Diaries, Diaries Everywhere, and Not a Drop of Ink

 

With the release date for Learning to Surrender just around the corner, I am reprinting a March 5, 2018 post that explains why I chose not to use the popular diary format for this novel.

Diaries, Diaries Everywhere, and Not a Drop of Ink

I apologize for the cutesy title, which isn’t even quite true. But it almost is.

Many Southern women kept diaries during the Civil War, and they ran into shortages of paper and ink. They improvised by writing on scrap paper and filling their quill pens with berry juice.

So when I decided to write a story about the Siege of Vicksburg, I considered using the diary format that has been successful for many middle-grade historical novels. Scholastic’s Dear America series, with books written by various authors, is the best-known. Then there is the American Diaries series written by Kathleen Duey, who is one of my favorite writers of middle-grade historical fiction. The first books in both series were published in 1996, so it is unlikely that one copied the other. (The time between conception and publication can take several years.) The two series ran in tandem until the early 2000s and faded almost in tandem, as well. Scholastic also issued a series for boys (My Name is America) and another for younger children (My America) published around the same time. The Dear America series later saw a resurgence with both new offerings and re-releases of some of the original books.

But that’s part of the problem. Fashions come and go, and that is as true for writing styles and formats as it is for clothing. Not that all trends are fads, and a well-written diary story will never go out of style. But I prefer to write what works for me rather than chasing a trend.

The main reason I rejected the idea of writing my book in a diary format is simple: it limits my options for dramatizing the story. First, although some real-life diaries contain vivid descriptions, the writers rarely describe those places and events that are part of their everyday lives. Even the backstory is simply assumed. Second, real-life diaries rarely set up a scene or contain dialogue. To put it in literary terms, diaries tell rather than show.

Obviously, that isn’t always the case, and some authors have found ways around the limitations. Of the many Dear America books that I have read, a couple have made significant use of dialogue, but it only works with the right protagonist—one with a good memory or a strong dramatic sense. Or there is the way Kathleen Duey does it, where diary entries are fleshed out and accompanied by much longer sections written in a more traditional third-person style.

Still, not every Southern woman or girl wrote a diary, and I would rather have my protagonist spend her time reading. That gives me more freedom to write the story I want.

And I don’t have to worry that she’ll run out of ink.

__________

The photo at the head of this post shows three of the Civil War diaries in my collection. From left to right, they are My Cave Life in Vicksburg (Mary Ann Webster Loughborough), The Civil War Diary of a Southern Woman (Sarah Morgan), and Vicksburg, A City Under Siege (Emma Balfour). Emma Balfour’s entries end on June 2, 1863, a month before the siege ended. Her subsequent entries are probably just lost. But who knows—maybe she ran out of ink.

Creating Sympathy for Characters with Unsympathetic Beliefs

 

My fourth middle-grade historical novel, Learning to Surrender, will be released at the beginning of March, and my next blog posts till the soil for its publication or, to be more direct, they market it. Even so, the rest of my February posts are not pure promotion but are designed to provide insight into the writing process.

During a trip down the Mississippi River to research a different book, I came across information on the 1863 Siege of Vicksburg, where the residents dug and lived in caves that served as bomb shelters. The idea intrigued me, but it had one big negative.

There were few, if any, abolitionists in Vicksburg at the time. Early in the writing process, I came up with several ideas of how I might make my character and her family secret opponents to slavery, but Roland wasn’t sure that even closet abolitionists existed in the deep South then. Besides, that choice didn’t feel right. Historical realism dictates that my main character believe in slavery, so how could I make her sympathetic in spite of her unsympathetic beliefs?

This isn’t an unusual situation for a writer to be in. Many stories begin with an unsympathetic protagonist whose change in character or beliefs is at the crux of the story. Think of Ebenezer Scrooge, who starts out as a people-hating miser and ends up as an open-hearted and generous person. Or Mary Lennox from The Secret Garden, who is one of the most spoiled, selfish heroines in children’s literature until she starts having compassion for someone else.

Readers don’t usually identify with unsympathetic characters, and they don’t like to read about people they don’t identify with. Unless we catch their interest at the beginning of the book, they won’t read on. That means that one of our tasks as writers is to generate sympathy for unsympathetic characters or for otherwise likeable characters with unsympathetic beliefs. Charles Dickens did it with humor. Frances Hodgson Burnett did it by showing the circumstances that formed Mary’s obnoxious character.

Generating sympathy for a main character with unsympathetic beliefs is just part of the job.

But you’ll have to read Learning to Surrender to find out how I did it.

