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The Tasks of Todd Hasak-Lowy: An Interview with the Author of The Task of This Translator

by Erika Dreifus on July 3, 2007

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This interview originally appeared in The Practicing Writer, August 2005.

The Tasks of Todd Hasak-Lowy: An Interview with the Author of The Task of This Translator

Todd Hasak-Lowy was born in Detroit and raised in its suburbs. He received his PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley, where he wrote on modern Hebrew fiction. Todd also started writing fiction in Berkeley. He is presently an assistant professor of Hebrew Language and Literature at the University of Florida in Gainesville, where he lives with his wife and two daughters. His debut story collection, The Task of This Translator, was published by Harcourt in June 2005. Here Todd graciously answers questions posed by your editor, Erika Dreifus.

Erika Dreifus: Todd, thanks so much for taking the time to “talk” with us. I know you’ve been busy! Your debut story collection, The Task of This Translator, was published in June [2005], and you’ve been giving readings in New York, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, and Ann Arbor. Congratulations on the book’s publication. Please tell us a bit about your development as a fiction writer?

Todd Hasak-Lowy: I started writing as an unintended side effect of my graduate study. I was struggling with academic writing while simultaneously coming to deeply appreciate (and for the first time understand the workings of) narrative fiction. One day, quite spontaneously, I tried writing a short piece of fiction myself as a way to make sense of a piece of theory I was reading, something by Dorrit Cohn called Transparent Minds. Her book is about various ways of representing consciousness in fiction. Rather than just underline the text, I started describing someone’s thoughts, using a few modes Cohn treated in her book that struck me as particularly compelling.

Also, around the same time, I stumbled on a couple writers–the Israeli Yaakov Shabtai and the American Nicholson Baker–both of whom had a somewhat unconventional (i.e.highly analytical, exacting, and plain wordy) approach to narrative that really spoke to me. Within a few weeks I had found my voice, as corny as that may sound.

There are definitely times I wish that I had more training in how to write fiction, but ultimately I have learned to trust myself. In graduate school I learned above all how to read fiction closely and systematically, and that’s the main tool I rely on in my own writing.

ED: For those who haven’t yet read it, the collection includes seven stories, only one of which, if I understand correctly, was previously published (“On the Grounds of the Complex Commemorating the Nazis’ Treatment of the Jews,” which appeared in the Iowa Review in September 2001). Many short story writers (and poets and essayists, for that matter) are advised to publish their work widely in literary journals before trying to publish a collection. What’s your response to such conventional wisdom?

THL: I don’t know much beyond my own experience in this case, but my hunch is that outside of a few widely circulated magazines (The New Yorker, Harper’s, etc.) getting published elsewhere is only marginally helpful. Again, I could be totally wrong.

ED: Please tell us about the process you went through structuring the collection, choosing and sequencing the stories, and so on.

THL: I had an agent, Simon Lipskar from Writer’s House, before I had a full manuscript. He explained to me how the whole process works, and over the course of about a year I was able to complete a manuscript. Once I had enough stories–in terms of overall word count–he and I worked together on coming up with a sequence. The editor who eventually bought it, Tina Pohlman, actually bought it under the condition that three out of the eight stories (thankfully the shortest ones) not be included, since she wasn’t as enthusiastic about those three. My contract with the publisher stated that I had to provide two new stories (again, for word count purposes) by a certain date. A fair amount of time (almost a year) had passed since the time Simon and I first started sending out the manuscript, so I was already nearing completion on a couple new pieces. It was fun to finish those two stories knowing they’d get published. Tina and I settled on the final sequence during the editing process.

ED: “The Task of this Translator” is really a standout piece in this collection. There’s a lot of mystery in this story, from the translator’s own inability to comprehend what’s being said to him (conveyed in such lines as “Ben listened intently and heard: My name is Goran Vansalivich and I blah you blah. Blah years ago my brothers (passive marker?) blah by blah.”) to the fact that the language (and even the genocide) at the root of the story remains unnamed. To what extent are you aware of what’s “not told” in your stories as you write them?

