Catherine Gildiner
CATHERINE GILDINER is the author of three memoirs and a novel. Too Close to the Falls (1999) was a New York Times and Globe and Mail bestseller. This was followed by two sequels, also bestsellers, After the Falls (2009) and Coming Ashore (2014). Catherine lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Visit her at www.catherinegildiner.com, or at her blog, http://gildinersgospel.blogspot.com.
Catherine was a much-anticipated guest for a session of Memories into Story I, the introductory online course on memoir writing I teach through University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies. The following is an edited version of my students’ collaborative interview with Catherine about her memoirs and her writing life.
“I learned as a psychologist that almost everyone feels the same things and that people spend the majority of their lives dealing with their own vulnerability and defending against it. In my writing, it was easier to reveal things in my own unconscious knowing that almost everyone is dealing with the same conflicts.”
You were well into adulthood when you started your first memoir. Was there a trigger that compelled you to write it? Was it something that percolated for years before you put pen to paper?
No, there was no direct trigger; however, there was a precipitating incident. I was out to dinner one night in 1998 with a CBC crowd in my neighbourhood, and someone was saying they thought their sixteen-year-old daughter was too young to have a job. I started laughing at this and said I’d worked since I was four, and sixteen was definitely old enough to have a job. (My husband said we’d never be asked back there for dinner.) I told them about working with Roy, the black delivery car driver, in my father’s drugstore. Everyone enjoyed my story, and the next day the CBC woman called me up and told me to write it up for the CBC short story contest. I was fifty years old and had never thought of myself as an author. I had, however, written a psychological advice column for fifteen years for Chatelaine.
I found that I had a hard time turning the story into fiction. I realized then that I was a memoirist and not a fiction writer. I felt I had to tell the story the way I perceived it had happened. Thus I began to write what later became Too Close to the Falls.
How did you go about getting your first book published? Were the experiences very different for your second and third memoirs?
For the first, I had no agent. I decided to send the book to every Canadian publisher in The Canadian Writer’s Market as far as the letter E and sent it to ECW Press on a Friday, and on the following Monday I got a couriered letter saying they were accepting it.
I did a lot of publicity work on my own. I went to hundreds of book clubs, etc., and gave a myriad of talks, and Too Close was a hit. It was on the Globe and Mail’s bestseller list for 174 weeks and also on the New York Times bestseller list. When Penguin saw it on the bestseller list, they contacted me, and it was sold in the U.S. to Penguin and in England to Harper and Collins. Then, for the sequel, After the Falls, Random House bid on it in Canada. Random House also published my novel, Seduction. For my last memoir, Coming Ashore, I have returned to ECW. For complicated reasons, which are not relevant here, ECW bought back the rights from Random House and put out their own editions of all three memoirs that make a boxed set. I now have an agent who sells my foreign rights and advises me on contracts. I have done all the selling myself.
Were you at all scared to write your first memoir? Memoirs open you up like open-heart surgery. Did you ever consider writing your story as fiction?
I was not at all frightened to write the memoir. I had no idea that anyone would read it. I thought of it as a writing exercise — who wants to read about a four-year-old in Lewiston, New York, in the 1950s? I was shocked when it went viral.
Thinking back to your first memoir, what aspects of memoir writing were you naive about? What did you learn from that experience that influenced your approach going forward with your writing?
I was shocked how accurate everything had to be. I received dozens of letters saying that a Rambler could not have had four doors in 1954, or some such thing. People picked up every tiny error. I learned to check every single fact, and don’t trust the copy editor, who doesn’t necessarily have any more of an idea how many doors a Rambler had than I do. If you are going to describe something, do it correctly. I even had people write to me about the incorrect description of the tassels on Cisco’s and Pancho’s hats from a ’50s TV show.
I was also naive in that I didn’t realize not everyone would agree with me. I learned that memory is different for different people. I was an only child with parents who died young. I had no one to disagree with me. I found out that people in Lewiston didn’t see things as I did. If you recall the essay contest for “Find a living saint amongst us,” you will remember that it was written from my point of view and I thought I should have won. The boy who did win wrote to me and said, “Did you ever think that maybe, just maybe, my essay was better than yours?”
