Friday Feedback: The Art of Persistence with the Awesome Martha Brockenbrough

Dear Campers,

Once in a while I read an author who truly makes me swoon with unabashed envy. Today, one such author, Martha Brockenbrough, is here.

The chic and amazing Martha B.
I have made no bones about hiding my crazy love for Martha and her book during the last few weeks on social media, and for your sake (lie: mine) I threw myself at her and groveled for her to come in the midst of her book-release craziness and host a Friday Feedback.

I fell in love with Martha, the person, on facebook, then fell in quick hate with Martha, the author, about one page in to her extraordinary novel The Game of Love and Death.

You know, the kind of mesmerized, green-eyed hate where, with each sentence you read, you start to question why you even bother to write.

No, really.

I am telling you this: if you read one book this summer, this is worthy of your read. . .

(luckily, I know you will all read more than one book and so won't have to pick and choose).

Kirkus' called Martha's prose "precise" and "luscious" and Booklist chimed in with "breathtaking." I think, so far, The Game of Love and Death has already garnered a well-deserved FOUR stars, and I give it FIVE HUNDRED more.

All I can tell you is this: I am three quarters of the way through it, and I have marveled on pretty much every page. What I know is I wish I wrote this book.

As I made my way through the early chapters, I started sending Martha notes. "But, HOW?!" I asked. "HOW did you think of this?" "... write this?" "HOW did you make this story happen?!"

So when she agreed to do Friday Feedback, I asked her to talk a little bit about that. So here she is, in a post she calls The Art of Persistence:


Starting a new book is a bit like starting a new romance.

You flirt with an idea. You move in closer. You give it the eye. It looks back at you and you just know. This … is the one.
As with love in the real world, though, the intoxication of possibility and potential eventually wears off, and you are left with a book that has morning breath and stubble, and those qualities that were perhaps endearing at first have become wearing.
But as I have told the couples I have married in my alternative life as an internet-ordained minister, love is fundamentally a choice you make every day. Whether your relationship succeeds, provided you’ve chosen a reasonable partner, is up to you.
This same thing is true with writing a book. And in all likelihood when you hit a rough patch, it’s not your book’s stubble, morning breath, or irritating qualities that are making you want to abandon ship. It’s your own darned self.
So here’s how to navigate that.
Step 1: Choose thoughtfully
I’ll stop belaboring the relationship metaphor soon, but you do want to choose wisely, both with partners and with books. Writing to a trend is like choosing a partner based on looks. This can seem necessary, but it rarely works out for the best in the long run.
  " Do I have some notion of why this story is important to tell?"
Before you set out, ask yourself:
-       Is this a story idea I love and will potentially be proud of for the rest of my life? -       Is it one only I can write? -       Can I imagine specific emotional moments for this character that give me the chills?-       Do I have some notion of why this story is important to tell?
Step 2: Give yourself permission to think
It’s tempting, when you have a new idea for a novel, to jump right in. And a lot of good can come from this: excitement, the discovery of new things about your characters, the feeling that you’re attached to the skirts of a rocket-powered muse. If that’s helpful to you, go for it!
That’s what I did with The Game of Love and Death. I got to know the character of Love, who was my original starting point. I wanted to know what Love would think of humanity. What would give him hope. What would irritate him. I did always know my version of Love was a man—which was a good choice made instinctively (but often the sort of choice better made upon reflection). And I found his voice and point of view to be delicious.
I also knew I wanted to write the story of people who’d never not loved each other—but still struggled to be together. That gave me Henry and Flora, who initially were Sam and Isabel.
But I did not know who his antagonist was. I did not know the story would be better set in 1937. I also did not know that Flora was a pilot. Or even that she was black. In the first draft, it was contemporary and Flora was a white girl named Isabel, while Sam was a black boy. (He was always a bass player, though.)
Most important, I didn’t quite know how or where the story would end. To me, endings have to be unexpected but inevitable, and that is a hard balance to strike. It takes a lot of thinking to get there, and sometimes—especially in this day and age of public writing and declarations of word count—the desire to be in the frenzy of creation swallows us whole.
Then, when it spits us out as it inevitably does, we’re left with more anxiety and self-doubt than before.
Step 3: Know that anxiety and doubt are normal … and that they are allies
Sometimes the mere existence of anxiety and doubt make us think there is something wrong with us and our ideas.
This is false. In fact, there would be something deeply wrong with us if we never doubted. If we never feared. We would be insufferably arrogant. Reckless. Liable to produce garbage creatively and leave misery in our wakes personally.
So don’t fear these things—know they are inevitable and that they come bearing gifts.

