Karen Hesse's Blog

As a mother, I’m curious about your experience as a mother and a writer. Were you a mother, for example, when you wrote Out of the Dust? And are there ways in which you can identify how your experience as a mother has informed and shaped your writing?

I was, indeed, a mother when I wrote OUT OF THE DUST. My entire body of work for children has been written since the birth of my first child. Writing and mothering are two overwhelmingly demanding jobs. They both require regular creative problem solving and they jealously compete with each other for attention. I ended up writing at night while my children slept until they were both in school full time. I imagine just the act of writing at night (for someone who is not a night owl) had an impact on the writing as well as my health. Yet I needed to write as much as I needed to eat or breathe. And so I managed.

Both mothering and writing require digging deep. Being present for my children as well as my characters (and myself and my poor husband) took its toll at times. I was committed to doing both parenting and writing as honestly and respectfully as possible. Mothering and writing stretched me, fascinated me, filled me, and exhausted me.

It helped that I often carried several children in my car, transporting them to activities. I was invisible to them which allowed me to listen: to their conversations, their interests, their concerns, their humor. Though I never used any of my children’s issues (nor the issues of their friends) in my books, it helped enormously to hear their rhythms, their reasoning, their laughter, their perspectives.

I suspect I would not have been the writer I became if not for the lessons I learned from parenting, and I suspect I would not have been the parent I became if not for the lessons I learned from the writing. I learned to be attentive, patient, disciplined in my use of time, to feel my children’s and my characters’ joys and sorrows without confusing them with my own joys and sorrows while still holding those joys and sorrows respectfully and deeply.

The above photo is of me with my first grandchild. I think you can see the joy grandparenting has brought me. This is an entirely different experience from parenting and my book GRANNY AND BEAN reflects that, I think.

When my choral director, Becky Graber, asked if I might write a poem about being a grandparent that she could set to music, I recalled a day spent in Alnmouth by the North Sea with my very small grandson. The poem became a lovely piece of music as well as this picture book, illustrated perfectly by Charlotte Voake.

It’s always tricky to make your work feel authentic and organic when you’re imposing a rigid “literary device” on it.  I wrote hundreds of poems that never made it into the final cut of WITNESS. That gave me many options while cutting and moving poems around to shape the narrative into something with both flow and internal logic.  I also had poems that extended over several pages. And sometimes a single incident would be seen through several different characters’ perspectives, hence a series of pages looking at the same moment in time. Don’t despair. You’ll find your own way. Good luck with your project!

Witness

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No. In fact I’m rather critical of my own work and often wish I could do a bit more editing. That’s not to say I dislike my own work. The opposite is true.

I selected this image to suggest that even though I’ve loved every one of my pets through the years, I’ve loved other people’s pets as well. The relationship is different with your own pet. You know that animal intimately, just as an author knows her/his own work intimately. But it doesn’t prevent you from admiring the beauty, grace, humor, and style that is another’s.

(This question came to me from Ancillae Assumpta Academy in Wyncote, Pennsylvania)

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An excellent question. Thank you. In fact a story develops on multiple planes. Research helps shape it, current events help shape it, what is going on in my own life helps shape it. Every day, all day long, choices are being made during the writing and editing process. Dead ends are pursued and rejected. Seemingly dead ends open up and reveal a passage to the next part of the story. Eventually the story has its own unique shape and structure because of the choices I’ve made during those months of work. After a year of trying to bring my thoughts, ideas, characters, plot, setting, etc. into focus, the book arrives on my editor’s desk and shortly thereafter returns to me with questions, concerns, suggestions. And the process begins again. It’s fascinating to think of how many different books could have emerged during this process, books that were not written, sacrificed to this one story line that managed to dominate all the myriad options available to me as I wrote.

For anyone who might be in Vermont tonight, the 11th of May 2019, or tomorrow afternoon, you might enjoy attending one of the Brattleboro Women’s Chorus concerts. I’ll be singing with 70+ other women making beautiful harmonies.  And one of my poems will be read as part of the concert. I’d love to see you there.

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P.S. If you do come, please introduce yourself to me after the performance.

Happy Mother’s Day!

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I loved the experience of researching and writing STOWAWAY. Using the journals kept by Captain Cook and Joseph Banks, as well as the shipboard artist, Sydney Parkinson, I felt more immersed in primary source material than I have felt writing any other book. It’s important to me to be as accurate as possible when writing historical novels. Having the words of the men aboard Endeavour at my fingertips through the entire writing process gave me confidence that I was as close to an authentic recounting of the journey as it was possible to get.

I’ll be signing NIGHT JOB, reading from the book, and visiting with readers at Everyone’s Books  on Elliot Street in downtown Brattleboro on Saturday, November 10th, 2018 at 11 in the morning.

I hope to see you there.

P.S. Don’t be deceived by this back door view of the bookstore taken years ago. It is warm and welcoming  and chock full of excellent books, calendars, and anything else a reader might want or need.

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Today Birdman, aka Mark Norton, would have been gleefully observing his birthday.

In September, one of the tales of his childhood will be available as a new picture book, NIGHT JOB, published by Candlewick Press and beautifully illustrated by Brian Karas. I hope some of you will have a chance to look at it. It’s really quite lovely, just as Mark was.

Scholastic presented me with multiple choices and together we selected the images we agreed best represented the characters I had created.

The photographs come from the Walter Dean Myers photograph collection, and the photo albums of the families of Edith and Herbert Langmuir, Dean Langmuir, and Joan Lacovara, relatives of an employee of Scholastic Inc.