Sarah McCoy

About Sarah McCoy

SARAH McCOY is the New York Times, USA Today, and international bestselling author of The Mapmaker’s Children; The Baker’s Daughter, a 2012 Goodreads Choice Award Best Historical Fiction nominee; the novella “The Branch of Hazel” in Grand Central; and The Time It Snowed in Puerto Rico. Her work has been featured in Real Simple, The Millions, Your Health Monthly, Huffington Post and other publications. She has taught English writing at Old Dominion University and at the University of Texas at El Paso. She calls Virginia home but presently lives with her husband, an orthopedic sports doctor, and their dog, Gilly, in Chicago, Illinois. Connect with Sarah on Twitter at @SarahMMcCoy, on her Facebook Fan Page, Goodreads, or via her website, www.sarahmccoy.com.

Hurray for Independent Bookstore Day!

April 23, 2019 By Sarah McCoy 19 Comments

In case you weren’t aware, April 27 is a national holiday: it’s Independent Bookstore Day. Only five years old, you might not have heard of it and that’s okay… because you have now! What could be more exciting than discovering we have a new holiday to bedazzle on our calendars?

In my humble opinion, we don’t have enough true holidays. I.e. Unadorned celebrations without the stress of gift giving, event planning, cooking complicated meals, decorating, and contending with the in-laws. Too often, holidays don’t feel like the definition of the word and more like its antithesis. So here I present one day that is entirely, wholeheartedly, unequivocally designed for a communal book lovers’ jamboree. And that, my friends, is not to be missed, particularly by our kind—writers and readers.

Don’t be fooled by the facades of social media, we are living in an age of community. The big and little main streets of America are being reinvigorated by their citizens’ commitment to supporting one another and thriving despite all obstacles against our diverse democracy. No place is this more apparent than with booksellers. I travel from coast to coast doing book events, and it never fails that at the heart of each city is an independent bookstore.

For nearly a decade, I lived in El Paso, a beautiful city with wonderful readers but no independent bookstore. I watched as friends from across the country shared their photos, events, interviews, and most significantly, their memories with independent bookstore staffs, patrons, and fellow authors. The dynamic relationship between these people was more than professionalism. They were a book family committed to strengthening the bonds of their literary village. You know the saying, It takes a village to raise a child? Well, I argue it’s even truer written, It takes a book village to raise a person.

The minute I planted roots in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, I went in search of that village. For me, it’s a beautiful, bustling indie called Bookmarks in the epicenter of the city. It’s my privilege to support their growth and impassioned work connecting community members through reading. Bookmarks is not merely a brick-and-mortar business; it’s a place that encourage young and old to seek out stories and find magic. It’s a safe haven with caring booksellers who help us believe again in the goodness of our neighbors—who help enrich minds, bodies, and spirits every day. They are my friends, some of the best I’ve made in my adult life. Independent bookstores are where we come together to share, celebrate, learn, and connect. They are places that endeavor to fill us with reliable head knowledge, and more importantly, reliable heart knowledge.

I didn’t grow up with an independent bookstore. [Read more…]

Yes, I’m Still Sick: Writing with Chronic Illness

February 26, 2019 By Sarah McCoy 47 Comments

A friend texted me the other day while I was lying on my back under the glaring light of my dental surgeon’s chair.

How are you?

I’m still sick. [Attachment: photo of me on laughing gas.]

You have had the (poop-emoji-est) January ever!

[Interpret ‘poop-emoji-est’ as you wish: wasteful, crap-natious, grossest, unbelievably garbage, and so forth.]

It made me lopsided smile through the dental dam, needles, drills, suction, and mind-altering medications. Because she put it quite right. It has been a doozy of a winter.

If you would permit me a moment of painful honesty and at the risk of exposing myself to be less than super-powered, super-positive, super-super Sarah:

I have Celiac Disease, a severe gluten allergy. I was diagnosed in 2002. For the most part, I have it well controlled with diet, exercise, and strict precautions. That said, it’s a lifelong autoimmune disease that has weakened my body’s ability to fight off most passing viruses. I try to keep as far from infectious disease as possible. Hard to do, right? Even harder when you’re a traveling author handshaking, hugging, and sharing meals with reader friends and strangers. Needless to say, I catch things. But never has it been like the winter of 2019.

In the spans of five weeks, I contracted a malicious fever virus, followed by an upper respiratory flu that turned to bronchitis; paroxysmal coughing from infected airways put me on an inhaler all hours of the day and night, unable to sleep, to breathe, to speak, and producing extreme exhaustion, dehydration, and medication induced GI distress. In the midst of this, I could not put off having planned dental surgery: a tooth abscess and a number of cracked teeth. I stress grind… a lot. All of this. In five weeks. That was just the physical. Emotionally, I hit a major low, which was more debilitating than the illnesses.

I didn’t feel like getting out of bed some mornings. I didn’t feel like getting in bed some nights. What was the point? I was miserable either way. Never before had I experienced such an out-of-body pessimism. I couldn’t read: it hurt my eyes. I couldn’t write: it hurt my head. I couldn’t watch movies: too loud! I couldn’t go outside: I’d catch my death of cold. I couldn’t get warm inside: shivering with fever. There were moments at my writing desk when all I could do was cradle my teacup and close my eyes; block out everything else, remove myself from reality, and float in the nothingness.