I also had to confront the idea of memory. Memory is not fact. There are events that occur and my memory is my interpretation of those events. Unconscious material gets mixed in with our interpretation of the past and that can be distorted. Our sense of self, our guilt and shame and fear and vulnerability shape our memories.
I found the same thing when I was a psychologist and ran family groups. Siblings often differed wildly in how they remembered an event.
How did you retrieve memories for your three memoirs? Did you have personal records (e.g., journals)?
I had no journals for the first two memoirs. For the third memoir, I discovered letters to my mother that I had written to her from Oxford, and they brought back some memories.
I found that it was best to sit down at the computer and just start writing, and since memory is associative, one neuron hits another, just like in a pinball machine. As you write, you remember more and more. I have to say I do have a good memory and can remember more than the average person, especially in terms of dialogue.
It may also appear that I have remembered more than I have. For example, in Too Close, there are only twelve episodes. Everyone can remember twelve episodes from their life. Each episode is spun out for a chapter. Memory experts are right when they say what is on permanent file in our minds is the memories of the most joyous and the most traumatic of our lives. What gets lost is the tedium in between. Anyone can tell you where they were and what they were doing the day Kennedy died, or for younger people what they were doing when the twin towers were hit. On a personal level, everyone remembers the first time they confront death, betrayal, first love, first sex, etc.
Did you freewrite regularly before you became a famous writer? And do you freewrite while you are working on a book, or is your writing focused on the project at hand?
I have never freewritten, a term I have never heard before. I usually have a project and then start with a one-line theme, then a two-page outline, and then I start writing. After about forty pages, I then try to make chapter outlines and a two-page character analysis for each character.
I do write a draft without any editing or looking back on what I have written. (Is that freewriting?) I find you excavate the best material when you tap into your unconscious. If you are constantly correcting yourself, you will never get down there.
Jung is right — we have a collective unconscious. The closer you stay to the unconscious in your writing, the more universal it will be. Let’s face it — no one cares about Cathy McClure, the four-year-old from Lewiston, New York. She is not famous like Princess Di or Madonna. What people relate to is what we have in common — people are looking for a verification of their own dark, unconscious feelings.
While working as a psychologist and raising a family, how did you manage to set aside time for writing?
When I was a psychologist , I was also on a rowing team and I had a husband and three children. I got up and wrote from 5:00 to 7:30 in the morning. I never wrote at night. After the success of Too Close, I cut my practice in half, and instead of going to work at 9:00, I went at noon. I always worked until 5:00 p.m. That way I could row on a team in the morning, then write from 7:30 to 11:30. a.m. Then go to my office. I never worked on the weekends or at night. I spent that time with my family. I looked at writing as a 9-to-5 job. I did not wait to be inspired. I just sat down at the same time every day.
When you began writing each of your memoirs, how conscious were you of the organization and structure? Did you plot these out, or did you just start writing and let the structure develop?
The longer I write, the more I plan ahead. When I wrote Too Close, I didn’t even know I was writing a memoir. I just kept adding to the story about Roy and me until one day I branched out.
For my other memoirs, I used large bristol boards that I break down into chapters and then subchapters. I try to be as organized as I can be. I also wrote a PhD on Darwin’s influence on Freud many years ago, so I know how to organize big projects. The secret is to keep breaking it down into sub-categories.
I also wrote a thriller called Seduction. It has to do with Darwin and Freud. That had to be very carefully plotted, especially since all the clues have to be planted early and the characters have to be flawed but not so flawed that the killer is obvious. That was a lot of work. I also had to teach the reader about Darwin and Freud as she moved through the book. Seduction was a hit in Holland and Germany and was chosen by Der Spiegel as one of the ten best mysteries of the year. It had trouble in North America because people wanted another light-hearted memoir and it was not that at all. It was intellectually more complicated. I was warned by my publishers not to write outside my genre — but I didn’t listen. (Story of my life!)