"When fear and doubt arrive, ask them what they are trying to tell you."
When fear and doubt arrive, ask them what they are trying to tell you. Sometimes they’re saying that an idea isn’t fully cooked. That you are shying away from the depths you need to plumb. That you have not yet uncovered your characters’ real fears, and that you are sparing them the suffering that makes for a bad life, but for great reading.
Sometimes, they’re giving you the gift of greasy baloney: that you are not good enough, that you are incapable, that you have nothing of worth to say. Learn to recognize these and shut them down. You will be happier in every way once you’ve gotten rid of the alluring garbage peddlers in your life and work.
Step 4: Know where you are going—and that you aren’t actually writing a novel
Wait. What? You’re not writing a novel? Yes. Bear with me a moment.
There is no one way to write a novel. And every novel demands different tools. Some people plot extensively in advance. Some fly by the seat of their pants. But I can’t help but believe that even the blindest of fliers is heading in a particular direction.
For me, it helps very much to know where I am going, and the closer I get to the end, the more specific detail there is in my mental map.
"In any case, there is no such thing as writing a novel.  There is writing a sentence.  A paragraph. A scene. A chapter." 
In any case, there is no such thing as writing a novel. There is writing a sentence. A paragraph. A scene. A chapter. These are challenges that can be managed on a daily basis. Just as relationships are sustained or spoiled by the daily choices we make, big projects like novels are the result of accumulated efforts.
As you write the novel, you also write yourself as a person who is brave, resourceful, persistent, and a welcome presence in the world. Here is this thing you are pulling from yourself. And while the process can sometimes feel like you’re yanking your guts through your left nostril with a crochet hook, the truth is you are adding love and beauty to the world without exploiting the planet’s resources or taking advantage of anyone in the process. This is a remarkable thing, and there is no one like you, no one able to do just what you do in the way you can do it. It doesn’t mean that you can’t do it better, but that again is nothing to fear. Don’t focus on the imperfections and inadequacies. Focus on the potential. Pardon my French, but that’s a f*cking exciting prospect and it is yours and yours alone.
"I revised the book 31 times."
So, know what you are about as much as you can (knowing you can always adjust later), and set a reasonable daily goal. It took me several years to write The Game of Love and Death. I revised the book 31 times. Had I known this at the outset, I might have been too intimidated or dispirited to proceed.
But I had an idea I believed in, and I managed to create sustaining moments in each day’s writing. A sentence I liked. A scene that thrilled me. An idea for work yet to come. And the knowledge that no one but me could write this book in the way I had imagined it.
This is not to say that every day was a basket of lavender-scented kittens. Far from it. But if you keep at your work knowing you are just swimming from one buoy to the next with the distant shoreline in mind if not in sight, then that is all you need.
Step 5: You don’t need to be perfect, just focused
Your goal when you’re struggling with that first draft is simply to finish it. Get to the end. When you finish things as a habit, you have the confidence you will finish this book, too, no matter how rough the going gets.
Most books require editing and revision, and lots of it. Yes, you will always hear stories of people whose books came to them in dreams or in three feverish weeks of typing. You sometimes hear people boast that they are so good at what they do they need only one draft to get the story right.
That may be true for those writers, but I think in general these tales and models are poison for the rest of us.
"The performance is not in the moment,  but in the sum total of moments spent."
The beauty of writing as an art form, as opposed to something like music or dance, is that we can continue to improve and refine it over time. The performance is not in the moment, but in the sum total of moments spent.
We don’t have to get it right the first time or all at once. We can do our best and then resume work the next day (preferably after we have filled our emotional wells with rest, reading, exercise, companionship, and other good things).
It really doesn’t matter how long a book takes to write or how many drafts it demands. What’s important is the knowledge that you have something worth saying—story that adds something new to the world.
Readers, especially young ones, deserve our best efforts. So does literature. Bookshelves and bookstores are already overstuffed. If it’s not better than what’s out there already, a book shouldn’t be published. I believe time and thought are necessary ingredients to this process. And likewise, so are you. Just as you are, with all of the flaws and fears and sorrows and joys.

So go forth and write with everything you have, knowing both you and the world will be better for your efforts.
- Martha
So, there you have it, some wonderful gems from Martha to digest and hold on to.

When I read Martha's post, one of the things that resonated with me most was her question, "Can I imagine specific emotional moments for this character that give me the chills?"  Such moments, in my writing, are often what inspire me to keep writing even when the rest of the story fills me with self doubt. As if such moments are proof that the character is worthy, even if the story hasn't quite yet settled around him or her.


In THE GAME OF LOVE AND DEATH, which you should run out and buy right now, there were so many moments that gave me chills as the reader. Two earlier ones come to mind, one in a gondola in Venice, between Love, Death and the Gondolier. The other, a moment surrounding the Hindenburg. Still now, just thinking about them, I get chills.

From THE GAME OF LOVE AND DEATH, Martha Brockenbrough
So, I thought, since it's Friday Feedback, I'd ask Martha to share one of those emotional moments from her new WIP, and I invite you to share the same pursuant to our Friday Feedback RULES. Share a brief moment that gives you, the writer, emotional chills.

PLEASE, if you haven't participated before and don't know the rules, STOP and click this link, scroll to the bottom of the post and READ the RULES and abide by them!

Martha will only be here today, but as always, I will read excerpts through Saturday.

Also, please note that Martha is in Seattle, so three hours earlier there! She won't be here until a few hours later EST .

So, without further ado, this excerpt, from Martha's yet-untitled WIP, an "experimental fairy tale with a non-human narrator, which will (probably) be set in medieval Germany and post Gold Rush Seattle. As with THE GAME OF LOVE AND DEATH," Martha adds, "Music, truth and love are core elements of the story."


The world emptied itself of everything unnecessary. There was nothing in front of me but this child. I touched her, and the song devoured me. I'd once seen an owl struck by lightning as it launched itself from a tree. Its entire body arched and sparked and turned white with the sheer power of it. I felt like that owl, and it was all I could do to remove my paw and remain conscious. (I cannot say the owl fared nearly as well, but you get my point.)I don't know how long I stood in thrall before Magnus's voice came from the shadows, where he liked to fiddle with his whiskers and observe the world. "You're a fool, Tomas.""Am I?" I pulled my paw away from the child and smoothed the fur on my cheeks. I suppose I was embarrassed, I am not proud to admit. And despite my question, I knew he was right.I was a fool. I remain a fool. I will ever be a fool for love. A fool, a soldier, a prophet, a martyr. If love makes a demand, I offer myself in my entirety.