Writing About the Writing by Caroline Starr Rose

I write historical fiction, so the idea of keeping a notebook to gather my research and questions about a new project isn’t a new one. But over the years my notebooks have expanded into something other than just a collection of historical tidbits. They’ve become an on-going private conversation where I can noncommittally explore the fragile beginnings of a new idea or work out troublesome knots once the story’s under way. 

In other words, my notebooks are teaching me the importance of writing about the writing.

My novel Jasper and the Riddle of Riley’s Mine didn’t yet exist when it sold as part of a two-book deal. For a few weeks I was thrilled with my good fortune, but then panic settled in. I pulled out my notebook and scribbled down my worries: I’m not very good at plotting and have never created with a deadline. There’s pressure knowing I’ve sold something I haven’t even begun. Then I made myself try and answer these worries, to the best of my ability. Plot comes, I wrote. It can be discovered in character development and drafting. My agent and editor believe I can do this. If I can’t see this in myself right now, I can borrow their belief. I returned to this page in my notebook throughout the drafting process any time I needed a little courage.

The word “writing” is sometimes a heavy load for me to carry. My mind fills with word counts and productivity — the opposite of how my projects often progress. I’ve allowed myself to replace “writing” with terms that don’t hold so many expectations. Now I explore. Create. Discover. Tinker. Wonder. Practice. 

This might mean figuring out what’s working with a premise and what isn’t. Or creating a list of historical details I need to further study. Some days it includes questions I have about a story’s timeline and plot or notes on characters — their secrets, their fears, the stories they tell themselves to make sense of the world — and their relationships with others. My notebook becomes a running commentary, an in-the-moment chance to reflect.

There was a particular scene in Jasper that I just couldn’t get right. Each time I’d turn it back in to my editor she’d point out what wasn’t working. One day I set aside the manuscript and returned to my notebook. I needed to hear from the characters in that scene — how their lives before this moment had influenced how they saw themselves, how their experiences had shaped their choices. Using first person, I wrote quick character sketches of both men. I realized one felt cheated, like he was owed something. The other was guarded and afraid. Knowing this opened up the scene in an entirely new way, allowing me to see how these two would interact and how they’d treat Jasper, the kid who’d stumbled in on their conversation.

In going back over my notes, I witness a book slowly taking shape. Each page records challenges that I eventually find my way through. Writing about the writing becomes a promise that someday my book will come together. Though it might be hard to believe in the moment, I hold the proof my story has made it this far, that it will reach the end. 

On Fiction, History, and Wishing the World Were Otherwise, by Anne Nesbet

            I've been thinking a lot recently about the places where fantasy and history overlap, and in particular about the strange things that sometimes happen when our stories revise the past by making the painful parts of history otherwise.

            Making things otherwise is a desire very much at the heart of most writing, of course. It's pretty much the essence of fiction! In real life, we can't tweak what has already happened--we can't, in real life, heal wounds inflicted hundreds of years ago by one human being on another. But in fiction, we can. And so, we do. It strikes me that sometimes I find these twisted histories satisfying and moving--and sometimes the fictional mending of the past unsettles me. Loopholes, it seems, can have unintended side-effects.

            I was recently quite moved by a historical fantasy by H. M. Bouwman, A CRACK IN THE SEA (2017), which is explicitly about loopholes, about "a crack in the sea" that allows doomed and desperate people from our world--Africans thrown overboard from slavers' ships, Vietnamese refugees whose boats are damaged by pirates and then sink--to travel to another world, where the water is sweet and people are very few.

            As Heather Bouwman explains in her very thoughtful Afterword, the inspiration for this book was the true, awful history of the Zong, a ship transporting enslaved human beings across the Atlantic Ocean: in 1781 the men sailing this ship threw 133 living people, men, women, and children, into the ocean to drown, so that the owners of the ship could collect insurance payments on the lost "cargo." One of the characters in Bouwman's story, a girl named Venus, comes from the Zong; the story of A CRACK IN THE SEA, as the author explains, had its origins in a longing to change what can't actually be changed:  

            "And the Zong is the heart and soul of my book . . . . [F]or me, the story first became alive with Venus--with my feeling that she had to escape, somehow, from this terrible historical fact, this thing from which, in real life, there was no escape."

