Helene’s Comments (group member since Dec 17, 2013)

Helene’s comments from the Ask Helene Wecker - Tuesday, January 14th group.

Scarlett wrote: "I loved your book! I came across your book by a lucky accident and I'm so glad I did! It's hard to find good non-horror stories that really connect the reader with main characters that aren't huma..."

Hello, Scarlett! I love those happy book accidents. I've discovered some of my favorites that way.

Telling the story through the Golem and Jinni's viewpoints could be really, really hard, especially at first. I had to keep in mind all their abilities and limitations, and really try to imagine how they'd react to a given situation. In fact, the scenes where they're walking together at night were the hardest in the book to write, because I had to deal with both of their viewpoints at the same time! In the end it took a lot of tinkering and a lot of rewrites, as well as early-draft readers who pointed out my very obvious mistakes along the way. :-)

James wrote: "I loved the book. I listened to it on audible and George Guidall did a fantastic job bringing the characters to life. The story itself was wonderful and I look forward to your next work. And the ne..."

Hi James! Thanks so much -- didn't Mr. Guidall do an amazing job? I was completely blown away when I heard his performance.

I've answered the first part of your question in a few of my earlier posts, so I'll concentrate on the second part. Not sure if interactions between cultures will become a hallmark of my work, but it's certainly one of the things I'm interested in. I love questions of culture and religion, and tradition vs. assimilation, and all the different forces that go into shaping our identities. Especially here in America, where there's such a love of iconoclasm and independence on the one hand, and tradition and religion (quasi-Puritan at times) on the other. It can feel very schizophrenic, and we all end up navigating the problems in different ways. That's the stuff I love to chew over.

Jack wrote: "Hello Helene,

Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions.

First, I just want to say how much I enjoy your novel, The Golem and the Jinni. Once I read or listen to a book with such i..."

Hi Jack! Thanks so much for your lovely comments!

Really, I think my process is a mishmash of everything you describe. At the very beginning I tend to start with an idea, or a theme I want to explore. Maybe not even the characters yet, just the idea, or a scene that seems to embody the idea. Then the characters start to develop. At some point I realize I need research, so I pause everything for Google searches. The research leads to more ideas, which leads to interesting connections. And then suddenly the whole thing's exploded into a giant mess, and I'm trying to say everything all at once. So I have to pare back, and remember my original idea, and maybe make a plan to keep myself organized. Then more research, and more ideas and details, and hopefully a satisfying ending. At that point I take a step back and try to figure out just what it is I've got. Of course, this is the ideal version; in reality it tends to be even messier!

Nancy wrote: "How are you connected to the middle eastern cultures and influences that are in your book? What is your spiritual background or interests and did it influence your writing? Thankyou for writing suc..."

Hi Nancy! The short answer is that I'm Jewish (Ashkenazi, grew up Reform), and my husband's Arab American. (His dad grew up Muslim in Syria; his mom grew up Polish Catholic; he himself grew up sort of atheist/agnostic/Buddhist.) I've gotten more interested in Jewish religion and mysticism as I've gotten older, but as for my own beliefs, they vary widely from day to day. My own spirituality is mostly influenced by Buddhism, but I feel a stronger cultural pull towards Judaism, as far as ritual and comfort and the like. So, in writing the book, I started out with all of that as a background, and added a lot of research as I went.

Nicole wrote: "Helene, your book was the first one in a long time that I didn't want to put down, and I was so happy to have picked it to review for Coal Hill Review. Thank you so much for that. As one writer to ..."

Hi Nicole, thanks so much for your kind comments!

To answer your first question, the first draft was absolutely nothing like the finished book. For one thing, it went much more quickly. I got a lot of comments from my readers like "slow down," "give us more detail," so the book kept getting longer with each rewrite. Also, I took a lot of wrong turns at the beginning. At one point I ditched about half the book and started over. Not to mention that I never actually got to the end of the book until almost seven years into the process, when I was under contract with HarperCollins! It felt like Zeno's Paradox at times, where you never quite reach the end of the race.

Quite a lot of the book changed once I got my agent. He helped me to focus the plot and tighten up the writing. With his help, I cut something like 15% of the book overall, much of it at the sentence level. My editor at HarperCollins was instrumental in helping me shape the second half of the book, especially the ending. (See one of my answers above for how I had to rewrite the ending at the very last minute.)