How do you decide how/where to break your memoir down into chapters?
There are a couple of ways to do this. One, at the planning stage, I set a chapter for each moment of emotional or moral growth. Two, if a chapter gets too long, I divide it.
You write with such precision and seeming ease. Is there any aspect of writing that you find particularly challenging: opening lines, dialogue, characters, something else?
I find romance difficult to write about. Also, appearing vulnerable in text is not very easy for me. My favourite thing is dialogue. I have an ear for dialogue. I can remember what someone says and how they speak. It is harder for me to remember the place, and sometimes I have to look at pictures to remember my surroundings.
In an excerpt you shared from Too Close to the Falls, you reached all the way back to events that occurred at the cusp of your awareness as a child (four years of age). What proportion of these memories did you recall in detail, and what proportion did you fill in and breathe more life into by talking to family, other relatives, or even doing research on the Niagara area of that time?
I actually remember all of those incidents and the dialogue. Roy’s dialogue was unique and different from my parents’, so I remembered his phrases very clearly. While my mother would say, “It is so quiet you can hear a pin drop,” Roy would say, “It is so quiet you can hear a mouse pissin’ on cotton.” I remembered all his colourful phrases and tried to reuse them.
Research for a childhood memoir is very tricky. You need to rely on your memory more. For example, I described our beautiful revolutionary-style wooden home with the black shutters and the wraparound porch. When I went back to see it, it was not palatial, and it was much smaller than I remembered it. Children see things as larger than they are. Have you ever gone back to see your childhood home? You will be surprised. The question is, do you write the memoir based on the real size of the house or the house from your memory? I chose to do it from my memory, for that is the only way to make a four-year-old’s memory authentic.
Do you check facts with other people who shared the worlds you write about?
No, not at all. I am writing from my memory, not other people’s. I did do careful checking on the historical facts — for example, to get all the correct dates for the civil rights marches in After the Falls. However, the memories surrounding those events are mine and mine alone.
Do you ever invent characters that did not exist or create composite characters?
I have a few composite characters because there were too many characters in my life to make it work in a memoir. In Coming Ashore, I lived in three countries and had three separate lives full of people. No reader could remember all the characters. In writing about Oxford, I amalgamated some of the less important characters.
At what point do you believe that “embellishing” a memoir crosses the line into fabrication?
I think that sometimes you have to lie to tell the truth, for emotional truth is not always served by a retelling of bland events. For example, although I have an entire chapter on Jimi Hendrix in Coming Ashore, the majority of it happens in my head. I only exchanged a few words with the man.
Then, of course, there is the problem of memory as fabrication. What exactly is a memory? How does it reflect the “real” past or the actual event? It is a way our unconscious allows us to restructure our pasts.
I like the way you grounded your writing in the era in Coming Ashore by referencing current events involving LBJ and Prince Charles’s investiture as the Prince of Wales. How does a writer season his or her stories with references to the era without it sounding contrived?
For me that was easy, because current events have always been a big part of my psyche. The example of the prince’s investiture was a boring non-event for me, but I got swept up in it, and it caused me great inconvenience by knocking me out of my regular life. It marooned me in Wales with Clive. Of course, when you are knocked off kilter is when exciting things happen.
I think that in a memoir you can only use historical events that mean something to the character. I am writing, or was writing, a ’50s novel where the character’s neighbour gets polio in the epidemic. I did a lot of research on polio — reading book after book on it. However, polio never had a personal hold on me. I never had it, nor did anyone I know and love have it. My two friends that read this proposed novel said that the polio section sounded like research that I’d fallen in love with and was determined to bore the reader with. So the moral of the story is to put in historical references only if they matter to the protagonist in some real way.
You achieve a good balance between descriptive pieces and passages that move the story along. How do you decide which parts of your life to describe in detail and which ones to skip over? Is there a way of recognizing when you included too much of one or the other?