THL: Completing gaps in a text–that is filling in what is “not told”–is a central part of the reading process. When I’m writing and thinking of some abstract ideal reader, I’m always trying to leave gaps or other features in the text that require the reader to take a stand or be more active. I had some vague ideas of why I included so many “blahs” in that story when I was writing it, but I think the thing that made it most attractive to me was the feeling that the reader would have no choice but to try and fill in each specific blank and at the same time think about what it meant that there were many “blahs” in the first place.

I think a similar impulse fueled my decision to write a story that takes place at Yad Vashem–Israel’s Holocaust memorial museum–only to call it “the complex commemorating the Nazis’ treatment of the Jews” and then repeat this name about twenty times in as many pages. A lot of people have asked me why I did that, and I have some answers as to what I think it means, but I’m more interested in knowing that the reader is impelled to come up with an interpretation him or herself.

As for not naming the genocide in the title story, I didn’t, in that particular case, want to get bogged down with a specific historical event. Here I was trying to invoke ethnic violence as a type (or even a genre) of historical event (Incidentally, I don’t think of what happened to Goran’s family as genocide, but leaving it vague obviously allows the reader to call it just that). If I had referred to a specific historical incident, then readers would have, quite naturally and correctly, concluded that the story was saying something about that event. But what I wanted to do here was narrate the meeting of an unqualified translator with a certain kind of horrific, but ultimately remote and regional, violence that marked the twentieth (and, I suppose, early twenty-first) century.

ED: Short story writers often hear that agents are more interested in reading emerging writers’ novels than their short story collections. Tell us how you came to work with your agent.

THL: Agents, including mine, are indeed more optimistic (or less pessimistic) about selling novels. Short story collections are simply very hard to sell. I sent one story blind to Simon and about five other agents–the one that takes places at Yad Vashem–and Simon responded. While he was very enthusiastic about my writing from the start, he was also very honest with me about how difficult it would be to sell a
short story collection. And, to be sure, this manuscript was rejected by at least thirty publishers. But I know Simon believes that if he is really enthusiastic about something, then he’s likely not alone.

ED: In reviewing The Task of this Translator, Publisher’s Weekly called yours “a cogent new Jewish-American voice,” which is certainly a wonderful compliment. But not every story in the collection deals with explicitly Jewish-American characters, subjects, or themes. To what extent do you see the voice of this book as a particularly “Jewish-American” one?

THL: The Jewish or Jewish-American question is central for me, both as a writer and in terms of my identity in general. I’m an assistant professor of Hebrew literature, and as such I think a great deal about Jewish literature (and not just Hebrew literature) as well as Jewish history. But when I started writing I was trying to write away from the topics I was dealing with in graduate school, in part because being a specialist is suffocating after a while. I also didn’t want to write on themes about which I had clear, pre-existing views. I felt that it would be hard to say anything compelling if I knew exactly what I was trying to say from the beginning. As such, I exactly did not want to write about Israel or Holocaust survivors or intermarriage or any other obviously Jewish topic. I just wanted to write. I wanted to work out and sharpen my voice. I know, however, that my writing is deeply informed by Jewish life and Jewish literature, especially Hebrew fiction, which comprises my literary frame of reference. I think of the world of my stories as mostly Jewish, but probably not in easily or traditionally identifiable ways.

ED: What has surprised you most about the publishing process?

THL: One specific thing: outside of nixing three whole stories, my editor requested of me virtually no major changes to any of the stories. That was surprising and extremely gratifying. On a more general level, I’ve been amazed at how much luck (both good and bad) is involved. No manuscript or book, no matter how great, is for everyone. But you only get one shot (if that) at each publisher and with each place that reviews books. So you hope your writing winds up with the right person at each step of the way. This isn’t to say that all books are equal. The consensus that eventually forms around a book is typically, I’d guess, not arbitrary. But when you’re just trying to get something published, there’s no consensus to rely on. In short, there’s a lot that the writer doesn’t control.

ED: What advice do you have for short story writers who have yet to place their first collections?

THL: Be patient and keep writing, since that’s the main thing you have control over. Find a comfortable strategy regarding the unpleasant but unavoidable matter of self-promotion. Developing and taking advantage of connections can prove crucial, especially since getting a complete stranger’s attention is so difficult. But these connections are often friends or relatives or friends of friends, which means it’s never just about you and your book.