Squire wrote: "Helene-

One of the many things I liked about your book was the simplicity of your lyrical and ethereal prose stylings. It had a whimsical fairty-tale quality that made it all the more enjoyable.

..."

Hi, Squire! In my mind, the Jinni's name isn't something that can be said out loud by a human. I imagined jinn language as something approximating the sound of the wind, something unintelligible to other creatures. I love stories in which "true names" are used to bind people (and monsters), like in old folk tales and the "Vampire Princess Miyu" anime series. But sometimes it seems like the real name is sort of a letdown. I remember reading a fantasy novel where a character's true name is revealed, and it was so prosaic, after such a long build-up, that I went, "That's it?" (This is also why I hope they never reveal the Doctor's true name in "Doctor Who." God forbid it's something like Leonard or the Time Lord equivalent.) So in the end, I decided to let it remain a mystery.

Kritika wrote: "Hello Ms. Wecker,

The Golem and the Jinni is easily one of the best books I read last year, and one of my favorites. It's the first book that made me cry tears of happiness - by the end, I was so ..."

Hello, Kritika! My goodness, thank you for your praise. I always feel a little guilty when someone tells me I made them cry!

I tried to develop the characters slowly, and give them the time and space to become real, full people. I also tinkered constantly with everyone's personalities as the stories developed, and then had to go back and rewrite their earlier scenes to make them consistent. This happened more with the Golem than with anyone else. At one point I rewrote her character completely, because she'd grown too much like a robot, too disconnected from everyone around her. That's when I added her ability to feel the fears and desires of everyone around her -- it gave her a connection to humanity that she really needed.

Sophia and Saleh were both special cases, in their own ways. Sophia originally wasn't very developed as a character; she was just this rich young woman that the Jinni happened to seduce one night. But then I decided that if she was just a random conquest, designed to get the Jinni from Point A to Point B, then I wasn't doing the character enough justice. So I started thinking more about *why* a young woman in her position would be so easily seduced. What was the Jinni offering her that she wanted? Why was she so willing in spite of the obvious danger? (And yes, he's very good at what he does, but let's not give him *all* the credit.) That was when her character started to get more interesting.

As for Saleh, he was a totally unlooked-for gift. I was reading through an old newspaper article from the turn of the century about Little Syria -- a terrible article, really condescending, "let's go look at the foreign people" sort of stuff. But it had an illustration of a man sitting on a curb, a thin, very sad-looking man in his late forties or early fifties, wearing a small white turban, and holding a churn. The caption read "An Ice-Cream Seller." I was completely taken by the contrast: that he made ice cream, which we think of as a happy thing for kids, but he looked like the most sorrowful man on earth. I thought, "Who *is* that guy?" And all of a sudden I knew. His whole backstory just came to me. I sat down and wrote it all out, and it all survived pretty much intact into the final draft of the book. Really, he was the one guy I didn't have to figure out bit by bit. He was sort of my rock, actually.

Sidharth wrote: "Hi Helene,
I was a pleasure reading "The Golem and the Jinni". The one thing which I loved the most was your choice of words and expressions. Every word fitted in exquisitely with the intended mean..."

Hi Sidharth! Thanks very much for your kind comments, and your questions.

Rabbi Meyer wanted to bind Chava to another master because he was worried about the dangers that an unbound golem would pose to the community (and to New York in general). Golems, by their nature, are dangerous and destructive creatures; even with a master, they can be hard to control. Chava is more intelligent than your average golem, but even so, just by existing she poses a threat. The Rabbi hoped that by figuring out how to bind her, he could lessen that threat -- but at the same time, he knew he'd be robbing her of her free will.

For your second question, I think you're referring to the drugged girl on the rooftop? I've gotten a lot of questions about her, and what she's doing in the book. Her only real purpose was to partially jog the Jinni's memory and remind him of Fadwa, who's part of his hidden past. But apparently I described her with too much detail and emphasis, since everyone asks me this question! And the answer tends to disappoint them, too. Sorry about that. :-)

Jennifer wrote: "Hi Helene- A friend recommended your book to me and I really enjoyed it. So much that I took it to Europe with me for five weeks knowing full well I'd have a hefty fine when I got back. Even worse,..."

Hi Jennifer, you library rule-breaker, you! (I have the same problem with library books, and always have. My high-school librarian told me once, "You know, if you turn the books in on time, you don't have to pay for them.")

