Lindbergh, world-famous aviator and Anne Morrow Lindbergh, author of Gifts from the Sea, Reeve Lindbergh opens a window into the life of her family. She offers a look at her older brother’s kidnapping and death, her family that expanded to five children, her mothers’ efforts to write with a large family, and her parents’ long marriage. She focuses on the people in her growing-up life.
TUNNEL STIFFS by S.T. Sweeney, Gorham Publishing, Centralia, 2011. Another Seattle area writer, Ms. Sweeney tells the stories of those who built tunnels, dams and bridges across American during the l940s to l980s. The workers and their families often traveled together from job to job as they drilled portals in mountains, constructed pathways across the country and changed the means of transportation. They lived in trailer homes and these provide a secondary tale in the book as they expand in size and comfort. The author was once one of my students and to her surprise, found her book was sought after by many companies and people who had also participated in the construction of these important features. She wrote history!
BALM IN GILEAD by Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, Penguin Books, 1995 (also Addison-Wesley Publishing, Co. 1988). Scholar and educator, the author decides to interview her mother, Dr. Margaret Morgan Lawrence, one of the first women of African-American ancestry to graduate from Cornell in Ithaca, NY, and Columbia School of Medicine, New York City, to become a physician. The author embellishes her story with tales of her travels to visit her mother for the interview. Dr. Morgan was reared in Vicksburg, Mississippi, the only child of an Episcopalian minister, and lived most of her adult life in the South.
I call these HISTORICAL MEMOIR.
EXERCISE CHALLENGE. I invited participants to write for ten minutes using thoughts from my talk for inspiration to picture new ways to tell their own stories.
“But those you talked about are all so good!” one woman wailed.
“Remember—they all began with an idea,” I reminded her.
Many who read what they wrote proved they had, indeed, found nuggets to bring to life in future stories.
My search of memoir that becomes history surprised me as did my study of Historical Novels. Many are inspired by a photo or a diary, a family story, inspiration from research, or the life of an outstanding person. I encourage readers of my BLOG to take the “Exercise Challenge” by looking into your life and selecting something that could have historical impact such as a person, an event you experienced, a place where you lived, an object like a toy, or a home where you or a family member lived. Share what you write with me if you like.
TWO MORE THINGS—Memoir is about truth and requires the author to tell truth. Historical Fiction allows room for enhancement of characters and story but does need to be centered in a historic location and bring forth something that is new to the reader. Dates, times, events, need to reflect reality.
RESEARCH, RESEARCH, RESEARCH IS ESSENTIAL. Good Historical writing requires research no matter what genre it falls into.
In my book Parsing the Dragon: A Memoir my parents letters to one another during WWII led me to find information on the University of Illinois website that explained why my mother would have needed to live with her parents when she came to Chicago to deliver me, why working mothers left children in cars when they could not find baby sitters and other interesting details. Dad’s letters tell of coming through the Panama Canal from the Pacific to Norfolk, Virginia at the end of the War on the aircraft carrier U.S.S. NATOMA BAY. I also found books about World War II and Dad’s ship. Research deepens the knowledge and may make corrections to what we “thought” happened.
Contact me at parsingwithsusan@gmail.com and also see my website at www.parsingwithsusan.com.
