Beth Hahn's Blog, page 2

When Literary Fiction Meets Genre

I’ve always loved noir, and nothing appeals to me on a windy autumn evening like a Wilke Collins novel. I adore finding fine writing in a good story, or an exceptional tale with well-developed, nuanced characters. We like to make distinctions in the writing world, and the idea that a novel or story cannot fit comfortably into both literary and genre strikes me as odd. I suspect such distinctions make things easier for marketers, but not for writers.

When I designed this workshop (Wednesdays, 4:30-9:00, Jan 13, 2016 – Feb 17, 2016) for The Hudson Valley Writers’ Center, I wanted to share what I learned while writing and then shopping around my first novel, THE SINGING BONE. It’s general fiction, it’s thriller, it’s literary suspense. While writing, I enjoyed playing with the edges of genre, turning things this way and that, and sometimes subverting traditionally expected outcomes.

I’ve included the course description here, but I’m also teaching a one-day workshop (Saturday, January 9, 4:30) on the same topic, so check that out if you’d just like to join me for a day. I think it will be really fun.

When Literary Fiction Meets Genre

Course Description: This course addresses the special needs of the writer who would like to close the gap between literary fiction—which often focuses on social dynamics and the inner lives of characters, and genre writing, which is more dependent on plot and story dynamics—to create a tighter, more plot-driven style of fiction that maintains a rich grasp on language and complex interpretation of our inner and outer worlds.

Readings: Each week, we will discuss excellent writing that meets the genres of mystery, thriller, noir, sci-fi, romance, and horror. Among others, readings will include the works of Cara Hoffman, Tana French, Donna Tartt, Colson Whitehead, Phil Hogan, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Jim Thompson.

Assignments: Assignments will be based on readings. They will range from one-paragraph in-class work to weekly longer writing assignments. At mid-point in the workshop, a student will have the choice to turn one of his or her pieces into a more sustained work.

Feedback: Each student will receive equal feedback from the instructor. Student writing will be subject to group critiques.

Goal: This course will inspire students to delve into the genre toolbox to create layered and meaningful page-turning fiction.

Alice’s Eye

If Alice Pearson had a camera during her stay at Mr. Wyck’s, what would she have photographed? I like thinking of the various cameras she might have had: a Polaroid, a Brownie, a pinhole. I can certainly imagine Alice Pearson sitting down one day to make pinhole, thinking she would photograph the sets and actors so she wouldn’t keep losing track of the play.

Follow AlicePearson79 on Instagram.

A Title Change

P.S.: And back again!

When Regan Arts decided to change the title of my book from THE SINGING BONE to DARK EYES, it took me by surprise–but not completely. I was more surprised that I’d been able to hold on to my title for as long as I had. Book titles, if you didn’t know, are almost always changed by the publisher.

I got to keep THE SINGING BONE through editing and even saw the manuscript’s final version with title intact, but then, at some point–I think it happened during tip sheet review–there was a pause, and someone questioned my title, wondering if it were too literary, too mysterious, too–oh, but those were the very things I liked about it. Anyway, the publisher worried that readers wouldn’t know the how to interpret THE SINGING BONE, and truthfully, I had noticed this when I told people. “The Singing what?” was not an uncommon response.

I guess I could have fought for my title, but then, honestly, I sort-of knew why the title was being changed, so I began to think of the title change as a further relinquishing of my book. Yes, THE SINGING BONE was my novel’s title, but when a book is sold, it belongs to everyone–to editors and art directors and readers, too, to libraries, and to strangers who would not get to ask me, “The Singing what?”

For a few weeks we kicked titles around. Mine were all terrible. My editor wrote: “Think GIRL ON THE TRAIN.” Girl in the song? No. So bad. For a minute we all wanted something with birds, but the bird title proved intangible and fluttered away. I went through the whole book, pulling bits of text here and there–maybe this? Or that? But it never led to anything. My titles were getting more abstract and felt like bits of stilted haiku. I strung them together at night, sleepless. Did my book still exist if it didn’t have a title?

Finally, I got an email from my editor: “What about DARK EYES?” he wrote. It was clean, relevant. It screams “Mystery/Thriller.” I’d thought of DARK EYES, but I’d been too literal with it. The darkest character in the book, Mr. Wyck, has blue eyes–light blue eyes. But the song “Dark Eyes” cuts a strange path through the novel, turning up in different scenes and carrying plenty of psychological and emotional weight.

