The Real Writer

The Next Big Thing Blog Hop

The Next Big Thing Blog Hop is a chance for authors around the world to tell you what they’re working on. The author answers 10 questions about their next book, and tags the person who first tagged them, plus at least 5 other authors.

Happily, I was tagged by Vonnie Winslow Crist who whose speculative fiction book, Owl Light comes out soon from Cold Moon Press. Check it out: http://vonniewinslowcrist.wordpress.com

Here are my answers to the questions:

What is the working title of your book? 

ROSE AND JESSE (but also considering SPIRIT OF THE MAKER. Rose is a seamstress and Jesse is a Baptist minister/missionary, so the title works well for both).

Where did the idea come from for the book?  

It is based on a true family story – my great grandmother took in a Baptist minister as a boarder when she was 83 and fell in love with him (he was 55). I’m told she was a rather emotionally repressed/cold woman and when it became apparent to the family, everyone was both surprised and horrified. Nothing actually happened between my great grandmother and the minister, but the family stepped in anyway. Her brothers told him what was going on and asked him to move out, which he did. My grandmother sold her house and rented an apartment near him, brought him meals, pies, took in his laundry. This non-relationship went on for another year until she had a stroke and had to be put into a nursing home. I was fascinated by her romantic awakening and wanted to explore their relationship, such as it was (imagining some new, risky, surprising events), her inner life, as well as the fact that age doesn’t prevent a woman from falling in love and feeling desire.

What genre does your book fall under? 

Either literary or women’s fiction.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

I always pick actors in my head at the start of a writing project – it helps with visualizing movements, expressions, hearing dialogue, imagining what they might be feeling. So I picture John Cusack and Helen Mirren. I can imagine some delicious, dangerous tension of all sorts between these two, as well as the needed conflict between their reserve and vulnerability.

 

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

An 83 year old seamstress falls in love with her middle-aged Baptist minister boarder, experiencing an awakening that makes clear the life she’s never lived and the woman she wants to be before it’s too late.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

I am seeking representation.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

1 ½ years. Thank goodness for my critique group and its regular deadline. 15-20 pages every 3-4 weeks does (eventually) a novel make!

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Because Rose is a solitary person and has lived alone a long time and the details of daily life are her life, there are elements of EMILY, ALONE that resonate with ROSE AND JESSE. Beyond that, I haven’t come across a story of this kind anywhere. (Suggestions welcome!)

Who or What inspired you to write this book?

This book has been in the back of my mind for a long time, at least fifteen years. The story of my great grandmother and the minister would come up periodically at family get-togethers. My mother was just thirteen at the time and thought it ‘gross’. She didn’t have much information, which, in the end, was probably for the best. It allowed me a scaffolding on which to build the story I wanted to tell. I didn’t start the book for fifteen years because I just wasn’t ready to explore the story, emotionally, and in terms of the level of my writing skills. When I was ready for a new project, there it was. And it's been quite a ride ever since, different from anything I’ve written before.

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

I’m fairly certain that the age gap and the circumstances of the characters would be a big draw, but of course I wanted to push the boundaries. I wanted to stay true to the basic facts of the story, but I did want to create interactions, moments, and experiences that would stand in for actual stages of a relationship – flirting, courtship, marriage, sex, etc. – and that Rose would be able to read into enough to feel like that’s what they really were, to feed her imagination and feelings for Jesse. For example, Rose converts for Jesse, and he baptizes her in a river (actually happened), which stands in as a sort of wedding ceremony, binding her to him. It was challenging, and fun, and has made for some risk-taking with Rose that was both nerve-wracking and exciting to write. I wanted there to be a big payoff for the reader and there are several! The fact that she is an 83 year old woman and he is middle aged, works its own magic – both compelling you to read, but also making you uncomfortable, which is exactly the reaction I’m going for. Both are also sensible people, who have lived on the fringe of intimacy and close relationships, so their movement toward the center is a leap for both.

 Links to the more of the next chain of bloggers/writers coming soon!

Jen Michalski: http://www.jenmichalski.com/2012/10/ten-interview-questions-for-next-big.html

B. Morrison:  http://bmorrison.com/blog/394/the-next-big-thing-blog-hop

Rosalia Scalia: http://rosaliascalia.com/ten-interview-questions-for-the-the-next-big-thing/

About Chris Stewart, M.F.A.

The Real Writer is moi, writing instructor Chris Stewart. I cut through the myths and delusions about the writing process, while honoring your unique vision and voice. I mentor, teach, edit, critique, inspire, challenge--sometimes nag if you need it--always support, writers of all abilities. 

The right client for me is someone who wants to have a writing practice and writing life. I help you define what that is--what you need--and help you develop  and maintain it.

You should be passionate about writing, excited to learn some craft, celebrate both strengths and weaknesses (weaknesses point you in the right direction!), and have a sense of adventure and wonder. And I hope you love to read!

You don't have to have written anything in the past or have a degree or have published anything. You can sample various types of writing or have a specific project in mind, perhaps a portfolio for M.F.A. application, a story to submit to magazine, a poem for someone's birthday. Maybe you're just looking for a deeper and more lyrical way to journal.

It's all good!

Writing is as necessary to me as chocolate and breathing (in that order). There is nothing better than wandering through this world with a story going on in the back of your mind or a poem composing itself. I hate to be one of those annoying people, but I honestly can't remember not writing. As a child I wrote little stories, as a teenager terrible poems, then better ones, then tried novel writing and the ten minute play.