            From my perspective, the power of a historical fantasy like A CRACK IN THE SEA depends very much on the reader knowing that what he or she is reading is a counter-factual wish, that in real life, these real people died terribly--and we wish so much that that could be otherwise that we are willing to write stories in which something else happens. What happens, however, when a student who doesn't know about the real history of the Zong--or the real history of the Vietnamese refugees in the late 1970s--reads this story? Perhaps the effect is quite different.

           

Although Bouwman's story is a fantasy, it does its best to take historical suffering seriously (as her author's note reminds us), even while opening magical/historical loopholes. A more extreme example of that approach might be Guillermo Del Toro's film, PAN'S LABYRINTH, in which a brutal tale of the Spanish Civil War gains another dimension through its young heroine's fantastic adventures. How one reads the ending of that film depends on whether one understands the "loophole" (the fantasy kingdom) to have been really, truly, literally real or, more poignantly (in my opinion), if we take that "loophole" as a reflection of our human and endlessly thwarted desire for the world to be other than it is.

        Other books go to bleak moments in human history and make them positively blithe, however. Remember the opening pages of J. K. Rowling's THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN (1999)?

"Harry moved the tip of his eagle-feather quill down the page, frowning as he looked for something that would help him write his essay, 'Witch Burning in the Fourteenth Century Was Completely Pointless--discuss.'

            The quill paused at the top of a likely-looking paragraph. Harry pushed his round glasses up the bridge of his nose, moved his flashlight closer to the book, and read:

            'Non-magic people (more commonly known as Muggles) were particularly afraid of magic in medieval times, but not very good at recognizing it. On the rare occasion that they did catch a real witch or wizard, burning had no effect whatsoever. The witch or wizard would perform a basic Flame-Freezing Charm and then pretend to shriek with pain while enjoying a gentle, tickling sensation. Indeed, Wendelin the Weird enjoyed being burned so much that she allowed herself to be caught no less than forty-seven times in various disguises.'"

            This description gave me a bit of a jolt the first time I read it, to be honest, and now that I've gone back to find it again, I understand better the reason for the jolt. The account here is jolly and lighthearted, but on the other side of this fictional lens (on the other side of this "otherwise") lies some pretty awful historical stuff, real people whose suffering had nothing at all in common with "gentle, tickling sensations." It's humorless of me to state the obvious this way, isn't it? But bear with me: I'm trying to figure out what makes some fantastical reworkings of history cut deeper than others. It seems to me that whereas A CRACK IN THE SEA focuses on the poignancy of the "otherwise" (by keeping the "terrible historical fact" close by, even while the fantastical loophole is opened), THE PRISONER OF AZKABAN puts more weight on the loophole, and lets the historical fact float away.

            Have you read any historical fantasy recently? What effect did it have on you? Have you encountered stories in which the "wish that the world were otherwise" particularly moved you? Does a purely humorous approach to rewriting history unsettle you at all, or do you merely find it refreshing? (A good recent example of history rewritten for comic effect might be MY LADY JANE, by the witty trio of Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, Jodi Meadows; in this novel Lady Jane Grey turns out to have been at the heart of various romantic and magical plots--and gets a happy ending, very unlike her historical fate.)

            So perhaps what I am discovering is that I am most satisfied when some trace of the tragic historical fact remains, even if veiled, in the counterfactual rewriting--the tension between fact and wish can then work a very powerful and poignant magic of its own. I am very curious to hear your thoughts, however--on historical fantasy, on loopholes, and on wishing the world were otherwise....

A New Book! Jasper and the Riddle of Riley's Mine by Caroline Starr Rose

I’m kinda obsessed with the Klondike Gold Rush. If I were heartier and braver (and had no problem with sub-freezing temperatures), I’d love to travel back to 1897 and see the frenzy that unfolded in Canada’s Yukon Territory firsthand.

