A NOVEL LIKE AN ELEPHANT

When I published my first novel, “Home Fires Burning,” back in 1987, it occurred to me how much the process resembled giving birth to an elephant.

You see, elephants are pregnant for 22 months, longer than any other mammal.  If you’ve ever been pregnant, or been around someone who has, you know how 9 months can seem like an eternity.  22 months boggles the mind.

That first novel took a good deal longer than 22 months to write.  The idea for it originated when I was in graduate school, working on my MFA in Creative Writing.  It started as a short story in a fiction workshop class, and when I finished the MFA in 1979, it began to take shape as a novel.  8 years later, it appeared in print.

So yes, I think of a novel – at least the way I write them – as resembling an elephant giving birth.  It takes a long time, and when it’s finished, you hope nobody notices that it has long, floppy ears.  Or if they do, they’ll be gracious enough not to say so.

So now I’ve got a new novel, “Villages,” due for publication in early April from Livingston Press.  Just like my others, it has taken a long time to bring into the world.  As for the long, floppy ears – well, you’ll have to decide for yourself.

“Villages” is mostly unlike anything I’ve written before.  It’s the story of a 21-year-old man, home from war in the Middle East, wounded in body and spirit, reluctantly returning to his small southern home town to try to get his life back together.  The small town is familiar territory to me – I grew up in one – but this young man’s life is a world I’ve never personally inhabited.  If my telling of his story is genuine and honest, it's thanks in large measure to extensive research and spending time with young men who have been there.  That, and empathy with what they go through.

I do know that my young man and his trauma are all too real.  We have legions of veterans who have returned from combat devastated by what they have lived and seen.  Their post-war lives are a struggle for meaning and survival.  Way too many don’t make it.  But PTSD – post traumatic stress disorder – can affect anyone who has experienced trauma – accident, abuse, rape, violence.  So my young man’s story is universal.  And the struggle, the ripple effect, touches families, friends, everyone whose lives intersect with the traumatized.

My job as a novelist is to imagine genuine characters – warts and all – that are part and parcel of our human experience.  Situate those characters in a particular time and place, surround them with other characters, and give them a dilemma.  How they confront the dilemma is the story.

A couple of other things about elephants: they’re highly intelligent and they have long memories.  I trust my storytelling will have the same qualities.

Give A Bookseller A Hug

Some authors are shy.  I’m not.

I remember a bookseller telling me some years ago about a visit to her store by an author whose work I admire.  This fellow had a fine new book, which the store owner had read in advance of his visit and was eagerly looking forward to recommending to her customers.  She arranged an appearance for the author, drew a crowd, had plenty of books available.  But she realized to her chagrin that the author was a terminal introvert.  He mumbled a few pages from his book to the assemblage, didn’t take questions or comments, barely met the eyes of people whose books he autographed, and scurried quickly away as soon as possible.  It was not a successful event.

Contrast that with another writer whose work I like a very great deal – Pat Conroy.  Pat is warm, funny, self-effacing, accessible, generous, and enormously talented.  When Pat appears at a book store, he seems to reach out and gather people to him.  Pat’s writing alone guarantees him an audience, but Pat makes the experience of meeting him in person a treat.  And it’s all completely genuine.  Booksellers love Pat Conroy.

Booksellers have a tough job – especially independent stores whose very existence has been in jeopardy for years.  The big box stores, Amazon, the e-book tsunami, have decimated their ranks.  In one good-sized city I’m familiar with, there were perhaps a dozen fine independent full-service bookstores not too many years ago.  Now there is one.  The stores that have survived are owned and run by people who combine savvy business sense with a love of books and work hard to deliver personal service to their customers.

Mid-list authors like me survive because of the independents.  We love to have our books available in any store of any size, and we have come to embrace the brave new world of the e-book.  But independents hand-sell our books.  Walk into one and ask, “What have you got that’s good to read?” and the bookseller will have a ready recommendation.  If independent booksellers like an author’s work and are willing to recommend it, that’s huge.

Park Road Books, Charlotte NC  

When I visit a book store of any kind or size, my attitude is that I’m there to help the bookseller.  I’m grateful for the invitation and I love meeting and talking with readers.  I really like people, and I’m thrilled when someone thinks enough of my work to want to read it and hear me talk about it.  If I enjoy myself and genuinely connect with the folks who take time to come out, it makes a successful event for the store and leaves a warm glow that will last long after I’ve left.  I try to be just like Pat Conroy.

I’m embarking on a promotional tour that will take me to a lot of bookstores of all kinds in the next couple of months.  After the years of hard labor it took to bring my new novel, The Governor’s Lady, to life, this is the payoff, and I don’t just mean in monetary terms.  It’s a time when I get to tell booksellers and readers how grateful I am for having the work to present, and the opportunity to present it.

We’d be a poor, sad society if we didn’t have booksellers.  So visit a store, give the bookseller a hug, and take home something good to read.  If you visit while I’m there, I’ll be mighty glad to see you.  Hugs are optional.

The Girl He Couldn't Do Without

They’re honeymooning at the beach – our young friend and the girl he couldn’t do without.

It’s a piece of advice my mother gave me when I was single, dating this girl and that one, occasionally bringing one home to meet the parents.  “Marry the one you can’t do without,” Mother said, and I took her advice to heart.  When things began to look a trifle serious with a young lady, I would ask myself, “Could I do without this one?” In every case but the last one, I could.  Then I met Paulette.  We’ve been married for 46 years.  I couldn’t do without her back then, and I can’t now.

I suppose it’s a tough yardstick to use when you’re considering a relationship that could become a lifetime.  But as mother said, if you choose someone you could do without, the odds are you eventually will.  Better to be tough going in than tough coming out.  Better a broken heart when a relationship is in its infancy than when it’s over.

So Paulette and I joined the crowd of friends and family in a rural Baptist church in south Alabama last weekend to see John and Candy begin a life together.  The way they looked into each other’s eyes as they stood before the preacher and said their vows told us they’ve chosen the ones they can’t do without, and that bodes well for a long life together.

There are times in any marriage when things seem to be coming apart at the seams.  It’s easy to just walk away.  But if the person on the other side of the conflict is the one you just can’t do without, you’ll make the extra effort to work things out and keep the partnership together.

I thought about my mother’s advice a lot when I was writing my new novel The Governor’s Lady which comes out in September.  There’s a marriage at the heart of it, and there a point where Cooper and Pickett have to face the essential question: can they do without each other?

Every good story needs a dilemma at its heart.  How the characters respond to the dilemma tells us who they are and how the story unfolds.  How this one unfolds will have to wait for September.