Today's? Just what I say above--to write a good book, you'd better love your subject.
For my WIP, I need (get!) to learn more about the settlement houses that were so huge at the turn of the century. (Okay, the turn of the last century; do I need anything else to make me feel old?!) My favorite form of nonfiction has always been memoirs, and I was lucky enough to find the memoir of a woman who did much of her growing up, and just growing, at Hull House in Chicago--perhaps the most famous American settlement house.
I Came a Stranger: The Story of a Hull-House Girl, by Hilda Satt Polacheck, is a wonderful curl-up-and-read book. It has all the gaps and perhaps flaws of a memoir, in that Hilda doesn't worry too much about checking her facts. At times, she actually tells us how proud she is of quoting just from her memory, without having to go back and look anything up. Hilda also chooses, I think, to skim over the hard times in her life and to encapsulate and tuck away some of the intolerances and unpleasantness of the times.
That's what memoir is though, right? It's about the author's choices, the bits and pieces she decides to pick out of her memory and share with us. And while I may need to read another, more detailed history book about the settlement houses, I am truly enjoying going with Hilda through the life she wants me to see.
Because she was happy in that life.
This despite the fact that she grew up in a Poland where Jewish children didn't go outside on Christmas day, for fear of being beaten or even killed. This despite the fact that her father died when she was twelve, leaving her mother with several children and a total of two dollars. This despite the fact that she went to work a few years later, in some of the ten- and twelve-hour day factories, doing strenuous and tedious work for too little money.
She credits much of this happiness of Jane Addams, the founder of Hull House, who helped Hilda in, as Hilda tells us, too many ways to count. Miss Addams opened Hilda's eyes to a wider world than she had ever known, assisted her in going to college, in teaching other immigrants, and in beginning her work as a writer.
I'm sure Jane Addams had much to do with turning Hilda's life around. I'm also pretty sure, though, that Hilda was happy, because...well, because that's who she was. Her cheerfulness comes shining through on these pages, in the funny little stories she has brought with her from the past, in the admiration she felt for Jane Addams, in the open and honest love with which she describes her parents, siblings, and husband. Mostly, though, it just comes through in the details--all the little, almost nonessential, things that always made her smile.
Hilda Satt Polacheck loved her life. And she made a smart choice, as an author, when she made the decision to write about that life.
What are you writing about today? Deep down, beneath the struggle for the right words, a solid outline, and getting the people onto the page, what do you love?
- Mood:
cheerful
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chasethestars
chasethestars
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Right now I'm thinking that part of what I love is the words themselves, even apart from the subject, though that's certainly part of it. But I struggle to get words that line up well, that make me go: yes! and feel glee.