Ask the Author: Louella Bryant
Answered Questions (8)
Louella Bryant
Excellent question! My memory goes back to 1974 when I was witness to an attempted murder near Dupont Circle in Washington, DC. I stepped forward to say I'd seen the accused and then was asked to identify the female in a lineup. I also gave testimony before the grand jury. Pretty gruesome stuff.
Louella Bryant
First, thanks for reading four of my books, Sally. And, yes, they're all somewhat different. What "clicks" for me is a story that won't leave me alone. For example, my first book, The Black Bonnet, was inspired by a visit to the cellar of an Underground Railroad site in Burlington VT. I started hearing a young voice saying, "Write my story." I put her off for months until she was whispering to me every day. I was teaching then and waited until summer to sit down with pen and paper. Then the words flew out of me. I spent the following year revising and sending queries, and Bonnet became a best-seller for New England Press. A story must insist on being told before I commit to it. I frequently put a manuscript on the shelf to "rest," but if it calls to me, I always come back to it. Cowboy Code took 20 years to get to print. I've been working on my current project, Sheltering Angel, A Titanic Story, for five years. I don't usually start a project unless I feel compelled to see it through. Writing requires commitment, endurance, patience, and faith. I wish those qualities for you in your own writing.
Louella Bryant
Being a writer for most of us isn't about making millions of dollars or getting heaps of praise. It's not about being followed by the paparazzi or getting three-book deals. It's about a passion for words. It's about talking to writers and readers about craft. And it's about making the next book, the next chapter, the next paragraph, the next sentence better than the one before it. It's about le mot juste, the precise word, even if you have to invent it, as Shakespeare did!
Louella Bryant
I get inspired by reading. When I read a not-so-good book, I think, "I can do better than that." When I read a fabulous book, I think, "I want to write that well." Ultimately, though, I am inspired to write by writing, which means picking up pen and paper or opening a blank page on the computer and getting down to business. No criticisms on those first paragraphs. Just keep the words pouring out!
Louella Bryant
Writer's block is a constant hazard. I take breaks for walks and tai chi practice. When I'm stuck, I bake or cook. I have coffee with writer friends. And I read. Often reading good poetry will help me break through a block. My go-to writer is Flaubert. Every time I read a paragraph by Flaubert, I am inspired to go back to the page.
Louella Bryant
1. Write. Keep a journal. Write every day.
2. Study your world through a writer's eyes. Dialogue. Landscape. Details. Take notes.
3. Join (or start) a writing group. Set rules and guidelines. Be sure members of your group are good readers.
4. Look into writing programs. They're worth the money for guidance as well as networking.
5. Go to writing conferences. Takes notes.
6. Read, read, read.
7. Never ever ever give up even if you paper your writing office with rejections.
8. Talk to published writers. Think of yourself as A WRITER!
2. Study your world through a writer's eyes. Dialogue. Landscape. Details. Take notes.
3. Join (or start) a writing group. Set rules and guidelines. Be sure members of your group are good readers.
4. Look into writing programs. They're worth the money for guidance as well as networking.
5. Go to writing conferences. Takes notes.
6. Read, read, read.
7. Never ever ever give up even if you paper your writing office with rejections.
8. Talk to published writers. Think of yourself as A WRITER!
Louella Bryant
My working novel Sheltering Angel is told from alternating points of view of two Titanic survivors. Scotsman Andrew Cunningham serves first-class travelers as steward aboard the most elegant cruise ships of the early 20th century. Florence Cumings, a New Yorker and first-class passenger traveling with her husband Bradley, discovers an uncanny connection with their steward. Both Andrew and Florence have premonitions about the ship’s fate, but neither is able to convince those in charge to listen. In the early morning of April 15, 1912, Florence watches in horror from lifeboat number four as her husband perishes with the ship. Just before Titanic submerges, Andrew jumps into the water and swims to lifeboat four. Florence pulls him aboard, cementing a friendship that lasts for the rest of their lives. The story comes through detailed research into the family of my husband who is the great-grandson of Florence Cumings.
Louella Bryant
I grew up fascinated with TV shows about cowboys—The Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy, and especially Gene Autry. Every time Autry picked up his guitar as his buddies sat around the campfire under a crescent moon, I felt a thrill. Unlike my father, good cowboys never got drunk and always defeated the bad guys. My father wasn’t a bad guy, but his drinking nearly destroyed our family.
