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>>So without further ado, please join us in welcoming Kelly.
Kelly: Hi, thank you so much for having me. Um, this is my first novel, as Lindsey mentioned,
and it is the story about Louisa May Alcott and it's set in 1855 when, um -- long before
she became a famous writer -- so we know she's most famous for writing Little Women. How
many of you have read or the movie or knows the story of little women. Um it is about
the four March sisters Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy and they live in Massachusetts and their father
is a chaplain and away in the civil war. So they are at home with their mother and this
is a difficult time for the March family because they um are poor and the the head of their
household is away and so they really have to become little women, as the title says
they have to learn to take responsibility and come together as a family to get through
this difficult time. Um, and this novel was first published in 1868 and it made her very
famous. It became and overnight success. She went from being a nobody to being very rich
and um, they wanted her to publish a sequel right away, which she did. Um, and her writing
career took off from there. She was about 35 years old when she wrote Little Women,
so she had had a long road leading up to that point of wanting to be a writer, wanting to
be, wanting fame, wanting money because she grew up very poor. Little Women is autobiographical
in that her childhood was very much like the March sisters and actually much more difficult
than the March sisters. Um, she sort of put a rose-colored view on, on what their life
was like in little women. Um, so she welcomed, originally, or initially she welcomed the
fame and the money that having published Little Women brought her, but she grew to feel more
conflicted about it because Little Women [skips] was a story written for young women, and it
was sort of, she called it a moral path. It was a, you know, a moral tale, she didn't
think of it as being sophisticated writing, she didn't think of it as being a complex
story. And she really wanted to be a novelist who wrote for adults. So, she felt that Little
Women sort of pidgeon-holed her in her writing. That she could not write the kind of things
that she wanted to write. She later went on to write many hundreds of stories under a
pseudonym. There were things she wrote that were never published during her lifetime because
they were too sensational and they were published in the 1990s. We're still finding about stories
that we don't realize were written by her, under different names, so there's a really
fun sort of literary detective story about um discovering a group of stories that they
had always believed was this A.M. Barnard and no one could figure out who A.M. Barnard
was and these two women eventually uncovered that this was Louisa May Alcott. So, that's
a whole different story -- but she was a -- she was a fascinating person in many ways.
But, she sort of came to feel more conflicted about having written Little Women, and the
fame and the attention. People would come to her house. Um, little girls, or not little
girls, young women who read Little Women loved the character of Jo, most people always say
Jo was their most favorite because she was a tomboy, she wanted to be a writer, she was
passionate and wanted to be independent at a time when that wasn't an option or that
wasn't what was expected for women. She's just a heroine in American literarure. Um,
so little girls loved her and wanted to know more about her story and they would come to
Louisa's house and knock on the door expecting to meet Jo because they knew that Louisa was
based, based Jo on herself. Um, and they would be, the look of disappointment on their face
when she would open the door, because she was older than they expected her to be and
she couldn't stand that disappointment. So, she eventually started to say that she was
the maid and that Louisa had gone into town and then [laughter] they might have to try
back later, so there, it was a, it was a wonderful thing that just happened to her, but also
it brought all kinds of things into her life that she never would have imagined. Um, she
became very famous, like I said and she was known, and this is, this is all the stuff
I'm telling you now is the true facts of her biography. She is known to have burned letters
and journals, because she knew that when she died that someone would go through all her
papers and want to write about her or tell, you know she would she was a celebrity in,
in Massachusetts. So, um, so she burned things that she didn't or blacked out, there were
sections that she blacked out of her journal that she didn't want of things she maybe didn't
want people to know. So, when I was reading about her life because I was alway a Little
Women fan and then I started to read about her biography I was very intrigued by that
thought of what could have been in these letters and journals that she would want to hide.
And so that was some, a seed, seed in my mind. And then um, I was thinking about what um,
the character of Laurie from Little Women and I don't know how well you know the story
but Laurie is Teddy Lawrence, the boy, a lot of people that don't know the, Little Women,
they think it's a girl. Laurie was a nickname for Teddy Lawrence, and he lived next door.
He was the son of a wealthy family and became a friend of the March sisters in the story
of Little Women and especially a friend of Jo. Um, and they were, sort of, kindred spirits.
