Nancy Zaroulis's Blog: QWERTYUIOP: A Blog About Writing - Posts Tagged "edgar-allan-poe"
Where Do You Get Your Ideas Part 2 Or: Life is Luck
As I have noted, for fiction I don’t get ideas, I get characters.
But sometimes I get some help, too.
And I really, truly believe that life is luck. It was luck that brought me to the publication of my first novel, The Poe Papers.
My Luck #1:
One day I was in the library, researching a novel I was writing about women in New England before the Civil War. The librarian handed me four pages of typescript written by a local historian. “This might interest you,” she said.
She was right. It did interest me, but I didn’t see how I could integrate it into the book I was working on.
Local historians know many fascinating stories. This one involved Edgar Allan Poe, who in 1848 traveled to the thriving manufacturing town of Lowell, Massachusetts, to lecture on American poets and poetry. While he was there, he met and fell in love with a young woman whom he called “Annie.” He wrote one of his most famous poems for her, “For Annie.” He also wrote love letters to her despite the fact that she was married. He often sent pages of in-progress stories or poems to her. He died the following year.
Eventually word got around that “Annie” had some of Poe’s papers. Biographers began to ask to see what she had, and some of them were quite persistent. She never showed the papers to anyone; if she thought the person was a legitimate scholar, she copied portions for him. She destroyed them all before she died.
I realized I had read this story before—not about Poe, but about another famous poet: George Gordon, Lord Byron. One of his mistresses was Claire Clairmont. After he died, in 1824, she was left with many of his letters and manuscripts. Although she was poor, she never sold any of them. She was hounded for decades by people who wanted to see them, to borrow them, to buy them—or even to steal them. One particularly bold and aggressive connoisseur was a sea captain from Salem, Massachusetts, who traveled to her home in Venice to confront her, without success.
Near the end of her life, in the 1870’s, she told her story to a young American writer, Henry James. Immediately he realized he had been given a terrific plot. He wrote a short novel, The Aspern Papers, changing the poet to an American, Jeffrey Aspern, and the location from Venice to Florence.
So that day in the library, I had been given the same real-life story that Henry James had been given—the famous poet, his beloved, his early death, her struggle to keep his papers from greedy collectors. At once a narrator/protagonist came into my mind: a wealthy young man from Boston who travels to Lowell to try to buy—or steal—Poe’s papers.
But I didn’t see how I could integrate that very interesting information into the manuscript I was working on.
My Luck #2:
Time passed. I came to a place in the long novel about New England women where I didn’t know how to proceed. I knew what the ending was, but I didn’t know how I was going to get there. So I decided to let my unconscious do the plotting. I put the manuscript aside and began to write the Poe story.
At that time in my life, I was busy. I always went to the drug store on Sundays to buy the Sunday New York Times, but I usually didn’t get around to reading the Book Review till the middle of the week. On that particular Sunday, however, I had time to read it that evening. I saw an ad for a new memoir written by a vice-president at Putnam’s, at the time a more prominent publisher than it is now. I thought it looked interesting.
The next day was a library day. As I walked in, I passed the “New Books” shelf. The memoir was there. I checked it out. Over the next few weeks, I read it. When I got to the chapter where the writer described his visit to Thomas Wolfe’s mistress, I felt a slight frisson. (Not the Tom Wolfe of “New Journalism,” but an older writer, long dead, who had been popular in the 1930’s and ‘40’s.) He wanted to ask her if she had any of Wolfe’s papers, but he felt suddenly shy. He longed to have them, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask. “I felt like the narrator of Henry James’s The Aspern Papers,” he wrote.
Wow.
Perhaps this man, this exalted figure in the publishing world, would be interested in my novel, based on the same true story as Henry James’s.
I ’d made a good start on the book. Now I had to finish it, which in the next few months I did.
Then I let it rest for a while. I made a few changes.
I knew I should send a query letter to the Putnam’s VP, but I hesitated. I was no one. I had never published anything. Why should an important New York publisher bother with an unknown like me?
A few more weeks passed.
My Luck #3:
Then one day it rained. Ordinarily I would have gone swimming (it was August), but the weather was chilly and unappealing. So I stayed home.
It was on that day that a neighbor did something she’d never done before, and never did again. She came to my door with a book.
“I thought you would like this,” she said, handing it to me.
As I began to look at it, it fell open to the acknowledgements page—the page where writers thank their husband, their wife, their parents, their teachers, and everyone else who has helped them.
Most of all, this author wrote, he wanted to thank the Vice President of Putnam’s, naming the man whose memoir I’d read.
I felt a tap on my shoulder. It didn’t come from my neighbor, who was standing in front of me. We were alone in the house.
Was it my Guardian Angel?
In my mind, I saw a door opening. Had my Angel opened it?
I had never believed in angels, but at that moment, I knew that someone, somehow, was trying to send me a message.
The next day I sent a letter to the man at Putnam’s. Yes, he wrote back, he would like to see my manuscript about Poe.
I sent it to him. He bought it and published it. It had excellent reviews.
