Welcome to meryl’s notes blog (this here place you’re lookin’ at) in Plano, Texas. We’re honored to be a stop in Candace Coulombe’s WOW! Women On Writing Blog tour for the Coffee House Fiction Anthology 2010 and The Fifteenth Dame Lisbet Throckmorton Contest. We’re giving away a copy of her book, Second Grace: stories of fresh starts, second chances, and also running away. Read on to see how you can win.

About Candace Leigh Coulombe: Candace Leigh Coulombe is the author of Second Grace: stories of fresh starts, second chances, and also running away and Mercy Seat: a novella of love, loss, redemption, and hagiography. Second Grace won the Compilations/Anthologies category of the 2010 Beach Book Festival and an Honorable Mention in the 2010 San Francisco Book Festival, and an included story entitled “ScentEasy” won the 2009 Environmental Futures Writing Prize.

Candace works in Northern California full-time as a marketing communications specialist and part-time as a writer of short fiction, essays, and poetry. Her work has been recognized by the Sacramento and Elk Grove Public Libraries, NYC Midnight, the American River Review, and PEN Women. Listen to an in-depth interview or read her stories.

The Truth That Allows You to Lie: Using Historical Facts to Enrich Your Fiction by Candace Leigh Coulombe

Gentle readers and writers~

Like many literary women, I feel I was born in the wrong era. It’s through the escape of fiction that I enjoy other times. And, as a writer of flash fiction, I can afford to be capricious. I experience disparate eras, genres, and points of view that would be difficult to commit to, for a reader or writer, in longer forms.

Writing historical fiction isn’t just writing a period piece. You can take a known event or age and craft new characters, or take persons of note and craft new situations. Then, add elements of non-fiction, memoir, or fantasy.

We all need external influences for our work, or we’ll write about the same boy who broke our heart over and over again. My stories have three elements vying for the same little space: practical matters (word count, genre, location, object); inspiration (poem, painting, etc.); and theme. I don’t hold fast to “write what you know,” only to “write what you want to know more about.” So, some of my favorite stories were inspired by news articles. The glimpse of the true story -– the exoticism of a foreign land or time gone by -– makes me want to learn more. Inevitably, in the research, I encounter new ideas that enrich the story. The language should reflect a precise era, location, and social class.

I aim for accuracy, even when the narrative veers toward the fantastical. For example, I was given the task of writing a bus stop horror story. I’d read a news item about German convalescent homes that erected fake bus shelters as a bit of therapy. Around the same time, I’d read accounts of the Lindbergh kidnapping. I pursued a historical fiction-fantasy approach to the perpetrator’s fate in “Buses and Planes.” The characters and details of the Lindbergh affair are true; I’ve just imagined a different fate. There are very small things, some the reader may never know, like the smoke rings one of the characters blows that echo the rings on the real ransom envelope.

For “The Gulf of Aden,” I’d read an article about the precautions some cruise lines were taking when sailing through the eponymous passage, and I wondered what would happen if they didn’t take any. It’s a contemporary story about division of wealth in which the social-climber gets what she thought she wanted and finds it’s not really wonderful at all. But, the story wouldn’t be the same having read up on pirates or Cunard itineraries.

My two best resources are The Complete New Yorker and The New York Times archives. I love having access to a century of news, reviews, and advertising. I wrote “Phoning Arcadia” after reading a “Talk of the Town” column from 1927.

But, for any work, the truth in the details allows you to buy the lie that is the story.

Whether it’s romance, suspense, political satire -– anything, actually — stories aren’t derived from nothing. It’s an interesting obituary, lip print on a shirt or aching piece of music. Then, instead of placing that object in the story, you weave in a thousand details. Lipstick on a collar is almost never from a wife –- a universal story there. But what about laundry marks, collar stays, the faint scent of sizing?

Try to capture a little piece of history in each story. There’s so much beauty in the world. Let your curiosity make your stories replete with truth and beauty and readers will gladly join your adventures.

So, tell me, if you could take any historical event and craft a new ending, what would it be?

Win: For a chance to win a copy of Second Grace: stories of fresh starts, second chances, and also running away., please leave a comment at least 50 words long that answers Candace’s question. You have until 11:59pm on November 1, 2010 to qualify for the drawing. The unbiased and robotic Random.org has the honor of picking the winner.

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• 19 Best Ads I Have Ever Seen: Wow. Impressive collection. [Link: Kottke]
• 100 Books Every Child Should Read: Grouped into three types: early years, middle years, and early teens. Mostly focused on British stuff. After all, it’s from a UK site. My third grader loved The Twits, and he doesn’t like reading. [Link: Kottke]
• How to Start Charging Your Dream Rates [Link: Freelance Folder]
• From Techrepublic: Flow chart for problem resolution and flowchart for gaming.
• History of the Harlem Globetrotters: My dad took me to see them a couple of times. I had great fun watching them live and on TV. Glad to see they’re still going strong.
• Big Think: Contains many interviews with experts in all industries. [Link: Neat New Stuff]
• Rules of Thumb: All the rules of thumb in one place. [Link: Neat New Stuff]

This past entry addresses the dying art of letter writing (by hand and snail mail!). Cursive writing becoming a thing of the past looks at cursive writing’s decline in the classroom. Students typically learn cursive writing in third grade and I believe this should continue — but not with a heavy focus on getting it perfect.

Rather, the kids should remember how to do it and legibly. Just like learning new spelling words, they need to learn to read and write cursive. Neatness, like art, is subjective. Some people are good at it and some people aren’t.

Kids today have to learn more than kids did 10 years ago. They have computers and keyboarding added to their list of things to learn plus 10 more years of history. Remember memorizing the American presidents and the years they served? I clearly remember that from 9th grade, but I’ve forgotten the order and years. Is there any point memorizing this? Well, perhaps, it gives us an idea about when the president was in office. For instance, we know Lyndon B. Johnson didn’t serve anywhere near Lincoln or Adams — but somewhere around Kennedy and Carter.

My parents took me to Washington, DC for the first time when I was about 10 years old. We visited the Smithsonian museums where I bought presidential flash cards (OK, I was a nerd … sometimes). I learned them on my own, but promptly forgot them by the time I had to learn them again in 9th grade.

We also memorized poems. I still recall the ones I had to say over and over:

* Shel Silverstein’s Captain Hook from Where the Sidewalk Ends in 2nd grade.

* The Highwayman in 7th grade.

* Edgar Allan Poe’s Eldorado in 7th grade

* Kipling’s If

* Mark Anthony’s Caesar speech in 10th grade

* Shakespeare’s All the World’s a Stage

I hated memorizing poems at the time. But you know what? Some of these have become my favorites. I can still recite Eldorado without help. There was a time when I was into finding poems like The Highwayman and discovered The Shooting of Dan McGrew by Robert Service. It turned out my grandmother was also a fan of his work and we spent a little time discussing his poems. As a result of this interest, I started writing epic style poems. Wish I had them (That’s why I try to pick some of my kids’ work and kept them in a safe place.).

In middle school today, kids learn about one poem per six weeks — depending on the class. The poems are tied to the curriculum.