They had this wonderful friendship and the book starts when they're young and as they
grow older and as a reader, you begin to think or you're allowed to think all along that
they are going to end up together because they have this wonderful friendship and he
doesn't expect Jo to, you know, reign in her passionate temperment and he loves her, the
way that she is, independent and he, he, they have an equal partnership and you can imagine
them having a kind of a unconventional, truely loving friendship kind of marriage that would
have been rare for that time. So you're cheering them on the whole way. He goes away to college,
he comes back, he's all in a snoot because he's realizing he's in love with her. He sits
her down and tells her, you know, it's so obvious, it should be us, we should be together,
you know let's get married. And she says no. And that is a terrible let down for a lot
of people when they read that book the first time. It's your first introduction to heartbreak
when you [laughter] read that story. Um, because you look at the book and you say, what? This
is not what I thought was going to happen here. And um, Louisa May Alcott got, because
she wrote Little Women in two parts, so um, the first part ended with this sort of cliff
hanger notion of yes, there's something there that's going to develop and they wanted her
to write the sequel. So, she wrote the sequel, now we, now they're published together as
one book, The Little Women that we know is actual, was two separate books. But she got
letters, and letters and letters from fans while she was writing the second half. Please
let Jo and Laurie end up together. Please let them get married, um, you know, this is
th most wonderful romance. But she, Louisa did not want them to end of together because
Luisa May Alcott was staunchly independent and felt a sense of responsibility writing
for young women readers that she wanted to show them that that wasn't necessarily the
only choices that they had. And in the 1860's, 1870's, it was not easy to be an unmarried
woman, and you know, you didn't have a lot of rights in terms of, you know economic or
rights and and opportunities for work. But she, she wanted to be an example and wanted
the story to be an example for young women. That they could pursue other things. So she
chose to write the story where Jo says no. And Jo says she wants to stay friends and
it would, she would be afraid it would ruin their friendship and eventually Jo does marry
a professor who is much older than her and it's a very passionless -- you know, they
like each other, he's alright -- but geez, it wasn't anything like Laurie, you know.
[laugher] It's definitely a let down as the reader. Um, because her publisher basically
told her she had to have Jo marry someone; she couldn't end the book with, with Jo just
keep, keeping her independence. So, um, so that's the other thing I was thinking about.
So I was thinking about the burning of the letters and journals and I was also thinking
about Laurie, because in Little Women, all the sisters correspond to Louisa's real sisters,
her mother was very much like her real mother, not exactly, but a lot in some ways like her.
The father is not really there but what we know of him in the story is a lot like Louisa
May Alcott's real father, but the character of Laurie is a little mysterious. Um, Louisa
said at different times that he was based on two different young men that she met in
her life, a neighbor and a man she met when she traveled in Europe. Uh, but it's never
really a satisfying explanation. So, my idea was to think about what could be in these
letters and journals that she was going to burn and what if there was a real person who
inspired the character of Laurie and then she decided to erase him from the record.
So that was the basis for for this story. Um, I guess I could read a little bit, is
that good? Okay. Just take a drink. Do you have any questions about that stuff so far?
>>Not yet.
Kelly: Okay, hate to put you on the spot. So, my story takes place in um, the summer
of 1855; she wrote Little Women in 1868, so this was long before she's had any success
as a writer. She is living still with her family. They lived most of their childhood
in Concord, Massachesetts and Boston. Um, but they often struggled financially because
Bronson, the father, was an very ineffective provider. He was a transcendental philosopher,
he was a man of ideas and words and of books and not a very, and he actually objected philophically
to the idea of commerce. So, he did not engage in any acts of commerce that was left to his
wife to figure out how to put food on the table and get them a roof over their head.
And so they were often moving around, um, and this particular summer they lived in Walpole,
New Hampshire because their, the mother had a house that belonged to her brother-in-law,
or he gave them this house for the summer. So they were able to live there for free.
So, Louisa and her older sister Anna and Lizzy and May were the two younger sisters and the
mother and father go to Walpole. So they had just arrived in the town and the house was
kind of a mess because no one's been living in it. So there's mold everywhere and they've
got to clean it out and they've got to put curtains on the windows so Louisa and Anna
are walking into town to buy fabric. That's what's happening here. And it's on page 16
if you want to follow along. I feel like I'm leading a class [laughter].
