Ask the Author: Elizabeth Daugherty
Answered Questions (7)
Elizabeth Daugherty
WOW! If I could go anywhere...there isn't just one place, there are several. I'd visit Downton Abbey in England, Barton Cottage in Sense and Sensibility, I'd walk the haunting halls of Northanger Abbey or take tea with Jane and Elizabeth Bennet or even visit Lady Catherine de Bourgh. One of the reasons I write time travel fiction is to send modern day people back in time to these eras and see how much has changed...and how much hasn't.
Elizabeth Daugherty
I got the idea for "Antiques and Old Junk: A Christmas Time Travel" from my experiences working and volunteering as a costumed interpreter. While working as a Civil War historical interpreter, we, all of us, were dressed from the skin out in authentic Civil War clothing: pantalets, shifts, corsets, petticoats, hoops, a dress with twelve yards of fabric in the skirt alone, our hair trussed up under a snood.. the whole bit. And as bad as I thought the ladies had it, the guys had it worse: full wool uniforms no matter what the weather was. I realized quickly, just in my walking alone, that I had not been conditioned for hooped skirts. I literally knocked over everything that was near enough for me to knock over with my skirt and wasn't even aware of the proximity. I was clumsy and everything seemed to take twice as long to do including and especially going to the bathroom. Women actually gardened in hoops..they had to. If you wore your dress without the hooped petticoat, your dress would drag on the floor and you were forever holding it up. I developed a deep respect for the women of this era who went through a day's work and day of just being a woman trussed up like this and not having anywhere near the modern conveniences that I have. So when my dishwasher goes on the blink or the microwave needs to be replaced or the power goes out, I'm not quite as helpless as I used to be.
However, it was not until I was a docent at the President Benjamin Harrison Historical Home in Indianapolis, Indiana and taking a group of students through the former president's home that the idea of writing down these experiences in a fiction novel actually began to take root.
A young boy who could not have been older than ten, appeared to have no interest when I began my spiel in President Harrison's library. In that library were President Harrison's Civil War commission documents and they're signed by President Abraham Lincoln. It's not a reproduction, it's the president's ACTUAL autograph. Written in what was most likely black ink, it's starting to fade and the House keeps these commission papers under glass and a dark velvet cloth over that to preserver these documents for as long as possible. Even so, the ink is fading and was a very light brown. Most of the students feigned some interest but this ten year old kid, fiddling with his cell phone, paid no attention.
We moved out the library and into the hallway and on the wall was a telephone with the candlestick receiver, the mouthpiece and no dial. The boy with the cellphone then asked me what that was on the wall. I told him that it was the precursor to the machine he held in his hands, that it was a telephone and that there was no rotary dial but that you picked up the receiver, listened for the operator and told her what number you wanted her to connect. Now, suddenly this boy as well as the rest of the students, were interested. A telephone with no number pad? It was a party line? What is a party line? You mean everyone on who had that party line could listen in ? Even while he was President of the United States?
Explaining how these telephones worked was as foreign to this boy as explaining his cell phone would be to President Harrison. It hit me then... what if someone were to go back in time, knowing what we know today and thinking we know everything about prior eras? Could we handle the day to day living, could we manage without modern conveniences, what about the norms of the day and what was considered common practice? Could we manage the rules, regulations and societal standards and expectations. And if we were to go back in time and live for a few weeks or months in that time period, make friends and even find lovers, would we want to come back to our modern times?
It begs the question of whether the good old days were really good and if modern times is a good fit for us all.
However, it was not until I was a docent at the President Benjamin Harrison Historical Home in Indianapolis, Indiana and taking a group of students through the former president's home that the idea of writing down these experiences in a fiction novel actually began to take root.
A young boy who could not have been older than ten, appeared to have no interest when I began my spiel in President Harrison's library. In that library were President Harrison's Civil War commission documents and they're signed by President Abraham Lincoln. It's not a reproduction, it's the president's ACTUAL autograph. Written in what was most likely black ink, it's starting to fade and the House keeps these commission papers under glass and a dark velvet cloth over that to preserver these documents for as long as possible. Even so, the ink is fading and was a very light brown. Most of the students feigned some interest but this ten year old kid, fiddling with his cell phone, paid no attention.
We moved out the library and into the hallway and on the wall was a telephone with the candlestick receiver, the mouthpiece and no dial. The boy with the cellphone then asked me what that was on the wall. I told him that it was the precursor to the machine he held in his hands, that it was a telephone and that there was no rotary dial but that you picked up the receiver, listened for the operator and told her what number you wanted her to connect. Now, suddenly this boy as well as the rest of the students, were interested. A telephone with no number pad? It was a party line? What is a party line? You mean everyone on who had that party line could listen in ? Even while he was President of the United States?