In the midst of one of those dark moments, I began to think about writers with chronic illnesses. No, I became obsessed with them. It seemed the only Internet search for which I had the strength. I wanted to know their stories. Because I could not imagine if my malaise and suffering continued for months, years, even decades. What I found gave me a whole new respect for many of my favorite authors; men and women who silently bore lifelong diseases, pushed through the depression that comes alongside of extended illness, and created powerful art.

Here are a handful of the many, living and gone, who exemplify endurance and inspired me to speak up about the realities of being a chronically ill, flawed, less than super-powered, human. [Read more…]

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Auspicious Days: Musing on Childhood Readings

October 23, 2018 By Sarah McCoy 12 Comments

It’s clearly an auspicious date. This Writer Unboxed post falls on the launch of my new novel, Marilla of Green Gables. It’s true, Jupiter and Mars are in alignment, the harvest moon has risen full, and the air is sparkling with autumn’s magic. Not that I believe in any of that and, of course, I believe in all of it. Whatever your conviction, no one can deny the charm of October. It’s ingrained from our childhoods to feel the magnet pull of change—new yet old, strange but familiar, comforting in its promise that the miraculous is real and evident season upon season.

On days like this one, there seems to me a palpable connection between the lives we live and the stories we share. The narrative osmosis begins in our youngest days and carries through to our last breath. It’s why I’ve come round to believing that the books we read during our imaginative development are the ones that make the biggest impact on our adulthood—the majority of our life.

Looking at my own literary upbringing, my favorite novel and one of the first that I read without pictures was Anne of Green Gables. I distinctly remember the pages of that old, borrowed library copy in my mother’s hands, ink type on sepia pages, dimly lit under night lamps. Nothing exotic, whimsical, or particularly fairy tale in it, but it didn’t need embellishment. The word pictures in my imagination exceeded any illustrator’s paints.

During that first reading, I had never met a person with red hair and had never been to Prince Edward Island. I had, however, visited my grandparent’s farm in Puerto Rico. I imagined Green Gables in tropical jungle motif. The landscape Lucy Maud Montgomery described sure fit the bill— vivid and swirling with motion. We had farm animals on my grandparent’s finca, just like Green Gables. I had a tribe of titis (aunties) flittering back and forth between kitchens. Marilla and Rachel could’ve been two. We had church gatherings weekly, bedtime prayers, and my mother made all my favorite dresses. So Anne in her Avonlea world felt like an extension of my own. A bosom friend in a make-believe world that was as real to me as any of the stories my family told about bygone days and people.

Such a poignant a part of my childhood, the book took root and my devotion only grew. For those who know me well, it’s not surprising that a middle-aged Sarah would be compelled to write the story of the middle-aged heroine Marilla Cuthbert. In Chapter 27 of AOGG, Lucy Maud Montgomery writes: “The spring was abroad in the land and Marilla’s sober, middle-aged step was lighter and swifter because of its deep, primal gladness.”

There’s a story heart beating passionately in that single sentence. I remember knowing it as a child and wanting to know it as an adult. It’s the reason Marilla of Green Gables exists. [Read more…]

Book Business: A Bookseller Interview

August 28, 2018 By Sarah McCoy 2 Comments

Flickr Creative Commons: Second-Half Travels

The book business is divided between two divergent yet synergistic entities: art and commerce. As authors, our stories are imaginatively composed, subjectively appreciated, and diversely interpreted. These qualities don’t particularly abide by Wall Street rules, but to make writing a vocation, the work cannot exist in a void. Whether we like it or not, there is a parallel corporate track to literature that has existed long before any of us. It’s not to be feared but to be embraced as part of the organic ebb and flow of literary dissemination. Through the ages, the business of publishing the written word has proven itself a fundamental part of every progressive society, and it requires expert tradespeople. Enter the heroic bookseller.

The bookseller is the fulcrum on which the reader-author/buyer-seller/consumer-creator relationship functions effectively. Understanding how we, as writers, can aid their work only improves the dynamics between us and helps the literary community flourish further.

So in an effort to learn more, I’ve invited one of my favorite people to Writer Unboxed. It’s with great pleasure that I introduce Beth Seufer Buss, the brilliant community outreach manager of Bookmarks in North Carolina.

Welcome Beth! Let’s chat about being a bookseller.

What’s your role and what do you enjoy most about it?

Beth Seufer Buss: There are many incredible things about my job, but one of the things I treasure the most is helping readers connect with books and authors, which is part of the Bookmarks’ nonprofit mission. Being able to help readers find themselves in books, learn about a new culture, or escape to a new adventure is a privilege and something I hope I never take for granted.

This summer we had a mother and son (let’s call him Tony) visit Bookmarks. Tony didn’t seem thrilled to be there and told me flat out he didn’t like reading. The one book he came to the store to get wasn’t due to be published until later that month, only adding to his frustration. We talked about different books, and he reluctantly agreed to try ARU SHAH AND THE END OF TIME by Roshani Chokshi. Fast forward to two weeks later, when Tony and his mother returned to the bookstore — he was radiant! He wanted to tell us how much he loved Aru, look for more books, and even had his picture taken in front of the store. They returned for our one-year birthday party and our Scholastic Summer Reading Road Trip event, and to quote Tony’s mom, “we’ve created a monster.” Those moments are absolutely magical to me!