ED: Is there anything else you’d like to tell us? (About your next project, other reading dates/venues, etc.)

THL: Nothing really. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to talk about my writing.

ED: Thank you, Todd!

The Task of this Translator: Stories
by Todd Hasak-Lowy
Harcourt, 2005
272 pages, Paper, $13

Delving Into the Toolbox: An Interview with Sands Hall

by Erika Dreifus on June 26, 2007

(This interview originally appeared in The Practicing Writer, September 2006.)

Delving Into the Toolbox: An Interview with Sands Hall

by Erika Dreifus

It’s a true joy for me to present this interview with Sands Hall, one of my first fiction teachers (and one of the finest writing teachers out there today). Sands is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and holds a second MFA in Acting; her experience as a director, actor, and playwright gives her a unique perspective on the writing process. In addition to her work as a freelance editor, she facilitates private workshops; she is also on the staff of the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley and teaches for conferences such as the Iowa Summer Writing Festival, as well as for the University of California, Davis, Extension Programs, where she was recently honored with an Excellence in Teaching and Outstanding Service Award.

Sands is the author of the novel, Catching Heaven (a Ballantine Reader’s Circle selection and a Willa Award Finalist, Best Contemporary Fiction). Her produced plays include an adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women and the drama Fair Use. She is an Affiliate Artist with The Foothill Theatre Company and lives in Nevada City, a historic mining town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in California.

Recently Sands “talked” with your editor via e-mail about her latest book, Tools of the Writer’s Craft (Moving Finger Press, 2005):

Erika Dreifus: What inspired you to write and publish Tools of the Writer’s Craft?

Sands Hall: I’d been teaching and editing for a number of years and found that I was scribbling similar comments, again and again, in the margins of student and client manuscripts. I decided to put those thoughts into organized form, and the essays became a sort of shorthand, as in, “see my thoughts about this in the attached.” Then I began to include them in course packs of various classes, as a way to ensure that everyone in a given class would share a sensibility and nomenclature. I was often told they were useful, but thought that getting them officially published would be an arduous task–until my blessed editor, Steve Susoyev, and Moving Finger Press decided to see them into print.

The book also includes exercises. These started as assignments I gave myself, to try and solve particular writing problems, and at some point I began to assign them to students. (Editor’s Note: For a sample exercise, click here.) As a teacher I find them extremely useful: when an entire workshop is working on the same exercise, with the same focus and objectives, the discussion is similarly focused, on a specific and particular craft problem. The result is that what is learned in the writing (and critiquing) of, say, 300 words, can be applied by the writer to a whole manuscript, the larger endeavor. It is exciting and gratifying to see the leap in ability and understanding that the exercises create in a workshop of diligent and generous writers.

In most other art forms an artist practices every day: a dancer does pliés, a painter takes on “studies,” someone longing to get better on the mandolin plays scales. The exercises in the book offer a way to practice writing. As often as not the pieces generated wind up as part of a larger piece, although that needn’t be the reason for tackling them.

ED: How do you see readers integrating these two parts of the book, “The Essays,” and “The Exercises”?

SH: The section of the book that contains the exercises is called “Put It to Work,” and that pretty much explains the idea. The essays offer theory and the exercises offer a way to put that theory into practice.

In my experience, one gets better–more effective–as a writer by reading, writing, critiquing writing (by which I mean, reading with a discerning eye as to what particular writers, published or unpublished, are doing); then reading and writing and discerning some more.

ED: As it happens, the book opens with an extensive discussion of “Making Workshops Work.” In my experience, this is an often-underemphasized aspect of writing instruction. What has led you to place such importance on it?

SH: Not long after Tools was published a (discerning) reader wondered why “Making Workshops Work” is the first of the essays in the book, rather than, as she thought it should be, the final one. I thought it a fair question, as it’s true that the essay assumes some knowledge of the craft issues discussed in the rest of the volume. It says a lot about my own passions that I lead off with that essay.

In the last five decades workshops have tended to focus on what a writer is doing that does not work rather than what does, with the result that the “learning process” and environment are ones that can humiliate and demean rather than encourage and support. Of course this rests largely on the shoulders of the facilitator of a given workshop, the tone and the system–the “workshop methodology” if you will–he or she sets or insists upon.

