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Writing as I do, with about as much sense of where the book is going as a blind driver has of the road ahead, makes a joke of the question of what effect I’m hoping to have on the reader.Fiction often has unexpected reverberations. It’s always startling to have a reader say that one of your books has had a powerful impact on his or her life. Sometimes it’s as straightforward
as a novel helping a person through a tough time, and make no mistake, I believe that distraction--call it escape--is a valuable commodity. But other times the impact can be more specific, and less expected. I once had a letter from a woman wanting me to know that a scene I wrote, in which a character broke the needle to which she was becoming addicted, led the reader to become clean and sober: She wrote me on the first anniversary.So, should I write to stimulate comfort--or sobriety, for that matter?
No. Nothing kills a good book faster than being built around A Message. My job as a novelist is to reach people. I entertain, yes. And I teach, to a degree. Also rant (quietly, in the mouths of my characters) and I share my excitement and my rage and things that amuse or interest me or--
At the same time, I know that what I write is going to touch lives. When I put words down on a page, tens of thousands of people will read them. I look over my own shoulder and wonder, will this offend anyone? Hurt anyone? And sometimes I change things, and take bits out. But then again, there is a responsibility to the story itself, and if it steps on toes, well, it steps on toes.
Touchstone, among other things, is about terrorists. I wrote it in part to try to get my head around the why of terrorism, the who and the how.
I wonder, what effect will it have on its readers?
10 comments:
Hi, Laurie:
Touchstone affected me on several levels. The one I was most aware of (and grateful for) initially was its richness and depth. I was going through a rough patch when I received my ARC, and it was one of those rare books that let me crawl into another world and scarcely come up for air. Comfort is too small a word.
I'm always touched by books that describe the trench warfare of WWI, as my paternal grandfather was among the last of the Doughboys to go to Europe. I have a newspaper clipping of an interview he gave about his experiences when he was in his 80's, but I know he must have been affected more deeply than his often light-hearted comments let on. I wonder how much of that legacy lived in my father and was passed along to me.
I was fascinated by the character of Gray and how you presented just enough information to keep me guessing about the extent to which his unique abilities were a function of 'simple' biology vs. something more paranormal (or at least not explicable by modern science). That was, I thought, a lovely touch.
I'm ready to read the final version now, and will think more about the terrorism aspect as well. In the meantime, thank you for yet another job most excellently well done!
Kerry
Good morning, Laurie.
I just received my copy of Touchstone in the mail yesterday. My daughter called me at work to tell me that it had arrived. I had to make her promise to wait for me to get home before she opened the package. After all, I wanted to see the pristine (signed) copy, too. Also, I didn't want her to get her paws on your book before I did. Mom gets to read it first!
Well, it was late last night when I finally got to lay down and open the front cover of Touchstone. You had me at the opening line. I made myself stop reading once I finished the Prologue, or else I knew I would be up all night reading. That is, I made myself stop after I had read the Prologue three times in a row, drinking in the beauty of the words, rolling the wonderful phrases over and over in my mind. It is perfect. Already Touchstone is worth the wait. I am counting the minutes until I can go home from work today so that I can continue reading.
Your books mean so much to me. I have learned so much from your writing. Your words, richly redolent of the sights and sounds of other peoples and cultures, transport me to places I will probably never get to physically visit. You have introduced me to new information and thoughts, expanded my worldview beyond the borders of my own pedestrian world. And, it goes without saying, your writing offers me escape and respite from the throes of my life. I can not wait to see where Touchstone takes me.
Thank you, Roxanne
Kerry, glad you enjoyed it. And Roxanne, I'm very glad for the sake of your job that the book is not available for download, or you'd have your head craned over your computer all day, listening to the whispering voices...
Still, the weekend's coming up.
Laurie:
Hey, I can multitask! :)
On your blog, you requested questions. I often feel the desire to write, but think that I don't have any interesting ideas or experiences to communicate. So--here is a (hopefully not too lame or too long) question:
Where do you get your ideas? Do you pluck them from the headlines or somewhere else? How do you know something is worthy or interesting to write about?
Roxanne
I take this question, "Where do you get your ideas?" as more a question of, "With all the ideas floating around out there, present and historical, how do you beat off the chaff and decide which ideas will go to make a book?"
Touchstone began, as The Art of Detection did, with a conversation with my editor. We both love the Twenties, but found it mildly frustrating to be limited by the world view of the Russell series. Mary Russell (This is the series beginning with The Beekeeper's Apprentice, for those of you unfamiliar with LRK land) is great as a narrator, but the tongue-in-cheek flavor of the books clearly limits where I can go with them.
I wanted something harder edged, but I wanted something English and historical. The General Strike had long interested me (for those of you keeping track, Russell and Holmes are currently up to the summer of 1924, in the book I'm currently writing, and Touchstone is set in April 1926.)
After choosing a central concern for a book, I generally find that other ideas--characters, themes, items I find of interest--begin to cling, and the book grows from there.
Hi Laurie,
greetings from Europe. Reading that a new book from you is out was my good book news 2008, I am just slightly shocked to see that so far I've seen delivery times of 2-4 weeks, this can be so long!
Here comes a question!
How do you enter into your historical research, how much time do you allow yourself for it (my experience is that once you start, it drags you in deeper and deeper, years after ....) and where do you dig around for the "daily life details"? Any favorite authors?
Especially - how do you choose your reading material? Do you allow yourself the time to go into archives and original sources for specific issues?
As a historian by training who spend wonderful hours in archives, such as the delightful UK Public Record Office, this is something I often think about when reading your historical books, which are so vivid on atmo and details.
Ditto!
Laurie,
I'm surprised that you don't have an idea of where your books are going while you're writing them. I'd recently been admiring the subtle changes in Russell that show her maturing as the series progresses, and I thought surely you had to plan ahead for that. And the detailed nature of the cases and clues!
Do you do any planning, or do you just start with the ideas? (Plotter or pantser?) If you just start with the ideas, how many drafts do you go through to get such beautiful, well-orchestrated finished products?
Snort. (I'm chuckling at the last sentence of your most recent post.)
I will be heading home from work (to read Touchstone!) in about half an hour. So I wanted to say thank you for taking the time to do this, Laurie. And thank you for your responses. As someone who is accustomed to doing everything for myself, the notion of utlizing "experts in the field" is thought-provoking. Hmmmm. Food for thought. Maybe I don't need to be frozen into inactivity (writing-wise) by the fear of not knowing what I am writing about. Maybe I just need to find myself some "experts" and pick their brains/use them as sounding boards.
Thanks again. And good luck in/with the storm.
Roxanne
I am deep into my second reading of Touchstone. Grey's supersensitivity is a matter of his sensory apparatus being set on hair trigger - which actually occurs with some people, not to that extent. Extra sensitive senses is even a known neurological difference that drives people who have it screaming bananas up the wall. Besides, there's a precedent in American popular TV - "Monk".
I think it was the sound from the shell, not the shock and explosion, that did the dirty work. And be it known that the feeling of being "blown apart and put back together and purged" is one of the things reported by members of indigenous shamanistic cultures as a shaman's initiation.
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