Another Book?
My debut novel, How to Make a Life, was the result of years of writing and revising stories, publishing some and retiring others. I had always wanted to write a novel about a family and gradually I thought that the characters in my short stories could belong together, part of a sprawling family whose individual actions impacted siblings and parents and even the whole family system, just like in real life. I spent a great deal of time rewriting until I felt certain that the characters made a family, the parts made a whole, and I had a novel.
The book was published in the fall of 2020, just as Covid was intensifying its grip on the world. I was kept very busy during most of 2021 with book clubs and other events—all courtesy of ZOOM. Meanwhile, on the long country walks I took with my husband Allen, and the lapses between reading and binge-watching Netflix series, the urge to write again was stirring inside and I began noodling other ideas that were floating in my writer’s brain. I wrote blogs for my website about things that were happening all around us—random acts of kindness, meals remembered, worries about the state of the world, like hunger, police brutality and the importance of the vote.
By then my book club readers were asking about my next book, and I decided I should write one. But what? The never finished mystery saved somewhere on my computer? The half researched historical fiction of the great Halifax Explosion? The germ of an idea about a Marrano family fleeing the Spanish Inquisition? The tantalizing family secret about the Jewish gangs in the early 20th century, which my daughter was urging me to explore?
How does a writer settle on one of the myriad ideas that crowd her brain? Here’s what I did.
I researched the historical times of each of my ideas. Sitting at my computer and googling people, places, dates I learned amazing facts. I borrowed books from the library and bought others. And I read.
I still had not decided what story I would pursue, but I had a weekly zoom appointment with a writer friend of mine, and we met weekly, wrote for two hours and read our material to one another. I joined an on-line three-writer group who sent weekly ‘writes’ to each other, not for critiques, but for accountability. I wrote from prompts…random suggestions from a book on writing that I used to stir the pot of my creativity: Write about the new moon. Write about cold. The color blue. Anything to start the pen moving across the page or the fingers flying on the keyboard.
Gradually, people and scenes emerged from the small pieces I wrote: Golda, a fiercely independent young woman who must take on motherhood of someone else’s child before she is ready. Ben, a hardworking, good-hearted man, whose life has also taken an unexpected and unwanted turn. The crowded and crime-ridden streets of early 20th century Brooklyn. And over the next year Street Corner Dreams came to life on paper. It will be out in print, e-book and audio in November, 2023. Stay tuned.