"Louisa had been to Walpole only once before, when she was quite young, so she tries not,
or she tries to notice each store front and memorize it's contents to report back to her
mother. The sisters were experienced at moving. As children they lived in several different
houses, and they knew all about the work each move made for the women. Stocking the kitchen,
dressing the windows, planting a new vegetable garden. It helped to get the lay of the land
and meet the shop keepers early, especially, Louisa thought with dread, since they would
soon be testing the shop keeper's generosity buy asking to buy things on credit. As they
descended the hill, they turned West on Middle Street and then North into Washington Square,
where the town's few shops were clustered. The butcher shop occupied the southwest corner
of the square. Bronson's aversion to meat made Anna and Louisa a little skiddish about
the carcasses hanging in the windows and they looked away as they passed by. The square
contained two village book stores that were local centers of political discussion. On
the west side of the square, men interested in the philosophy of the waning Whig party
argued over what to do about slavery and how modern technology, like railroads may change
the country. Directly opposite, on the east side of the square, Democrats stood with their
arms crossed, thumb pensively fingering their beards as they lamented the death of the ideallic
farming society President Jefferson had envisioned in their grandfather's time. And men who cared
for neither politics nor books gather at the tavern that sat between the stores to imbibe
and gamble until their wives prevailed upon them to return home for supper. Abba was at
least lucky on one account. And Abba is Louisa's mother, Abigail. Bronson was a temperate man
and never once set foot in that place of temptation. Louisa fought back the whelling irritation
that made her jaw feel tight. Walpole seemed to her wholly unremarkable. Over the last
few years, she had felt herself growing restless, yearning for freedom from the domestic obligations
that came with continuing to live at home. Though the cares of Boston frightened her,
the noise and heat of the train, the looming shadow of steamers discharging immigrants
on Indian Wharf where vendors sold peppered oyster soaked in vinegar near the overcrowded
tenements. She loved th excitement and freedom of the city. With her family she had bounced
between Boston and Concord over the years, but never had the chance to live in a city
on her own, to have the space and time to think and write. Since her father had announced
the solution to their current financial whoas, his plan was to move the family here to Walpole,
Louisa had been scheming for a way to get back to the city as soon as possible. She
had promised herself she would accompany them to her uncle's house, help unload the trunk
and be on the first train from Bellows Falls back to Boston by the end of the week. She
still had most of the money left from the $10 she earned for The Rival Prima Donna,
a story she wrote under the name of Flora Fairfield and the advance on Flower Fables,
her collecton on fairy tales published in a tiny local run the previous fall. The publisher
had sent her a mere $32 for that work, though even this small sum had astonished her at
the time. She gave a portion to her father for the good of the household and squirreled
the rest away professing an oath to Anna and her mirror that she would safeguard the money
for one express purpose. 'I, Louisa Alcott, do swear,'
'Do solomonly swear', Anna offered. Her hands cradeling the green leather bible on which
Louisa rested her palm. 'Do solomonly swear to resist temptations
large and small, be they in the form of particularly bewitching bonnets, slippers...'
'Gloves?', Anna asked with her eyebrowes raised. Louisa nodded, 'Gloves'.
And Anna was quick to test her sister's conviction. 'Even if they happen to be the sort that close
with those tiny pearl buttons?' 'Especially if they have pearl buttons, as
well as chocolates, pecans, new books, fine pens...'
'And cream laid writing paper, don't forget about that. Anna pressed her lips together
to suppress a smile. Louisa groaned and closed her eyes, 'The very
thought of it tests me this moment. Yes, yes, no fine writing paper. Now, where was I? Oh
yes, resist temptations large and small so noted, in the service of my especial aim,
to secure for myself in the City of Boston, a place apart and and a room in which I might
write my stories and sell them to the highest bidder.'
'Well done', cried Anna, and the oath was sealed."
So, in this part of the story, of course, Louisa's thinking it's going to be very simple.
She's going to get them set up in the house. She's going to get on the train to freedom;
but of course, that does not work out that way. So, that's my shpeel, I would love to
hear questions, if you have any.
>>How did you prepare to write this? Like what kind of research did you do, and how
long does that take?
Kelly: It was um, it I researched for about 6 months before I actually started thinking
about how I wanted to write it, or which story I wanted to tell, because there was so much
about her life, that was amazing and fascinating to me. And I wanted it all to be in the novel
but it wouldn't all fit in one story. So I had to decide what I wanted to focus on, what
part of her life I wanted to focus on. Um, I thought a lot about how she is such a historical
icon to us, you know. Um, what do we really know about her? We know she wrote Little Women,
that's what most people know. Um, but she had this whole other life, and and I wondered
too about what is it like to be the kind of person who did something that, you know this
book has never gone out of print, thousands and thousands and thousands of women have
read this book over decades. So, what is it about her that her do this and did she know
about herself, that she had this in her destiny. Or was she just a normal person before this
came into her life. So, I, that's why I decided to set it before, so that, you know, thinking
of what she, who, who the Louisa person was. Um, but in terms of research, I read all the
biographies of her, a lot of biographies of her family. Her father, like I said was a
philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson was their neighbor, Nathaniel Hawthorne was their neighbor,
Thoreau was their neighbor.
>>Oh my gosh!
Kelly: Uh huh. Concord, Concord was the most important place to be in the 1850's; um, in
terms of writing and thinking in American philosophy. And she, Thoreau, I have some
things about Thoreau in here, he used to take her on nature walks in the woods, she learned
all about the natural world from Thoreau. Emerson was her father's best friend, so he
was often at the house. He read Louisa's rough drafts of her work and gave her feed-back
on her writing when she was young. Um, so they lived in a very interesting place. Um,
so reading biographies of them, and then my favorite part of the historical research is
um, learning about how they lived their lives day-to-day. That is just fascinating to me.
How did, how they made candles. I have a scene in here where Anna and Louisa are making candles.
And so learning how they did that; and, you know, what supplies you would use and where
they would get them from and just the process of that. Or, how they prepared their food,
what kind of you know; seasonal eating is so popular now. Well that was what you did.
