July

It is July in Maine which usually means that the mosquitoes and tourists are rampant. I am much more interested, however, in France in 1914-1915, than anything around me at the present time. Bits of images keep floating around in my head. I recently read snippets from diaries written at the time. Siegfried Sassoon and Lady Cynthia Asquith's stand out, as one would expect. But a young Australian officer wrote of the various birds he heard while waiting to be killed. It was both poignant and haunting. I can't help but think of him when sitting on our screened porch here in the woods. I have started to read "The Great Silence" by Juliet Nicolson who also wrote "The Perfect Summer." How quickly life can change when you aren't looking.

Inaugural Post

I have a confession to make. This would probably be a good opening sentence for a mystery or a self-help manual. I don’t know if it is proper for a blog about the writing life. But you see, that is the real problem and hence, confession. I am not a blog reader, follower, groupie, or promoter. I am definitely an ingénue in the world of the blog.

Having said that, let me now justify why I have decided to take up space in this forum I barely comprehend. (I have to admit I think of the web as a newer version of the television screen that appears in Willy Wonka’s factory, and my thoughts are a bit like the child who disintegrates into tiny black and white particles.) But enough of literalism…I think of one’s life as a collection of chapters, and I have started the chapter entitled WRITER. I am a trained historian who has decided to discard the academic life and use my knowledge, research, and skill to make an understanding of the past enjoyable, not something to endure. So…this blog will be a chronicle of the intellectual journey of creating a fictional world that is rooted in the reality of past lives.

I actually have two confessions to make. I have checked out a dozen or so writer’s blogs, and I’m a bit confused. I don’t have lots of tips to hand out—I have been an academic writer, and believe me, you read most of that stuff because you are required. I don’t think aspiring historical fiction writers are interested in proper citations or current historiography. I also don’t think I want to add videos of family reunions or photos of my dogs to this blog. I have always liked the idea of writing as an extension of the anonymous self, although I can’t help but picture Hemingway leaning on a bar in the sweltering heat whenever I read even a title of one of his novels. We’ll see. Maybe I’ll take to this blogging thing and reveal long-hidden secrets. Of course, isn’t that why one writes fiction?

A Biography

I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t interested in the past. Surrounded by adults, my childhood was filled with stories and secrets about people who had died or been banished to the frontier. To my family, that meant California. I loved attics and spent rainy afternoons sifting through family history. I can still see my father’s ice skates and my grandmother’s riding outfit hanging in the dry and dusty eaves of my grandparent’s farmhouse.

As a young adult, I entertained the idea of becoming an attorney so I could enter politics. I did a stint or two as a community activist in rural America and followed that up as a low-level bureaucrat in a national anti-poverty agency. But I always went back to history. After an excruciatingly lengthy process of gaining all of the proper credentials, I became a college professor. There were many parts of this chapter in my life I loved. I am a researcher through and through. I truly thrilled at the touch of an old letter revealing unknown historical events, or people, or feelings. No matter how many faculty meetings, or tenure reports, or student exams I endured, I never lost the excitement of turning up another historical diary or photograph in an archival collection. I tried to bring this feeling to my classroom—to help students understand that history is not dead but rather vestiges of it live on in us. That our lives are shaped by those who came before us as documented in the pubic record and in the artifacts of our famiies’ attics. I think a few got it. But ultimately, the satisfactions of the teaching life were not enough for me, and I walked away from the security of a tenured position.

I have spent most of my professional life researching and writing about women in American history. My academic publications focused on women’s urban philanthropic endeavors during the Progressive Era and later, and I co-edited a book on the YMCA and YWCA. Through a quirky set of events, I have now settled on the World War I period. I have spent the past few years, off and on, researching the 18,000 to 24,000 American women volunteers in France during the Great War. A couple of fellowships from Smith College and Oberlin College were particularly helpful. While walking in a churchyard in Burford, England a few months ago, I decided to use some of this research in a novel. The protagonists are based on women I have researched but the story is entirely fictional.