Alexandra Grabbe is the author of The Nansen Factor, Refugee Stories. Her recent work appeared in Next Avenue and Washington Independent Review and is forthcoming from HuffPost Personals. More can be found at alexandragrabbe.com.
[…]
Meredith: Have you ever had to betray your original idea for a piece of writing in order to create the work it becomes? How about your view of yourself as a writer—ever betrayed, abandoned or, perhaps, transformed an image, dream or hope?
Alexandra: I wrote a blog during the last seven months of my mom’s life. She passed at 97 in 2006. By Bea’s Bedside was intended for family, but soon strangers started leaving comments. A follower suggested turning the blog into a book. The resulting homecare memoir remained too bloglike for some agents. One wrote that my manuscript “might work best in the blog format that it originated in.” Another disagreed and pitched a dozen editors who all shied away since the manuscript ends with Bea’s death (albeit with dignity and in her own bedroom). Agent Felicia Eth warned me it would be a tough sell: “I, and many other agents, do occasionally do books like this because they are so necessary for all of us. But I (and most others) pick and choose the one to do very carefully and very infrequently since they are so hard to sell. There’s a general sense that despite every single one of us facing these issues, it’s just not the kind of book that readers rush out to buy.” So, I revised ferociously and came up with a new title, Seeing Joy, A Story of Life, Death, and What Comes Next. In revision, I crafted the book I wanted, making a decision to focus on the most interesting part: Bea received visits from deceased family and friends, a situation confirmed by hospice personnel as perfectly normal at the end of life. Probably still a no-no for literary agents! (No one has published such a book, although Sebastien Junger reports in his recent memoir that his deceased father paid him a visit when Junger was near death.)
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Meredith: I’ve noticed a push-pull in the writer/publishing collective that seems to want to tout originality but is ultimately operating from the stance that readers won’t understand something that hasn’t been done before. I find this interesting, and recently began to think about this as a personal push-pull—otherwise, why else would it become so massive in the collective? As I’ve considered this in my own writing, I’ve noticed an old concern about being “enough” of a writer. I guess I’m looking for a conversation here, and curious about how you see this phenomenon?
Alexandra: For my next writing project, I researched a female freedom fighter and hoped to publish my novel with one of the big five publishing houses. I used multiple POV like in Is Paris Burning, although multiple POV is discouraged by the industry these days. Was it this POV or my age (77) or the number of recent novels on the French Resistance that explained my inability to hook an agent? Now aware of the need to pitch a truly original story if I want to intrigue an editor at a major publishing house, I’m researching Viking times and writing about an ordinary Scandinavian who lived in the ninth century.
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Meredith: Using the six-word memoir approach, please give us your six-word description of how you write.
Alexandra: Writing makes my world go round.
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Meredith: How do you keep the faith—or whatever you call it personally—when acceptance doesn’t seem to be coming?
Alexandra: You must believe in yourself and what you are writing, especially now that so many literary agents don’t respond to queries. For my short story collection, The Nansen Factor, published in May, I wrote my stories and queried over a period of 20 years, but publication came from an unexpected source: a writer friend recommended submission to Academic Studies Press’s imprint Cherry Orchard. The book has been well received. I guess the moral is Never Give Up!
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Meredith: Ranier Maria Rilke wrote:
“I believe in all that has never been spoken.
I want to free what waits within me
so that what no one has dared to wish for
may for once spring clear
without my contriving.”*
*From Rilke’s Book of the Hours: Love Poems to God translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy
Please talk to me about this in terms of writing and your writing process.
Alexandra: The happiest I have been as a writer is when the words simply flow. I don’t feel like this outpouring comes from within me somehow. Instead, it’s like picking up on a rhythm or wave sent by the universe. It doesn’t happen all that often, but when the paragraphs stream into my head and I tap them into my laptop, I’m the happiest camper. Prose that doesn’t require revision. Priceless!
Link for Sebastien Junger’s book: http://www.sebastianjunger.com/in-my-time-of-dying
Link for Multiple POV: https://janefriedman.com/using-multiple-points-view/
Link for Is Paris Burning? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is_Paris_Burning%3F_(book)
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[Thank you, Alexandra.]
Photo by Jeremy Thomas on Unsplash