I think workshops, for a long while, were a bit like that image we have of a ballet class painted by Degas, where the ballet master has a long stick with which to rap or pummel a ballerina’s unaesthetic or unruly calves and arms, accompanied by words of degradation; this was intended to improve technique, and certainly created legendary dancers. I have come to believe that this kind of teaching, teaching with abuse and fear, is simply old-fashioned, patriarchic, but it still goes on. (I’ve had students, inculcated in this tradition, tell me they don’t feel they’ve had a “good” workshop if they don’t feel shredded at the end of class.) Yet there have always been masters and choreographers who work more, dare I say, lovingly, enthusiastically, positively, and the result is just as lovely and “correct”–and certainly more pleasurable for the artists involved. The essay is an effort to encourage another way to participate in a workshop, although these are certainly not new notions.

In addition, it took me such a long time, when I was in the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, to figure out just what a workshop was supposed to accomplish, and I wish I’d known some of that when I started the program, rather than just beginning to get the point of it at the end of those two years. So the essay is also an effort to pull these ideas together, and intended to help students get a jump start on the workshop process; above all, I hope they will examine and own the idea that the more they put in to critiquing the writing of others, the more they will take back to their own
efforts.

ED: Some of the material in this book was happily familiar to me as your former student. How has your vision/definition of “tools of the writer’s craft” evolved over the years you’ve been teaching and writing?

SH: It has to do with that idea of “a dancer does plies” articulated above. There are some things one cannot be in control of: basic talent, luck, timing. But there are things a writer can control, and one of those is to be the best writer he or she can be. In the end, art is largely a matter of the craft it takes to create that art: one can write one great song by accident, or shape clay into something brilliant once or twice without “knowledge,” but those artists that endure, whose work stays with us, at some point grew into or grasped elements of what it is that created–sustained and improved–what they did before. That’s craft, and it seems to me by attempting to pinpoint and discuss various components of artful storytelling–vivid writing, who is telling the story, rendering life into art–one might grasp some tools that can be manipulate with *purpose*–a very important word to me–to create effective writing.

ED: You have experience as an actor, director, playwright, novelist, and, obviously, essayist. How do you see the “tools of the writer’s craft” crossing and/or overlapping genres?

SH: Well, I certainly hope your readers will be inspired to buy the book and find out. Seriously, the essays do describe elements of my theater experience that have proven useful to me as a writer, and I’ve had any number of students who have said that it is some theatrical metaphor or image that allowed them to grasp some aspect of writing that had otherwise eluded them: turning down the sound on a scene to underscore the idea of show versus tell; the idea of what a reader “sees” as the curtain goes up, or a camera fades in, to illustrate character; the idea of point of view as a camera; to name a few.

ED: What are you working on now?

SH: My new novel, Xie, is currently in New York. Like my previous novel, Catching Heaven, Xie has three narrators, but this novel also dances across a lot of history: one narrator is a playwright, living now, who is writing a play based on a trove of letters written between 1869 and 1920 by a woman who gets inspired by the women’s suffrage movement. Of course I’ve had to write those letters, and even some portions of the play, so it’s required a lot of research. I’ve had a wonderful time and hope my readers will too.

ED: Thank you, Sands!

===========

Tools of the Writer’s Craft
by Sands Hall
Moving Finger Press, 298 pages.
Paperback, $15

The Translator’s Practice: An Interview with Brett Jocelyn Epstein

by Erika Dreifus on June 9, 2007

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In keeping with the Web site changes mentioned here last week (and prompted by Dan Wickett’s recent e-panel with literary translators), I’m happy to add from the archives this interview with practicing translator/writer Brett Jocelyn Epstein. The interview initially appeared in The Practicing Writer in November 2004; new/updated material will be indicated by italics.

The Translator’s Practice: An Interview With Brett Jocelyn Epstein

by Erika Dreifus

This month The Practicing Writer considers an aspect of the craft and business of writing that many of us don’t necessarily think about every day: translation. What does a translator do? What are the ties between writing and translation? And where can we learn more? In an interview with Erika Dreifus, Brett Jocelyn Epstein shares insights on these essential elements of the translator’s craft and business.