Then it occurred to me: Maybe DARK EYES really is the title. I began to let THE SINGING BONE slip away and looked for a new version of “Dark Eyes” to listen to while I got used to it. I found this version, by Earl Hines, which I really like. That violin feels like an introduction, doesn’t it? It tells the listener that this version will be fun, a bit spooky, and beautifully played.

I hear it and know I’m in for a treat.

Work

I’m away at Ragdale, an artists’ residency in Lake Forest, Illinois, until the end of this month. The first week I was here, I worked on revisions for my book, THE SINGING BONE, which will be published by Regan Arts next spring. My official publication is just eleven months away, and I can’t wait for the physical object–the book–to hold it, open it, turn the pages and touch the cover, to come upon it unexpectedly in book shops. I doubt there’s anything like a first book–it’s like any first, I’m sure: anticipated, longed for.

I think it will always feel like a gift and a surprise to have published a novel.

I’m into my second novel now (which, by the way, is not really a second novel, but a third), and I’m thrown back to those early days of writing THE SINGING BONE–the research, the character study. I keep a set of loose notes next to me while I work, looping points of view to build a story. I’ve learned to write scary, and my book is scaring me. The fourth night I was here, I pushed a great ottoman against my bedroom door in the case that someone tried to get in. Because you and I know that when one pushes an ottoman against a door, it is a complete and total crime deterrent. No one gets past a plaid foot cushion.

Of course, Ragdale has ghosts. But its ghosts seem friendly. The air here is friendly. I haven’t seen the friendly ghost, but I don’t doubt people who say they have. I’m in the Beach Room, on the second floor of the Barn. My room is cozy, and it does feel a bit like a beach cottage, with painted wooden furniture and lots of light. I’ve been reading past residents’ entries in the Beach Room journals. I love finding the names of my friends who’ve stayed here–real or imagined.

Beach Room journals, from 1981-Feb, 2015

It’s not all work, though. Each night, all the residents eat dinner together, and I love hearing everyone talk about their work and what they’ve thought about and where they’ve gone–now and before. I spend my non-writing time in contemplation mode. I walk on the prairie or into town. I’ve started setting my yoga mat up in the conference center, and once so far I’ve taught a class. It’s sort of ideal for meditation, too, and though at home I’m lax with that, here, I’ve wanted to. And I’m only on Day 9 of 24!

Just burned prairie, Day 1

Prairie, Day 3

Prairie, Day 5

The Ferns, the Detective, & the Magi

Note: This entry was written back in June when I was revising my novel, The Singing Bone. I waited until I got good news about the revision to put it up. I hope to share that good news with you in my next post.

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I remember sitting on the floor in my old apartment in the city with scissors and tape, cutting a story apart and taping the words back together in different spots. I needed the tangibles of scissors and clear tape, the tactility of change. By the time I was finished, my story looked like the sort of old cartoon ransom note cut from newspaper letters, but I liked the pacing better.

On Wednesday, you can read one of my revised short stories on Necessary Fiction. It’s called “The Twenty-Third of June” and features ferns–as in the plant. The original story had no ferns. No ferns! But the ferns are the glue of the story. A few times, I sent the story out without ferns. I knew it was missing something, but I didn’t know what.

Revising a novel, though–oh dear–and the recently written novel at that, is different than altering a short story. A short story is an elegant bird. A novel is a one-thousand-eyed beast that lolls on its side in your basement and heckles you through the floorboards.

Visual Revision

When I’m working on a longer piece, I have to know its shape. If there are multiple POVs as well as a past and present story (check), I try to keep chapters organized and of equal length. I thought I’d done that, but when I reread, I can see that I went around falling in love with my characters all over the place and when they began to speak, I couldn’t quiet them down. No one wants to say, “Shh, sweetheart. Be quiet” to their new favorite character.

I owe a lot of my ability to revise this novel to my talented friend Nora Maynard. It was her idea to turn one character into a sort-of detective figure who’s piecing things together throughout. It’s the best revision idea I’ve heard for this book–it’s a bit like the ferns in “The Twenty-Third of June.” It’s a through-line.

I read Nora’s novel, too. It’s so well written and realized, and I drew her a diagram for revision. We met at Pete’s Tavern near Gramercy Park. You know, the place where O’Henry apparently wrote “The Gift of the Magi.” We even sat in the O’Henry booth. I mean, if you’re talking about structural through-lines, you better sit in “The Gift of the Magi” booth.

