Nancy Springer's Blog: Last Seen Wandering Vaguely - Posts Tagged "fiction-writing-process"

The idea was nothing if not high concept: give Sherlock Holmes a kid sister who can show him a thing or two. The research was vast but exhilarating. The writing was a challenge but a delight. Why, then, when I finished the initial Enola Holmes manuscript, did I tremble like a first-time author as I sent it in to my agent? I was an old hand at this stuff; I knew how to process criticism and shrug off rejection. So why was I feeling so uncharacteristically vulnerable regarding Enola?

That question went unanswered for a while. My agent and my editor greeted Enola with enthusiasm, so I forgot my vapours and got busy writing the second book in the series. But sometime after publication, when readers started asking about the hows and the whenceforths, I realized, with a shock, that Enola was entirely too much like me, Nancy, age awkward, lonely fourteen.

Of course all fiction writers extrapolate from their own lives. But I had exposed way more of my tender underbelly than I realized when I wrote Enola. The Case of the Missing Marquess, in particular, shows a remarkable number of parallels:

Like Enola, I had two older brothers I hardly knew. Both were off to college before I reached puberty.

Like Enola, I was a scrawny, bony, gawky tree-climbing tomboy with hair that needed to be washed.

Like Enola, I was solitary and bookish.

Like Enola, I was raised by Victorians. Actually, my parents were born in 1906 and 1909, but they might as well have been Victorians.

Like Enola, I was a tardy arrival in my parents’ lives. My mother was forty when she had me. Forty was a lot older back then than it is now.

Like Enola’s mother, mine was an artist. Actually, she made a good living doing pet portraits in oils, but what she loved to paint (like Enola’s mother) was delicate watercolor flowers. And when she had painted, say, a rose in bloom, it breathed sunlight and summer breezes from the paper. Her talent was extraordinary.

Also like Enola’s mother, mine was an individualist. I recently realized that in all my life to date – I am now on Medicare – I have never met anyone else even remotely like my mother. That’s how one-of-a-kind she was.

Finally, my mother, like Enola’s mother, “ran away” when I was fourteen. No, not literally, which was why I did not suspect I was writing about myself when I created Enola. My mother’s body remained in residence, but somehow the better part of her seemed to have gone elsewhere. In retrospect, I realize that in all likelihood Mom was having problems with menopause. But of course, in my strait-laced family, no one said so. And there was something else my parents were not telling me: Mom had cancer. I dare say that her health problems preoccupied her a bit and caused her to lose interest in me.

Unlike Enola’s mother, mine did not die. She beat the cancer. But then I went away to college, and then Dad died and Mom moved to Florida, still “gone elsewhere,” and she never did come back. She had Alzheimer’s or some other form of dementia for the last decades of her life.

Whew.

So it’s no wonder that Enola Holmes and I formed an instant bond. It’s no wonder that, the moment I needed her, she sprang out of my unconscious mind complete with a name, a physique and a personality. But it is a wonder that I could write about her for so long without realizing that her loneliness was my own and her heartache an expression of the long-forgotten heartache of my teenage years.

No wonder I felt more than a twinge of apprehension when I sent her off to the big city – not London, but New York. Does anybody else out there think that editors and agents take on somewhat of a parental role to authors? If so, I wasn’t aware of it until just now, thinking about Enola and understanding at last why I felt so apprehensive as I packed her off: I was afraid Mummy might not love her = me.

Isn’t it wonderful that Enola’s story has a happy ending? To all of the many readers who love Enola Holmes, let it be known: she loves you, too.

When I first started scribbling for real, when I was in my early twenties, I wanted to write a novel about how wretchedly I had been tormented in the New Jersey public schools. I had never spoken more than two sentences about this misery before being dismissively interrupted, whether by parents, siblings, or college friends. This was long before anyone took bullying seriousIy; they said it was just life. I quite desperately wanted to tell my story and be heard.

So I scribbled. (Back then, it was for-real scribbling, with a Bic pen in a spiral-bound notebook.) But I hadn’t written more than a few pages before I realized how profoundly depressing, boring, and whiney was my plaint, all mimsy like a borogove (“Jabberwocky” jargon). Nobody would ever want to read what the mome rath outgrabe. Not even me.