That's only what anyone did then, because when there was not such thing as refrigerated
transport of food. Or, I mean just everything that we take for granted. It's fascinating
to me to learn what life would have been like day-to-day for them. So, they are many many
good books out there for learning about these archaic things that I'm really interested
in. Um, a lot of reading, reading her letters and journals was fascinating and a way to
understand her voice. And really think, you know, hearing and writing her voice -- I wanted
it to be -- I want to understand her from, from her own words. Um, so that was, she didn't
burn all the letters and journals, thank goodness, you know, they still have a lot. She only
burned the mysterious ones. [laughter]. That have the juicy stuff in them apparently. Um,
so I guess that would be, and then um, you know libraries are very good places for me
to, to uh talk to librarians who know so much and can point you in the right direction toward
sources that you wouldn't think of. Old magazines, old newspapers. It's a fun, you know, fun
journey. Like a treasure hunt.
>>Did you do any traveling to any of these places?
Kelly: A little bit. I didn't travel to the town until after I wrote the first draft,
because I, I had a map, had a Google map. [laughter] Um, of the town and I had done
enough research on the town to know the street names, which had changed and so I could, you
know sort of have a map that was regressed to 1855. Um and understood the layout of the
town and I knew which buildings were old enough to have been there. But I didn't want to go
there because I knew it, well it's a modern town now and I wanted to have the town of
my imagination be what was first in the page, but then I knew I needed to go there to see
it and maybe there was something I was missing. So I did go, um it happened to be when we
were traveling out to Maine for a wedding so we drove through. And it was very interesting
going. I always tell the story about, um, that house that they lived in is still there,
but it is an apartment complex now. And it had, um it was just so not what I it. It is
still called Alcott House, but it, it has, you know one of those really funky awnings
on the front, all these additions that have come along, you know since the time. And there
was this big like '79 Chevy Impala parked on the lawn it had a Lynard Skynard bumper
sticker. I mean [laughter] it was so not the quaint, you know, New England house from 1855
that I pictured. So it was probably good that I didn't go there before um. [laughter] But
it was neat to walk the same streets that they walked and to smell what the air smells
like and the flowers and the bees and the things that you wouldn't think of until you
really walked there. So that was, that was really a good experience.
>>Given that you had um, so much insight into her thoughts, via the journals and things
like that, why did you choose to write in third person as opposed to first?
Kelly: Well, that a good question. I think that um, I felt that that might be going a
little too far in terms of making assumptions about her voice; or [pause] presuming to know
her so well to speak in her voice. I think that I was a uncomfortable enough at the idea,
and I still am in some ways, of writing a story about a real person making a fictional
story up about a real person that I think the third person gave me enough distance that
I felt, um I wasn't presuming so much about who she was, or understanding her. And also,
just from a practical point of view, structuring the novel, I wanted to be able to um, see
her from the outside and be able to see other characters from the outside that I as a narrator
would have a different perspective on them then then she might, inside her own head.
So sometimes it can be just more of a structural decision. But I, I definitely think that I
wanted enough distance from her voice in that way. Does that make sense?
>>Yeah, and actually I sort of have a semi-related question. Um, I know you said this was you
first published novel, but I imagine you've written your own things before?
Kelly: Um hmm.
>>Um, if you've ever written a fully fictional character versus that space in history, have
you noticed yourself behaving differently with the character? Do you connect less with
her or more with her or?
Kelly: I think that I'm more um, it's more freeing to write about a completely fictional
person, because you're not as worried about, um, portraying them incorrectly or disrespectfully.
Or I mean, I admire Louisa May Alcott so immensely; and connect with her in that, you know, I
just feel a sense of understanding about who she was and how she felt about her work; and
what she wanted her life to be like; and her struggle for independence and things like
that. I really can relate to those things. But, at the same time, she was a real person.
When you create a completely fictional character, then you can create whoever you want. And
so there's definitely a sense of responsibility when you are writing anything about a real
person that um, and, and some people think that you shouldn't do it at all because of
these, you know, issues and concerns. But, um, so yes I have written other characters.
I'm writing a book right now that is a completely fictional character and in some ways it is
easier in that it's, you feel more free to create her in any way that you want to. But,
um I loved writing about Louisa too because I loved learning about her life and I loved
sort of imagining, you know, bringing her life, that was very fun. Getting, it was like
getting a conversation, it was like getting to ask her all the questions that I really
wanted to ask her and never was able to ask her because she's gone. But, you know writing
the story I felt like I was able to sort of talk to her. [she laughs]. In a weird way.
>>Can you tell me a little bit more about your process, you know what I mean, you researched
a lot, like how long did it take you for you to write the whole novel and did you start
at the beginning and work your way all the way to the end or.
Kelly: Um hmm.
>>Or did you piece it together? How, things like that?