How do you feel about the way technology is affecting book readership and book purchasing?

Beth Seufer Buss: One of the things technology has done is make it far easier for people to connect with others. Social media allows readers to connect with and follow their favorite authors, stay on top of big news from the book industry, discover new and diverse authors, and interact with other readers. Podcasts are an increasingly great way to keep up with book news and reviews, genres, analysis, writing, and more. It’s a wonderful time to be a reader!

Technology is also responsible for giving us books in new formats, particularly audiobooks and ebooks. I’m a big fan of audiobooks because they allow me to sneak reading into parts of my day like walking to work or cooking dinner. I always travel with at least one print book, I still load up my iPad with ebooks because it’s much more convenient and cheaper than packing a separate suitcase for my books. If listening to audiobooks or reading an ebook is way somebody prefers to read, I fully support that and am grateful to companies like Libro.fm and Kobo that provide audiobooks and ebooks that support independent bookstores.

It’s easier than ever to find and connect with local bookstores thanks to technology. You can visit IndieBound.org to find local independent bookstores in your area – or on your vacation route, which is always a fun way to break up travel. Once you connect with your local indie, you can sign up for their newsletter, learn about their upcoming events, connect on social media, and order/pre-order books via their website.

Surveys continue to show that although technology is convenient, print books remain much more popular than e-books. Although technology provides convenience, print books give us a break from the technology and distractions in our daily lives. Many of us spend the majority of the day in front of computers and devices, and print books provide the escape so many of us crave from our devices while also allowing us to escape into a completely different place and time.

What does a brick and mortar store offer patrons that they can’t get from an online retailer?

Beth Seufer Buss: Oh, where to start? Although every independent bookstore has its own unique personality, they are all warm and welcoming thanks to the people who work there. We refer to Bookmarks as our home for the literary arts, and I think of it as my second home. Working at a bookstore is so much more than stocking books and ringing up transactions; it is about making personal connections, talking to people about what’s going on in their lives, having passionate conversations about books and issues, and forging genuine connections. It’s almost a complete 180 from the online environment.

Online algorithms might recommend additional books to purchase, but they aren’t a substitute for the conversations that lead to personal recommendations from booksellers you know and trust. There are so many factors to choosing a book beyond what you’ve ordered before and as readers we may not even realize it until we’ve having that conversation with a bookseller. What are you in the mood to read? Do you want something similar to what you just read or completely different? I can’t tell you how many new favorites I’ve found simply by wandering the shelves of a bookstore looking at displays, reading shelf talkers, and browsing staff picks (one of my favorite sections of any bookstore). They say you can’t judge a book by its cover, but we all do, and the serendipity of finding just the right book by browsing the shelves and actually seeing books you can pick up and sample is priceless.

Beyond recommendations, brick and mortar stores offer the full book experience. You might be able to chat with an author online, but in a bookstore you can meet the author, hear them read from their book, ask them questions, buy a copy of the book and go home with a signed, personalized copy. You didn’t just buy a book, you had an experience and made a memory. There are so many opportunities for making memories in a bookstore: storytime, illustrator workshops, book clubs, teen advisory councils, book trivia, launch parties, festivals, parapaloozas, panels, you name bookish fun, and it’s happening at a bookstore!

There’s a connection that’s made when you come in a bookstore and have conversations with booksellers, authors, and fellow readers. Bookstores are safe places to explore new ideas, discuss difficult topics and issues, or find an escape from the world around us. They allow you to become part of and support your community – shopping at independent bookstores helps keeps tax dollars in your community, create jobs, help the environment, invest in entrepreneurship and small business, and so much more!

Apart from the actual selling of hard copy books, what other activities do modern booksellers participate in?

Beth Seufer Buss: So many things! During the interview process at Bookmarks we go through a long list of responsibilities because so much of being a bookseller is stepping out from behind the cash register and engaging with our community. We are constantly looking for new ways to connect with the local community, and many of those relationships have started as a result of conversations within the bookstore.

As you might expect, there’s a lot that goes on with the actual books themselves. We receive daily shipments books that need to be unboxed, received into our system and shelved in the store. What people may not realize is there’s no time for actual reading at the store – when we have a quiet moment between customers, we’re working on recommendations, writing staff picks, creating and maintaining displays, updating chalkboard signs, straightening and cleaning the store, and working on other special projects.

Booksellers also help with the wide range of events we have in the store. They read at story time, lead a book club discussion, and give bookstore tours to visiting school groups. When we have an author event, they serve as event host, coordinating store and technology setup, introduce the author, photograph the event, coordinate the book signing, then take it all down and put the store back together again. There are some not-so-glamorous tasks like taking out the trash and recycling, dusting and vacuuming the store, and other housekeeping items, but it all contributes to keeping the space looking organized and ready for our guests!

One of the fun benefits of bookseller life is that publishers send us advanced reading copies (ARCs) and advanced listening copies (ALCs) for books that haven’t been published yet. It’s exciting to be one of the first to read a forthcoming book by a debut novelist or have early access to a long-awaited sequel by one of your favorite authors! In return, we write and share reviews with publishers and the book industry and get a feel for what books we want to carry and recommend in the store that season.

What can authors do to help promote events hosted by bookstores?

