All those piano lessons finally pay off

About now, I wish I had a really good roadmap for working on my next novel. No matter what I tell my students, my fellow writers, every novel is different. There is no map. For me, much of the writing process has to be reinvented along with the plot and everything else. If there is one comfort to me, it is that I pretty much know where to begin—and that is with a character, one that lives and breathes, in my mind and (on a good day) on the page.


I know that many writers say that they don’t use people they know as characters in their fiction. Well, I will admit that I almost always draw from life—my aunt’s way of sipping tea, my volleyball coach’s frown, my husband’s snore—bits and pieces, mostly. As I hunt for my characters, I am most attracted to people I have known in passing, rather than my intimates. I need to know just enough about a person—too much and the facts get in the way, too little and there is not enough there to hang my hat on. The main character of my first novel, Wilma Mabry, is a good example. She was inspired by a piano teacher that I had as a child. We called her Miss Wilma, and yes, I borrowed her first name for my book, may she rest in peace. Miss Wilma was a fixture in our town--one of those strict, steely-eyed teachers who can strike terror in the heart of any child (or grown-up, for that matter). I was a terrible piano student, and I was scared to death of the woman. Miss Wilma's best student, James (I've forgotten his real name), had the lesson time just before mine on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. James was a wonderful pianist, and on some days, I could put aside my terror and simply enjoy his playing. I noticed over the course of the year that James was preparing to go to college as a music major and perhaps for that reason, Miss Wilma was as mean (if not meaner) to him than she was to me.

Years later when I decided to write a little character sketch of Miss Wilma, I remembered a particular lesson time in the spring—just before James was to go for his music scholarship audition. On this day, the day when Miss Wilma was having the young man do his final run-through, I arrived at my lesson to find that Miss Wilma was entirely transformed. There was not one ounce of meanness in her. She was completely in a dither—her eyes fluttering—she seemed to alternate between girlish excitement and nervous mothering. James had his family's old, old, station wagon parked out front and Miss Wilma kept asking him, "Do you have enough gas? Do you have money? Oh, do you have your sheet music?" Understand—I was ten, maybe eleven at the time, but there was something about that moment that seemed important to me. I was seeing something rare and unknown in this person whom I thought I knew through and through.

For whatever reason, it was this powerful memory that came to me when I began to write the first scene about Miss Wilma. In about an hour, I wrote three short pages that were the beginning of my novel. Of course, by the time I got to the bottom of the first page, the Miss Wilma I was writing about was not the real Miss Wilma, but someone else altogether, a character with a life, a history, a personality all her own. However, Miss Wilma Mabry -- the life of the character -- was born in the memory of that particular moment and somehow propelled forward by it. The scene itself—those first three pages—survive in the novel (much revised, of course) as the beginning of Chapter 2, which begins exactly as I began that first sketch: "Of all Miss Wilma's students, James Moody was the prize…"

Everything in The Piano Teacher grew from that first scene: the other characters, their relationships with Miss Wilma, the town of Swan's Knob, and even the plot. All of these things were really a function of Miss Wilma's character, an outgrowth of it. It’s hard to remember exactly how I came to transform Miss Wilma from the buttoned-up piano teacher worried even about the marks she's made on her students' sheet music into the woman, who in the end of my novel, subdues a murderer with a kick of her Aigner pump.

During the time I was writing the book and to this day, I think of her mostly as a real person—in much the way you might think of a beloved aunt who has long ago passed away. You can no longer actually touch her, have a conversation together, but you can fully imagine a conversation with her about any topic, you can remember exactly her touch, and she is bound visit you in your dreams, as Miss Wilma did. Shortly after I finished the book, she appeared in a dream and lectured me about the state of my wardrobe. Then she marched me down to the local department store and bought me a dress.

Lynn York is the author of The Piano Teacher (2004) and The Sweet Life (2007). She lives in Chapel Hill, NC. Her website is www.lynnyork.com.

Characters I Have Known

Can you read a person like a book? A character that saunters into your path where suddenly your head snaps up and a part of you comes to attention? I know that feeling. It can happen in what we might call the natural world or in those so many of us live in as we create novels of all genres.

Characters have a certain way of speaking, of cracking a line, of giving the eye that causes us to lean in a little closer and listen to the story that is about to be told. 

Recently when author friend Shellie Rushing Tomlinson and yours truly hit the road in search of story we discovered one at every turn. We also encountered a few characters along the way. One of the most memorable being the one and only Mr. Jack Reed of Tupelo's well known Reed's Gumtree Books. He decided to pull up a chair and captivate us with some true tales of the business, of the things his seen come and gone, and how staying young at heart and having hero's is real important to living a good, long life. 

I think if we hadn't had another book event in Nashville we would still be there, trying to get just one more antidote out of the man that was full of them. Overflowing he was. But here's the thing. Shellie and I were both ready to talk about ourselves, our radio shows, to interview other customers, and, yes, even each other but when Mr. Reed walked in it was all over. And we both knew it, too. 

