Historical Fiction, Empathy, the Importance of Story, Mother-artists, and OH YES illegal fudge parties.
An interview with author Amy Lynn Green & a few just beautiful links
Friends, it has been a whirl-wind month. Our in-person gathering on faith, art and community (called Mini Moot) happened. I’ll send you a link to my talks once I figure out the tech. It was wonderful and exhausting. So, this newsletter is late, but I’m SO excited to finally share my interview with author Amy Lynn Green with you!
I met Amy in college, and we got to know each other while being teaching assistants for a chemistry class (terrible, but bonding), and the supper club Socrates Café that my husband and I started in the college Dining Commons - (my ploy was to date him, people like Amy actually attended because they are deep thinkers). If you haven’t read Amy’s books yet and you read this newsletter — go find them, you’ll enjoy them!
Her WW2 historical fiction books are stories you can’t put down because you like the characters and want to know what is going to happen, but they also always leave you thinking more deeply about life. My favorite is her epistolary novel Things We Didn’t Say (If you liked Guernsey, you’ll like this - except it’s set in a Minnesota prisoner of war camp. What? Yes, those existed). People apparently have strong feels about epistolary novels because they can be confusing, but I love them because who does not love snooping through other people’s diaries and mail?? I just read The Blackout Bookclub which we discuss here, too- and The Lines Between Us is also pretty great.
Without further ado - here’s my conversation with Amy, edited because of my rambles!
On why she loves writing historical fiction
“I’ve always been a history nerd, but the thing I like about writing historical fiction is you get to look at universal problems or questions but from a lens that doesn’t make people as defensive. So you can talk about racism, but you talk about it in the 1940s. Although it is the past, I get to write about things that are important today, like censorship, or what does it look like to find community… So I’m interested in the medium for that reason.
But it’s also just fun, because as you dig into the historical research, you just find out all these crazy things you didn’t know. Like people donating their dogs to the US Coast Guard in WW2. This happened! They got to train them and name them, and then at the end of the war they put them through a de-traumatization class and gave them back to their owners. Or illegal fudge-making parties in women’s’ colleges (because at the time people thought rich food was bad for young women?). So the college girls would secretly make fudge using the gas lamps in their rooms to melt the sugar and butter and cocoa. Watch out people, first comes the fudge, then comes the vote! You can’t make this up.
On creating characters with really strong, opposing beliefs about complicated issues – and throwing them up against each other.
You often have characters that have strong beliefs that are on opposing sides of an issue. And often there are these situations where they are facing complicated moral dilemmas – is this thing right? Maybe they’re both right? Maybe they’re both kind of right and kind of wrong? We became friends at a supper club in college called Socrates Café, where we would just talk around an issue from all angles and not have to land on one exact answer– just keep asking and understanding the issue. I feel like sometimes your characters in your books are like that!
“It makes for funny discussions with readers sometimes. I had a reader email me, very upset, because she couldn’t tell what I believed about pacifism from my second book and she really wanted to know what I thought was right or wrong. And I was like, “I’m here to get you to ask the questions, not to provide you with all of the answers that I believe. I can tell you what my characters would believe about that question if that helps?” And that was not satisfactory, I will let you know!
But I think one of the reasons that this happens in my stories is that some of it comes just naturally through various pieces of the history. World War Two has a lot of high stakes, high emotions and moral dilemmas inherent in the conflict, and so that makes it an easy place to start.
When I’m writing my story I usually think about what history I’m going to work into the book – what are some main plot points, and who are the most unlikely people to have to face those things? So you have an antisocial translator at a prisoner of war camp who is supposed to be there to have good PR for the camp and make peace, but she doesn’t like people. Or you have this pacifist who is supposed to be investigating a crime, which involves lying when he believes you shouldn’t lie. Or a librarian who doesn't like books. This is a great hack both for making the writing process more fun and for mirroring the kind of complexity that existed for real people in whatever time period you’re writing about.
On books building empathy
In the Blackout Bookclub, there is a character, Louise, who is pretty black and white on some of her principles, and is pretty hard to live with. What I liked about her character (friends, she literally has a “books or babies” dilemma)-- is that as you got to know her through the course of the story, you realized more about why she had these strong beliefs, and where they all came from. It wasn’t just abstract. And she, herself, also began to see her black and white abstract beliefs get more complicated when they were lived out and impacting real people. It felt like she saw things one way, and then came to a moment in the book where she questioned her motives like, “Wait, do I really love children, or am I just mad at my father?”. Like, she didn’t even understand herself, let alone others. But her actions were cloaked in this very noble language all the time.
So, interestingly, my editor actually had me go back and write the flashbacks from her early life into the book because they were like, “We don’t understand why this character is doing what she’s doing. You know more than we do.” So that was helpful for me as an exercise in building that character. But it was also helpful for me to realize the same is true for the people I see every day. I’m seeing their present day and where they ended up. But I don’t always get to see the things that led to that – and that would probably help me understand them a lot more if I could do that… My book club is reading Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis, and I think it’s a similar thing with that narrator coming to question herself and her motives. Books are good for creating empathy. As we watch characters reevaluate their motives, I think it encourages us to do that for ourselves, and maybe for the people in our lives who we are most easily annoyed with.