The Poe Plot was a natural sequel.
So as I say, life is luck. And when your luck comes, be ready to take it.
But sometimes I get some help, too.
And I really, truly believe that life is luck. It was luck that brought me to the publication of my first novel, The Poe Papers.
My Luck #1:
One day I was in the library, researching a novel I was writing about women in New England before the Civil War. The librarian handed me four pages of typescript written by a local historian. “This might interest you,” she said.
She was right. It did interest me, but I didn’t see how I could integrate it into the book I was working on.
Local historians know many fascinating stories. This one involved Edgar Allan Poe, who in 1848 traveled to the thriving manufacturing town of Lowell, Massachusetts, to lecture on American poets and poetry. While he was there, he met and fell in love with a young woman whom he called “Annie.” He wrote one of his most famous poems for her, “For Annie.” He also wrote love letters to her despite the fact that she was married. He often sent pages of in-progress stories or poems to her. He died the following year.
Eventually word got around that “Annie” had some of Poe’s papers. Biographers began to ask to see what she had, and some of them were quite persistent. She never showed the papers to anyone; if she thought the person was a legitimate scholar, she copied portions for him. She destroyed them all before she died.
I realized I had read this story before—not about Poe, but about another famous poet: George Gordon, Lord Byron. One of his mistresses was Claire Clairmont. After he died, in 1824, she was left with many of his letters and manuscripts. Although she was poor, she never sold any of them. She was hounded for decades by people who wanted to see them, to borrow them, to buy them—or even to steal them. One particularly bold and aggressive connoisseur was a sea captain from Salem, Massachusetts, who traveled to her home in Venice to confront her, without success.
Near the end of her life, in the 1870’s, she told her story to a young American writer, Henry James. Immediately he realized he had been given a terrific plot. He wrote a short novel, The Aspern Papers, changing the poet to an American, Jeffrey Aspern, and the location from Venice to Florence.
So that day in the library, I had been given the same real-life story that Henry James had been given—the famous poet, his beloved, his early death, her struggle to keep his papers from greedy collectors. At once a narrator/protagonist came into my mind: a wealthy young man from Boston who travels to Lowell to try to buy—or steal—Poe’s papers.
But I didn’t see how I could integrate that very interesting information into the manuscript I was working on.
My Luck #2:
Time passed. I came to a place in the long novel about New England women where I didn’t know how to proceed. I knew what the ending was, but I didn’t know how I was going to get there. So I decided to let my unconscious do the plotting. I put the manuscript aside and began to write the Poe story.
At that time in my life, I was busy. I always went to the drug store on Sundays to buy the Sunday New York Times, but I usually didn’t get around to reading the Book Review till the middle of the week. On that particular Sunday, however, I had time to read it that evening. I saw an ad for a new memoir written by a vice-president at Putnam’s, at the time a more prominent publisher than it is now. I thought it looked interesting.
The next day was a library day. As I walked in, I passed the “New Books” shelf. The memoir was there. I checked it out. Over the next few weeks, I read it. When I got to the chapter where the writer described his visit to Thomas Wolfe’s mistress, I felt a slight frisson. (Not the Tom Wolfe of “New Journalism,” but an older writer, long dead, who had been popular in the 1930’s and ‘40’s.) He wanted to ask her if she had any of Wolfe’s papers, but he felt suddenly shy. He longed to have them, but he couldn’t bring himself to ask. “I felt like the narrator of Henry James’s The Aspern Papers,” he wrote.
Wow.
Perhaps this man, this exalted figure in the publishing world, would be interested in my novel, based on the same true story as Henry James’s.
I ’d made a good start on the book. Now I had to finish it, which in the next few months I did.
Then I let it rest for a while. I made a few changes.
I knew I should send a query letter to the Putnam’s VP, but I hesitated. I was no one. I had never published anything. Why should an important New York publisher bother with an unknown like me?
A few more weeks passed.
My Luck #3:
Then one day it rained. Ordinarily I would have gone swimming (it was August), but the weather was chilly and unappealing. So I stayed home.
It was on that day that a neighbor did something she’d never done before, and never did again. She came to my door with a book.
“I thought you would like this,” she said, handing it to me.
As I began to look at it, it fell open to the acknowledgements page—the page where writers thank their husband, their wife, their parents, their teachers, and everyone else who has helped them.
Most of all, this author wrote, he wanted to thank the Vice President of Putnam’s, naming the man whose memoir I’d read.
I felt a tap on my shoulder. It didn’t come from my neighbor, who was standing in front of me. We were alone in the house.
Was it my Guardian Angel?
In my mind, I saw a door opening. Had my Angel opened it?
I had never believed in angels, but at that moment, I knew that someone, somehow, was trying to send me a message.
The next day I sent a letter to the man at Putnam’s. Yes, he wrote back, he would like to see my manuscript about Poe.
I sent it to him. He bought it and published it. It had excellent reviews.
The Poe Plot was a natural sequel.
So as I say, life is luck. And when your luck comes, be ready to take it.
