The Feedsack Dress

Talking about writing

KOPN’s Jill Sheets, host of Penquin Tracks, interviewed me as part of a series on authors who write for middle grade and young adult readers. My credits include The Feedsack Dress, three YA nonfiction books, and educational materials for various levels.

Sheets broadcast the 25-minute interview in July and again in September, which is One Read Month here. She plans to post it on the radio station’s website (www.kopn.org/archives).

The 25-minute interview covered such topics as my writing process (I think before I write), the differences in writing nonfiction and fiction (nonfiction requires accuracy, fiction demands truth), what I’m writing now for both children and adults, and the best advice on writing I ever received.

Many people—editors, readers, strangers—offer advice on writing, and I listen. I can always learn something new, and I can usually tell what to ignore. Here are three deceptively simple bits of wisdom I’ve heard and said again and again.

1. Don’t give up (particularly in writing and marketing fiction).
2. Know your readers (particularly in writing nonfiction).
3. Read what you want to write.

If you write fiction, take a look at my report from Killer Nashville (a mystery writers’ conference) on why agents and editors stop reading a manuscript. Go to my website (http://carolynmulford.com) and click on News.

—Carolyn Mulford

 

Living in the past

When I was a kid, I loved reading historical novels. I still do.

 

One of my favorite authors is James Alexander Thom. He writes from the point of view of colonists, settlers, and explorers and of the Native Americans they pushed farther and farther west. Like me, he worked as a journalist for years and bases his fiction on facts.

 

Nonfiction writers, and readers, turn to fiction to go beyond facts and give an understanding of the people and the time. Besides, nothing commands attention like a good story. Mr. Thom says that “the most effective storytelling concept is this: Once upon a time it was now.”

 

Good historical fiction transports you to the past and enables you to live there.

 —Carolyn Mulford

Finding timely words in 1949

Choosing the right words always challenges writers, but when you’re writing historical fiction, that challenge doubles or triples.

When I wrote The Feedsack Dress, I relied heavily on childhood memories in writing the dialogue. The patterns and sounds of speech change slowly, and I didn’t doubt that I could capture what people said and the way they said it in 1949.

What I worried about was specific vocabulary. When did slang terms enter the language? Some of these I could track down through the dictionary or books on slang. I also asked people who remembered the mid 20^th century much better than I did. My older sister gave me a plot point and a term: slam book. It was also the only term the publisher questioned.

Another aspect is figuring out what people were talking about. For 1949, that included such things as fashions, books, news headlines, and radio shows. I wrote my first draft in pre-computer days, so I went to magazines and newspapers for answers to many of these questions. When I did the final revision, I used the computer to find a major news story that students would have been discussing at a key point in the story.

Does finding the timely word matter? I certainly think the language, particularly in dialogue, is a major part of what transports us back in time. As a reader, I expect the words to give the feel of the period. As a writer, I demand it.

—Carolyn Mulford 

Traveling in the 1800s

During the last eight months I’ve been visiting the American frontier in 1811 and 1812. 

For the first four months, I traveled through books from my own and the county’s library. Considering the winter weather, armchair travel was definitely the best way to go. I found the events, people, and culture I came across fascinating. I’ve been reading historical novels and biographies since childhood and I’ve visited dozens of historic sites, but I knew little about life in that period and place. 

Those months of time travel were preparation, not destination. I spent a month using what I’d learned to create my own little corner in that world, imagining people like those who lived there, the homes and town they lived in, and their reactions to one of the greatest natural disasters in American history.   

In March I started writing their story. In spite of all I’d read, I kept running into new questions. 

1. How did people greet each other? 

2. What kinds of cows did farmers have? 

3. How long would it take a flatboat to travel from where my characters lived to New Orleans?

4. What coins or bills did the people use? 

5. How cold was the weather there and to the north? 

6. What fruits did people grow? 

7. What musical instruments did people play at the Sunday frolics? 

8. What did they use for lighting besides candles? 

9. What books would a family own besides a bible? 

Those are a few of the many questions I had to answer as my characters went about their daily lives. I’ve had a wonderful journey.

—Carolyn Mulford

Reading articles about Carolyn Mulford

As a journalist, I’ve interviewed hundreds of people for articles. Occasionally I switch roles, answering rather than asking questions.

The Feedsack Dress was the major topic of two interviews published in March. An article by Charlotte Atchley appeared in the Columbia Missourian and on the newspaper’s Web site at http://voxmagazine.com/stories/2009/03/05/write-stuff. Charlotte interviewed several women writers, each of whom has followed a different path. One thing I told her about why I became a writer: “When you’re fond of reading stories, you want to write stories.”

Phoenix, the national magazine of Alpha Sigma Alpha Sorority, published an article called “Alpha Beta alumna authors historical novel.” Cretia Rowlette, another Missouri native who served in the Peace Corps and settled in the Washington, D.C., area, interviewed me for that article.

One quote from that article: “To her delight, the book elicits a powerful emotional response from adults who remember the days of feedsack dresses. The book conveys a true picture of that time and of the timeless trials of adolescence.” 

I enjoy talking about the book, but I prefer to be the one asking the questions.