The O’Henry Booth

The O’Henry booth is dark and wood-paneled with lots of O’Henry paraphernalia. Do I believe O’Henry wrote in this booth? It’s probably folklore, but I adore folklore, and while his story may seem somewhat old-fashioned now, it’s still one of those pieces that everyone knows as a sort-of perfectly turned and metered short story.

Nora and I became friends at Bread Loaf. We dormed in same white clapboard house and sat across from each other in Amy Hempel’s workshop. You might say we’re kindred writing spirits, because one of the reasons I sent a piece to Necessary Fiction is because Nora’s work is there, so I thought they might like my work, too.

Revision notes, publishing houses

My desk is now covered with coffee-stained ramblings. It took me two weeks of staring out of windows, cleaning the house, and jotting notes to begin the task of revising, but yesterday, I made my first inroads. I once dreaded this moment, but now I’m slightly obsessed with the new version and glad for the chance to make the book better.

This is my mantra: Revision is writing. Writing is revision.

The day I used scissors as a revision tool, I learned something about writing that I hadn’t anticipated. For weeks afterward, I kept finding bits of text sticking to my shoes and socks. I plucked them off and read them, slightly puzzled, as if someone else had composed them. I couldn’t place where they’d been in the story. And that’s the best thing about revision. You never remember what you’ve cut. You only remember what works.

In the end, you only remember the ferns.

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While there is no universal formula to revising a novel, here are few articles that might help:

Seven Tips for Revising a Novel by James Duncan

Revision Checklist by Nathan Bransford

And if getting out scissors and tape is what you need to do, disregard everything and do it.

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Secret Glen, Forest Glen

Just outside of Washington, D.C., at the center of the National Park Seminary Historic District, a beautifully renovated, rambling set of buildings are being sold as condominiums to Washingtonians who want what the original 1800s resort hoteliers predicted: leafy surroundings, pretty views, an escape from the city.

But the hotel, though lovely, did not do as well as the original owners had hoped, and by the mid-1890s, The Forest Inn Hotel had become the Forest Glen Seminary, a private boarding school for girls. The new owners used architectural pattern books to recreate picturesque English gardens–building decorative villas, a pagoda, castle, windmill, and a series of scenic, fairy tale-like bridges. They dotted the grounds with fountains, gardens, and Hellenic statuary.

Minerva, Library of Congress image archive

Minerva, near the Villa

Ad from 1906/7

Aside from its emphasis on “domestic science,” it must have been a wonderful place to go to school, but when the Great Depression arrived, the school no longer had enough wealthy young ladies to fill its corridors, and it was sold once again–this time to the United States Army.  In 1942, it became part of the Walter Reed Medical Center, and the former hotel and school dorms became a place for wounded soldiers to heal during World War II and Vietnam. Try to imagine for a moment what an odd thing it would have been to return from a war and find yourself recuperating in a sort-of fairy tale village.

Addition

Until 1972, the spot remained army owned, and when the army left, it became a part of the National Parks, but no one really took care of it. It was vandalized and left to the whims of  nature. The once pretty buildings fell to ruin. Vines grew. Ivy claimed the historical structures. Then a private company stepped in and began to renovate the buildings–turning them into well-appointed, interesting homes. The Aloha House is for sale as is one of the former dorms turned townhouse.

Renovations on the Colonial House

Colonial House

Inside the Colonial House

Inside the Colonial House

Bench inside Colonial House

But not all of the buildings have been renovated. The Castle and the Villa Dormitory remain in ruin, and if you like seeing that sort of thing, now is the time to go. Soon the buildings in disrepair will be painted and patched and cared for by new owners. Of course, it would have been wonderful if the site could have been renovated and turned into a public park, but it seems more important to this visitor at least that the buildings survive.

The Castle

The Castle, side entrance

Postcard of the Castle, 1920s

The Castle, main entrance

Interior of The Castle, Library of Congress image archive

Any place with this sort of history has much folklore attached to it. Rumors of hauntings abound: Girls’ pale faces peer out of dormitory windows at night, and the melancholic ghosts of veterans appear in the ballroom. No one knows what sort of secret, experimental testing went on when the site fell into the army’s hands. One legend says they experimented with training super soldiers at Forest Glen, and tested unknowing participants with LSD and other hallucinogens. These are all rumors of course, but when you’re there, even if standing in field flowers on a bright and beautiful spring day, you might get a chill.