Beth Seufer Buss: We appreciate anything and everything authors to do help promote events! First and foremost, share information about the event early and often – let your followers know where they can see you and how to get in touch with the bookstore if they have questions about the event. If you’re putting together promotional materials or listing events on your website, list the bookstore name in addition to the city and town. Tag the bookstore in your social media posts, and as much as you’re able to, interact when the store promotes your event on social media – retweet, repost, comment, like, and be involved in the conversations surrounding the event. Letting your followers know how excited you are to visit a bookstore in their area will help get readers excited!

Encourage people to pre-order and buy their books from the store(s) where you’ll be having your events! Independent booksellers are fierce champions – we will be recommending your books and talking about your event long after your event is over!

What are some creative ways authors can become involved with events at the store between new book releases?

Beth Seufer Buss: The list is endless: [Read more…]

For the Love of Libraries

June 26, 2018 By Sarah McCoy 33 Comments

If I can bring you into my prosaic world: I’m writing this 35,000 feet up in my compact plane seat, tray table down, elbows in, laptop jostling on the turbulence. I’m on my way back from speaking at the annual American Library Association conference and am delirious with library love.

This was my first time attending the meeting. Michelle Obama was there. Sally Fields, too. Not to namedrop, but to namedrop. Fandemonium of this magnitude is collectively appreciated. I’d heard about the ALA gatherings, seen the hashtags on Twitter, the Facebook posts, and Instagram videos of rooms full of books and their librarian knights. But this was the first time I had the pleasure of attending to discuss the exciting releases of fall 2018.

I’ve long been a loudmouthed proponent of supporting our independent bookstores—national troves of story sharing. But when I think back about my development as a reader and writer, I didn’t grow up in bookstores. Not until college did hanging out at my local bookshop café become a trendy thing. Before then, it was libraries. Always libraries. So I hope you pardon me while I gush a spell in tribute…

All of my first books were library copies, borrowed on behalf of my mother’s library card, which was as revered and all-giving as our family bank card. Library copies had to be taken extra special care, too. No summer lemonade cups leaving dewy rings on the covers. No crinkled pages or dirty fingers while reading. The entire McCoy clan’s reputation was at stake. If abused, we might lose our privileges to the library kingdom and then what? How would I spend my leisure hours??

I distinctly remember having one decision crisis the summer after the first grade. My library copy of Tikki Tikki Tembo was due back, but I wanted to read it one last time before returning. A day late meant a fee of 10 cents, which would leave me 10 cents short of the creamsicle I’d hoped to purchase. A civilian ice cream truck was permitted to pass through our military barracks only one day a week. So that meant seven treat-less days in exchange for one more with TTT and his brother Chang. I couldn’t ask my parents for the extra bit. My mom and dad, an elementary teacher and an Army officer, did not approve of tardiness or ice cream before dinner. So the choice and the payment would be mine. [Read more…]

Magic Cloaks, Lucky Charms, and Other Writerly Superstitious Habits

February 27, 2018 By Sarah McCoy

Flickr Creative Commons: Mohammed Alnasar

I visited Lucy Maud Montgomery’s bedroom on Prince Edward Island to research my forthcoming novel Marilla of Green Gables. Standing before Maud’s vanity mirror, I tried to see the world through her reflection: single bed, gabled ceiling, flower wallpaper, writing desk, lamp, chair, and window looking out to the Lake of Shining Waters. The morning light twinkled golden peach over everything in the room, and I understood why she protected her hours in it.

Montgomery wrote in the mornings, so the myth goes, and she always began with her journal. On February 11, 1910 she wrote, “… the worst as well as the best must be written out.” She had to first write herself out before she could begin the day’s fiction.

Was this a decisive routine to clear the deck for her characters? An unconscious habit born of her youth? Or a writing spell that she feared breaking? I can’t say for certain, but it got me thinking about the superstitious patterns of our writer tribe. Some we admit. Many we keep secret. But Writer Unboxed is a safe space of honesty and acceptance, so I’ll crack open my nut first…

I wear a cape when I write. Technically, it’s a red tartan robe that my mother gave me. My husband refers to it as the “get-off-my-lawn” old man robe. But he’s of a medical mind and doesn’t comprehend the magical realms of our craft. It’s a cape, endowed with super powers. I have a hard time concentrating when it isn’t on. I’ve tried to supplement with a sweatshirt or shawl, but I spend the whole time yearning for it without a single word produced. Also, when I’m not robed, it usually means that I’m in public attire. I.e. The public (my husband, mailman, dentist, doctor, friends and neighbors) feels within its right to interrupt me. My cape protects me from this—a kind of warm, invisible cloak allowing me to slip into the imaginary without distraction. Sure, one of the pockets ripped off and hangs to the side; the cuffs are permanently ink stained; the sash was knotted some time ago and with subsequent washings has become untie-able. It’s a homely thing. I’m a realist in that regard. But I’ve worn it every writing day of my last two books, and it has made the impossible happen many times. I fully intend to wear it until the seams come undone and the hem tatters.

I am not alone in my wardrobe particulars. Caroline Leavitt says she writes better when wearing a specific set of red earrings. Carson McCullers has a lucky sweater, and Francine Prose wears her husband’s red and black checked flannel pajamas. Then we have John Cheever who preferred nothing at all and wrote best in his underwear. Garments aside, there are many other superstitions to be claimed.

