A bookcase of days

I’ve written about my great-grandmother’s diaries—how they’ve provided insight into my family, how I’ve used them as research for some of my historical fiction, and how they influenced me to begin my own daily diary-writing practice 25 years ago. 

For many years my mother was the keeper of the diaries. Whenever I visited her, I’d spend several hours reading through them. And when my mother prepared to move out of the house I’d grown up in, she sent the diaries to me. Now they’re displayed in a bookcase in my bedroom—which, until our young-adult children leave the nest for good, is also my writing space.

There, they’re just a reach away, so I can research and immerse myself in historical New England. When I was writing Full Cicada Moon and wanted to know the weather each day in 1969, I turned to her diary. As I’ve been writing the middle-grade novel Family of Ghosts and wanted to understand how women’s suffrage, World War II, and the influenza pandemic affected her and her small New Hampshire town in 1918, I turned to her diary. As I wrote the adult verse novel The Women of Shunem and needed details about the death of her son, I read her 1937 diary. And as I’ve been writing the adult novel Restored and wanted to know anything about the inn that was once a birthing hospital, where my mother and uncle were born, I read her diaries from the 1950s and ‘60s.

When I find a bookcase for my own diaries, I’ll post a photo of them.

Happy reading and writing!

Why I wrote Full Cicada Moon in poetry

I'm often asked why, when I could have written Full Cicada Moon in any number of forms, I decided to tell the story in free-verse poetry. 

The answer is pretty simple: it's the way the story came to me. And, once I began writing the story in free verse, I realized that what Mimi had to say flowed more easily that way.

Originally, I’d intended to finish the first draft in free verse and then rewrite subsequent versions in more traditional narrative prose. But when I got about a quarter way through the first draft, I realized that this form was the best way for Mimi to tell her story. Because: 

1. Poetry let me write from a deep place in Mimi's character. 
2. Poetry let me express Mimi's emotions not only by which words I used but by how I arranged them on the page. 
3. I could omit tedious stage directions (for example, "She walked to the other side of the room," etc.) and write only the essential information that conveyed the story. 
4. Poetry gives more space for the reader to fill in their story between the lines and in the unwritten words. 
5. Poetry is fun to write.

Happy writing!