Tag: #amwritng

Name Game

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`Don’t stand chattering to yourself like that,’ Humpty Dumpty said, looking at her for the first time, `but tell me your name and your business.’

`My name is Alice, but –‘

`It’s a stupid name enough!’ Humpty Dumpty interrupted impatiently. `What does it mean?’

`Must a name mean something?’ Alice asked doubtfully.

`Of course it must,’ Humpty Dumpty said with a short laugh: `my name means the shape I am — and a good handsome shape it is, too. With a name like yours, you might be any shape, almost.’”

—– Lewis Carroll, Through The Looking Glass, Chapter VI,
Humpty Dumpty

John Forster wrote that Dickens made his “characters real existences, not by describing them, but by letting them describe themselves”.

Because my novel, The Last Daughter of Elizabeth Light, is based on some threads of family history, I invented names for my characters, whose lives reminded me of what little I knew about them.  Keeping the continuity of the surname Light, which, strangely enough, was an ancestral name that appeared in England in the 1700’s on my family tree, turned out to be one of those wonderful coincidences.

I had too much fun with secondary characters. Here we are introduced to Harold Hollows the first time:

“Taking a closer look at the young man, Elizabeth noticed the splotches of youth still visible on his face and his somewhat fleshy figure. He had small hands and his nails were bitten away.

“I am planning on being a butler for the family, once I gain the experience, that is.  I have a plan—I will return to London in a few years and be able to run the household of any family I choose. What is your plan, Elizabeth?”

Looking down at her, he had already made up his mind that she had somehow ruined whatever chances she might have had. Her baggage—the baby—had sealed her fortune.

“I really don’t have one—do you think it’s necessary?”

The Last Daughter of Elizabeth Light

Some insight to picking names for your characters can be found from Elizabeth Sims

Taking Time

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Taking Time

If we steal time                                                                                                                                              the watching never ends.

If we lose time                                                                                                                                               the searching unearths the past.

If we make time                                                                                                                                             the inventing stretches science.

But when we find time                                                                                                                                   the discovery reveals a gift,                                                                                                                       always there to take.

B LeFlore ’09

Writing takes time. Everyone has a routine to make their words take shape on a blank page. My routine while writing The Last Daughter of Elizabeth Light was to carve out three hours a day, sometimes three would turn into six (that was a really good day). I would edit what I wrote the day before first to get back into my characters life.  I was lucky that there were many days they often took off ahead of me and I had to chase them as fast as I could type.

Fact or Fiction

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“Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.” – Mark Twain

Autobiography, Memoir or Fictional Memoir?

An autobiography tells the story of a life, a memoir tells a story from a life with touchstone events and turning points. Relying on memory, well, you know how that goes.

We remember what we want to or how we want to.  There is the saying that there are three sides to every story: mine, yours and the truth. Memory is often a liar.

Is there such a genre as Fictional Memoir?  I think so.  Here’s a list of famous fictional memoirs according to goodreads. 

So why is there a picture of a trapeze artist attached to this post? She is Erma Ward and she could fly.

My grandmother was in the circus = Fact

She had TEX tattooed on her arm = Fact

She saw Erma Ward fly = Fiction

“ I will make it okay. Everything is possible, see—look at Erma, she just lets go. You have to believe.”  – From The Last Daughter of Elizabeth Light

Telling Stories

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This is a blog about writing, writing my stories, and the journey taken to get to here.

My debut novel The Last Daughter of Elizabeth Light has not found a publisher or even an agent, but that’s not what this blog is about.  It is about what I have learned in the process of writing.  The fictional family tree going back nine generations was inspired by curiosity.  Why did my mother, grandmother and great-grandmother leave their home, their family, and their country to travel great distances to find a new life? My research using newspapers, diaries, journals, and biographies led me to uncover a real history of women struggling to be themselves.

Before 2005 I only wrote business memos, but one beautiful day in San Francisco, after I had left my career in advertising behind, I had an argument with my mother about a plastic ruler.  That was the day I really began to write.

My mother inspired me because she  “embraced life like a bride married to amazement”.   Whether we have had to lean in, or follow another path,  history repeats itself.  We are part of what comes before us, each generation leaving something for the next.

Later edit from 9/16: The novel’s title has changed in this journey, and in October 2016 it was self-publish.