Isabelle Allende begins all her novels on the same day: January 8^th. Truman Capote, Mark Twain, and Edith Wharton insisted on writing lying down. Lewis Carroll, Charles Dickens, and Hemingway had to be standing up. While A.J. Jacobs walks on a treadmill and Dan Brown hangs upside down to cure his writer’s block. Poet Edith Sitwell gets inside a coffin to focus her mind, and Friedrich Schiller said he couldn’t write without a rotten apple smelling up the room. Someone could pen a treatise on the varied and extensive list of author superstitions.

Curious, I posed the question to a forum of contemporary writers: 60 percent said they do not have superstitious writing habits and 40 percent said they do. Here are a few willing to share their charms. Who knows, maybe they’ll work for you, too. At the very least, they prove that the writing community is a methodically creative bunch. [Read more…]

Re-envision Revision with Sandra Scofield

October 24, 2017 By Sarah McCoy

I first met Sandra Scofield over ten years ago. A visiting professor to my MFA program, Sandra was lauded for her unparalleled storytelling and a National Book Award Finalist (Beyond Deserving) as proof. To work with her, master students had to submit their stories and be accepted for one-on-one workshops. I had the great honor of being selected. I was working on my thesis, which would go on to be my first novel The Time It Snowed In Puerto Rico. At the time, however, I came to Sandra with only a handful of short stories set in 1960s Puerto Rico. She was loving but brutally honest in her critique. Her aim was not to foster her students’ egos. No participation trophies in Sandra’s satchel. The ultimate good of the story was paramount.

At the java shop that my fellow MFA-ers gathered, some lamented the criticism of our straightforward Montana mentor. But I’ve never been one for mollycoddling—giving or receiving. I took to the fierce twinkle in her editorial eye, and we forged a friendship through common understanding that it isn’t the author that earns praise or censure but the writing. It’s been over a decade now. I’ve lost touch with many of my MFA colleagues but my devotion to Sandra has only rooted deeper.

She came to visit me in Chicago last year. We had tea at the local indie bookstore, swapped stories, photos, laughs and books, of course. She shared her new novel Swim: Stories of the Sixties with me. The narrative mastery left me wonderstruck. So when she sent me the advanced copy of her new craft book (releasing December 5, 2017), I nearly tackled the mailman on delivery. St. Nick came early! And I was not disappointed.

The Last Draft is an invaluable guide to a novelists’ revision process. All the lessons I learned from Sandra for the last ten years are bow-tied and bound into this compelling resource. Author guru Janet Burroway (Writing Fiction) calls this “a needed book…” And I have every confidence it will be part of the creative writing canon.

So it is with great pleasure that I welcome Sandra to share her wisdoms with our Writer Unboxed community. [Read more…]

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Friends, Countrymen, Take Up Your Words!

August 22, 2017 By Sarah McCoy

It’s been a strange August full of strange happenings.

It started when I packed up my gypsy wagon once more and moved from Chicago to North Carolina with an unintended pit stop (i.e. dead car battery) beside a nuclear power plant. Did I mention it was the dead of night in West Virginia with everything closed the following day? Soon after, Charlottesville, Virginia, was set upon by white supremacists. My husband is a UVA alumnus and we dated through our undergrad years, so I have a romantic devotion the town, its students, and community. It broke our hearts to see it tainted with hate and violence. Immediately following, the sun and moon aligned in the first solar eclipse in 99 years. All in a month.

Prophetic much? I came close to telling my builder to scrap the house plans and dig a bunker. Then I remembered that living in fear is exactly what our enemies want—whether they come from within (supremacists) or without (terrorists). We can let the internal and external devils govern our actions, or we can seek some semblance of understanding so as to respond discerningly. Words are our power, friends.

As men and women whose lives are dedicated to the craft, the responsibility falls on us to be facilitators of a positive language exchange. Antagonistic rhetoric is too readily accepted today, indirectly and directly. It’s become the only way many know how to communicate. But anger and fear only fuel the beast.

Make no mistake: we are angry; we are fearful. But as guardians and proprietors of words, we understand that there is grace, knowledge, and a defined intent to every written and spoken element. This is the credence we give to spending hours deliberating over each a and the that make up the sentences and paragraphs and pages of our chapters. Words matter.

Once expressed, words resonate through the chambers of the world we inhabit and through the chambers of ourselves. We believe them— believe in them. So we must choose wisely, now more than ever. This is not the time for ignorance or flagrant tweets. 140 characters have the power to unite or destroy a nation.

Let’s be clear about the truth of language: words see no color of skin, religious affiliation, age, or sex. They supersede time, wealth, and political powers. They are steadfast as the mountains yet fluid as water. Our sacred texts even refer to them with veneration: In the beginning was the Word… They are to be honored and applied with due diligence. Anything less twists their nature and makes them void.

Silence is not an option either. I’m ashamed to confess that I tried that in the past. During the volatile election year, I had a well-meaning family member counsel me not to publicly express my personal beliefs. She warned me that it would never reflect my true heart. I’m guilty of caving to the pressure. I didn’t want to offend family and friends on either side of the political divide.

Charlottesville changed me. [Read more…]

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“What Did Your Book Teach You?” A Wisdom-Filled Q&A with Four Authors

July 3, 2017 By Sarah McCoy

A couple years ago in Tucson, I had the pleasure of sitting down to supper with a remarkable handful of author friends: Jean Kwok, Edan Lepucki, and Scott Turrow. We’d traveled across the miles for a book festival and had spent the day at our various speaking events. All were exhausted, slightly sweaty, and hungry, which lent both a familial and illusive vibe to our gathering.