Here's why. 

When a character comes calling you have to have your listening ears on. Pricked up high. So that suddenly a bonifide whistler of a man comes waltzing through the back door of your mind, you have to just decide whatever that other thing was - it can wait. That blind snake milker living down in those swamps - oh, yes, there's a story there that woman longs to tell. That old woman rocking and reminising. That baggy man shuffling his shoes in the dirt of wasted dreams. Here's the deal American Idol will be there next week. That list of things to do to get published - one more day. All those unopened bills, well - if your staring down cutoff day - give it an hour. And give that character their due while their willing to talk. Just like we did Mr. Reed.  

Because the fact is -

We don't know when that opportunity will roll its way around again if ever. I've lost a few good characters in my life. Some to the wicked wracked out strange tragidies. Some with faces so young they are now immortal. Some just to the ever moving hands of time. I never felt as though I had captured any of them, spent enough time with them, listened to enough of their stories. 

I feel the same way about the characters who have been knocking on my door, well, now nigh for a decade. One with a foot stomping impatience waiting for her story to be told. And yet, I've been writing and living and running and puttering - in other words living this big old, wonderful, messy life. But - those characters - they tell me time is not waiting for me to set aside my precious hours in neat packages to listen to them. 

No more than real folks do in this real, natural world of hours. Babies don't want for us to slow down before they grow up, lovers don't wait for us to make time for one more dance, grandparents don't wait to tell us one more story before they go. 

It's up to us. Purveyors of characters such as we are. Storytellers, story seekers, greedy story grabbers one and all. 

Here's to all the wild, wooly, wonderful characters in this life and from beyond the page who dare to  inhabit our worlds and in the process give us half a fighting chance to capture a moment of their light. 

River Jordan is a Storyteller. She lives in Nashville with her husband and their big, white, lap dog where she also produces a weekly radio program on Radio Free Nashville 107.1fm.  She is captivated by the new book cover of The Miracle of Mercy Land (Random House/Waterbrook) due out September 7, 2010. For more information on the author, her work, and the radio program visit http://www.riverjordan.us 

When Characters Come to Life

By Nicole Seitz, author of A Hundred Years of Happiness, Trouble the Water, and The Spirit of Sweetgrass

I'm so happy to be writing right now, I could kiss someone. Now, in one sense, the "writing" I'm talking about is that I'm under contract for more books...in this economy. Trust me, I'm counting my blessings. But (and there's always a but, isn't there?) I have a deadline in a couple of months and honestly, with summer here, the kids at home, work calling, I've no clue how I'm going to get this done. But then again, I have to remind myself that I ALWAYS feel this way about each new book and each new deadline. And, I have to remember I'm not alone.

The "writing" I'm happiest about is the actual sitting-down-at-the-computer, feeling the keys beneath my fingertips, forgetting there's a blank page in front of me, just letting it flow kind of writing--like I experienced yesterday, sitting on the front porch, watching my children play. In those moments, I am consumed by my characters. I'm in their heads. I care what happens to them, what they say to one another, what they did in their pasts, what motivates them. In those moments I am completely oblivious to the fact that I'm under deadline or that writing books is even a business at all. Because I don't know about you, but I didn't get into the book business for the "business" part of that equation. I did it because I love this process of "writing."

Oh, how hard it is to remain in that ephemeral place where I once lived for months through the writing of my first novel. All I felt was love for my main character, Essie Mae Laveau Jenkins. I just wrote what she told me to. I had no thoughts of publication, no thoughts of market, no fears of failure or rejection or 'what if this doesn't sell-out'? Back then, I was just a creative person who had a very different definition of the word "sell-out." Have things changed so much since I began this journey? Well, yes and no. I still love the books. The business I realize, although difficult at times, is necessary and worth it at the end of the day. I'm just finding that with each and every new book I write, I know more about writing and more about the business. Sometimes knowledge is a wonderful thing...it aids in survival. But sometimes, knowledge can turn a passionate faith into a technical, nay saying science. And I'm more of a whole-hearted faith kind of a gal.

When I feel too much knowledge nipping at my brain, the kind that zaps all creative thought, I back away. I back away and ask for Essie Mae and Honor and Alice and John Porter and Ernest and all my other beautiful characters who have carried me courageously and valiantly over the threshold of my deadlines, to pick me up once again. They've done it before. Like that tiny red ant my daughter just showed me in the driveway that is carrying another red ant three times its size--by the grace of God, our characters can carry us anywhere if we'll just erase ourselves, forget all we know, and play dead for a little while. That's when we really see what the little boogers are made of. That's when our characters truly come to life.

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Nicole Seitz is the author and cover artist of three novels. Her second book, TROUBLE THE WATER, was named one of the BEST BOOKS OF 2008 by Library Journal. Her next novel, SAVING CICADAS, will go on sale December 1. Nicole makes her home in the lowcountry of South Carolina with her husband, two children, a cat, a dog, a hamster, and two frogs.