I find that very difficult to judge, and that is why when I am finished a book I give it to three readers, and from there it goes to the publisher and then to more editors for several edits. Coming Ashore was almost twice as long in manuscript as it was when published. I had far too much description, and several stories expounded the same theme. I had four chapters on the mountain climbing in Wales. It was a harrowing trip and I nearly lost a leg, but I was told it went on far too long and no one wanted the medical details, so another chapter was cut. I was told by a wise editor that I was writing a Bildungsroman, a German term describing a piece of writing that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood. You don’t have to have many chapters to show the same moral growth of the character. In the mountain-climbing section in Wales, I had been a fool, had not listened to anyone, and got into a dangerous situation. I learned that I am not always in charge and there are things that I cannot do strictly through force of will. That moment of maturity did not have to be hammered home.
I enjoy the trace of sarcasm in your writing mixed with heartfelt memories. As you write, are you conscious of trying to establish rapport, camaraderie, or even empathy regarding your experience?
I am not conscious of that at all. I write it as I remember it and include the emotions I felt at the time. If you overthink things, they don’t come off as real. It is best to get into the character, who was me, so it wasn’t that hard, and then just react as she would react, complete with all her warts. You have to trust that the reader will be on your side.
A good trick for writing is to picture writing for one person, your best friend. Someone who totally gets you and for whom you don’t have to explain too much. I never picture a group of readers or I’d be stymied.
Do you make a conscious choice to use humour, or is it something that just emerges in your writing?
That emerges naturally. I just have a quirky way of looking at the world. As my mother said, “You were not the child we were expecting.”
I am naturally comedic — an in-born trait — it started in my crib. If you try too hard, it has a forced, stand-up-comic feel.
Your point of view and sense of humour reminds me of the Greek Gods seeing the foibles of humanity and toying with them. As a writer, do you see yourself that way?
No, as I said, I am comedic and always have been. It is best to write using your natural personality. If you try to alter it — it does not work. I think there are two things that contribute to what you call my noticing the “foibles of humanity.” My mother always laughed at my pointing out the oddness of civilization, so that encouraged me to see the world in a weird way. My mother was eccentric, and that also set me a bit apart. Also, I was not raised in the usual fashion with a mother at home like most kids in the 1950s. I had Roy, the store, and my father as constant companions. I recognized that Roy saw things differently from my mother and father. The nuns at school saw things differently from Roy and my parents. So I learned early that there was no right answer. The concept of authority eluded me.
An example of this occurs in Too Close to the Falls in the bullying section. My parents told me to tell the authority, the principal, about the bullying. The nuns told me to offer up my suffering for the poor souls in purgatory, and Roy advised me to hit the bully with something hard when he isn’t paying attention. I did the latter and got in a lot of trouble, but the bullying stopped.
Racial tension is a thread in Too Close to the Falls. It’s lurking beneath the surface in the child’s-eye view and the adult responses. How did you decide how to frame this?
First of all, that is how it happened, so I simply recorded it. Also, I think that is how a child perceives prejudice. At first you pick up only slight nuances of behaviour, and then when these behaviours begin to accumulate over years, you understand the problem of “race in America.” My parents never said a prejudiced word, ever. It is interesting to note that at the age of four, I had no idea what being black meant, but by seven or eight, I had picked up that there was racial tension in America without anyone ever saying so directly. It is a child’s job to decipher the rules of world so they can protect themselves and grow into adults. To use a Darwinian phrase, it is a “protective mechanism.”
When you are a child, you are unaware of harsher realities. I was surprised that Roy lived in a motel, but I really had no idea what a motel was. I didn’t connect it with a sad, transient life, only knew that it had an interesting driveway for a home. The way children judge others’ lives is if they are happy. Roy appeared, from my childhood perspective, to be a happy man, so I assumed he liked his life and his lot in it. When the sheriff is a bit short with him, I am shocked by his rudeness — not by prejudice. I had no idea what that was. Like every other child, I learned what prejudice was in tiny increments.