Kelly: Um, it was very different, it's very different now than it was when it, from the
first draft. Um, originally, I wanted a story that had a contemporary plot, with flashbacks
to the historical times. So I had a narrator who was in the first person. Um, who was living
in Boston and working as a teacher. And I had this whole story around her life and she
discovered at her aunt's house this trunk that contained letters. And that her aunt
would have been a decendent of Joseph, the love interest in the story. Um, and she would,
over time, uncover the details of this relationship and through the letters there would be these
flashback chapters of the historical. Um, but as I was working on it, I so loved writing
the historical portions and so dreaded kind of [laughter] I don't know sort of this dread.
I don't know I just didn't sort of like this character very much, didn't like where the
story was going. It was sort of like that friend that you just wish would stop calling
you, [laughter] you know, you're tired of hanging out with her, I don't know I just,
I think I just liked Louisa more than I liked her. So, I ended up just, I was so frustrated
with it because I'm, I was getting to this point where I would say, okay, Monday, Wednesday,
Friday I have to work on the, you know contemporary plot and on Tuesday and Thursday I can work
on the historical. But then I would find ways of avoiding it and all this stuff. I finally
had to have a sit down with myself and just decide, what am I going to do about this 'cause
it's not working. So then I just took a break for a while. I didn't even, I didn't know
if I would finish it, I was just so frustrated. And then what I finally realized what I had
to do was just cut all that and restructure the story around these few, but very lovingly
crafted themes that I had of the historical time. And, um so that was 150 pages that I
had to cut and that was a hard day.
Kelly: Because I felt like I had made so much progress. I had all this, I had lots and lots
of pages, but it wasn't coming together as a novel. So I cut those. I still have them,
but I mean they will never see the light of day because I, you know, don't feel the love
for that. [laughter]. But, um, and then I had to, you know, grow the story and develop
the story around what I did have. And decided you know how, what to develop the sisters
more, and to make it into a novella of it's own. So, that was a process, um, coming to
that decision and, you know, many many more months after that of writing more. Additional
research, because once I expanded it, it raised a lot more questions about things. Um and
so I would say, from beginning to end of sending it out for submission, it was probably a year
and a half. Um, and it was, uh, it was a kind of an interesting time in our lives because
we had, my husband is a physics professor at Loyola. But he just started that job in
July. And before we moved to Chicago for that job, he in order to be competitive for the
path of theoretical physics in academia, you have to do well these short-term research
positions. So, we had moved around a lot to different universities. And um, we had been
in Rhode Island for two years, which is when I started to get really interested in um,
in the Alcotts and that part of history and then we moved to Ontario for two years. Waterloo,
which actually there's a Google office in Waterloo, Ontario [laughter]. Um, but we didn't
know a soul there and I was, I had been teaching 7th grade when we lived in Rhode Island, but
I couldn't teach there because my certificate wasn't recognized. So I started working as
a nanny, which was not something I really wanted to do, um and that was when I started
writing. So, anyway, that's a long answer to your question. But it took a year and a
half and that was kind of the amount of time that I had to allow it to take, because we
were there for two years, I needed something to show for that time, I felt. And so then
I was able to submit it right around the time that we were starting to prepare to leave
from there. So. Yeah.
>>And how long did it, can it take once you, like how did you find a publisher and how
long did it take to actually get published?
Kelly: Um, so first you have to find an agent, that's the first hurdle. Um, you submit to,
you know, you look for agents who are interested in the same or represent the same kind of
works. So someone who does historical fictions or someone who, you know, might have an interest
in this kind of thing. And um, you send a query letter. There's a whole process. You
send a query letter, which is just a one-page letter that's about the story. And sort of
give your marketing hook, how you think it could be you know, portrayed to a publisher.
And then if the agent likes it, they will request the manuscript. So then that takes
time and they read it and they decide okay, we're going to represent you. And then, from
that point they are sending it to editors at different publishers and that's a long
process of waiting to hear, is anyone going to want it, it's a very tough market, yadda,
yadda, yadda. [laughter] So it can be a long dissapointment, you know it can be a struggle.
Um, and then you finally find an editor that is interested and then there's the whole negotiating
process and you know how long is it going to take. So, that whole thing, I mean it actually
went pretty fast for me, a lot faster than it does for a lot of people. I think I had
good timing with you know, people are really interested in historical fiction right now
for some reason, it just a trend at the moment. I mean it comes and goes, over time. Like
some people think it's because of the economy, that people are interested in, you know, the
past and the simpler time, which of course it's never really a simpler time. [laughter]
But, um so, for whatever reason, I was really lucky. So it took about, you know it took
a few months from when I first sent it to May, the woman who became my agent, until
we had the commitment from my publisher that they wanted to publish it. And then it takes
about a year to actually come out. Because you go through a long process of editing with
your editor and then it has to be copy edited, the cover design and the, and you know, all
that kind of stuff. So uh it was March '09 that it was sold to the publisher and April
this last couple of weeks that it came out. So.
>>Oh, it's brand new!
>>It is brand new. [laughter] It's brand new, yes. So, yeah.
>>Can you tell us more about your current project?
