The Compromise: An American Novel
Author's log of writing The Compromise
Today the rain comes in gusts that alternate with the whine of sirens. We think we can drive at normal speeds. Twice, my fictional character Mariah experiences dangerous storms, a tornado in Columbia and a blizzard in Stoneville. I learned a lot through my research on tornados, and I found descriptive language that is authentic…
Christmas Eve the girls at the Columbian Female Academy perform German, English, and Spanish songs near the Christmas tree, a new decoration in 1844. Then the girls go caroling through the streets while in search of a Black family that adopted a baby. They take a basket of food and eventually find the carpenter’s house….
Are the limbs and flourishes of wit tedious? Then brevity is the soul of wit as Shakespeare’s Polonius observed. But I’m not so sure. Flourishes may raise the expectation of comedy but also conceal the growing tragedy. Shakespeare wrote, “Present mirth hath present laughter. What’s to come is still unsure.” Is humor doing my story…
Revising, I need to go back to some fundamentals, like a theory of time and story. Thousands of small decisions about the placement of information may produce coherency and emotional involvement or lose them. I may have to rework with a blowtorch the deeper structure of the plot. I may even add a narrator. How…
Today Google posted a Google Doodle to celebrate Native American woodcarver Amanda Crowe, a Cherokee woman. She carved fine art wooden bears and taught others to whittle and carve. The way of the knife includes this. The Compromise describes two small wooden birds that the sisters wear as totems. They were carved by their Cherokee-raised mother…
Technology and chararacter now get a dedicated page on this blog. This could be the most important aspect of writing historical fiction. It helps us understand more than “what happened.” It asks “so what?” As I make decisions about plot elements to follow, I hold this notion of relevance. As such, the answers are not…
Siblings ride out of their childhoods hoping that big open spaces and new towns mean opportunities: employment, education, and family. The terrain through which they ride is beautiful and inspiring, but uneven and treacherous.
Photo by Edwin Andrade on Unsplash This is the space where a book comes to light — the classroom. Years in the teaching profession trained me to think alongside the minds of others, mostly youth and immigrant adults. They are processing, making, questioning, and sometimes lapping up the American Dream. No doubt, The Compromise is written for them. Teachers are conductors and…
I am a woman writing about the experience of people who do unpaid or underpaid work, who adapt to the places they find themselves, and build the future. After all, our lives are the futures of our ancestors, whoever they were and wherever they lived. With or without children, can we be true to ourselves…
A couple is united and their offspring survive. Goodness is rewarded. Writing for a young adult audience, I have placed this novel in the area of romance. In its sentimental forms, that genre is publicly derided and critically ignored. I do not want my readers to wile away their hours reading an impossibly glamorized romance….