So instead of that, I wrote –

No, actually, it wasn’t that simple. An unconscious, daydreaming process intervened for several months, maybe even a year. But eventually I wrote a fantasy novel about an evil king and his cruel minions and how two princes became blood brothers, endured tortures, rallied followers, and defeated the bad guys. Both of my heroes were me, although I didn’t realize it at the time. The golden one was my public, steady self and the dark, scarred one was my hidden, moody, messed-up self. It was about time we got acquainted, if only on paper.

The next novel was the same, except different. Indeed, I wrote fantasy novels of paired heroes for a decade before I put myself together as one person able to be, get this, female. But all that time I had written about being bullied and I was read and heard. I had done it. So I wrote fantasy instead of strict fact; so what?
And then I went on to write many more different sorts of novels. . . .

Caveat: sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes – actually, most of the time after that first spate of fantasies – sometimes my novels are just novels, period. But occasionally they’re more. At least four of my YA novels were written in order to exorcise from my heart the horror of murder – various different real-life murders. And one of my children’s books was written in a three-week rage after I’d heard a racist comment from a neighbor. And then there were my problems with my mother, never resolved because she became dotty in her final decades, so they ended up in several novels, including the Enola Holmes mystery series.

But perhaps the freakiest book I’ve ever written “instead of” strict fact was FAIR PERIL, magical realism that many readers find hilarious. I began writing it when my husband fell in love with another woman, although he so earnestly denied having an affair that I believed him – consciously. But the smarter part of me prepared for divorce by creating a wacked-out narrative that starts like this:

“Once upon a time there was a middle-aged woman,” storyteller Buffy Murphy declaimed to the trees, “whose bung hole of a husband dumped her the month after their twentieth wedding anniversary. After she skipped having a life to raise three kids with him, he gives her the old heave-ho and off he goes with his bimbo.”

There’s much more, of course, concerning Buffy’s adventures with a talking frog in the Mall Tifarious, but what’s freaky is this: FAIR PERIL was written so far ahead of time that it was actually published the same month my marriage hit the fan, and my first copy arrived shortly before the splat. My then-husband picked up my brand-new book and carried it into the bathroom with him. When he came out a few minutes later, his face had gone frog-belly white. He said, “I can’t read this.”

“Why not?”

He didn’t answer me at that time, but before that October was over he finally told me the truth and moved out. “I hadn’t intended to leave you until spring,” he said. (!?!**#!)

I suppose I ought to thank myself for writing FAIR PERIL. It ends with my protagonist talking to the trees again, but making a new story. In writing my dress rehearsal for divorce, although I had thoroughly disguised the material with a wicked queen and a magical librarian, I had included my own healing process.

Whoa.

Instances like that make me look back and shake my head. I write books for a living; I write them one after another because otherwise I don’t know what to do with myself; but sometimes a book is more than just a book. It’s instead of. It’s a way to turn suffering into the write stuff. Luckily for me.

You want to know the truth? When I get a brilliant book idea, write it as if my head were on fire, and send in what I think is a masterpiece, usually it won’t sell. In this way I’ve written books about a pregnant man, about the gillygaloo bird laying cubical eggs and weeping itself into a puddle of self pity, about feral cats in search of Tyger tyger burning bright, and angels with angle-wings (type of butterfly), and a swamp Sasquatch, and twins separated by faerie, and – and many more; can you understand why I don’t want to remember them all?

I mention this lest anyone be disappointed with the rather uninspired way the Enola Holmes books came about.

They started out being business as usual. For a decade I’d worked closely with a savvy editor at Penguin, starting with I AM MORDRED and I AM MORGAN LE FAY, after which I suggested the Rowan Hood series – five books, five years. But it was barely finished when my editor phoned me and said, approximately, “Nancy, what I want you to do for me next is a series set in darkest London at the time of Jack the Ripper. Children’s lit is getting darker and darker. I’d have you do Jack the Ripper only somebody else already is.”

Whaaaat? I’d never been to England, let alone London, I’d never written straight historical fiction, I felt no fondness for Jack the Ripper, and I had to remind myself seriously that this editor had guided me well so far.

Because of that, I knew I ought to give the idea some thought.

So I thought: as a child, I’d read my family’s King Arthur book to shreds; hence I AM MORDRED and I AM MORGAN LE FAY. I’d read the Robin Hood book to tatters; hence Rowan Hood. Now, had I compulsively read anything set in Victorian London?

Well, I had all but memorized my mother’s complete set of Sherlock Holmes.

Huh.