The restaurant was western themed: colored lights had been strung between red pepper skeins; the walls were a rainbow of Mexican tiles; a giant Long Horn skull hung over the entrance. The building was a local icon and had once been the town’s signature hotel. We sat inside away from the patio crowd despite our knees banging into one another under the table. Intimate was the word we whispered. That didn’t bother us. Our waitress had an Annie Oakley drawl and was quick and skilled on the pours. Mariachi music played faintly from a jukebox.

I couldn’t tell you what we ate or drank, though I know we did because our table was full of empty dishes in the photos. While substantial, the meal wasn’t what filled us. The company did. For hours, we talked of our writing, our business, our loved ones, those we admire, and our dreams for the future. As storytellers, it’s important to listen, too. To stop supplying the narratives and allow our own creative cup to be replenished by others. I loved hearing how each friend came to write and publish and be; what they struggled with then and now; and most importantly, the path they saw ahead.

It’s an incredible gift for a writer to find a group of peers she both admires and trusts. I’d go so far as to say that it is an essential of being a progressive author— an author in progress—the art of communal learning.

Scott and Jean shared a piece of cake for dessert. I ate all the whipped cream off Edan’s chocolate mousse. We drank coffee and laughed until the place was about to close up. Scott, being the gentleman that he is, picked up the check, and we left. Writing quills blown to the four winds.

Since then, each of us has given birth to a new book. (In Edan’s case, a book and a baby!) So I thought this might be the perfect opportunity to get the gang back together. In spirit, I’m bumping elbows with Edan and spooning off her plate. Jean and Scott are across the table kicking our shins and lifting glasses. That’s the beauty of our craft and friendship: all we need do is write, and we are together again.

So pull up a chair, friends, the three questions on the virtual table are:

1) What did your first book teach you?
2) What is your current book teaching you?
3) What do you hope to have perfected by the end of your career?

Jean Kwok

Q1: What did your first book teach you?

JK: I was completely clueless when my debut novel took off. I was running behind, trying to figure things out like: how to tweet and how to unfreeze my face when someone took a photo of me. The public aspect of being an author was foreign territory. I’ve learned to concentrate on my interviewer, regardless of how many people may be watching or listening, and to try to give thoughtful, real answers. A seasoned publicity director told me something so simple that has helped me time and time again: “When you get out there, remember to smile. Don’t get stiff. Let people know you’re happy to be there.”

In terms of craft, I had a lot to learn as well. I had always been concerned with the flaws and passions of my characters, but I am much more aware of the technical details of my story now: how old are my characters at every point; what season is it; which day of the week; what are they wearing. I’ve learned that the more solid my fictional world is, the freer my imagination is. I’ve moved from using Word to Scrivener, which makes it much easier for me to deal with a 400-page document and all of the accompanying files.

But perhaps most importantly, I learned to love and admire my readers. They are generous, critical, and smart. I used to write only for myself, but now I write for my readers as well, trying to make sure that their journey through my work is a pleasurable, meaningful one.

Q2: What is your current book teaching you?

JK: I’ve just finished my third novel: a drama set between Europe and the U.S., following the women of a Chinese immigrant family, a mother and two daughters. It’s about what happens when one daughter mysteriously disappears and a series of family secrets begins to emerge.

It’s a book about how hard it is to truly know another person, even someone you might love very much. It’s about jealousy, passion, loyalty and most of all, love.

I had to try to use all of my skills to the utmost in order to write this book. In terms of craft, I was concerned with the two timelines an author always has to keep in mind: A) the order in which events actually happened; and B) the order in which those events are revealed to the reader. Since my new book is told by three different women as they unravel a mysterious disappearance, I was very aware of what information was revealed when so that we could follow along as the mystery evolves. Each woman’s voice is also unique, shaped by her own language and culture.

So I was especially concerned with narrative structure and voice in this novel and I could never have written this book at the beginning of my career.

Q3: What do you hope to have perfected by the end of your career?

JK: I think that many of us are drawn to writing because we love voice and that was certainly true for me. But as I learned more as a novelist, I had to deal with character, pacing, narrative arcs, themes, and symbolism, as well. It’s like I’m juggling and every time, another ball gets added. I hope that someday, I’ll be able to keep all of those balls in the air.

Edan Lepucki

Q1: What did your first book teach you?

EP: Well… my first book isn’t the one I ended up publishing first. This book was called The Book of Deeds and it was an extremely dark novel about a sixteen-year-old girl, her best friend, and the violence they come to inflict on those around them. I still have a special fondness for this weird, little novel; and after four years of writing it, and one year of racking up rejections from every editor in the galaxy, I learned that sometimes you just have to do writing that the world won’t read. I learned a ton from writing this book: the pleasures and limits of the first person; how thorny the retrospective narrator can be; how to balance two time frames, and how to weave them together; and on and on and on. No one can take those lessons from me. The book was flawed, I understand that now; looking back, I’m relieved it didn’t get published because I wasn’t ready, I had a better book in me.