—Carolyn Mulford

Preparing to rewrite

Honest criticism of another writer’s work can ruin a friendship or break up a family, but writers learn most from readers, particularly readers who are writers.

I risked cutting the family ties by reading a teenager’s novel and giving her the same kind of feedback I would an experienced writer. That’s tough love. Fortunately she proved dedicated enough to accept criticism of technique as well as praise for creativity.

I gave her the following tips on preparing to rewrite.

Look at each page. Does it have paragraphs of different lengths? If all your paragraphs are short, you probably have too much dialogue and not enough action. If all your paragraphs are long, you probably have too much description.

Does every page look like the one before and after it? Then you haven’t varied the pace. Your writing may be monotonous.

Look at the beginning of each paragraph. Do you start several with the same word? Watch particularly for paragraphs beginning with “The” or the name of a character.

Does every sentence have the same structure? Most should follow the strongest pattern in the language: subject-verb-object.

List your characters. Does each name start with a different letter? If you start names with the same letter, people have trouble telling the characters apart. Do the names have a different number of syllables? If several characters have a one-syllable name (Joe, Bob, Dick), readers may not remember which is which.

Have you described each character the same way all the way through? Be sure no one is short in one chapter and tall in another. Be consistent in describing a character’s personality, too. Either before or during the first draft, write a brief biography of each character. Include not only what they look like but what they want.

 

Rewriting begins with an analysis of what you’ve written.

—Carolyn Mulford

Where characters come from

This weekend I’m going to a reunion of my high school graduating class. As The Feedsack Dress takes place in ninth grade, I’m expecting a lot of people to ask me if such and such a character is so and so from our class.

No, he/she isn’t.

For decades I’ve been a nonfiction writer and dealt strictly with facts. The facts leave little wiggle room. One reason to write fiction is to control the action and the people, to keep the facts and credibility in mind, but to create my own world.

Naturally I base that world partially on people I’ve known, emotions I’ve felt, events and incidents I’ve been part of or observed or read about. In a very broad sense, all fiction is autobiographical. We write from the truths we’ve learned. But if excitement ruled the days of our lives, we wouldn’t write fiction. A lot of the fun comes in taking all those things in the dark hole of the subconscious and creating something unique.

One or two characters suddenly appear in a scene and intrigue you enough to get to understand them as you do few people you know. You decide not only what they look and sound like but also what they’ve been doing all their lives and what they like and don’t like. Most of that never appears on the printed page, but it has to be in the writer’s head.

You choose a name.

I spend a lot of time choosing names for my characters. I use books on naming babies, I read obituaries, I read the names of the crew at the end of movies, I browse the phone book, I listen, I make them up. The name has to fit the person, and each person must have a distinctive name readers can remember. You need a mix of opening sounds and of number of syllables. I often rename minor characters because they change as I write about them, but once I name the major characters, that’s who they are.

Most characters serve to further the plot or to reveal other characters, particularly the main character. The girl in the feedsack dress would lead a dull life if she didn’t have the mean queen to battle. And every school, every organization, every social group has a mean queen or king, although some are smart enough to hide it as they get older.

Everyone has friends as well as enemies, and for the feedsack girl the friend is another outsider, the girl who seems older and wiser, who draws gossip like a magnet, who protects herself by withdrawing. I’ve had at least a nodding acquaintance with a dozen of them. Other characters also come from common types: the mean queen’s me-too friend, the quiet girl who gets things done, the good-hearted but trouble-prone class clown, the sweet boy who infuriates you, the teacher who sees more than she says.

These characters may germinate as types who will move the action along, but they become real people with unique characteristics as the writing progresses. Quite often they make you divert from the outline and go in another direction because these characters simply wouldn’t do what you planned. Cardboard figures don’t challenge the writer or appeal to the readers.

As a writer you live with your characters a long time. They must surprise, delight, annoy you. They must become as real as the people who walk in your door. But, for me, they aren’t those people.

--Carolyn Mulford

Getting the facts

I learned the importance of getting the facts right in journalism classes and on the job. I enjoy writing fiction because I can create a world, but the facts still have to be right.

When I started writing The Feedsack Dress, my own memories of farm life and ninth grade guided the plot, but I needed facts about life in 1949. I looked for them in the same places I would have if I were writing an article.

At the library I wore out my eyes scrolling through microfilm copies of the Kirksville Daily Express and two great photo magazines, Life and Look. These answered such questions as the styles of dresses or skirts and blouses a fashionable ninth grader wore to school and how much they cost. Few girls wore jeans or slacks to school back then.

Copies of fair catalogs told me what exhibits 4-Hers would enter in hopes of winning prize money. As a 4-Her for seven years, I already knew that only country kids belonged to 4-H then.

Books and local and national newspapers told me about historical events, and on the Internet I found such riches as President Truman’s speeches, the history of feedsack dresses, and lists of popular songs, radio shows (almost no one had television), movies, and books.

The most enjoyable part of the research was talking to my mother and others who remembered 1949 well. They linked important events in their lives to that year. They, and I, recalled how a chicken bounded around after a well-aimed hatchet removed its head and the awful stench when you dunk the chicken into a bucket of hot water to make it easier to pull out the feathers.

Some things you’d rather forget.