Kelly: Sure, um it is another historical novel. It's set in 1835, so a little bit earlier
than this one. Um, and it starts in Buffalo, New York. Um, it's about a woman who is in
a violent marriage, and she is trying to escape from this marriage and two other women are
helping her. And, there are no railroads at this time, so the only way to travel West
was just by steamship. So she takes a steamship to Mackinac Island, because one of these women
has a house on Mackinac Island. And she's partially based on a real person whose house
is now a, a bed and breakfast on Mackinac Island, the Harbour View Inn. Um, so these
women help, are helping her make this escape. And so a lot of the book takes place on Mackinac
Island, which has been really fun to research. And it's fun to talk to people from Michigan
about that, because everybody, well not everyone, but a lot of people have been there or know
about it. And it's kind of this gem that people other places don't know about. And it has
so much interesting history, it was such an important place during the War of 1812. It
was import - it was the, the center of the fur trade. So the Jesuit missionaries were
there in the 1600's it's actually very, very, very old settlement for this part of the country.
So, the history there, I mean you could write 50 novels about Mackinac Island, it's so interesting.
Um, and I got to go there last summer, in June to do a little research. And that was
wonderful, though it rained the entire time I was there.
>> Oh no!
[laughter]
Kelly: Yeah, it's hard to get around with no cars. And, you know, it was raining the
entire time, but that's okay. If you are determined enough you'll [laughter] get your work done.
Um, but it, you know, so that's been a fun process. And then the, the tricky thing is
getting time to work on that while, you know doing all this, which is really fun to talk
about it. But, of course, my mind is on that one and now, you know, I'm just kind of juggling
those things but, um, but it's really fun. I mean I'm doing what I've always wanted to
do and it's just kind of amazing that it's happening to me. [laughter] You know, yeah.
>>So let me know if you've already answered.
Kelly: Sure.
>> This and I'll ask you at the end so everyone else doesn't have to hear it again. But, how
do you go about, like choosing your topic and like identifying like, you know, what
you want, what you want to write about. Like you focus on historical fiction, so.
Kelly: Um hmm.
>>You know, how do you come about, like choosing?
Kelly: It's hard to choose, because there's so many great stories to be written. And,
you know people say, where, how do, how do you get your ideas. And it's like how do you
no get ideas? [laughter]. I can't walk down the street without getting ideas. [laughter]
The main thing is, you know, is it a written, is it a novel? Is it just a cool story, or
is it, could it be a novel. You know could you make it into a novel? And um, you know,
reading, reading about places and, and different time periods gives me lots of ideas. But it's
a good question, because it's hard to choose. I think you find a compelling character in
a particular event, or um, who just captures your attention, and you want to know more
about what their life might have been like. And, in figuring out or inventing, if you
can't find the answer, what their life was like. That's sort of how it comes, becomes
a story. And they sort of, you know you hear them talking in your head and you think about
them a lot. And umm but there have been leads that have turned out to not be. You know,
there are things I sort of pursued and really took a lot of notes and thought about it a
lot but ultimately it just didn't materialize for whatever reason. I got really interested
originally when I was writing about Mackinac in John Astor. John Jacob Astor the fur trade
magnet who immigrated from Germany and owned the American Fur Company, which was based
in Mackinac Island. And he was the first American millionaire and, um, I thought, well there,
there's a story. But I think, maybe because it was a man, I think I really love writing
about female characters and that I started wanting to write about his wife or his daughter,
and I realized, okay, he's not doing it for me. [laughter] You know, he's in the story
a little bit, but you know he's not the center of the story anymore. But um, yeah, so I just,
you know I love the reading and choosing the part and then, you have to choose and then
you have to commit. And then you can't read other stuff. I have all these other things
that I want to read about, and I don't let myself read because I know I'm going to get
sidetracked and want to think about that and so. There's a part there's like the honeymoon
period, where you love your story so much, and you love working on it and then it starts
to get, you know like a little more complicated and bogged down, and you get to the hard part
where you don't know what your going to do with the story and you get to a point where
you want to chuck it then you fall in love with a new story. [laughter]. And then you
want to be with that story all the time. So um, I think that you, you have to be committed,
just like you're committed to your partner. You know, I'm not going to be turned away
by this eye-candy over here, I'm going to pay attention to you [laughter] because I'm
committed to you and see it through to the end, and you know, that's where the discipline
part comes in, I think.
>>Do you have like a group of people that you share, you bounce your ideas off of like?
Kelly: I do. I have a couple of friends who are writers and um, we do. Although it's kind
of interesting, I don't like to let people read things until, I'm very perfectionistic,
so until I feel like they're really, really ready to be shown. But, we do definitely bounce
ideas off each other. I have a friend who is really smart about, you know, what's a
dud and what's a, what's compelling, you know or what's a dud idea. And, and we're, we're
honest with each other. You have to have that honesty, otherwise it's not helpful, you know,
kind of advice. If everything is so wonderful that you tell her, then you know that she's
not telling you the truth. Uh, but um, yeah I think you have to have that because it's
a very solitary job, most of the time, so it's good to have other people that you can
talk to and who understand, and who are weird like in the same way that you're weird. [laughter].