When I started what would become my first published novel, California, I felt free to write what I wanted to write because I didn’t think anyone cared. Of course I despaired over this, but it was also liberating: I had only myself to please. That in the end, has made me a more bold and fearless writer.

Q2: What is your current book teaching you?

EP: My current book, Woman No. 17, which has only been out since early May, is teaching me so much!

One, I’m learning that readers are smarter than I am—that they can reveal my own characters and themes to me through our conversations, their reviews, and so on. For me, a central joy of being a published writer is interacting with perceptive readers and finding new ways to talk about and understand the story I wrote.

Two, I’m learning that what I call a “complicated” character is for others an “unlikable” character. This occasionally wounds me (does it mean I’m unlikable?! Dear God, no!), but it also has gotten me thinking about what I want from my fictional characters. In the end, I simply long to be captivated by characters, and to feel like their desires and pasts and conflicts are complex. With Woman No. 17 I’m learning to own this reading predilection, and to stand by my characters, no matter how flawed, vicious, reckless, or even self-absorbed they seem.

Third, I’ve learned to finally, finally, finally, stop checking my Amazon sales ranking. It’s an opaque number that changes hourly, and no one seems quite sure what it’s measuring. Frankly, I’ve made myself crazy looking at mine. But I haven’t checked in about two weeks, and I’ve got to say: I feel much better!

Q3: What do you hope to have perfected by the end of your career?

EP: Honestly, I don’t want to have perfected anything, because perfection is at odds with the novel, in my opinion. The novel as a form is free-wheeling, sometimes nutty, and you can write one in so many different ways. I want to spend my career challenging myself formally and taking risks—I’d love for each of my books to be different from the last but to also feel like they’re mine, that only I could have written them. My goal is always to write novels that are at once smart and deep, and also entertaining and absorbing. I hope by the end of my career I can lean back in my rocking chair, my faced etched with a zillion wrinkles, and feel content that I’ve done just that. I guess I do want to get better at enjoying the publishing process—to feel more relaxed and grateful about the whole thing. Maybe it’ll get easier—but will it remain exciting? I hope so! Sigh—I have a lot to learn…

Scott Turrow

Q1: What did your first book teach you?

ST: I will exercise lawyerly privilege and interpret “first book” with multiple meanings.

The first book I tried to write was a novel I began the summer after my freshman year of college. I had discovered, to my amazement, that Amherst College did not offer creative writing courses, which you might think I would have checked on before enrolling, since I was fierce about saying I wanted to be a novelist. So I wrote that book on the theory that it was the only way I could learn to be a novelist. And I was essentially right. Writers write. Those who do are writers and those who merely think about what they want to write, or just hang out with writers, or only go to readings or even creative writing classes, without writing much, aren’t writers. That freshman novel was widely rejected. But I got a nice note from the Editor in Chief at Farrar Straus & Giroux, Michael di Capua, who advised me to go on to “the next novel you will surely write.” Even that sustained my dreams.

The first book I published, One L, about my experiences as a law student, was a pure fluke. I wrote my agent to tell her, somewhat shame-facedly, that after 5 years involved with the Creative Writing Center at Stanford, including teaching there, that I was abandoning academic life, but not my literary dreams. To prove the latter point, I offered the observation that I hadn’t found a good book about the day-to-day experiences of law students. A contract followed without so much as a phone call before the document appeared in my mailbox. After writing four unpublished novels, I was astounded and realized then what has only become truer as the years have gone on: the great break of my literary career was going to law school. Lessons? Many. But you will never succeed in the arts if you can’t take a punch. Get back up. And keep going.

Q2: What is your current book teaching you?

ST: The book I’m out promoting, Testimony, has been an odd experience. I really liked the book while I was writing it, and I loved the process. But it’s only now that I’ve gotten some distance that I recognize its challenges. I was so confident that I could handle learning about the International Criminal Court, the Roma people, and the Bosnian War that I gave almost no thought to the possibility of failing as a writer with the novel. Weird in retrospect. I should have been scared to death.

Q3: What do you hope to have perfected by the end of your career?

ST: To this one I have no answers. I think dreaming of perfecting anything is probably misleading. You change as a writer as you age—energy level declines and knowledge increases. Both facts have an impact. Personally, I’m pleased that I’ve never let myself off the hook, never said, “This book isn’t that good, maybe I’ll do better next time.” I’ve always tried to do my absolute best by the time I let go of a book.

Turnabout is fair play…

Sarah McCoy

Q1: What did your first book teach you? [Read more…]

A Hard Change Will Do You Good

February 28, 2017 By Sarah McCoy

Flickr Creative Commons: Torbeln Ronning

I didn’t expect it, but changing publishing houses is like living in Mayberry your whole life and deciding to relocate to London. Potentially forever. You’re aware that it won’t be an easy transition, but you can’t imagine it’s that hard. People speak the same language where you’re going and historically, we were all once kinsmen.

Change is the essence of life. People do it every day. Even nature is perpetually evolving: winter, spring, summer, fall. So this should feel organic, right?

Not quite. I won’t sugarcoat the truth. This has been one of the most arduous journeys I’ve ever experienced. Nearly more difficult than getting my first book published—because then I was simply happy for an open door. I was content to have my novel be made real on bookshelves. I didn’t know anybody in publishing, and they didn’t know me. My publisher and I were new sweethearts, and I hardly edited a dozen words of my manuscript before it went to press.