Other than reading, the two research methods that helped the most were 1) visiting the NYC locales myself, to try to absorb the details and atmosphere, and 2) trolling through the New York Public Library Digital Archives for old maps and photographs. Really, I think 2) helped even more than 1). It's amazing what you can find in those digital archives, like photos of just about every street corner in New York, from any year since the beginning of photography. But the footwork was instrumental too. One very good decision I made was to visit the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side, where they've restored a number of old tenement apartments to how they would've looked at different times in the building's history. It really gave me a model for the Rabbi's apartment, and to some extent the Jinni's too.

As for specific advice I'd offer to new writers of historical fiction, I'd say it's very important to keep your research materials organized. (I'm a big fan of Evernote for notes organization.) Totally boring, I know, but you'll appreciate it when you need to compare sources, or when you're trying to remember if you read a particular detail or if your brain made it up.

As for the Golem's face, I have no idea! I'm awful with faces, and these days I can't recognize anyone on the magazine covers. Maybe, if anything, a plainer Rachel Weisz? Crossed with my sixth-grade Hebrew school teacher? Aaagh, I'm terrible at this.

Linda wrote: "How did you pitch The Golem and the Jinni to an agent or an editor? How did you describe it?"

Hi Linda! When I met my future agent at a Columbia University event in New York, I pitched it to him as "A female golem and a male jinni meet in 1899 New York." (I'd been told to keep my pitch down to one line, something short and memorable.) He was intrigued, and asked if he could read it. Unfortunately at that point I only had 50 pages of the book! But I sent him what I had, and we kept in touch after that, until I had enough of the book that he offered to take me on formally as a client. At that point, he pitched it to editors, drumming up interest (and eventually getting me a deal with HarperCollins). So in the end, I only had to pitch the book once. It's not the usual story, for certain; I have lots of writer friends who have to pitch their books over and over again. But "short and sweet" seems to work a lot better than long and overly detailed.

OK everyone, I sent a few emails and ate some lunch, so I'm all fortified for another round of question-answering. Let's get to it.

Taking a break, but I'll be back in a few hours with more answers to your questions. Thanks for reading, and stay tuned.

Bryan wrote: "First of all, I adored the book, and everyone I recommended it to loved it ask well (can I get a commission?) One of the things I loved the best about the book was how it made me feel; it kept me c..."

Hi Bryan! So glad to hear you had those reactions while reading the book. Makes me feel like I did something right. As for your commission, the check is in the mail. ;-)

The flow of the book took an insane number of drafts to get right. (Or at least, as "right" as I could get it.) The ending itself required a major rewrite at the last minute. The very kind folks at HarperCollins gave me a deadline extension to accommodate it. (I also had a newborn daughter at home, which made things extra exciting.) The original ending just didn't fit the book at all. It was a muddled mess of plot points that tied up all the loose ends, but was completely emotionally unsatisfying. It was a traditionally "happy" ending too, which didn't seem to do justice to the very long struggles that the characters had endured. Even as I wrote it, I knew it was terrible, but I didn't know what else to do. So I sent it to my agent and editor, and we had a few long talks about it before I rewrote it completely. Even with all that planning, a few important elements of the new ending came to me pretty much as I was writing it. So much for careful planning!

Milana wrote: "Hello Helene! You have a beautiful vision that you are able to convey in your writing to your readers. I absolutely adored The Golem & The Jinni. It was the best book I read in 2013 and will always..."

Hi Milana! Thanks so much for your lovely comments!

I've got a few projects in the works, one a potential sequel (which seems to excite some readers and dismay others!). I've also got an idea for something totally different, an alternate-history dystopic thingy set in suburban Chicago in the early '90s. We'll see if either or both of them end up becoming a reality.

Mohammed wrote: "Hello Helene! I'm so excited to see this discussion.

Coming to study in America from an Arab background, I began to realize my lack of knowledge about Jewish history and culture (sadly for obvious..."

Hello, Mohammed! Thanks a ton for your question. I feel it's an important one. (And believe me, I understand where you're coming from. As a Jewish woman growing up in America, my knowledge gap concerning Arab and Muslim culture was pretty huge. Educating myself has been a constant, ongoing project.)