__________

The drawing at the head of this post comes from Harper’s Encyclopedia of United States History (vol. 10), John Lossing Benson, ed. (New York, NY, Harper and Brothers, 1912). It is in the public domain because of its age.

Preaching to the Choir

 

It’s been unseasonably warm here lately, which makes it all the more poignant to remember the very cold days we had in January. On Sunday, January 14, it was seven degrees below zero, and the choir was scheduled to sing at the 8:00 a.m. service. Some churches cancelled services, but ours didn’t. That was consistent with my father’s philosophy, who never cancelled church because of the weather. He always said that if there was even one person in the congregation, he would hold the service. (I’m not sure he ever had that few people, though.)

Back to the present. When the choir members arrived for our pre-service warm-up on January 14, we were all there except for three members who had other commitments and would have missed anyway. Our director, Karen Foote, has often complimented the choir on its dedication, so when her mother said we wouldn’t show up with those temperatures, Karen said she was wrong. To prove it, Karen took the above photo and texted it to her mother.¹

It wasn’t just a matter of preaching to the choir, however. The 8:00 a.m. service is typically the one with the lowest attendance, but even in the cold temperatures of January 14 the congregation outnumbered us. And that’s with the option of attending the 9:30 service online.

Daddy believed that the weather shouldn’t make any difference in how we worship.

I’m glad my church agrees with him.

__________

¹Karen is not in the photo. The person who isn’t wearing a robe is our accompanist.

The Source of Peace

 

I won’t go into the details, but I had a tough several days with eyesight issues that could have affected my lifestyle. I’ve since learned that there is no permanent damage, but even before I knew that, God had given me peace.

Thursday’s devotion was especially helpful because one of the readings was Psalm 31. These selected verses from the ESV speak to my eyesight issues but also to other hardships in life.

³For you are my rock and my fortress;

     and for your name’s sake you lead me and guide me;

⁴you take me out of of the net they have hidden for me,

     for you are my refuge.

⁵Into your hands I commit my spirit;

     you have redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God.

⁶I hate those who pay regard to worthless idols,

     but I trust in the Lord.

⁷I will rejoice and be glad in your steadfast love,

     because you have seen my affliction;

     you have known the distress of my soul,

⁸and you have not delivered me into the hand of the enemy;

     you have set my feet in a broad place.

 

¹⁴But I trust in you, O Lord;

     I say, “You are my God.”

¹⁵My times are in your hand;

     rescue me from the hand of enemies and from my persecutors!

¹⁶Make your face shine on your servant;

     save me in your steadfast love!

 

²⁴Be strong, and let your heart take courage,

all you who wait for the Lord!

 Whatever your situation may be, I pray these verses give you peace, too.

Getting History Right

 

This week’s blog post is a reprint from June 20, 2016. It is another one I wrote while working on  Inferno.

Getting History Right

You’ve probably heard that the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 was started by a cow. Mrs. O’Leary’s cow, to be exact.

The rumor was apparently begun by a reporter who wanted a colorful story to tell in his newspaper. It spread as quickly as the fire and had equally disastrous results—at least for the O’Leary family. Mrs. O’Leary never lived it down, even after the rumors were shown to be false. After all, people thought, every rumor has some truth to it.

And there was a germ of truth in this one. The fire did start in Mrs. O’Leary’s barn. But it started long after Mrs. O’Leary had finished her milking, taken away the lamp, and retired to bed in the nearby house.

One plausible theory is that a careless neighbor was smoking in the hay-filled barn. Another report speculated that men were gambling there and one of them knocked over a lamp. While the cause is still unknown, it is unlikely that Mrs. O’Leary’s cow did it.

I have started researching my next middle-grade historical novel, which takes place during the Great Chicago Fire. So how historically accurate do I need to be? Should I include the story of Mrs. O’Leary’s cow?

Personally, I believe that historical fiction should be as accurate as possible. That doesn’t require me to ignore the story, but I need to place it after the fact and treat it as the rumor it was. I’m not far enough along to know whether I’ll even use it, but it can be done without portraying the contents of the rumor as fact.

With her back against the church wall, Julia pulled her legs up and hugged them. To her left, a woman held a squirming toddler and watched an older child rock back and forth.

“One of those Irish immigrants started it,” the woman told Julia. “She was milking a cow and left the lantern too close to his hoofs.” The mother moaned. “One kick, and now my children are homeless and the entire city is gone.”

“Did you see the cow do it?” Julia asked.

“No, but everybody’s saying it, so it must be true.”

The rumor of Mrs. O’Leary’s cow started within a day or two after the fire, and the existence of the rumor is factual even if the contents aren’t. The trick in writing historical fiction is to find a way to incorporate them without validating them.

Because false rumors have their role in history, too.