Originally from Chicago, Brett lived in southern Sweden for more than five years, and moved to southern Wales last September. She is a Ph.D. student in translation studies, researching the translation of children’s literature, and she works as a translator, writer, copy editor, and English teacher. She is the author of a textbook, Ready, Set, Teach: Creative Lessons for the Intermediate English Classroom. She was graduated from Bryn Mawr College in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, with a BA in English and creative writing, and she received an MFA in fiction from Queens University in Charlotte, North Carolina. Please visit her website and her blog for more information.

Erika Dreifus: Brett, can you briefly describe the job of a translator?

Brett Jocelyn Epstein: Translation is the art and craft of bringing an author’s actual words, as well as his ideas, implications, moods, voice, style, and so forth, from the source language (the language to be translated from) to the target language (the language to be translated to), without being either overly literal and strict with the text or overly free and loose. A translator must consider what and how would the author have written this document if he were writing in the target language. So, translation is the delicate and formidable job of perfectly recreating the author’s original document.

ED: What kinds of business opportunities are open to translators?

BJE: The great majority of translators support themselves with non-fiction work. My partner, Daniel Elander, and I mainly translate articles, websites,business documents, and menus from Swedish to English, though we’ve also worked with Danish. Translating legal documents, articles, reference works, textbooks, websites, and other such items unfortunately pays better and is much easier to get into than translating poetry, plays, or novels. I personally feel that translating creative work is more challenging and more interesting, but since only approximately two percent of all literature published in the United States is in translation (and the translations that do exist come primarily from Spanish, French, or German), it is clear that there is little work available for people who want to translate novels or poems. Most people who do this work don’t do so because they want to make money (translating literature is far from lucrative), but rather because they are dedicated to literature and/or to the specific author or work and because they want the intellectual and creative challenge.

ED: In a recent article, you issued a call for more people to “join the ranks of translators.” In what ways may practicing writers be particularly suited to the work of translating texts?

BJE: I really do think that writers are the ideal people to be translators. To translate a text, you must understand it fully and be able to basically rewrite it in a new language. Clearly, then, it helps if a translator has experience with writing, the writing process, analyzing literature, and editing. Certainly there are good translators out there who do not work on their own original writing and likewise there are good writers who don’t have the patience for or interest in working with other people’s documents,but in general, I believe translating and writing are worthy and compatible mates and I find both that reading, analyzing, and translating texts has benefited my own writing and also that writing stories and articles has helped me better understand the English language and how to translate into it.

ED: What works “on translating” would you recommend for anyone interested in learning more on the topic?

BJE: One of the best ways, I think, to learn about translation is to carefully read and study a document in both its original language and its translation. When I did this with Per Lagerkvist’s The Dwarf, I spent a lot of time trying to understand what words and phrases really meant and why the translator had made certain choices and I compared this to what I would have done, had I been the translator. In fact, I realized that I was not satisfied at all with the English translation and I hope that one day soon a publishing company will decide to issue a new version of this novel. As for actual works on translation, I have particularly enjoyed and learned from Vladimir Nabokov’s essay “The Art of Translation”, William Weaver’s essay “The Process of Translation” (which can be found in an interesting volume called The Craft of Translation, edited by John Biguenet and Rainer Schulte), and Performing Without a Stage: The Art of Literary Translation, by Robert Wechsler.

ED: Thank you, Brett!

Editor’s Note: For a few examples of literary journals and magazines that do pay for translations, please click here.

Housekeeping

by Erika Dreifus on May 26, 2007

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Faithful blog visitors–and I know there are a few of you out there!–may be noticing some “redecorating” here at the blog, with new sidebars for book reviews and author interviews. I suppose one personal side effect of all the recent brouhaha over a “book reviewing crisis” has been a renewed motivation to try to archive more of my reviews online. So look for some blasts from the past (I’ll try to keep everything relatively recent) to appear here in the coming days/weeks.

Adventures in Historical Fiction: An Interview with Natalie Wexler

by Erika Dreifus on May 24, 2007

Great news just in from Natalie Wexler, whose novel, A More Obedient Wife, has won a bronze medal in this year’s Independent Publisher Book Awards competition (historical/military fiction category). Congratulations, Natalie!

In honor of this wonderful development, here’s a reprint of an interview with Natalie; the original version appeared in the April 2007 issue of The Practicing Writer.