The harsher realities of race come in my second book, After the Falls. In fact, a good deal of the book is about race relations. I return to the topic in Coming Ashore yet again when I teach at a ghetto school. I think it is fair to say that race is one of my preoccupations. I came upon it early and have not let it go. I am now planning a book on the Underground Railroad in Lewiston. The home I grew up in was used in the Underground Railroad — the last stop before smuggling slaves across the Niagara River to Canada.
Do you feel that being a psychologist makes you a better writer, such as in character development?
I don’t think being a psychologist helps me with character development. They are different fields entirely. What it has helped me with is telling the unvarnished truth. I learned as a psychologist that almost everyone feels the same things and that people spend the majority of their lives dealing with their own vulnerability and defending against it. In my writing, it was easier to reveal things in my own unconscious knowing that almost everyone is dealing with the same conflicts. I know that because I listened to it for twenty-five years.
How did studying abroad influence your writing?
Studying abroad gives people perspective and helps them to grow, no matter what they are doing. I had spent a great deal of my time criticizing America. I had been in the civil rights movement — to the point that I was investigated by the FBI. I had to go to England before I began to appreciate America and love it as my country. While in England, I saw what was great about it. Sure America had class distinction, but nothing like in England. In America you could actually get ahead and people admired your drive without calling you an upstart. Your accent did not tell someone your social status. A scholarship student was revered in America but looked down upon in England for not having gone to the right schools. Americans were taught to say what they felt, not what was socially appropriate. When I left England, I felt more rooted in North America. I had a new perspective. I was starting to give up adolescent rebellion and grow up.
A good example of this phenomenon is the writer Phillip Roth. He lived in England for fifteen years. He came home to America, and in his late 60s wrote his best books, one after another, American Pastoral, The Human Stain, etc. When asked why he had such a renaissance after forty years of writing, he said he had never appreciated America until he lived in England. It gave him a new perspective and a longing to write about it.
The Catholic faith plays an integral role in Too Close to the Falls. How have those experiences shaped you now as a woman and successful writer?
All experiences shape you, no matter what they are, so that is hard to answer. I would say that the Catholic Church — the nuns, etc. — did their best to squash me and my spirit. It is only my parents standing behind me in everything that allowed me to keep my spirit.
That being said, some of those nuns were strong women. Mother Agnes was a powerful foe and in many ways a role model. She did not take crap from anyone — ever, whether it was me or the mayor of the town. She fought for her belief in God at all times and never once seemed confused or in conflict. She was a strong woman who took her job seriously. If she wanted to punish you, she was willing to stay in the classroom until dark till you completed your punishment. No matter how misguided her messianic qualities were (my name on the board in hells-of-fire red chalk — why? because I was going to hell — the chalk was just helping me to adjust to my role in eternity) you had to admire her strength.
In Too Close to the Falls, your parents appear almost removed from your day-to-day life. Roy appears to be parent/father/confidant/friend. Did you receive any negative feedback from parents or family or other readers with regard to how you told this story?
My parents died young. You will read about this in After the Falls. The upside of losing your parents at a young age (my father had a brain tumour when I was fourteen; mother, leukemia) — and there aren’t many — is that you can write whatever you want about your family because they are not around to protest. I am an only child, and my cousins are nuns and priests, so they wrote me off years ago. I am on my own in the world to say what I want. There is no one I can hurt in my family.
I was surprised when I did book clubs and some people thought my mother was neglectful. I saw her as a great mom. Working in the store and delivering with a man I liked was the best thing for me. I was busy all day, which is what the paediatrician ordered, and happy. Some thought she was neglectful as a cook. So she didn’t cook — so what? That’s why God invented restaurants.
It seems to me that people have some stereotyped view of what mothers are supposed to be — especially in the ’50s. She had a graduate degree in math in an era before women worked. She was a prisoner of her time. She said to me once that she really didn’t like motherhood. She found it a confusing and difficult job with no rules. She said it was like teaching. (She only taught for one day, saying she didn’t know she’d have to teach children.) She loved math but not the job of teaching it. She loved me but not the job of motherhood. I imagine if we were all honest, there would be lots of mothers who would say the same thing.