__________

The illustration at the head of this post was published in Harper’s Magazine in 1871. It is in the public domain because of its age.

Sifting Through the Rubble

 

This week’s blog post was originally published on August 15, 2016, when I was writing Inferno.

Sifting Through the Rubble

The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 is one of the best-documented events in history. Chicago was a newspaper town, and within 48 hours most of the major papers were back up and running. They had plenty of eyewitness accounts to choose among, including those from their owners and reporters. Other educated persons quickly published their own eyewitness accounts. Then the Board of Police and Fire Commissioners held a public inquiry, heard sworn testimony from fifty-one witnesses, and published its report—all before the end of the year.

Even so, much of the evidence is inconclusive. We know where the fire started, but we don’t know how. We don’t even know exactly when. (The evidence puts it anywhere between 8:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m.) We know that the early response to the fire was a comedy of errors (combined with circumstances beyond anyone’s control), but we don’t always know who was responsible for the errors or the reasons for them. And only God knows whether the fire could have been controlled if everything had gone right.

In 1871, even the most reputable newspapers had a taste for sensationalism. Besides that, eyewitness testimony is only as reliable as the eyewitness is. Some people misinterpret what they see, some exaggerate, and some simply make things up for effect. So how much of the eyewitness accounts can I use in my middle-grade historical novel on the Great Chicago Fire?

Take this story:

One little girl, in particular, I saw, whose golden hair was loose down her back and caught afire. She ran screaming past me, and somebody threw a glass of liquor upon her, which flared up and covered her with a blue flame.

At first glance, the story looks pretty improbable. Not because the girl’s hair caught fire—that was common. But would somebody really be mean enough to throw alcohol on her? Still, maybe it wasn’t meanness and the person was so intoxicated that he thought his drink would put out the fire like water would. Besides, the eyewitness was Alexander Frear, a visitor who was a member of the New York State Assembly and a New York City commissioner. Surely we can believe someone like that.

Maybe yes, and maybe no. I can hear you saying, “Never believe a politician.” But for me, the biggest problem with Mr. Frear’s account is that it is filled with similarly dramatic events. One or two such instances might simply mean that Mr. Frear was observant and knew how to use vivid language to describe what he saw, but the entire account seems over the top.

So even if it’s true, I won’t be using the story of the girl catching fire from a liquor bath. And that’s okay, because I don’t need it. There are plenty of better documented yet still dramatic incidents scattered among the many eyewitness accounts.

It’s all a matter of sifting through the rubble.

Detecting History

 

This week’s blog post was originally published on August 6, 2018, when I was researching as as yet unpublished novel about the Siege of Vickburg during the Civil War.

Detecting History

Only detectives should write historical novels. I don’t mean the kind of detective with a magnifying glass or a knowledge of fingerprints. But writing historical novels requires a significant amount of research and deductive reasoning to get the history right.

In June, I dragged Roland along on a research trip. I am writing a book that takes place during the Civil War Siege of Vicksburg, Mississippi, and I wanted to do some research at the library in the Old Court House (pictured above) and visit the battlefield. While there, I gathered information on a real girl named Lucy McRae. She never comes onstage in my book and is only mentioned briefly, but she was trapped in a literal cave-in and I want my protagonist to hear about that incident. Also, Lucy comes from the same income class as my protagonist, so they would probably live in the same part of town and attend the same school. Knowing more about Lucy helps me make my own character more authentic.

My earlier research indicated that Lucy was 10 or 11 years old, but the movie at the battleground said she was 13. When writing for a middle grade audience, that is a big difference, and I needed to determine whether she was younger or older or the same age as my twelve-year-old protagonist. This is where the detective works comes in.

The research library had copies of the 1861 city directory and the 1850 census but none of the 1860 census. The 1861 city directory and the 1850 census showed a William McRae who was a merchant. At the time, he had four sons and no daughters. Was he Lucy’s father? He could be if she was 10 or 11 in 1863 since she would not have been born when the 1850 census was taken. And it was also possible that she could have been 13 if the census was taken early in the year and she was born right afterwards. But the 1850 census listed the youngest boy as less than a year old, making it less likely that Lucy would have been born shortly after.

And was this even the right William McRae? Several sources identified Lucy’s father as the sheriff, and both the city directory and the 1850 census listed this William McRae as a merchant. So did he become the sheriff by 1863?

After returning home, I went online and found a copy of the 1860 census. It showed a William McRae who was listed as sheriff and named the same wife and sons as in the 1850 census. The 1960 census also showed a daughter, Lucy, and gave her age as eight, which is consistent with her being ten or eleven at the time of the siege. Mystery solved.

But it took some detective work.