Explaining how these telephones worked was as foreign to this boy as explaining his cell phone would be to President Harrison. It hit me then... what if someone were to go back in time, knowing what we know today and thinking we know everything about prior eras? Could we handle the day to day living, could we manage without modern conveniences, what about the norms of the day and what was considered common practice? Could we manage the rules, regulations and societal standards and expectations. And if we were to go back in time and live for a few weeks or months in that time period, make friends and even find lovers, would we want to come back to our modern times?
It begs the question of whether the good old days were really good and if modern times is a good fit for us all.
Elizabeth Daugherty
The inspiration to write was an portal to me born out of a psychological need to escape the hell I was living in at the moment.
I was born to alcoholic parents. My father was never a part of the picture and my mother was an illegal immigrant living in the United States. She and my father divorced when I was 18 months old and when I was three years old, she finally became naturalized. No one has ever or probably will ever tell me the real truth of why she waited so long to become a US citizen when she had no real intent of going back to her native country.
She was a selfish, cruel, narcissist who looked upon children as her own personal servants rather than as a family. She bore the "single mother raising three children on her own" flag very proudly and milked it for everything she could get, none of which she shared with us. She took care of herself and her wants first and then begrudged every penny she had to share with her children.
My father died when I was nine and my mother began to receive Social Security benefits for her three dependent children which she immediately spent on herself: fine clothes, gold jewelry, and on a collection of several of the most worthless men ever found. For her children, she cut corners and waited until we were bursting out of our clothes and shoes before she would buy new ones and fat shamed us for that. There were no dance lessons, art lessons, music lessons. There was no summer camp, nothing that would require her to write a check out of disposable income that she earmarked for herself.
She went out bar hopping every Friday and Saturday night without fail and in all kinds of weather and sometimes not coming home until morning hours. The weekends were spent waiting on her hand and foot while she nursed hangovers and endlessly smoked. She was a mean and selfish drunk and she was that way when she was sober too.
Life with her was absolute hell and so was living where she chose for us to live: in the southwest desert in a city where she could indulge all of her own hedonistic vices and where we walked to and from school in blistering triple digit heat.
I began writing short ghost stories in the third grade because I equated autumn months with the relief of cooler weather that was simply denied me in a desert climate until well close to Thanksgiving. Ghosts lived in colder months near Halloween and had things like autumn leaves and pumpkins and whispering winds.
As I got older, I started sneaking sandwiches out of the house so I could save my lunch money to buy books from the class book order. By the time I was in the sixth grade, I was reading Jane Austen, Shakespeare and Charlotte Bronte. When I read through everything I could lay my hands on, I started writing my own stories. They sustained me through long evenings when, as a pre teen, my sisters were out with their friends and my mother was out drinking and I was all alone.
I was born to alcoholic parents. My father was never a part of the picture and my mother was an illegal immigrant living in the United States. She and my father divorced when I was 18 months old and when I was three years old, she finally became naturalized. No one has ever or probably will ever tell me the real truth of why she waited so long to become a US citizen when she had no real intent of going back to her native country.
She was a selfish, cruel, narcissist who looked upon children as her own personal servants rather than as a family. She bore the "single mother raising three children on her own" flag very proudly and milked it for everything she could get, none of which she shared with us. She took care of herself and her wants first and then begrudged every penny she had to share with her children.
My father died when I was nine and my mother began to receive Social Security benefits for her three dependent children which she immediately spent on herself: fine clothes, gold jewelry, and on a collection of several of the most worthless men ever found. For her children, she cut corners and waited until we were bursting out of our clothes and shoes before she would buy new ones and fat shamed us for that. There were no dance lessons, art lessons, music lessons. There was no summer camp, nothing that would require her to write a check out of disposable income that she earmarked for herself.
She went out bar hopping every Friday and Saturday night without fail and in all kinds of weather and sometimes not coming home until morning hours. The weekends were spent waiting on her hand and foot while she nursed hangovers and endlessly smoked. She was a mean and selfish drunk and she was that way when she was sober too.
Life with her was absolute hell and so was living where she chose for us to live: in the southwest desert in a city where she could indulge all of her own hedonistic vices and where we walked to and from school in blistering triple digit heat.
I began writing short ghost stories in the third grade because I equated autumn months with the relief of cooler weather that was simply denied me in a desert climate until well close to Thanksgiving. Ghosts lived in colder months near Halloween and had things like autumn leaves and pumpkins and whispering winds.