After this harangue, I just reread the question and realized I didn’t answer it. I don’t know exactly what you mean by “how I told the story.” I can tell you that some people in Lewiston where I grew up were angry about how I described their harsh treatment of Warty, the woman who had neurofibromatosis, the same disease as the elephant man. They felt they were kinder than I portrayed them. I pointed out that she was referred to as Warty — even on her prescriptions — so that was somewhat of a tip-off on how the town treated her. I think their memories were clouded by guilt and they became defensive. This angry little cadre did agree that her name was Warty and that she was not allowed to talk to or touch anyone ever for fear of contamination. They wanted me to mention that they left a clothing box for her in the post office. When I said that was already in the book, they said they hadn’t seen it.
This is a perfect example of how guilt can cloud memory and actually distort it. I noticed as a psychologist this happens all the time.
What do you think makes Roy such a memorable character for readers? And: after writing Too Close to the Falls, did you ever find out what happened to him?
I think that the reader sees him through my adoring eyes. We had a perfect relationship, which was free of the bonds of parental discipline and one of mutual respect. He was always kind without being a suck. He didn’t care about money or accolades, and he had human compassion. Yet he was a womanizer and a gambler and led a fun life when not at work, so he was no saint. He only gave advice when I asked for it, which is an admirable trait. Plus, I never felt he treated me as a child. He probably did, but I always felt respected. And we had fun. These are rare qualities. Others have informed me that I was a difficult child. Yet I never was difficult at the store or with him. Some people are talented with human emotions and know how to make people behave without ever saying a word. He was one of those — and I was a tough case.
What happened to Roy is the most commonly asked question about all of my writing. I have received hundreds of letters about it. I find it moving that you all felt his loss as I did.
No, I never found out. However, I was out in San Francisco giving a talk once and a pharmacist who used to work at the drugstore as a student was there in the audience — forty years later. He told us that it was his job to deliver Roy’s last pay cheque. He had gone to where Roy lived, but he was gone. All of his clothes were there, and there was even a mouldy cup of coffee on the counter. Either he left quickly or something bad happened to him, or both.
How long did it take for you to become confident in your unique writing voice?
I was not confident when I wrote my first book — Too Close — but it was the only voice I had, so I went with it. Well, actually that is not true — I had written a number of academic papers, but that didn’t count as creative writing.
Readers are smarter than you think. They can tell a phony in the first few pages. Whatever your voice is, go with it. Authenticity is more important than being clever.
As a writer of memoir, how much importance would you place on platform? Are you on Facebook? Twitter? Do you use social networks to reach your audience and/or publishers?
I was told by Random House to get on Facebook and Twitter, so I do both. The rule of thumb is to build up friends — I have six or seven hundred and communicate with them, and then in every sixth post I mention my own published writing. If you push yourself all the time, you are correctly dismissed as a snake-oil salesman. When you do Tweet or Facebook about your work, make it humorous or in some way interesting. When you have a reading or a launch, send out Facebook invitations. It works. It broadens your network. I also blog and put those links on Twitter and Facebook.
How do you decide what to blog about? Do you recommend including excerpts from works in progress?
I only blog when something occurs to me — sometimes it is twice in a week and sometimes it can go for six months. I don’t think I do it very effectively. I wrote a column for many years in Chatelaine, so I think in 750 word chunks because that is how I was programmed. It would be best to write shorter blog posts more often. My son’s friend Christian Lander wrote a blog called Stuff White People Like. The blog was sold to Random House for a huge sum to be made into a book. He had millions of followers. It is short, pithy, and funny. That is what people want to read.
That being said, I am surprised how many read my blog, for when I go anywhere, people mention it. Even my auto mechanic read the one where I had a black eye and men asked me out for the first time in forty years. (http://gildinersgospel.blogspot.ca/2014/06/a-black-eye-opener.html) See, I just slipped in a blog link!
