Writing about real people, while honoring the creative process
When writing about real people who came before, how do we honor, how do we offer something true while maintaining our own creative voices? Week 5 - get out your journals & explore
Week 5: Look at what you’ve written so far (story(ies), essay(s), poem(s) … even journal entries) and ask what the primary theme is that is driving your inquiries this year. How have real events influenced your work? What events could feed it even more?
Combine your theme with your driving question (see week 3) and keep it by your side as you write for the rest of the year. Let it guide you. Let it keep you focused.
The essence of what I’m about to tell you is this: we need to focus on a single question when tackling something as complex as a human life.
But allow me to back up …
Genre aside, inspiration about true events show up in the majority of notable novels. We are shaped by our past. Beloved by Toni Morrison is based on the tragic story of Margaret Garner, Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel is a fictional examination of Cronwell’s rise to power, and most of Orwell’s work was about today (long pause).
Authors are attracted to complex stories of individuals, communities or societies. But we have to find a thoroughline to make such stories digestible.
We Arrive Uninvited is the novel that I got me on my way after years of writing short, and it explores the life of a strong, complicated woman. All my work over the last ten years, in fact, explores or is catalyzed by real people who managed to do the impossible in environments that told her to stay small. I discuss this here.
My question:
How does a person pursue an unlikely and lofty vision, becoming a change agent despite detrimental influences, dismissive and oppressive environments, an onslaught of negative attention, and very few fundamental rights to support her?
This was the driving question of my forthcoming historical novel, currently titled RADICALS.
It is fiction and based on the life of Victoria C. Woodhull, a woman born in squalor who found a way to testify in front of a congression committee, start a paper, open a brokerage, and ultimately run for President of the US in the 19th centruy.
In my novel, the difficulty was that Vicky did so much. And still, most do not know who she is. I decided that my fictional version of her would be “discovered” by a young protagonist living in small-town Ohio in a reality much like we live in today, a woman who finds her voice as data centers destroy the quality of her town’s water and air as governments profit and her neighbors suffer.
While I’m not done (I’m working on the publisher’s edits of this novel over the spring … still in it!), what got me far enough to get a publishing deal was a shitton of work. And that final draft pre-publisher was only possible because there was one question that guided me through the slog of writing tens of thousands of words, deleting thousands of words, and rewriting tens of thousands of words (over and over again) until I had a manuscript.
The question nudged me through was my way of keeping track.
The other aspect of longform writing that acknowledges historical figures is the balance between invention and research. I did what I hear many first-time historical authors do on my rough draft, which was I wrote a story that closely aligned with the articles, letters, and other historical documents I could find about VCW. I let her life guide the narrative and even—at a certain point in my writing process—let it bury my looming question/theme.
To balance research with invention is beyond challenging. I found that it was useful to return to the bones of the thing, and then ask myself which aspects of VCW’s life were most important to that driving question I began with.
I wanted to include it all. She was a wild person, full of energy and strangeness and brilliance as well as many questionable decisions and actions. She, like any human, was dynamic, and I wanted to show that.
But when we reference history, we cannot include all the interesting facts (or, more accurately, findings). We need to prioritize a structure the reader can navigate as they take it all in.
Perhaps this means I’ll write another book about VCW. There is so much more to explore and include. But I learned a lot as I deleted scene after scene and detail after detail in revision. I remembered the efficiency of short story and essay writing, how you cannot waste a word or digress with every interesting turn.
So regardless of genre, for our fourth week, today, I invite you to revisit the revision and reevaluation prompt above.
Paid subscribers, you are invited to join the Feb Creative Resilience Circle, we’ll have featured co-host Button. Register here. Our March Creative Resilience Circle will be focused on ekphrasis. Sign up for Feb here and March here.
Here is a thank you for your support and attention. Meditation on compassion (Metta)