As I got older, I started sneaking sandwiches out of the house so I could save my lunch money to buy books from the class book order. By the time I was in the sixth grade, I was reading Jane Austen, Shakespeare and Charlotte Bronte. When I read through everything I could lay my hands on, I started writing my own stories. They sustained me through long evenings when, as a pre teen, my sisters were out with their friends and my mother was out drinking and I was all alone.
Elizabeth Daugherty
I have two projects I am working on: "Tea in the Time of Jane Austen" which takes the four seasons of the year and I break them down into various ways of having tea with Jane Austen's characters in different situations: a summer strawberry tea at Highbury with Emma Woodhouse and her friends, a rustic autumn tea with apple cake and spiced tea at Barton Cottage with the Dashwood sisters, an elegant formal winter Christmas tea with Lady Catherine de Bourgh a literary tea in the spring rain with Catherine Moorland and Henry Tilney at Northanger Abbey .
There are several other teas from the most humble to the most elegant. I include teas, tea blends and some product placement from some of my favorite Jane Austen themed purveyors.
There are several other teas from the most humble to the most elegant. I include teas, tea blends and some product placement from some of my favorite Jane Austen themed purveyors.
Elizabeth Daugherty
Get a good laptop. Get Word. Forget Notepad. You want a Word processing program so that you can edit effectively.
Just write. Even if what you are writing seems better put in the middle of a story, write it out and then write around it or edit it to fit what you wrote.
Get it out of your head and on to paper.
Also: READ. I cannot say it enough. READ. Read everything. Read books, read magazines, read graphic novels, read magazine mastheads, read Wikipedia...don't use it as a source but read it for the information. Read White House.gov and find out who your representatives are and what they're platforms are and their biographies. Look up the lyrics to your favorite songs and then ask yourself why they are your favorite songs. Dissect them. Read recipes. Then go back and re read it all over again.
This does several things: It immediately increases your vocabulary and you get used to sentence structure and sentence syntax and will help you construct your own sentences. Reading also improves your spelling ability. As young as eight years old, I could correct the grocery lists my sisters, six and seven years older, would write out. Indeed I was much better at writing than my mother who could, legitimately, be classified as a functional illiterate.
Reading makes you a better writer and there is nothing on a cell phone text message that is better than reading books. Get the Kindle app and Nook app for your phone and load it up with books, magazines and newspapers. The best invention in the world, for me, was digital books applications. Instead of lugging around books with me, I now have stacks of them in digital format. There is always a need for a good book or magazine: waiting in line at the DMV, at the doctor's office, on an airplane or train or bus, anywhere you have to sit and wait, is a good place for a book.
Reading is not just fundamental, it's knowledge and knowledge is power.
Just write. Even if what you are writing seems better put in the middle of a story, write it out and then write around it or edit it to fit what you wrote.
Get it out of your head and on to paper.
Also: READ. I cannot say it enough. READ. Read everything. Read books, read magazines, read graphic novels, read magazine mastheads, read Wikipedia...don't use it as a source but read it for the information. Read White House.gov and find out who your representatives are and what they're platforms are and their biographies. Look up the lyrics to your favorite songs and then ask yourself why they are your favorite songs. Dissect them. Read recipes. Then go back and re read it all over again.
This does several things: It immediately increases your vocabulary and you get used to sentence structure and sentence syntax and will help you construct your own sentences. Reading also improves your spelling ability. As young as eight years old, I could correct the grocery lists my sisters, six and seven years older, would write out. Indeed I was much better at writing than my mother who could, legitimately, be classified as a functional illiterate.
Reading makes you a better writer and there is nothing on a cell phone text message that is better than reading books. Get the Kindle app and Nook app for your phone and load it up with books, magazines and newspapers. The best invention in the world, for me, was digital books applications. Instead of lugging around books with me, I now have stacks of them in digital format. There is always a need for a good book or magazine: waiting in line at the DMV, at the doctor's office, on an airplane or train or bus, anywhere you have to sit and wait, is a good place for a book.
Reading is not just fundamental, it's knowledge and knowledge is power.
Elizabeth Daugherty
The best thing about being a writer is getting it out of my head. If you're inclined to write your own stories, there's piles of them in your head. Get it out and on to paper. Trust me, it's therapeutic.
Elizabeth Daugherty
I do two things: I outline what it is I'm blocked out. If I need to bridge some action between characters in order to move them to the next scene and I can't figure out how to do it or if I need to write a scene and I just don't know where to start, I'll break it down into manageable pieces by outlining it and see what I have.
The other thing I do, honestly, is take a nap. Take some time to get out of your head and get some afternoon z's. Curl up with your dog or cat (in my case, dog AND cat) and take a nap.
The other thing I do, honestly, is take a nap. Take some time to get out of your head and get some afternoon z's. Curl up with your dog or cat (in my case, dog AND cat) and take a nap.
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