Did you learn about the Klondike Gold Rush in school? I certainly didn’t, unless you count the day we spent reading Jack London’s memorable short story, “To Build a Fire.” That was my only taste of this historic event that (unbeknownst to me) fascinated the entire world.

If I could, I’d like to spy on Jefferson “Soapy” Smith, a con-man in Skagway, Alaska, who swindled, tricked, and robbed would-be miners (called Stampeders) as they were passing through. I’d love to see the never-ending chain of people climbing over the Chilkoot Pass’s Golden Stairs — steps carved into ice that men, women, and even children trudged up for days and weeks and months, until they’d finally carried their ton of supplies safely into Canada.

What would it be like to wander the muddy streets of Dawson City -- the community that sprang up at the mouth of the Yukon and Klondike rivers after gold was discovered --where the knighted and the nameless were suddenly on equal footing? Wouldn’t it be fun to catch a glimpse of Skookum Jim and George Carmack with their gold nugget belt buckles the size of supper plates? What would it feel like to endure darkest winter in a tiny claim shanty? 

Of the 100,000 Stampeders who set out for the Klondike, thirty to forty thousand reached Dawson City. About twenty thousand of those who made it to Dawson tried looking for gold. Four thousand found it. A few hundred got enough to be considered rich. But only a handful were able to hold onto their wealth.

All that hardship with so little return. Can you think of anything more daring or exasperating?

I hope my newest book, Jasper and the Riddle of Riley’s Mine, set smack dab in the middle of the Klondike Gold Rush, gives young readers a taste of this weird, wild, wonderful bit of history — from the coziness of their well-insulated, modern-day homes, of course!

Praise for Jasper:

Jasper narrates in the present tense, his homespun voice evoking both emotion and adventure. Villains and allies provide colorful melodrama, but it's the brothers' struggle to survive the Yukon wilderness with its harsh beauty and unforgiving cold that will keep readers entranced.

— Kirkus

Jasper’s voice and Caroline Starr Rose’s writing style brought her characters alive, bursting with warmth and spirit. The rich details and historically accurate setting took me back to the era of the Gold Rush.

-- Terry Lynn Johnson, author of Ice Dogs and Falcon Wild

Jasper and the Riddle of Riley’s Mine takes two brothers and plunks them right into a hair-raising journey to the goldfields of Canada. It’s a rollicking adventure, warm and funny, chockablock with bad guys and good guys, mysteries and deceptions, dangers and disasters.  With courage and persistence, Melvin and the delightful Jasper discover the true meaning of riches, friendship, and family. It’s a rip-roaring tale and a romping good read. Try to resist!

— Newbery Award-winning author, Karen Cushman

The dreams and dangers of the 1897 Klondike gold rush fuel Rose’s first novel in prose, and it’s a rousing historical adventure…Rose’s carefully plotted clues, along with colorful supporting characters and narrow escapes, keep the pace brisk until Jasper finds Riley’s mine in a suspenseful climax. Complementing a narrative rich in details about life on the frontier, the author’s note provides more intriguing facts, including profiles of characters in the book who were true historical figures. VERDICT Highly recommended for fans of adventure and historical fiction, or as a classroom read-aloud. — School Library Journal

Would you like a personalized copy of Jasper? Click through to order! Be sure to leave instructions on the dedication in the "order comments" section.

On HIDDEN FIGURES, by Anne Nesbet

Christmas and Hanukkah coincided this past December, which meant our Jewish/Quaker/secular family's chaotic all-things-at-once version of the holidays--best latkes in the world (celery root and parsnip, YUM!), combined with presents, the Beatles, and Christmas carols--almost sort of made sense, for once. And then all fifteen of us, ranging in age from approximately 11 to over 94, trooped across the street to go to the movies.

We pretty much dominated the lower left-hand quadrant of that theater. We settled in. Some of us had popcorn. And soon we were transfixed.

The movie we had chosen had just come out that day: Hidden Figures. It tells the story of three remarkable African-American women--Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, and Katherine Johnson--who worked as mathematicians and engineers at the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics Langley Aeronautical Laboratory, renamed NASA in 1958. The film uses John Glenn's 1961 space flight--the first time an American orbited the earth--as its dramatic highpoint; it was the unsung human computers who made the calculations that ensured his safe return to earth.   

