Launching our What My Last Book Taught Me Wednesday blog series is the lovely and talented Janet Fox. Janet stayed with us at The Writing Barn this past January when she was on her Texas book tour for her roaring 20’s novel, Sirens. (To read about Janet’s writing retreat time with us, go here.) We loved having her with us in person and again here today at the Barn blog. Welcome, Janet.
What My Last Book Taught Me: The Universe Whispers and I Must Listen
When I sit down to write a new novel I have no plan. I have no outline, template, or sense of direction. When I begin something new all I have is a character and a dream.
A dream? Really? Well, yes. Maybe an image, maybe a passage, maybe only a few sentences, but each of my novels has begun with something shady and incoherent and I wonder where it will all end up. My character comes out blaring, like Athena, exploding from my head triumphant and trident-wielding and ready to take on the world. But the rest of the narrative…that’s the mystery of writing for me. Sometimes this approach works. Sometimes it doesn’t.
While writing my last book, Sirens, I made progress toward discovering how to help it work more often.
Sirens was written on request from my publisher. Could I write a novel set in the 1920s? I said yes, partly because I’ve always been fascinated by that time period, and partly because, as soon as the question was asked, the answer came out in the form of an image. Water, medals awarded in service during the Great War, stars, city lights, and something indecipherable hovering at the edge of the picture. That was all I knew about the novel.
I set to work in my usual fashion, putting one word on the page after another, and finding my character (the easy part), and searching for her story. Yes, I did research, and discovered the usual stuff about my subject. Prohibition. Flappers. Gangsters. Good, but the usual. About halfway through, the work felt static. I hadn’t been able to figure out what it was, that indecipherable something hovering over there, and so I’d been avoiding it. Sticking my fingers in my ears. Turning up the word music to drown out my ignorance.
I was pretty frustrated, because deadlines are deadlines, and I wasn’t sure where to turn. I had most of a plot, I had most of my characters, but the novel was as flat as an Iowa cornfield.
One evening after supper I was listening to the radio, listless and irritable. An interview with an author. Yes, yes. He’d just written a book about a magician. Sigh. This particular magician, Howard Thurston, had been friends with Houdini and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. My ears pricked. These three and a number of other famous types had all been involved in the Spiritualism movement of the 1920s. I sat bolt upright. They had debated among themselves about whether or not there was life after death, and so on…but by that time I’d run to the computer, writing it all down, ordering a copy of this author’s book, and finding images that were as indisputably significant to me as the eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg are to Nick.
That indecipherable something I’d been unable to figure out was grounded in the Spiritualism movement, which led me to address in Sirens the question of whether there is life after death, which led me to the heart of my story.
The universe had provided the information I needed to me at the very moment I needed it.
I thought about this coincidence a great deal as I reworked the book, and I keep on thinking about it now that Sirens is out in the world. What if I hadn’t been listening to the radio that evening? What if I hadn’t made the connection? Here’s the thing: I believe that as long as I am the least bit open, as long as my ears are ready to receive, I will hear the universe whispering.
Here, it says. Here is the important thing. Here is what you need to think about. Here is what is most significant. Here is what is going to resonate. Here is the heart of your story.
What writing Sirens taught me is that I have to be ready. The universe whispers; it doesn’t shout. I need to be listening, and not sticking my fingers in my ears. There are messages resonating within me and across the landscape, and they are messages that I must be tuned to receive. Listening is excellent practice.
In our noisy, hasty, cluttered world, I’ve discovered, thanks to Sirens, the essential art of listening to the universe.
Janet Fox is the author of award-winning books for children and young adults. FAITHFUL (Speak/Penguin Young Readers 2010), set in Yellowstone National Park in 1904, is a YALSA Best Fiction for YA nominee and an Amelia Bloomer List pick, 2011. FORGIVEN (Speak 2011), set in 1906 San Francisco during the great earthquake, is a Junior Library Guild selection 2011, and a 2012 WILLA Literary Awards Finalist. Her most recent novel, SIRENS (Speak 2012) is set in 1925 New York. Janet has numerous MG and YA projects underway. She is a former high school English teacher and received her MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults in 2010 (Vermont College of Fine Arts). Janet lives in Bozeman, Montana