The Ballroom (of course it’s haunted), Library of Congress image archives

May Day Festivities at Forest Glen, The Library of Congress image archives

The Villa

The Villa

The Villa, Library of Congress

Tower and Bridge

In the early 1960s, my father, then a freshman at the University of Maryland, and his friends drove out to the seminary on more than one occasion to see what they could see. No one ever got out of the car, he said, because the place was crawling with military police. There might be more to the story than that–a car full of mischievous kids on a military site–I sort-of suspect there is. I imagine there were dares and beers involved, but he’s not saying. When I was there, I had the sense the place is full of untold stories.

Find it!

Forest Glen/National Park Seminary

2755 Cassedy Street

Silver Spring, Maryland, USA

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A visit to Forest Glen may make you want to read or re-read Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, and Henry James’s The Turn of the Screw.

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If you go to Forest Glen, have brunch at Pacci’s Trattoria. It looked like the old train station to me, but it is sometimes called the “old general store” and it is on Post Office Road. Maybe you know, but brunch was delicious! AND you can park amid decorative architectural ruins.

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Thanks to the following places and sites:

Save our Seminary at Forest Glen

The Seminary at Forest Glen

The Library of Congress: Searched “National Park Seminary” link

Welcome to the (Very Dark) Dollhouse

One of the many excellent but sometimes unnecessary rules of fiction writing is to begin in media res. The advice goes that if you begin with action, you hook your reader. But sometimes I’ve stayed up all night to read stories in which nary a thing happens. So all rules should be known but easily broken–said someone famous–and I agree with that

I thought I should begin my blog gently, with something colorful and charming, and then I put it off because I couldn’t think of anything like that. Well, I thought: Begin with action, then. Begin with the Nutshells.

The Kitchen

This poor little awkward doll. She’s met an untimely demise, of course, because this is a room from The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death.

History. Not mine–but that of the keen-minded Frances Glessner Lee’s (March 25, 1878 – Jan. 27, 1962), who was the creator of the Nutshell Studies, and the woman whom many still claim as the mother of modern crime scene investigation.

Born into a wealthy industrialist family and well-educated, Frances Glessner Lee might have done what she wanted–which was study medicine–but her family decided she would not. She would marry instead. And she did. She married and had three children. She raised her children, knitted and sewed, entertained, became a talented miniaturist, and read Sherlock Holmes for kicks.

Not bound by the same rules as his sister, Lee’s older brother did study medicine, and one summer, he brought home a school friend, George Burgess Magrath, who would have an enormous impact on Lee’s future. Magrath became Lee’s good friend, but he also became a chief medical examiner in Boston and taught courses in legal medicine at Harvard. Just like Lee, he was intrigued by crime scene investigation, and the two often discussed the details of actual crimes. Based on these conversations, Lee began to build the Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death. The Nutshells are filled with clues–some intrinsic, some useless–it is up to the viewer to decipher which is which.

If you’re a noir fan, the miniatures won’t disappoint. The bleak side of poverty and addiction are depicted, and the pretty rooms of the middle class sometimes hold the saddest secrets. Instead of Philip Marlowe, it is the viewer who plays the cynical detective while reading witness statements and eying overturned ashtrays and empty bottles.

The Nutshells are still used today as teaching tools in forensic science, and if  you want to see the Nutshells for yourself, you must travel a bit–if not physically, mentally and emotionally. They are housed on the fourth floor of The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Baltimore, Maryland. Mind you, that’s the morgue, so be prepared for a rather an odd day.

I had very strange day indeed.

I’m originally from Maryland,and my parents still live there . My mother is the children’s author Mary Downing Hahn, and I inherited her penchant for the spooky. She’s got an Edgar, after all, and does things like break into abandoned amusement parks to take photos, so when I called my mother and said, “Let’s go see the Nutshells!” she said simply: “Oh—,” then: “Let’s.”

On the day of our appointment, the rain was torrential and right in front of the Medical Examiner’s Office, I was hit–but not really hit–caught–and not me, but my car was caught–by an enormous truck. There was a terrible tearing, crunching sound, and when my mother and I got out and looked, stepping around puddles in a muddy gravel parking lot where parts of “The Wire” had once been filmed, it seemed that my bumper was “torn a little off,” and we could just “sort-of pop it back on” if we tried. We tried. In the rain. Eventually I said: “Never mind. I’ll take care of it after. Let’s just go in and see the Nutshells.”