Why Story matters
If you had a soapbox and you could stand on it for five minutes and talk about why as a Christian it is a great thing to be a writer- and specifically a fiction writer (and not just, say for example, apologetic or theological papers, which, of course are needed, too) – what would you say?
Well, that could be a long soapbox! So let me do two smaller soap boxes!
One is that I think it’s easier for people to understand the importance of their own vocation and how it fits with their faith, and they’re maybe more likely to look down on somebody else’s vocation because they don’t understand it, or aren’t good at it. I remember when I was in college and they were putting up artwork in one of the new buildings, and it seemed super fancy, I was like, “Why are we spending all this money on something that isn’t necessary?! If we just cut all of this out and made it utilitarian, it would be cheaper and get the job done”. And I remember one of my professors said, “But God is a God of beauty and not just a God of truth.” It hit me that I was doing to the visual arts what I feel like people do to writers, in minimizing the importance of creativity and excellence in work that’s not obviously practical or ministry-related. But then that conversation made me think about the times that beauty and art has brought me closer to God, and that was a humbling experience. You know it sounds good to say, “Save money and just have concrete buildings and paint the wall white” – but where was that coming from? I mean there is moderation to be had, of course, – but ultimately art can bring us closer to God in a special way. So that’s a place where I am just as guilty as other people sometimes.
Then secondly, when it comes to fiction and story, I realized after reading some apologetics books that one of the main reasons I’m a Christian is story. Like if I were to tell somebody why I believe what I believe, it’s not the evidence for the Bible or the crucifixion or whatnot (and I’m not saying that’s not important, I’m glad people have done research in this), but for me, when I look around and I see the world, the story of the Bible matches the way the world is. It describes the suffering in the world. It describes the way that people are both made in the image of God and also broken by the fall. And we can see that and how people relate to each other right through history. And that for me is one of the most important reasons that I'm a Christian and not of another religion. A lot of that has to do with the fact I’ve seen truth through story. The parts of the stories I read that stick in my mind and my heart most are things that echo the story of the Bible (even if they weren’t written by a Christian). And sometimes I’ll read a book and I’ll be like, this feels “off” to me– like somebody who is musical, hearing something off key. (For example, in a novel someone is cheating on their spouse and it is portrayed as romantic). But then I realize that's the part of it that felt off, because it didn’t fit with the world that I see. I think story does a good job of raising those questions. It makes you say, “What do I see in this that’s beautiful and true? And what do I see in this that isn't those things, and why?”
On her experience with motherhood and making art
What was your experience writing books while having a baby? How did you do it? What was it like for you? As you know, this is kind of an obsession of mine - looking at these writing mothers in history - but I love hearing how people do it now.
“I like how you phrased that– “my experience” – because I’m sure as you looked into other writers in that position, you probably found they had different ways of dealing with it. And I think that’s one of the things that’s so bad, is when people tell (especially moms) this how you have to get your creative work in – because it can leave to feelings of inadequacy if you don’t do it that way, or you feel like you don't have enough motivation, like this one super driven person does, or the output that they have. Whereas if you can just look at other people and see it as someone sharing the story of what they did, you can try it and if it doesn’t work for you you can leave it. Honestly I feel that way about all writing advice.
So my first book is probably my favorite because it was the easiest to write. The second one I wrote in Covid lockdowns which was extremely isolating, just really emotionally difficult. And then the third book I was finishing up my marketing job and editing while pregnant. Then the book that’s coming out in January is the one that I wrote mostly fully while having a babe.
And when people ask me how I did that, I usually say, I don’t know? A helpful place to start is letting go of expectations of what a productive day looks like. Even though some people will say to be a disciplined writer you have to write every day, that’s not the case. There might be whole stretches of time where you don’t get writing done. A fellow writer who is a mom said once you get past the super sleep-deprived stage, you can be thinking about the writing you’re going to do, so that when you have time, it’s easier to jump in. I found that to be true in the past six months. So if I’m standing in the shower, instead of shopping lists, or being anxious, I just think about what’s next for my book. I write during nap times. But it’s also helpful to have some “office hours” when my husband watches the kids- and I think that’s good for productivity. Even if it’s just for one night a week, to know I’ll have that time to just focus. I can't get up at five in the morning, that just doesn’t work for me. Some things have worked better than others. I’ve scribbled handwriting while nursing. I’ve done voice-to-text while taking stroller rides (that was hilarious to read afterwards). All that to say, your writing journey doesn’t have to look like anybody else’s. You don’t have to so some specific thing. Even if a famous author did that.
You can find Amy’s books anywhere books are sold - and sign up for her occasional newsletter or follow her on social media.
Just Beautiful Links:
The round up is short and sweet this month. I’m starting to get feedback on my annotated Little Women from some tween/teen readers I sent it to, and it’s equally terrifying and so fun. (I asked them to be brutally honest. THEY ARE NOT FLITERING. It’s what I need. But it’s terrifying).
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