ADVENTURES IN HISTORICAL FICTION: AN INTERVIEW WITH NATALIE WEXLER

by Erika Dreifus

I met Natalie Wexler in a workshop taught by Sharon Oard Warner at the Iowa Summer Writing Festival several years back. At the time, we were both immersed in the workshop’s focus on “Discovering Your Novel.” I was captivated by Natalie’s work at that early date, and I remained riveted as I read through my copy of her finished book, A More Obedient Wife: A Novel of the Early Supreme Court, this winter.

Natalie Wexler lives in Washington, D.C., with her husband and two children. A former Supreme Court clerk, she was an associate editor of The Documentary History of the Supreme Court of the United States, 1789-1800 until its completion in December 2006. She has also written a number of feature articles and essays, and currently teaches workshops on the personal essay at The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland.

Recently Natalie responded to a series of questions about her work posed by yours truly.

ERIKA DREIFUS (ED): Natalie, A More Obedient Wife is a story of two women from early American history–two Hannahs (Iredell and Wilson)–who were married to Supreme Court Justices (two Jameses–Iredell and Wilson). Please tell us a little more about these women: who they were, how their lives intersected, and why you decided to write a novel about them.

NATALIE WEXLER (NW): The two Hannahs were very different. I’ll give you what is known about them historically: Hannah Iredell–in her early 40s when the action of the novel takes place–was intelligent and unusually well-educated for her time, but extremely, possibly even pathologically, shy. When her husband was appointed to the Court, the family moved from their home in Edenton, North Carolina, to the new federal capital–New York at first, and then Philadelphia. It’s clear, from the letters she wrote that have survived, that she found it extremely difficult to participate in the society of what is sometimes called “the republican court.” Although the United States was a republic, the only real governmental model Americans had was monarchy, so they borrowed some of its trappings: levees, tea parties, formal “evenings” held by the wives of the President and various Cabinet members, etc. In addition to feeling pressured to attend these events, Hannah Iredell had the burden of dealing with her mother-in-law, who arrived from England shortly after the Iredells moved to New York and turned out to have a serious drinking problem.

I know much less about Hannah Wilson, because fewer of her letters have survived, and I’ve found only one letter written to her by her husband. (James Iredell, in contrast, wrote to his wife nearly every day that he was away from her–which, because Justices had to travel the country riding circuit–was often.) But it’s clear, from the Gilbert Stuart portrait of her that has survived, and which I’ve used for my cover, that she was quite attractive. She’s also much younger than Hannah Iredell during the period covered by the book–19 in 1793, when we first meet her, and 24 when it ends in 1798. We know from letters (including an amusing one from John Quincy Adams, which is included in the book) that in 1793 James Wilson–then a 51-year-old widower with six children–saw her in church one day when he was riding circuit in Boston and immediately fell madly in love with her. By the time he left town ten days later, he had proposed. When Hannah accepted, shortly thereafter, many observers concluded that the attraction was Wilson’s great wealth–a reasonable conclusion, given that he wasn’t particularly handsome and by all accounts lacked personal charm. But the interesting thing is that, a few years later, when he had a spectacular financial downfall and landed in debtor’s prison, Hannah Wilson stuck by him rather than going home to mother.

The two women’s paths crossed because their husbands were friends. They first met in late 1794, when the Wilsons, riding the Southern circuit together, stayed with the Iredells in Edenton–the Iredells had moved back there the previous year. But in 1798, after Wilson’s financial affairs had worsened, the two women had a more extended period of contact. Wilson had essentially fled to Edenton in late 1797, to avoid another arrest by his creditors, and in early 1798 his wife joined him there. He died in Edenton that August, after which Hannah Wilson–penniless and exhausted from caring for her dying husband–moved in with the Iredells for several months.

I decided to write a novel about these women because I felt drawn to them, and there simply wasn’t enough information available to allow me to write a biographical, nonfiction account of their lives. There were lots of unanswered questions–gaps left by the letters and other documents that have survived–and I wanted to answer them. The only way I could really do that was to invent some of the answers.

ED: What’s your advice for anyone contemplating (or in the process of) writing a novel based on the life of a “real person”?