So.
>>You mentioned you have had, when you were starting to write, you had like Monday, Wednesday,
Fridays dedicated to that one part. Did you dedicate, like a certain amount of time per
day or were you like, I want to get through so many pages?
Kelly: Yeah, well I have a word count goal every day. Um, but I try, if I'm doing well
and I make my word count early, I try to still sit there and keep working as long as I can.
Um, I write in the mornings. And I really do try to write every day, because I, I think
I have that fear that if I stop for too long, like this last couple of weeks has been really
creepy and I haven't been as good about my routine. And there is that fear that it's
just going to go away and you'll, you won't be able to come back to it. You won't be able
to you know, pick up the thread, probably paranoia or not a real fear, you know not
a legitimate fear. But it's good to be afraid of that because it motivates you to keep working.
And you do, you know you do have to be committed to it. It's like any other job, you know you
just have to keep, keep working and keep going with it, and have managable goals, too. I
mean having that word count, read it I'm thinking I'm going to write my novel today, you know
that's too overwhelming. That's like trying to run a marathon you know you have to just
go from one, one water station to the next water station. [laughter].
>>What's you're word count?
Kelly: Um, 500 to 1,000. 500 when I'm just having a rough day or I'm working on a difficult
part that I think is going to take a long time. And, that doesn't sound like a lot,
but some days it's really hard to write 500 words. Some days it comes very easily, some
days 1,000, 2,000 comes very easily. Um, it just depends on what part of the story you're
working on. And I, and then I do find time to um you know, sort of outlining as I go,
or like how am I going to approach that next chapter or, right now with my new one I'm
sort of working on resequencing chapters so thinking about, okay, if I move this here,
then, I have to go back and change this part because then it's not going to make sense
now. It's kind of like a house of cards, if you move one thing, you know everything else
is dependent on that. So some of the time is sort of spent on that macro-level stuff,
but, the actual writing yeah, 500 to 1,000 words a day. And you can write a novel in
you know, 3 months if you really wrote a thousand words a day. But, then you would, every word
would have to be perfect from the beginning. [laughter] So that doesn't count re-writing
and your revising and those types of things. That's why it takes longer than that. So.
Um Hmm?
>>Do you have any, um authors that really stuck out to you as a kid, or growing up that
has inspired you to really pursue this?
Kelly: Um hmm. Um, I love Ethan Canin, one of my favorite. I can remember reading he
has this book called Emperor of the Air, a short story collection. And I can remember
reading that in the library when I was probably about 14 or 13, something like that. And it
was an adult book, but um thinking whoa, this is different from anything I've ever read
in school and this guys is still alive and I'm thinking wow, this is really a job that
people do and just being absolutely blown away by him. He is and incredible writer.
Um, Lori Coleman is another writer that I really love. She writes a, well she passed
away, but she did write many a few, you know a handful of novels about young women and
you know I love women's stories, that's what is compelling to me. Um, Marilyn Robinson.
[pause] [sigh] Um Alice Monroe, I really love Alice Monroe, she has the most fabulous short
stories, so I just love to read so much. You know? And I've always loved to read, and that's
what made me want to be a writer. Loving to read and thinking, maybe I can do that too.
You know.
>>How, um, how have you noticed, I mean you've probably been writing for a long time. How
have you notice that your process has changed? Have you become more organized or concrete
or, you mentioned outlining.
Kelly: Um hmm. I think that um, I never really thought it was a real thing that you could
do. I mean I always wanted to write. I wrote all through school. I'd write a million reams
of bad poetry all through junior high [laughter] and all that kind of stuff. But then when
I finished college I felt like I had to get a a grown up job, that that wasn't a grown
up job, that you couldn't really pursue that. Or it wasn't practical, so you know I had
all these grown up jobs that I hated. And then, um when I decided I was going to try
to write a novel, I thought well, if I'm going to do it, then I'm really going to do it as
a professional, you know in a professional way. In that I would commit to finishing something
and um, writing something that I thought other people would actually want to read. You know
thinking about the audience is a big step forward from writing terrible poetry all through
junior high. Please God let no one read it. If I'm going to burn anything it should be
that. [Laugher] If I get hit by a bus after this meeting I won't have anyone read it.
But um, I think that um, so thinking about it as a real job. Then it was like okay, if
you're going to try this, then let's do it for real. And committing to a schedule and
then you know, finishing. Because a lot of people will start things and then not finish
them. And then that's such a shame because you put all this work and effort into it,
but it, you don't give yourself a fair shot if you don't finish it. And you can't submit
to an agent if it's not finished. So, um, I was going to finish it, no matter how bad
it was, I was going to finish it. And, I was going to write every day and just really give
it a fair shot. So I think my process has changed in that I learned to think of it as
a job. And um, to take responsibility for it that way, and not look at it like a hobby.
