Book Clubs for Writers

Writers should be copious readers.

Twenty-five years ago as I working to create my first serious writing for publication, Steinbeck became my model and my inspiration. Immersing myself into his rhythm, working through a theme, establishing a sense of place, transporting myself into another world. Focus and accuracy got me into the car to begin serious research. The Minnesota Historical Society archives located at that time on Mississippi Street in St. Paul was my first stop. There a mystery began to reveal itself. I discovered a hand written letter filed away in the Pond papers. (The Ponds were early missionaries who translated and recorded the Native Dakota Indian language.) The author was a teenage girl. Quoting her, "...we studied small particles in the morning and large particles in the afternoon..." My imagination went wild dreaming of the setting for her school, who was her teacher, was she sitting in a tepee, what did she wear, how about the weather, did she have any friends? Phone calls followed. Eventually I packed up my teenage daughter. With the neighbor lady and her daughter along, we took a driving trip following maps gleaned from historical society documents. Locating a ruined home site along the Minnesota River that could have housed the prairie school, I photographed my daughter standing on the continental divide. At her feet was a deep rut, the only reminder of the once bustling Red River Cart trail over which the family of the 1820's may have traveled; gradually a story revealed itself to me.

It is fascinating to thoughtfully delve into an author's motivation and character development, especially when in the company of a group of trusted authors. Currently I'm reading Olive Kitteridge a Pulitzer Prize winning novel. My book club of non-writers saw Olive as "not a nice person". I see her as a complex character; an aging women so common in our world today where over 60% live in physical and emotional poverty. Who could have been Elizabeth Strout's model?