So we went. And we saw.

Three Room Dwelling, by Frances Glessner Lee

Three Room Dwelling

Three Room Dwelling

Bruce Goldfarb, a journalist and former EMS tech, showed us around. He’s an expert on Frances Glessner Lee and the Nutshells, and though he’ll never reveal solutions (the answers are kept under lock and key), he will help you learn how to look. He asked me if I was sure about something more than once–after I noticed the doorway stuffed with newspapers but before I knew anything about the window latches. He was so interesting that I forgot all about my car and the rain. You really couldn’t hope for a better guide. By the end of the day, my mother and I had both claimed him as our best new friend.

The Bathroom

This was the same day that Charles Street collapsed, and my mother and I still had some notion that if we couldn’t pop the bumper back on ourselves, someone would come out who could pop the bumper back on. Three hours later, a tow truck arrived. The tow driver said we should stay in the car while he got my car hooked up to his truck. I pulled out of the lot and waited on a side street next to the morgue. I glanced through the fogged windows to see the tow operator’s black hoodied head moving back and forth in the rain–I think it was then that his hood began to resemble the grim reaper’s cape, his tow tools a distorted scythe. The strangeness of the day had finally gotten the better of me, and by the time we were warm and towed and sitting in the auto shop with cups of burnt coffee, I only felt grateful to be safe and dry with my mother beside me.

Marie, The Red Bedroom

But poor Marie was still in the closet! This is why the Nutshells fascinate. The dioramas are of people–mostly women–doing exactly what they’re supposed to be doing where they should be doing it. They’re at home, in safe spaces. The woman at the bottom of the stairs in her beautifully turned out home, the woman face up on her kitchen floor with a cake fresh out of the oven–all would seem to be as it should be if not for the dead body. The Nutshells shatter the illusion of domestic tranquility, and they do it in such a way–with dolls and beautifully hand-crafted sets–to make it possible to really look, to begin to see what the forensic investigator sees.

Lee sewed and knitted all of the clothes. She glazed and painted the dolls.  She collected weapon charms–knives and guns. The only work she sent out was to a carpenter, who built the houses and made certain the doors and windows opened and closed the way a real door or window would. The careful worlds are scaled one inch to our one foot.

Many of the victims are in their beds, even.

Frances Glessner Lee did not begin her career in media res. By 1943, when she was appointed captain in the New Hampshire State Police, she was divorced, and both of her parents were no longer alive to protest what her father had called her “unseemly” interest in crime.  She was fifty-two when she built her first Nutshell.

I’m not sure how many Nutshells exist, but there are eighteen in Baltimore. They are encased in glass, perfectly preserved, forever teaching students to double-check witness statements, to consider the time of year, the day of the week, the temperature. I like to think of them, too, as teaching us to keep after our true passions and fascinations–no matter what’s stopped us in the past. It turns out that the Nutshells are the perfect way to begin a blog about fascinations, curiosities, and legend trips.

What’s next? In a few weeks, I’ll let you know. I’m planning another road trip–this one to pick up my finally fixed car. I’m stopping to look at some rare books along the way, but that’s all I’ll say for now.

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Don’t stop here! There are so many better photographed images than mine.  Check out these from the New York Times: Visible Proofs. Those gorgeous photos are by one of the Nutshell masters, Corrine May Botz.

If you want to see the Nutshells in person, call Bruce to set-up an appointment:

Bruce Goldfarb (410) 333-3225

Office of the Chief Medical Examiner

900 West Baltimore Street

Baltimore, MD 21223

I can say for sure I’ve never had a better tour anywhere.  If you go, you can also view a startling collection of Frances Glessner Lee’s hand-painted chest plates of gun shot wound patterns, as well as a room for crime scene set-ups called “Scarpetta House,” funded by the crime writer, Patricia Cornwell. On the day we visited, Scarpetta House had just been cleaned up after a massive cult suicide staging. We saw a few pictures on Bruce’s phone–all the office employees done up in full poison makeup. Imagine one of those apartments you wander through in IKEA–but a little different. Scarpetta House definitely has a vibe.

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Thanks to the following websites, places, and people:

Botz, Corrine May. The Nutshell Studies.

Bush, Erin M.  Death in Diorama

Goldfarb, Bruce. The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death.

NIH. Visible Proofs: Forensic Views of the Body.

The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner Baltimore

Ramsland, Katherine. Death in Miniature.