But I really learned how much writing meant to me when it saved my life.

Okay, I'm speaking metaphorically here, but isn't that exactly right? Metaphor is where it's at.

In 1997 I was diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder after several months of panic attacks. These occurred practically daily - it got to the point where I had to ask friends to grocery shop for me. I couldn't handle being in line with even one person. What if I freaked out? They'd cart me away. I remember trying to go see Titanic with friends at Christmas when it came out and having an attack in the theater. I had to leave. They thought I went to the bathroom, but I never came back. They found me shaking in my car in the parking lot, trying to pull it together to drive home.

I barely ate anything, barely slept. I was constantly tense and fatigued and felt an overwhelming dread and depression all the time. I was going to school full time and working full time and thought I'd have to drop out. Just sitting in class with 35 other people and not being able to leave the room (well, except for the bathroom, but you can't do that every five minutes because you are having anxiety) made classes a nightmare.

Fortunately, a friend recommended a cognitive behavioral therapist and I started getting acupuncture. I spoke to a couple of my professors who encouraged me to stay in school and offered to help however they could, making exceptions about absences, having extra meetings with me. One of them was my poetry professor, with whom I was doing an independent study. We turned that semester into 'Chris writing poetry to cope with anxiety' rather than towards a specific academic end.

But what came out was pretty good poetry! Good enough for my professor to nominate me for and for me to win a national fellowship for $15,000 (Ruth Lilly Fellowship for two students, undergraduate and graduate, annually). When Joseph Parisi from The Poetry Foundation called me to tell me I'd won, I burst into tears. Poor man. He was so nice about it. He had no idea what it really meant to me.

It meant everything. Seven months after leaving that movie theater in panic, I had my life back. And I did it through writing.

It didn't instantly become perfect after that phone call. I continued in therapy for two years. I started doing yoga. I learned breathing exercises and journaling techniques to deal with anxiety and panic when it came up.

I still experience anxiety sometimes, but now it's a tool I use to propel my creative work rather than a condition that wears me out and weighs me down. Artists often have or have had some experience with anxiety or depression because we are so sensitive to the world around us.

We are seeing, hearing, feeling, absorbing and channeling what we take in into our art. It can be exhilarating and exhausting. I learned to enhance the first one and pretty much eliminate the other.

Now I don't mean that your story about writing and what it means to you has to be so dramatic. It doesn't. But is your writing practice life giving? Does it make you happy? Excited? Recharge you? Does it make your life feel more expansive, sparkly, deep, intense (in a good way)?

If so, excellent. Keep on keeping on. If not, it can!

I've tried a lot of cool stuff that I share with you on this site - an artist residency, big name conferences (yes, Bread Loaf), meetings with editors, collaborations with artists in other mediums (I once wrote poems to be read during an aerial performance with trapezes and hoops), a pilgrimage to sites related to one of my favorite authors (www.embarkingonacourseofstudy.com).

I've hosted poetry and performance marathons (6 hours!) and readings at book festivals. I've taught interesting classes (animations from poems, flash fiction, ten minute plays, ekphrastic and visual poetry) and I'm always looking for more to try. More to experience and share with you, more to challenge you with to try yourself.

And I've done it long past the time when most do. In my thirties and forties. You are never too old to do anything. Never.

So read on for the credentials part below. And sign up for my posts. I took a break from them to write but will be posting more insights, exercises, and tips now. Don't miss out!

Fill out the email subscription form in the top right hand portion of this page and receive a free audio, a visualization to help you break through writing blocks.

And now for the serious stuff:

Christine Stewart is program director for literary arts with the Maryland State Arts Council. She also directs the National Endowment for the Arts' Poetry Out Loud program for Maryland.

A former artist-in-residence with Creative Alliance in Baltimore, she is the founding director of the wildly successful Write Here, Write Now workshops co-sponsored by CityLit Project. She has a M.A. and M.F.A. in creative writing and poetry, is the recipient of a Ruth Lilly Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize nominee, and has been published in Poetry, Ploughshares, Blackbird, The Cortland Review and other literary magazines. Her ten minute plays, Anesthesia (about where we 'go' under anesthesia--the surprising world and choices we find there), and Literary Land (inspired by Shannon Hale's novel 'Austenland,' about what happens when one takes a 'literary' vacation and plays the role of a heroine in a novel) have been performed in showcases for local playwrights.

Besides hosting the annual poetry marathon tradition, 'First Day,' a cavalcade of 50 poets, performers, and musicians at Creative Alliance, she has led workshops for the Odyssey Program at Johns Hopkins, and at Carver Center for Arts and Technology and The Baltimore Museum of Art, where her poetry, and that of her students was recorded and added to the audio tour for the permanent collection. She is the editor for the first Write Here, Write Now Workshops anthology, Freshly Squeezed, published by Apprentice House Press. 

Chris will be teaching a one day seminar on delivering a pitch to agents and editors for the Johns Hopkins Odyssey program on March 31st, 2012.

Her next reading is at the Minas Gallery for Poetry In Baltimore's Essential Sundays series on December 11, 2011 at 4 p.m.

Poems are forthcoming in Baltimore Fishbowl.

Interested in private mentoring or critique services? Email Chris at therealwriter@gmail.com.