NW: First of all, choose someone who’s dead– preferably long dead. Personally, I wouldn’t have felt as free to invent if I had been writing about people who were living, or whose children or even grandchildren were living. But even if you don’t have compunctions about that, there are potential legal problems that could arise if you’re fictionalizing the lives of people who are still around.

Beyond that, I’d say it’s important to learn as much as you can about the real person you’re writing about, but at the same time you shouldn’t feel too bound by what you’ve learned. That is, you want to get at the essential character of the person, if you can, but you also have to bear in mind that a novel needs a plot, and a good amount of significant detail, neither of which may be provided by the historical record. And obviously, you’ll also need to omit detail that just clutters up the narrative (for example, I eliminated a few siblings of some of my characters–there were just too many to keep track of).

I’ll also say that in some ways I found it helpful to be writing about real people. I constructed elaborate timelines, based on the historical record, for each of my two couples. I used long sheets of paper, which I’d roll out and consult whenever I was stuck wondering what was going to happen next. On the other hand, I found myself up against certain constraints as well. For instance, my two main characters–the two Hannahs–don’t meet until halfway through the book, and the reader doesn’t even hear from Hannah Wilson until about a third of the way through. But that was the way events happened to unfold: the most eventful part of Hannah Iredell’s life (at least for purposes of the novel) was from 1790 to 1793, and the most eventful part of Hannah Wilson’s life didn’t begin until 1793.

ED: Please tell us about some of your favorite research discoveries from your work on this novel.

NW: I immensely enjoyed doing research in two books that were published in the early 19th century–The American Frugal Housewife and The Family Nurse. Both were written by Lydia Maria Child, who was an interesting person in her own right (she was an ardent abolitionist, and also the author of the poem, “Over the River and Through the Woods”). Based on some hints in the letters about Hannah Iredell’s character, I decided to make her something of an expert on household hints and home remedies, and I borrowed extensively from Mrs. Child’s books. Some of the herbal home remedies have come back into fashion, like senna as a laxative (I found some in an herbal tea at my local supermarket). Others were just downright weird, like the cure for “Dropsy in the Head,” thought to be brought on by “unnaturally forcing the intellect of children.” The recommended cure was to shave the child’s head and apply “a poultice of onions slightly stewed in vinegar,” while bathing the feet in “warm water with mustard in it.” I actually had Hannah Iredell subject one of her children to this treatment.

ED: Throughout the novel, which relies on diary and letter forms, the language seems particularly authentic for the late 18th-century setting. I’m struck by how many nouns are capitalized (“My true World, my very universe, is left behind in Edenton–a poor thing, as the Bard once wrote, but mine own.”). Please tell us a bit about that stylistic aspect of the text, and any challenges that came up for you as a 21st-century writer employing it.

NW: Actually, I was surprised by how easily I was able to assume an 18th-century voice. At first, I started writing the novel in the third person because I didn’t think I could sound like an authentic 18th-century person, but then I tried writing in the first person and found that I could do it well enough to satisfy a 21st-century reader. (Of course, I don’t know if I’d be able to fool a real 18th-century person, but fortunately there aren’t any of those around.) It must be a result of having spent countless hours reading 18th-century letters, even before I started doing research for the novel, as an editor of a documentary history of the first ten years of the Supreme Court (which is where I first came across the story of the Iredells and the Wilsons).

I think adopting the style of the era was immensely helpful in transporting myself to that particular place and time, and in conjuring up the people I was writing about. As for the capitalization, I’ve long been fascinated, in reading 18th-century letters, by what people chose to capitalize. You would think that they’d capitalize only the important words, but for some people it appears to have been more or less random. And some people used capitalization much less than others. (I won’t even broach the subject of spelling, which was a real free-for-all–but I decided to use standard modern spelling, so as not to distract the reader too much.) I decided to use a more or less random system of capitalization for Hannah Iredell, because I thought it made her voice seem more archaic and I conceived of her as the more old-fashioned, backward-looking of my two main characters. Hannah Wilson’s capitalization is more in line with our modern system (i.e., it’s just used for proper nouns and the first words of sentences), because I saw her as the more modern of the two. It was an easy way to help distinguish the two voices.

ED: You’ve published this book on your own. Tell us how you came to decide to self-publish it.