How had we not heard of these women before? It was thrilling to see them rise up through the ranks of the human computers--while faced daily with the harsh realities of segregation and discrimination. We all agreed--young folks, parents, and Grandpa alike--that this film was the best possible choice for a family outing at the end of 2016 in the United States of America. We really needed to see it. We needed to be reminded about the things that matter, and about the power of hopeful stubbornness to reshape the world.

I've finally tracked down a copy of the book by Margot Lee Shetterly on which the movie is based, and I heartily recommend it. The movie simplifies the timeline and focuses on three women's stories in order to make the story more vivid, but the book helps you see the larger picture, the way the war shapes Langley, and then the way NACA/NASA, Virginia, and the United States slowly change in response to the persistent, courageous, and, I would say, patriotic pressure put on the old institution of segregation by women who thought their minds should get as much respect as minds housed in white, male bodies.

(I see there's a simplified edition of Hidden Figures for "young readers," but I haven't had a chance to look at it yet--my fingers are crossed that it's good.)

It seems to me that a worthy goal for 2017 might be to bring as many "hidden figures" as possible into the light. Whether we are reading books or writing them--or going to movies and then talking about them with our friends and family--let's try to foreground more stories about people who have played important but relatively forgotten roles in science, politics, social movements, the arts, and in history.

Our own mothers and grandmothers, for that matter--how well do we know their struggles, their stories?

I hope we can inspire a new generation to become avid detectives and researchers in their own right, willing to dig beneath the surfaces of things and to continue the work of making our understanding of history deeper, richer, and truer.

#Diversity and Social Action in Children's Literature, with Chris Eboch

The Power of Diversity

Recent months have seen an increase in bullying and racism in schools. Children, of course, reflect what they see in the world around them. We can mourn what’s happening, but a better way to improve the world and feel empowered is to fight. Fighting can happen in a variety of ways: through civic action, discussing issues with our own children, lobbying for anti-bullying policies and programs at local schools, and so forth.

And as writers, we have a special tool: our books.

That does not mean every book has to be an in-your-face challenge or political statement. We know themes should be subtle, not preachy, we should not try to share everything we believe about the world in one story, and that young characters should be in charge of their own solutions – no adults who come in and fix things, explaining the proper way to behave.

Some books, especially nonfiction, can present issues directly. For example, I’m working on an educational title about racism and economics, and another about immigration. Meanwhile, novels can touch on subjects in lighter ways, if only by showing the wonderfully diverse world.

Sam Bond, author of the Cousins in Action series, says, “It took becoming a mother to two non-white children for my indignation on the lack of books with diverse characters to surface. I quickly realized that every book we bought or borrowed rarely contained children that resembled mine and those characters hardly ever shared similar backgrounds - unless that book was about adoption or China. It was also interesting to realize that Chinese characters often found themselves in the position of side-kick, rarely the main protagonist.

“Did it bother my children that their favorite characters didn’t look like them? I don’t think so. Did they notice? Not that they said. But it bothered me enough to start writing my own books so children adopted from China (like mine) would have characters that not only looked like them, but had backgrounds that resembled theirs as well.​”

Magic and Mystery

Fantasy and science fiction can show diversity in unusual ways, because they don’t necessarily have to be realistic. James Mihaley, author of You Can’t Have My Planet But Take My Brother, Please, says “Activism is central to my novel. Tula, one of my main characters, is a twelve-year old environmental lawyer. She is also an alien and travels around the universe protecting the natural beauty on different planets. While writing the book, I heard repeatedly that this was a boys book, due to the humor and sci-fi components. I rebelled against that restriction and did my best to invent interesting girl characters. Tula is one of my proudest creations.”

Greg Fishbone, author of the Galaxy Games series, says, “For me, having a team of kids that represents Earth, all of Earth, means showcasing all kinds of children, allowing as many readers as possible to see themselves in the Galaxy Games. It also means crossing borders and bridging differences to show all of these players of differing backgrounds and traditions working together toward a common goal.” 