Bless all the experienced authors who cheered and smiled and let me think it all so snappy. If I met my debut self right now, I’d pour her a stiff drink and say, “Girl… start taking that Zantac.”

Here’s something you need to know about me: I’m loyal to a fault. I fiercely defend my trusted relationships until I reach an absolute, indisputable end. I don’t know how to be any other way, personally or professionally. So I stayed at my original publishing house for nearly ten years while it and everyone in it changed.

I went through six or seven editors—so many I can’t even recall the exact count. They just kept leaving my imprint. And for those of you who’ve never had your editor leave in the middle of your book project, I think I can speak for the rest of us: it completely knocks you off your creative horse. Your writing legally belongs to the publishing house, not the editor employed by the house. So there you stay to be assigned to another in-house editor, who is usually inundated with projects already. Back to square one with the nice-to-meet-you’s, never mind the ins and outs of the book you’re working on. Do that 6-7 times and you feel like a redheaded stepchild. How could you not?

What many of you don’t know is that when my latest novel The Mapmaker’s Children released, my lovely editor left for another publishing house imprint, and I was assigned once more. This was the straw that broke the writer’s back. My agent and I agreed that I needed to move to a fresh house. Easier said than done. Here’s why…

Unlike with my debut, I know people now. [Read more…]

11+

Listening: the Lost Art

August 23, 2016 By Sarah McCoy

We live in a culture and time of Listen to Me.

Listen, we preference our statements to family, friends, and strangers. Did you hear me? We ask when someone doesn’t do as we request. Can you hear me now? Can you hear me now? We jokingly parrot into our third ears (cell phones) and are piqued to shrieking if there’s a connection hiccup, a dim signal, a garbled word. But stop a minute. Hush yourself and think about it: if each of us is talking, how can the other ever be the listener?

I’m a storyteller. That’s my craft, my profession and my passion. Every hour of my life (wake to sleep) is dedicated to the business of stringing together words and telling a story. The odd paradox of being a writer is that it’s imperative that we be listeners first.

Seek to hear

Just this past week I was at the doctor’s office. My technician is from Poland. We’d had our introductory meeting last month when I moved to Chicago. Then, she’d asked me what I did for a living, and I told her I wrote books.

When I arrived for this second visit, she met me in the exam room, “I’m reading your book! The Time It Snowed In Puerto Rico!” She took a vacation to the island this summer and was interested in learning more. While she went about her medical checklist, she said she was fascinated by the similarities between my young protagonist’s dream of “making it to America” and her own growing up.

As it happened, I was physically in a position where I couldn’t do the talking—couldn’t tell her about my mom, titis and abuelita, about my family farm in Aibonito, about the food and the music and all the wonders of Puerto Rican culture. All the stuff that I’d grown accustomed to chatting about when someone brought up the book. So instead, I turned the tables on myself. I became the listener.

“Tell me about growing up in Poland, how you came to be in Chicago,” I said. [Read more…]

13+

A Frame of Place

June 28, 2016 By Sarah McCoy

The packers are here. Yes, this very hour. We’re moving. Not down the road, across town, or even as close as a state away. We’re traveling 1,500 miles north to an entirely new place, another world for all intents and purposes. By this time next month, I’ll be there and not here. This present hour will be the shadowbox memory in my mind.

So while men stack my books in brown boxes and seal them up with packing tape, I’m standing here at my office window, looking out at the mighty Franklin Mountains and the parched Rio Grande. They’ve been my writing companions for nearly a decade. From here, I’ve watched the sunset light up that rocky ridge as red as a bonfire. I’ve felt the anxious anticipation of a summer sandstorm’s approach. I’ve opened this window to let in the rare scent of desert rain. I rooted my mind—reality and imagination—within the frame of this place.

Place. Such a powerful thing. A story world cannot be composed without first being grounded in a place and time. The setting is the stage on which the characters and action are invested.

Writers Roundtable

This topic of place came up in a group of novelists on Facebook. Aline Ohanesian explained, “With my first novel, I felt a string of personal connections to the place/setting of Central Anatolia where my grandparents were from. I grew up listening to stories about the old country until I felt nostalgia for a place I’d never been.”

Hilary Zaid was passionate that “place is inextricable, essential, and informs everything else. A novel is steeped in it, as an object in a vat of dye.”

Sandra Hunter agreed, “I’m with Hilary. For me, setting informs everything. It provides dimension to character, explains root causation, as well as conflict and just about every other thing.”

Going to my own work for evaluation, I find that the settings have always been the genesis. In The Mapmaker’s Children, the novel began with a West Virginia house hiding a secret. The culture and history of the Underground Railroad in that specific location was the catalyst for the characters’ journeys. The landscape (environmental to social) directly influenced the plot action.

I was led to write The Baker’s Daughter after moving to El Paso, Texas, and meeting a German woman selling baked goods at the farmer’s market. I knew Garmisch, Germany, having been there as a child and visited often as an adult. The two places are as significant as the characters that hail from them. They don’t align naturally and yet, they align authentically.

And right there, we circle back to Hunter’s comment: conflict in setting is story gold.

So now, I’m flipping the coin. If setting is such a forceful ingredient in our writing, wouldn’t it be equally potent in our real lives? We all agree it is the bedrock to our creative worlds, but what about our personal ones? [Read more…]

About Sarah McCoy

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