NW: Frankly, self-publishing wasn’t my first choice. I had an agent, but was unable to find a publisher. Once my agent gave up, after about 20 rejections, I tried to find a publisher on my own (I’d been advised it would be very difficult to find another agent at that point, because the manuscript had already been sent to most of the major publishing houses), but soon realized that wasn’t going to work. I was only trying small publishing houses, but even many of those won’t look at unagented manuscripts.

At first I was hesitant to self-publish, because it seemed like an admission of defeat, but ultimately I decided it made more sense than just letting the manuscript gather dust in a drawer. I wanted my friends and family to be able to read it in a manageable format, and there were certain markets I felt I could target–people interested in Supreme Court history, and people who live in or visit Edenton (where you can actually tour the James Iredell House). And I hoped that I might be able to reach some segment of the general public as well, though I knew it would be difficult.

ED: What made you choose Lulu.com among all the other Print on Demand (POD) companies?

NW: The main reason was that Lulu would allow me to keep the price low–or so I thought. With POD, the price really goes up with the number of pages. So, if your book is only 200 pages or so, your price can be competitive with books published by regular publishers, but my book is about 450 pages. I looked at some other companies and found that the minimum price for my book would be something close to $30. That struck me as way too high for a paperback novel by a first-time novelist. I wanted to keep the price under $20 if I could. Lulu allowed me to take no royalties, which helped to keep the price low–although, with the 40% mark-up that most retailers demand, the retail price would still be just over $20 ($21.08, to be exact). But–at least at the time I agreed to the contract–the book was for sale on the Lulu website for the wholesale price, $13.56. Unfortunately, a few weeks ago, Lulu unilaterally decided to charge the retail price on its Web site, so the only way for me to keep the price under $20 is for me to sell it myself–or lose money on every retail sale.

ED: What surprised you most about the publishing process?

NW: I suppose the biggest shock for me was that getting an agent didn’t automatically lead to getting published. That may sound naive, but I knew many good writers who’d had a hard time finding an agent, and I had one more or less fall into my lap. I wasn’t even looking for an agent yet, because I hadn’t finished the novel, but the sister of a friend of mine–who is one of the best-known agents in New York–heard about the novel and signed me up on the basis of 30 pages. She has a reputation for being pretty critical, but she apparently just fell in love with my novel. So I assumed that if she had that kind of reaction, it wouldn’t be that hard to find just ONE publisher who felt the same way. Alas, I was wrong.

ED: How did you locate the book’s cover image (Gilbert Stuart’s Mrs. Thomas Bartlett [Hannah Gray Wilson])? How did you acquire permission to use it?

NW: Locating the portrait of Hannah Wilson was easy–it had already been reproduced in one of the volumes of the documentary history of the Supreme Court that I had helped to edit. (The vast majority of the letters and other documents I incorporated into the novel had been collected and copied by the staff of the documentary history project before I joined it, so I owe them a huge debt of gratitude.)

Obtaining permission to use the portrait wasn’t particularly difficult either. I knew that the original was at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, so I contacted them. I had to pay $130, get their approval of the cover design, and send them two complimentary copies of the book. But it was well worth it–I’m very pleased with the cover, and I feel really lucky that such a beautiful portrait of one of my characters existed.

ED: What advice do you have for anyone else considering self-publishing/using Lulu?

NW: I think you need to go into self-publishing with realistic expectations. I think it works best for nonfiction, actually–books that are useful and that people will seek out for their usefulness, with or without the imprimatur of a “real” publisher. Fiction is a harder sell even when you don’t self-publish, and I think many people assume that if you couldn’t find a publisher for your novel, it can’t be any good. It’s extremely difficult to get a self-published book reviewed anywhere. And of course, you can’t even get it into the vast majority of book stores across the country.

That having been said, if you can think of a few likely target audiences–as I could–it might well be worth it. I’m hoping the book will be for sale at the Supreme Court gift shop, for example, and at a couple of shops in Edenton that cater to people who come there for the historical buildings. And even if your book comes nowhere near the New York Times bestseller list, I can tell you that it’s incredibly gratifying to get enthusiastic feedback from even a few people.

Editor’s Note: Download a preview excerpt from Natalie Wexler’s novel here.