Deanna Roy, author of the Magic Mayhem series, says, “In my Magic Mayhem series, I wanted to make sure that kids who have medical conditions saw themselves in a book. Jinnie Wishmaker has dyslexia and faces a huge challenge when trying to read a map to find her way to her stolen wish. Marcus Mender has been vaguely on the autism spectrum as long as he can remember, but has no real diagnosis to say, “This is what I’m up against.” His dietary restrictions make him feel completely alone in a world of pizza and chocolate milk and cheeseburgers. And Elektra Chaos may act tough, but inside she’s terrified of having seizures in front of the school. They make her feel different and weak, and she really wants to be powerful and strong.

“The world is hard to navigate, and I believe books are the best way to help anyone see what other people like them are doing to find their way.”

History’s Lessons for Today

One of my passions is for historical fiction, especially story set in ancient lands. In The Well of Sacrifice, I tried to bring the world of the Maya to life, while also touching on issues of environmental protection.

The Eyes of Pharaoh, shows kids today the differences – and similarities – of young people 5000 years ago. I hope readers will learn about a remarkable culture, and also recognize that the same humanity exists in all of us.

In my work in progress, The Guardians of Truth, is also set in ancient Egypt. In this young adult adventure with paranormal elements, fabulous brown and black fight against injustice. (Read a sample here.)

My novel The Genie’s Gift combines fantasy and history. Anise suffers from extreme shyness and the misfortune of being a girl in a male world, the Ottoman Empire. (Well, a fantasy version of it, inspired by The Arabian Nights.) While young readers may not face her specific challenges – ghouls, monsters, and a solo journey across a vast desert – they may see themselves in her social anxiety and desire to make her own choices about her future.

More Mayhem

These are just a few examples. The authors here at Project Mayhem support diversity and activism with a wide range of characters. Caroline Starr Rose‘s historical novels feature a girl with a learning disability on the Kansas prairies (May B.), and the friendship between an English girl and one from the Roanoke tribe in 1587 (Blue Birds).

Eden Unger Bowditch’s The Young Inventors Guild Trilogy features children from different parts of the world, finding commonality through science.

Joanna Roddy’s middle grade fantasy, Jules and the Djinn Master, draws on Near East mythologies about djinn and legends of King Solomon.

Yamile Saied Méndez On These Magic Shores features a girl whose undocumented mother goes missing.

Read about all our Project Mayhem Team Members here.

What example do you want your work to show to the world?

On the Present Need for Historical Fiction, by Anne Nesbet

When I was a kid, "history" was divided into two very different phenomena:

1. the subject at school, in the form of textbooks and multiple choice tests; and

2. the stories my mother told. Some were family stories, but a lot of them were about places we were visiting at the time: "So here's where poor Marie-Antoinette waited to have her head cut off . . . they had old straw on the stones--imagine what the place must have smelled like!"

....or tales of her friends' childhoods during the war: "So she was sent, when she was little, to live in hiding with a big family in the French countryside, and one day a Nazi officer came to that very house, and pointed her out, the one who wasn't actually related to anyone there, and said, all smiling, 'This one's the spitting image of you, Madame, isn't she?"--and none of the little children in that room said a single word. Imagine that!"

....or stories about the wonderful objects she took us to see in museums:

"See the patch missing in that skull there? They used to cut pieces out of people's skulls to let the bad spirits out--see the round edges, there? That means this person SURVIVED that surgery long enough for his bones to start to heal......"

We were agog.

What I didn't realize at the time was how the difference between "school history" and "Mom history" was itself playing out a meta-historical story. My mother--a history major and a schoolteacher, herself--had been swept up in the shift in historical studies from old-fashioned lists of the reigns of kings to a fascination with all the little details of "everyday life."  (She had a whole long row of books in French with "la vie quotidienne" in the title. I remember that because "quotidienne" was the longest, fanciest word I knew in French, much more elegant than the English "everyday.")