I wanted to elevate it from hobby to job. To a profession. And um, and then in terms
of, I do outline. I, you know, when you take writing -I don't know how many of you took
writing classes in college- but outlining and stuff is like oh, real writers don't outline
because they are just, God's word is coming directly through them. You know the inspiration,
you know the outlining is for amateurs or something, but actually most writers I know
do outline at least, you know, very generally. It might not be very specific. It might not
be in Chapter One this happens, but they have an idea when they, they have a destination.
I mean they have an idea they set out and I think too, you know, lots of notes and part
of the historical stuff is helpful to me to just all of the details. It's sort of like,
um you know a framework or something that I can rely on when I'm facing that blank page
to think about, you know what's going to come next in the story. It's good to have a little
bit of an idea of where you're headed. Some people though like the process of just, not
knowing at all and, and going through it with their eyes open and just ready to seize on
just whatever comes along and I think that can work for some people too, but it might
take a lot longer to finish because you may go down a lot of roads that won't come to
where you want to end up, and so then you might have to circle back and loose a lot
of material, but some people enjoy that, you know. So I think that everyone has to figure
out for themselves what they think is the best way to do it for themselves. But, for
me, I do keep lists and outlines and I kind of know how it's going to end, but the middle
is what, the part that I still have to figure out as I go. But the, I kind of know where
they're all going to end up. And sometimes I change it as I go, but.
[pause]
>>You have a question?
>>I do. [laughter] [inaudible]. Um, I was wondering, in terms of, I mean I've read books
and literally been like bawling in my room, you know. So when you write a book, and you
create these characters, and you like march them into these situations, are, do you feel
like you're more connected to them because you did it, or less connected.
>>Kelly, Um hmm, yes.
>>Because I imagine a director of a movie doesn't thinks a scary movie is scary as their
filming it. You know, so.
Kelly: That's a really good question. That's a really good question. I think um, when you're
working on you know, the technical aspects of it, like getting a scene just right or
getting the word choice just right, you're kind of in it in that way and so it's maybe
like a director, where you're not, you're not thinking of them as real people. But when
you're working on the story and you realize what's going to happen to one of them or you
what you have to do because it's like the only thing that makes sense or it's the come
uppance that they need to get or whatever. That is hard, I mean there are definitely
times where I've sat there and cried, realizing, oh, this is going to be so sad. [laughter]
You know, because they are like real people to you. And um, or to me anyway. But the one
I'm working on now has a lot of, um well this one too was sad, because I knew how it had
to end. I won't tell you, because that would be. I mean it's sort of, you sort of know
because we know about Louisa May Alcott. That she was not married in her life, so, you know
I knew I couldn't depart from history completely and say she marries this guy and they lived
happily ever after. And it's a totally different ending than the real historical record. We
couldn't do that. So, um, so that was hard in a way to sort of make it fit, um with the
historical record. But the one I'm working on now too, like I said is a woman who'd been
in a violent marriage, so she has to go through some pretty awful stuff and writing that is
hard. Um, even though it's in the service of the story and I'm going to save her from
that, I'm going to get her out of that situation, but writing that stuff is definitely emotional.
Yeah. It's like you have all these multiple personalities and you have to carry them around
with you every where you go. It's a weird life. [laughter]. It's a very weird life.
So, yeah.
[pause]
>>How, um like how tied to the history do you feel like you have to be when you're writing?
Kelly: That's hard, um, that's a good question too. And being, um when you write about a
real person. Basically, what I did was I chose a summer. 1855 is a summer we don't know that
much about what they did, so I purposely chose that, because I knew that would give me the
space to create this. But I knew, we know what happens, you know in the spring and we
know what happened in the fall. So I knew it was, you know, start with that and I could
create in between and then I would have to join back up. It was kind of fun, it kind
of gave me just like you know, Robert Frost has that saying, um free verse poetry is like
playing tennis without a net. You know if you don't have a, a structure to your poem
or your story then, anything goes, and how hard is that? You know and, and that's a,
well, I don't really agree with that because there's other things that are hard about that.
But this gave me a structure that, you know, I knew how it had to start, and how it had
to end, and the fun part was, how to get them to that point. Um, but in terms of I do want
to be accurate in the way that I portray the carriages and the clothes and the way that
they looked. I don't want to say that they got on a train in this town if there wasn't
a train in that town yet. So, doing that kind of research was, you know, hard, at times
to track down a little fact that you'd have to go through ten different books to try to
find this one little fact and it would end up being one sentence in the story, but it
was for my own satisfaction that I knew that it was correct. But then there comes a point
where you can't find the answer and then you just have to guess what it would be. Yeah,
and so.
>>Okay? Well, thank you so much for being here.
Kelly: Thank you so much you asked such good questions. It was wonderful, I love it. I'm
so happy. [laughter].
>>Well thank you for spending your time with us and um feel free to take a book as you
leave.
>>Thank you.
Kelly: Thank you very much.