Helping Real People
The early reviews for Louisa are coming in, and they’re good. One reviewer said the story left her speechless, cementing Lu as her favorite fictional character.
Such a review leaves me speechless, and I had about a second to hang out in it before Saturday chores. But, I streamed the Pride and Prejudice soundtrack through my AirPods so I could think about Elizabeth Bennet and my other favorite fictional characters while I vacuumed.
The first was Jo March from Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women and all because of the scene where she cuts her hair to pay for her mom’s train ticket. Her hair is her thing – or so everyone tells her. Her one beauty. And she cuts it off because it’s also the one thing she can use to do her part. I still remember reading this scene for the first time thinking “No!” and “Yes!” and wanting to grow up to be just like her.
Then came Codi Noline from Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal Dreams, a seriously damaged character forced to confront her past, which she’s ill-equipped to do because … she’s seriously damaged. But Kingsolver let Codi be, and in her I saw how a woman can be – smart and stupid, quiet and outspoken, brave and timid, propelled and stuck. There’s no trajectory here, just choices and paths to either follow or blaze as we so choose. Reading this story was both sobering and emboldening for me as a young woman.
I didn’t come to Elizabeth Bennet in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice until my 20s, and even then, it was first through the BBC miniseries (my heart, Colin Firth). Elizabeth is as distinctive for her attributes as her faults. Is she pride? Is she prejudice? She’s definitely stubborn, as is Mr. Darcy. Austen put her love interests on an equal playing field. No one is saving anyone here, and I wish more love stories were written this way.
So, it was a bit crowded in my living room on Saturday with Jo, Codi, Elizabeth, and me swapping girl stories while I vacuumed. It’s not as strange as it sounds because they are three-dimensional to me. They are women, not characters. They are also a sign of a story written well and the potential of any work done well.
Bringing ideas to life is more than an expression. It’s the potential that what starts in my mind can walk off the page into yours – maybe even keeping you company while you vacuum.
When Louisa May Alcott wrote about Jo’s haircut, she reached across time and place to me and my frizzy side ponytail. I did wonder whether people still paid good money for hair in the 1980s, but mostly, I saw Jo and I saw myself. I saw how, even a century later, women were still valued by how they look. I saw how a woman could either play that game or break the rules.
One scene, and I saw a problem and a story of a girl who solved it. I saw the same problem facing me and how I wanted to solve it.
I saw who I wanted to be – all from one scene.
How did Louisa May Alcott do it? In part it’s because some what was true then remains true now. In Little Women, Alcott wrote about real problems that women today still face. Her book was an idea for how to solve a real problem, as we talked about last week, by bringing women in through the story of someone else.
But there’s another level we need to consider. I don’t presume to know Louisa May Alcott or her intentions behind Little Women, but I don’t question that she understood the women she wrote about and the women she wrote for, and it’s got me thinking.
Good ideas solve real problems for real people.
If we want our ideas to walk off the page, we need to get to know the people we want to help.
That’s what we are going to talk about this week.
We all have our space. Imagine you, unleashed, working for the glory of God and the good of those around you. This is what we’re talking about on the blog right now as I share the steps I took to envision, write, and publish my next novel, Louisa. Do you have ideas you don’t know what to do with or are you stuck somewhere in the middle? Start at the beginning of this series to get you going!