I never post excerpts from my work, but some have done it successfully, and I do think it is a good idea. If you want to see a successful media person, read Terry Fallis. He got in the race early and has maintained a lead. It paid off for him with Canada Reads, etc. He blogs and is in complete control of social media. (Note his tone. It is slightly self-deprecating, humorous, erudite, and he radiates kindness.) He has podcasts, etc. I think he is the best in that area and is worth studying.
Which writers (or books) have inspired you? Has your work been compared to anyone else’s, and if so, how do you feel about the comparison?
George Eliot has inspired me — I have loved her heroines and how she is always in a personal struggle but also concerned with the world at large. I think Middlemarch is one of the best books ever written. All of the town characters are universal while at the same time being unique.
Dickens is a great creator of character. Within three lines a character is fully drawn. He or she may change or grow as the novel progresses, but that first description is always spot on.
Philip Roth’s later work has moved me. His combinations of current events in America with character are unparalleled. The death of the American city of Newark is spectacular in American Pastoral. Race is explored in a unique way in The Human Stain. In Sabbath’s Ghost, he was brave enough to create a reprehensible character but forced the reader to care about him.
My first memoir has been compared in conversation and in print to To Kill a Mockingbird. I assume it is the childhood innocent voice and the issue of race in Mockingbird that reminds others of Too Close to the Falls. I, of course, have been flattered by the comparison. I doubt, but hope, Harper Lee would be equally flattered.
The Glass Castle is another comparison in print and often in conversation in book clubs. I honestly don’t get the comparison other than we are both young girls coping with childhood. Her parents were poor and unhelpful and bordering on mental illness. Her childhood was tragic, and she thankfully rose above it. I saw mine as happy, so I am at a loss to get the similarity.
What three characteristics are essential for a memoir to be compelling?
Good writing
Honesty
Conflict — internal or external
Sometimes people who write memoirs don’t get that there still has to be a dramatic arc even if the story is true. It is conflict that pushes the reader along to the next page in fiction and in nonfiction.
What can editors bring to the table in helping a writer polish and publish their work?
There are good and bad editors, and I have had both. I had one who had no sense of humour. I will give you an example. The first line of my novel Seduction is “I killed my husband and the embarrassing thing is I forget why.” She wanted it changed to “I killed my husband and for some unconscious reason I have blocked why.” I knew at that point I was in trouble. She knew a lot about Darwin and Freud, but she had no sense of humour. The whole book was a struggle. We saw the world differently.
At their best, editors are invaluable. They can let you know when you are overdoing things. I had a great editor for my last book, Coming Ashore. She pointed out my excesses. She said I was too mean in my description of my boyfriend Clive’s aristocratic mother. She was right. I toned it down. She also streamlined the prose, saying I had already made a point. That is one of my foibles: beating a dead horse. I have always enjoyed it and have to have the whip taken out of my hand. (What works in storytelling does not always work in writing.)
She also pointed out faults in my timeline. If I arrived in January to Oxford, I couldn’t have seen heather. She helped me keep in all the humour and to highlight it. Sometimes I didn’t recognize when I’d said something funny, and she had to help me to see it and keep it in.
I also had a good editor for After the Falls. She did a great structural edit. For example, she pointed out that I didn’t need three chapters on my job at the doughnut shop. She said condense it into one short chapter. She was right when she said this is a novel about Cathy growing up, not about Cathy’s life at the Puerto Rican doughnut store. It is just a step along the way. I listened to her, and the book was better for it. She also taught me something else: just because something happened in a graphic way does not mean that the reader wants all the details. In this book, I witnessed a gang-bang sex scene, not exactly a rape, and put in all the details as I watched from a closet where I’d hidden. She made me tone it down by half. When people read the scene, they all said it was so graphic they couldn’t finish it. Again, she was right.
With editors, you have to learn to listen to what they say and not be, as they say in the writing world, “print proud.” Yet, here is the tricky part. You have to learn when you are right and they are wrong. Sometimes you fall in love with a scene because it is good writing — but it may not contribute directly to the theme of the novel. Other times, you know in your gut what works and you have to go with it.