I came to care about history--Mom's version of history--because of the textures, the stories, the smells.

Every now and then I would find a book in the school library (or through the Scholastic book club) that affected me the way my mother's stories did. I remember, for instance, a book called Children of the Resistance, by Lore Cowan, which was a collection of stories of quite ordinary children who performed heroic acts of resistance in Europe during World War II. I read and reread those stories, wondering always whether I would be able to be half so brave and so resourceful in such circumstances. 

And another book, The Endless Steppe, by Esther Hautzig, about a Polish girl who is sent with her family in 1941 to Siberia by the Soviets, contained a vivid image I've never forgotten: Esther's memories in Siberia of the hot chocolate she had fussily refused to drink, back in Poland before the Soviets came, because it had cooled a little and developed a skin.

How much she longed for that cocoa in Siberia! These books did more than remind me to drink my own cocoa without complaining: they gave me warning that "History" can happen to you at any moment. Even if you are just an ordinary sort of person.

Ordinariness can be very suddenly interrupted.

Reading books about people in other times and places reminds us of the thin border between History and the everyday. Such stories can even be a way to "practice" being caught up in historical events.

"If something like that happened, what would I do?"

That's a good question for readers of all ages!

The children in my new book, Cloud and Wallfish, find themselves facing hard choices in East Berlin in 1989.

 

The children reading that book today will almost certainly find themselves living through History at some point, too. I hope that those real and ordinary children will then feel the comforting presence of all the stories they have read, stories about other times when life was complicated and when choices were hard.

Because the more we read about history, the better equipped we are to face the present with courage--and the future with hope. 

History Moves: Thoughts on Historical Fiction by Kell Andrews

When I was in eighth grade, my school district determined that girls and boys would study the exact same curriculum. This was progress.

In sixth and seventh grade, we girls had taken Home Economics while the boys had Industrial Arts. In eighth grade, however, we would rotate to take both subjects, one half year in each one in mixed gender groups. 

I had Home Ec first. I remember making the first Caesar salad I ever ate. The recipe called for canned tuna instead of anchovies. It wasn’t authentic, but still delicious. I also remember a male classmate telling the teacher that really good cooks don’t need recipes. (We call that “mansplaining” now.)

The Industrial Arts teacher had an even worse adjustment than the Home Ec did. He took his eyes off what he was doing when a girl student called out to him, her unaccustomed high girly voice carrying across the class. He looked up, and he cut off three fingers on a circular saw. It was a memorable day for everyone. (We call that “being a distraction” now.)

Thus when I finally took my first shop class, my teacher was an experienced substitute who had been called out of retirement while the injured shop teacher healed. 

Mr. Legg was a taciturn sort, and he had lived through a lot that was far worse than the unfamiliar presence of 13-year-old girls in his classroom. He bore an Auschwitz tattoo on his forearm. He wouldn’t talk about it, but he didn’t hide it. I think he wanted you to know it was there. 

The Holocaust seemed so distant in 1983, but Mr. Legg had survived it.

Now I realize how close it was -- the liberation of Auschwitz had happened just 38 years earlier.

I’m sure middle-school students now also think the Holocaust is ancient history. It’s not.

I’m sure that the softer bigotry the required different classes for boys and girls seems distant as well. It was just 33 years ago -- history to current middle graders.

Antisemitism, sexism, and bigotry of all kind are not in the past. Racism didn’t end with slavery -- it continues. Antisemitism and misogyny are resurgent, reactionary convulsions in the face of other progress. Genocide, religious, gender, and racial violence continue on the evening news, in Mosul, Ferguson, and Orlando.  

It can be difficult for middle-grade writers to look at current events and culture with the clear eyes reserved for hindsight. History moves -- current events slide into the past as we write about them. Distant events emerge as relevant. 

But as middle-grade writers, we have an opportunity to make past and present real and vivid. That’s what historical fiction is for, even with the humbling fact that our own childhoods are now the realm of historical fiction. It’s also what contemporary fiction is for, turning the writer’s lens to the present. 

We’re living in history, past and present. All fiction that speaks truth is historical, all is contemporary.