From the time I was young, my mother told me stories about her early life in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, and many of those tales bore fruit in Cowboy Code. Panthers came down from the forests at night and stole chickens from her father’s yard and the woods were full of ticks and poisonous snakes. She recalled the train stopping at the town’s station and unloading wealthy visitors and dignitaries headed for the elegant Homestead resort a short drive away to play tennis or golf and soak in the hot springs. She spoke about what was known as the African settlement where the Negroes lived. Her father, a mill foreman and secretly a member of the Ku Klux Klan, hired one of the young men from the settlement to help him with his small farm. My mother had been the oldest of three children, and her father inflicted harsher discipline on her than he did on her younger brother and sister. At eighteen she married to escape the sting of the razor strap for the most minor infraction of his rules.
After she married, my mother gave birth to two boys. They were still very young when their father was killed in an explosion at the paper mill. In her early twenties, my mother was a beautiful widow with no means of support, so she took a job at the paper mill and hired a nanny for her sons. In Cowboy Code, I replaced the older boy with Bobbie, a 14-year-old girl, because I wanted the story to reflect a girl’s coming of age in Appalachia.
After her husband’s death, my mother married a sailor who struggled with alcoholism. After he moved the family to Washington, D.C., where he worked for the Navy Department, I was born. As I grew up, our summer vacations were spent visiting relatives in southwest Virginia. We never entered an aunt’s or cousin’s house without sitting down for a meal of meat, vegetables fresh from the garden, and hot baked biscuits. Once in a while we engaged in table raising, a combination of spiritualism and levitation that occurs in the novel. To this day I am unable to explain the phenomenon.
Cowboy Code took twenty years to find its way into print. I was reluctant to release the story to the public and expose the shame I’ve felt for most of my life around my father’s drinking, my grandfather’s racism, and the soot and poverty of my family’s southwestern Virginia roots. But in writing about the people of the fictional town of Pine Cliff, I have come to realize that they are the embodiment of dignity, honesty, a strong work ethic, and a deep spiritual faith, and I’m proud to say that they are my people.
From the time I was young, my mother told me stories about her early life in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, and many of those tales bore fruit in Cowboy Code. Panthers came down from the forests at night and stole chickens from her father’s yard and the woods were full of ticks and poisonous snakes. She recalled the train stopping at the town’s station and unloading wealthy visitors and dignitaries headed for the elegant Homestead resort a short drive away to play tennis or golf and soak in the hot springs. She spoke about what was known as the African settlement where the Negroes lived. Her father, a mill foreman and secretly a member of the Ku Klux Klan, hired one of the young men from the settlement to help him with his small farm. My mother had been the oldest of three children, and her father inflicted harsher discipline on her than he did on her younger brother and sister. At eighteen she married to escape the sting of the razor strap for the most minor infraction of his rules.
After she married, my mother gave birth to two boys. They were still very young when their father was killed in an explosion at the paper mill. In her early twenties, my mother was a beautiful widow with no means of support, so she took a job at the paper mill and hired a nanny for her sons. In Cowboy Code, I replaced the older boy with Bobbie, a 14-year-old girl, because I wanted the story to reflect a girl’s coming of age in Appalachia.
After her husband’s death, my mother married a sailor who struggled with alcoholism. After he moved the family to Washington, D.C., where he worked for the Navy Department, I was born. As I grew up, our summer vacations were spent visiting relatives in southwest Virginia. We never entered an aunt’s or cousin’s house without sitting down for a meal of meat, vegetables fresh from the garden, and hot baked biscuits. Once in a while we engaged in table raising, a combination of spiritualism and levitation that occurs in the novel. To this day I am unable to explain the phenomenon.
Cowboy Code took twenty years to find its way into print. I was reluctant to release the story to the public and expose the shame I’ve felt for most of my life around my father’s drinking, my grandfather’s racism, and the soot and poverty of my family’s southwestern Virginia roots. But in writing about the people of the fictional town of Pine Cliff, I have come to realize that they are the embodiment of dignity, honesty, a strong work ethic, and a deep spiritual faith, and I’m proud to say that they are my people.
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