I had a tricky time with the Jinni's character, and whether or how much to connect him to a specifically Islamic view of jinn. In the end I decided against it, because except for Saleh, all of the Syrian characters in the book are Christian (either Maronite Catholic or Eastern Orthodox), not Muslim. And from what I could tell in my research, Arab Christian belief in jinn falls more closely into the category of folklore than religion. (In other words, it's not specifically written into the religion, the way it is in Islam.) Because of this, I used a number of Arab Christian (mainly Lebanese) tales and folk wisdom for my research, in which the jinn are closer to the tricksters of the Thousand and One Nights than they are to the fully developed, religiously aware creatures described in the Quran. (Also, the Jinni's imprisonment in the flask happened before the wider spread of Islam, which I imagine is one of the reasons he's so clueless about religion as a whole.)

However, looking back on it now, I think I could have done a better job balancing all of this. You're right in that he seems more like a westernized "genie" at times, closer to our versions of the tales than the original tales themselves. I think a lot of this came from my own limitations as a Western writer. And it's yet another issue that I'd like to address if I ever write a sequel!

Linda wrote: "Helene -

For years I've been searching for what I would call an American "classic," something I want future generations to read as outstanding and lasting examples of American culture. Yours is t..."

Hi Linda! Goodness, what praise. I'd dispute my place among your list of writers, but that's just me. :-) And at last, a vote against a sequel! I wonder sometimes about sequels, and if it's possible for a sequel to not disappoint in some way. Like I said earlier, nothing's set in stone.

To answer your questions: I knew about golems originally through my own Jewish heritage, but most of the golem stories I'd read before I started writing the book came from modern science fiction and fantasy. (I think the first golem I ever encountered was in one of the early Xanth books by Piers Anthony, GOLEM IN THE GEARS.) And yes, jinn/genies are much more familiar in American culture, but I think golems are catching up! There's a whole generation who know them now through games like Magic: The Gathering and World of Warcraft, even if they don't know the original folktales.

As to how I decided on a golem and a jinni: The whole thing started when I was writing a collection of short stories about my family and my husband's family. I'm Jewish, and he's Arab American. They were very realist stories based on true events, and I was having a hard time with them. A friend of mine suggested I add an element of fantasy, since that's the sort of fiction I tend to gravitate towards. So I decided to switch the two main characters, a Jewish woman and an Arab American man, with what I saw as the two most representative fantastical creatures from each culture: a golem and a jinni. And really, the whole thing took off from there!

The research took an insanely long time. The first two years were about 50/50 research and writing. Over the next five years of writing the research decreased and the writing increased, but even up until the end, I still had to research individual details.

Shomeret wrote: "I think that a sequel taking place in the 1920's could be very different from the first book because the zeitgeist was so different in the Roaring Twenties. I would like to see that.

My question:..."

Hmm, that's a really good question. I'm not sure how much of it was deliberate, how much of it came from their natures and circumstances of creation (a clay woman created to be a man's wife vs. a mercurial, constantly changing creature of fire), and how much of it was my own learned cultural biases coming to the fore. Certainly it would've been a lot harder for the Golem to fit in if she was a more outgoing and independent personality like the Jinni -- and how much worse would the Jinni have fit in if he were a woman?? I've thought a lot about the gender roles in the book since it was published, and if I do end up writing a sequel, that's one of the themes I'd like to address.

Angela wrote: "What a beautiful story you've written , meshing folklores and cultures . For me it portrayed friendship ,love , humanity . I loved Chava and Ahmed and would love to know if you plan a sequel so we ..."

Hi Angela! Glad to hear you enjoyed the book enough to want a sequel. :-) I've got an idea for one, set a few years in the future. Nothing definite yet -- we'll have to see what happens!

Shelly wrote: "Hi Helene,

I loved your book! I urged my mother to read it and she enjoyed it as well.
I was impressed by how you were able to write a gripping, entertaining story while at the same time there ..."

Ha, the old planner/pantser debate! I think I'm a little of both. When I started the book, I had no plan whatsoever. It took a few years(!) for the scope of the book to really show itself, and by that time it was a crazy tentacular mess of plot threads and half-developed characters. Finally I had to sit down and create a plan. But even then, the plan kept changing. I went through a few major rewrites before things really settled down, and still the plot particulars kept shuffling around. But I discovered that if I had some idea of my destination, I could keep forward momentum going, even if that destination changed.

Jennifer wrote: "Hello,
I loved this book! Thanks for taking the time for us here. I really hope you write tons more books :)"

Thanks, Jennifer! I hope so too. :-)