Creating Esther

After numerous submissions to publishers and agents, I decided to self-publish my second middle-grade historical novel. Once that decision was made, it took over a year to get it out there, primarily because of problems with the cover. The first cover designer I hired was over-committed. Then, after I found somebody else to do the front cover art, medical issues slowed the process down. But I’m happy to announce that Creating Esther is now available for purchase from Amazon and other retailers, and you can also read it on Kindle.

Here is the back-cover blurb.

Twelve-year-old Ishkode loves her life on an Ojibwe reservation, but it is 1895 and the old ways are disappearing. Can a boarding school education help her fight back, or will it destroy everything she believes in?

And don’t get confused when you see the author’s name. I use Kaye Page for my middle-grade fiction.

Over the next few weeks, I’m going to repurpose former blog posts from when I was researching and writing Creating Esther. I’m not fool enough to claim that they aren’t intended to promote the book, but I’m also smart enough to know that my blog readers desire—and deserve—more. By giving you insight into my writing process, I hope to educate and inform my readers about some of the tougher decisions a writer has to make—especially when writing outside her culture.

Next week I’ll start by describing my reading research.

Story Over Message

I’ve been reading Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. It’s an easy read for a book published in 1719, but many passages are mini-sermons. That may have been the fashion in the 18^th Century but bores today’s readers—or at least this one. Fortunately for me (and unfortunately for Defoe), those sections are easy to identify and skip.

Many authors—including me—want their books to convey a message. My first two middle-grade historicals have protagonists who come from different cultures than I do. I wanted my readers to understand two seemingly contradictory but very real truths: (1) that we are all the same under the skin and (2) our cultural heritage is an important part of who we are and should be celebrated rather than suppressed. But if I had stressed that, my readers would have decided the books were dull and put them down before the message sunk in. Or they would have skipped over the lectures. Either way, the message would be lost.

So what’s a writer to do? I try to make the story primary and the message secondary. Think of Aesop’s Fables and fairy tales. The tortoise beat the rabbit because he worked steadily and didn’t slack off. That’s a message, but we remember it because of the story. “Beauty and the Beast” teaches us that it is what is inside that matters but, again, we remember the message because of the story.

I’m not saying you can’t have a message in mind when you write your book. I do. But without a compelling story the message will never get heard.

The same is true for other lessons. One reason I write middle-grade historicals is because I believe it is important for today’s children know about their history. But my readers want a story, not a lecture. When I wrote Desert Jewels, I wanted to show everything that the Japanese Americans went through during World War II when they were forced to leave their homes and move to internment camps. Unfortunately, that goal was unrealistic. There were some events and circumstances that I couldn’t weave into the story without bogging it down, so I had to leave them out. I probably still left in a few things I shouldn’t have, but hopefully the story is strong enough that my readers will forgive me for those slips.

By the time I sent Creating Esther to my middle-grade beta readers, I was doing better. However, I still wanted to show everything about how my Ojibwe protagonist lived before she went to a white-run boarding school, and that goal was unrealistic, too. This time I had the sense to ask my beta readers to point out those passages that sounded like lessons, and they did. The final version either reworked those parts or left them out.

Fiction isn’t a textbook or a sermon. If it is written that way, readers will put it down. And they should.

So if you want your readers to learn something new, put story over message.

Brushing Teeth and Cleaning House

In the last two weeks I saw several of my old colleagues from the Indiana Writers’ Consortium and had a good time visiting with them. During the six years that I ran the IWC blog, I wrote many posts that I never reprinted here. Now that IWC has disbanded, I’m trying to change that. Today’s post originally appeared on the IWC blog on September 18, 2013.

Brushing Teeth and Cleaning House

People look at a picture of a toddler cleaning a toilet and say, “Cute.” Replace the toddler with an adult, and they say, “Who cares.” Fiction works that way, too.

Every scene in every novel—or in any type of writing, for that matter—must have a purpose. In fiction, the scene should either develop a character or move the story along. Everyday details that do neither make the story boring.

I don’t want to read about a character’s morning routine. In fact, I assume it’s pretty much like mine. He gets out of bed, uses the toilet, brushes his teeth, takes a shower, gets dressed, and so on. You don’t have to tell me any of this.

As mentioned above, however, there are two exceptions. I’m willing to pay attention to details that show me something interesting about a character or advance the plot. But even then, I only want those details that make the point.

The mere fact that a protagonist brushes his teeth every morning doesn’t tell the reader a thing. But if you show him brushing them exactly 100 strokes, we might conclude that he is obsessive. And no, I don’t want to count every single one with him.

As a reader I don’t usually care to intrude on a character while she is getting dressed. But I’m interested if she gets up at two o’clock in the afternoon, rummages through the dirty clothes hamper, and pulls on a pair of rumpled jeans and a stained T-shirt without taking off her pajamas. And if she goes to the store that way, so much the better.

Similarly, I don’t usually like to watch the protagonist clean her house. Still, maybe you want to show that she’s a cleanliness freak who wrestles with every piece of heavy furniture so she can pull it out and clean behind it, a sloppy person who only dusts the furniture that is in direct sunlight, or a bored person who cleans an already clean house because she has nothing else to do. Even those characteristics may not matter to the story. If they do, show us the details. But if they don’t, leave them out.

You can also use otherwise mundane details to move the plot along. Maybe your protagonist cleans house and discovers the murder weapon just before the police knock on her door with a search warrant. Or maybe the antagonist injected the tube of toothpaste with poison and the protagonist is one step closer to death every time he brushes his teeth. One caution in the second situation, however. You probably don’t want the protagonist to know he is being slowly poisoned, but the reader needs at least a clue. Otherwise, you can’t count on the reader staying with you until you reveal all.