Still doubtful, I checked dates; was Jack the Ripper contemporary with Sherlock Holmes? Yes, I had a handle on the right era. So, regarding possible book premises, feminist that I am I thought: how about “daughter of Sherlock Holmes?”

But I didn’t think it more than a nanosecond before shaking my head. Sherlock Holmes, veritable Victorian monk of a bachelor, with a daughter, or any child? Inconceivable.

Okay, maybe "little sister of Sherlock Holmes?

A fiction premise began to form. I counted backwards and decided on the year of Enola’s birth. By now she was Enola, a name with which I’d been familiar for all the years I’d lived in Pennsylvania. There was a railroad town called Enola along the Susquehanna River, named after the founder’s mother. Curious about the moniker, I’d discovered that backwards it spelled “alone.” The Victorians sometimes gave their girls strangely melancholy names such as Perdita (“lost”) and Dolores (“sad”). Oscar Wilde’s sister was names Isola, “the isolated one.” Go figure.

I’ve always been a loner, so Enola began to take shape in my heart and mind as an extension of myself. Her provenance pointed toward a mystery series, and I’d won a couple of Edgar awards seemingly by mistake, so I decided to give mystery a try. But not murder mystery. This was supposed to be a children’s series, and anyway I had always preferred stories about missing persons.

I dove into research. Blast my mother for giving away her Annotated Sherlock Holmes books to someone else; those suckers are expensive. But I managed to find a first volume, which was all I needed, el cheapo. It affirmed what I had always thought: Conan Doyle's chronology is so messed up I couldn't do it any further harm. THE ANNOTATED SHERLOCK HOLMES blessedly included a map of London in the 1880s. I internalized the map by drawing and labeling it. After that, I researched every which way, but I especially needed visual reference. John Thomson’s VICTORIAN LONDON STREET LIFE IN HISTORIC PHOTOGRAPHS proved invaluable. So did coloring books from Dover Publications, whether dissecting Victorian houses (I had to be careful; these were different in England than in America), Victorian costume, Victorian hotels or Victorian flowers. Also, I sent away for videos of Jeremy Brett as Sherlock Holmes, and I learned how to use the VCR player so I could watch them over and over, pausing to take notes on details of setting.

Before I could possibly finish all the research I needed, I had to write the first volume of the Enola Holmes series. I was very, very nervous about sending it in, even though I’d found out so much of London was destroyed during World War II that nobody would know I was fudging it. I was relieved that my editor liked the book, but I was joking when I suggested calling it The Case of the Missing Marquess, shades of Perry Mason. Duh. Never lock yourself into alliterative titles. Also, after the first book, the editor expected a code or cipher in each one. Ouch! Like Enola, I didn’t like ciphers, but I learned to.

So I was hobbled in ways, making the books parlous difficult to write. Each had three plots: Enola finding her mother, Enola finding a missing person, and Enola fooling her brothers. And I’m not a plotter; I’m a character-driven writer! I soooo did not write the Enola Holmes books as if my head were on fire. Usually, writing them felt more as if my head were being used to break rocks.

Writing volume two before the first one was published, I strove for that Darkest London setting, as I was originally directed. That’s why THE CASE OF THE LEFT-HANDED LADY is grimmer than the others. But by the time I got to volume three, THE CASE OF THE BIZARRE BOUQUETS, sales had boosted my confidence and Enola had taken over. Completely. She wanted to dress up. She no longer cared about Darkest London and she no longer cared that she was supposed to be for children. Vocabulary restrictions be hanged! Onward and upward, Excelsior!

Considering all the research I had done, I wanted to write maybe twenty Enola Holmes books, but she disagreed. She wanted character arc and resolution, not the usual slow death of most series. Necessarily I listened to her, and each of the books got better than the last. My only regret is that I didn’t find out until too late that Florence Nightingale owned seventy-six white Persian cats. (THE CASE OF THE CRYPTIC CRINOLINE.) What feline fun Enola and I could have had with them!

I love Enola; how can I not love Enola? In many ways she is a fictional incarnation of me. Yet I can’t help feeling irony: here am I, capital-F feminist, standing on the shoulders of a misogynist, namely Conan Doyle? Annoying. Even more annoying: One of my critics has been unkind enough to suggest that authors shouldn’t ride on the coattails of existing works, but should write their own stories, dammit.

Well, I did, dammit. And I still do. And some of them actually get published and do well. Nevertheless, I remain most gratified and truly honoured to have made the acquaintance of Enola Holmes.