Do you have Facebook friends who tell you every routine detail about their day? I hide those people from my news feed, and you probably do, too. Nobody wants to read about mundane things like brushing teeth and cleaning house. Not usually, anyway.

If it doesn’t aid the story, leave it out. If it tells me something I need to know, make it interesting.

Because excessive detail creates a book readers won’t finish.

Drama on the Erie Canal

As I work on the first draft of my Erie Canal book, Muddy Waters, I have been looking for circumstances and events to bring tension to the story. There are plenty of opportunities for drama, but they are created by humans rather than by nature. The canal was shallow, the current was sluggish or nonexistent, and boats were always close to the banks, so realism eliminates icebergs and hurricanes on the high seas.

Realism does, but humor doesn’t. Many songs of the day made fun of the sedentary waterway, and the then popular “The Raging Canal” was one of them.  Mark Twain added his own voice by paroding “The Raging Canal” in Roughing It. He was no poet but was the consummate humorist, as you can tell from “The Aged Pilot Man.”

“The Aged Pilot Man”

On the Erie Canal, it was,

     All on a summer’s day,

I sailed forth with my parents

     Far away to Albany.

From out the clouds at noon that day

     There came a dreadful storm,

That piled the billows high about,

     And filled us with alarm.

A man came rushing from a house,

     Saying, “Snub up your boat, I pray

Snub up your boat, snub up, alas,

     Snub up while yet you may.”

Our captain cast one glance astern,

     Then forward glancéd he,

And said, “My wife and little ones

     I never more shall see.”

Said Dollinger the pilot man,

     In noble words but few,—

“Fear not, but lean on Dollinger,

     And he will fetch you through.”

The boat drove on, the frightened mules

     Tore through the rain and wind,

And bravely still, in danger’s post,

     The whip-boy strode behind.

“Come ‘board, come ‘board,” the captain cried,

     “Nor tempt so wild a storm;”

But still the raging mules advanced,

     And still the boy strode on.

Then said the captain to us all,

     “Alas, ‘tis plain to me,

The greater danger is not there,

     But here upon the sea.

“So let us strive, while life remains,

     To save all souls on board,

And then if die at last we must,

     Let . . . I cannot speak the word!”

Said Dollinger the pilot man,

     Tow’ring above the crew,

“Fear not, but trust in Dollinger,

     And he will fetch you through.”

“Low bridge! low bridge! all heads went down,

     The laborimg bark sped on;

A mill we passed, we passed a church,

     Hamlets, and fields of corn;

And all the world come out to see,

     And chased along the shore.

Crying, “Alas, alas, the sheeted rain,

     The wind, the tempest’s roar!

Alas, the gallant ship and crew,

     Can nothing help them more?”

And from our deck sad eyes looked out

     Across the stormy scene;

The tossing wake of billows aft,

     The bending forests green,

The chickens sheltered under carts,

     In lee of barn the cows,

The skurrying swine with staw in mouth,

     The wind spray from our bows!

She balances!

She wavers!

Now let her go about!

     If she misses stays and broaches to,

We’re all”—[then with a shout]

“huray! huray!

Avast! belay!

Take in more sail!

Lord, what a gale!

Ho, boy, haul taut on the hind mule’s tail!”

“Ho! lighten ship! Ho! man the pump!

     Ho, hostler, heave the lead!

And count ye all, both great and small,

     As numbered with the dead!

For mariner for forty years

     On Erie, boy and man,

I never yet saw such a storm,

     Or one ‘t with it began!”

So overboard a keg of nails

     And anvils three we threw,

Likewise four bales of gunny-sacks,

     Two hundred pounds of glue,

Two sacks of corn, four ditto wheat,

     A box of books, a cow,

A violin, Lord Byron’s works,

     A rip-saw and a sow.

A curve! a curve! the dangers grow!

“Labbord!—stabbord!—s-t-e-a-d-y!—so!—

Hard-a-port, Dol!—hellum-a-lee!

Haw the head mule!—the aft one gee!

Luft!—bring her to the wind!”

“A quarter-three!—‘tis shoaling fast!

     Three feet large—t-h-r-e-e feet!—

Three feet scant!” I cried in fright

     “Oh, is there no retreat?”

Said Dollinger the pilot man,

     As on the vessel flew,

“Fear not, but trust in Dollinger,

     And he will fetch you through.”

A panic struck the bravest hearts,

     The boldest cheek turned pale;

For plain to all, this shoaling said

A leak had burst the ditch’s bed!

And, straight as bolt from crossbow sped,

Our ship swept on with shoaling lead,

     Before the fearful gale!

“Sever the tow line! Cripple the mules!”

     Too late! . . . There comes a shock!

Another length, and the fated craft

     Would have swum in the saving lock!

Then gathered together the shipwrecked crew

     And took one last embrace,

While sorrowful tears from despairing eyes

     Rain down each hopeless face;

And some did think of their little ones

     Whom they never more might see,

And others of waiting wives at home,

     And mothers that grieved would be.

But of all the children of misery there

     On that poor sinking frame,

But one spoke words of hope and faith,

     And I worshipped as they came;

Said Dollinger the pilot man,—

     (O brave heart, strong and true!)—

“Fear not, but trust in Dollinger,

     For he will fetch you through.”

Lo! scarce the words have passed his lips

     The dauntless prophet say’th,

When every soul about him seeth

     A wonder crown his faith!

For straight a farmer brought a plank,—

     (Mysteriously inspired)—

And laying it unto the ship,

     In silent awe retired.

Then every sufferer stood amazed

     That pilot man before;

A moment stood. Then wondering turned,

     And speechless walked ashore.

__________

NOTE: It took me forever to get the poem’s formatting correct. I hope it shows up that way on your computer.