The Century I Live In

When does literary inspiration stop and my own personal voice take over?

It’s a question that’s been on my mind lately, since I’m working on “The Heart of a Lie,” my second historical fiction novel. I’m about halfway through the rough draft and making excellent progress. I wrote two scenes last night and several new chapters last week.

The story is about two sisters who are orphaned when their mother dies, they are forced to sell their Maine farm and end up in Portland, Maine with relatives they don’t know.

I was definitely inspired by “Bleak House,” a fantastic 2005 miniseries about Dickens’s interesting and character-packed novel. I didn’t know anything about the story and viewed it on Netflix one quiet wintry week two or three years ago. I really loved the story, bought the novel and read it, too. The novel is more like a series of vignettes rather than a coursing narrative, so the miniseries brought the story to life in a much more story-like way.

Another inspiration for “The Heart of a Lie” is Jane Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility.” The 2009 miniseries starring Hattie Morahan is just delightful. I also own the Emma Thompson/Kate Winslet movie version and watch it several times a year.

So, my story is a combination of these two classic novels, with an American twist of setting it in Maine three years after the Civil War. Obviously, the country is trying to recover from this immense tragedy. My main character Esther’s father was killed in the war, so he’s not around anymore to run their farm.

When I first began this story, I really felt as if I was borrowing way too heavily from past authors. The close-sister motif popularized by Jane Austen and Louisa May Alcott, the Gothic twists I’m adding that are reminiscent of “Jane Eyre,” “Bleak House” and Hawthorne – all of this weighed on my mind as being too reminiscent of 19th century novels.

As much as I love that century and that time period, I also want to stand on my own as a literary voice in this time. The one main difference between me and Austen or me and Charlotte Bronte is that I’m not repressed by my social era. I have freedoms those ladies could only dream about. I can give my characters as many burdens and obligations as I want to (and I do!), but I’m not living that situation. I’m not drawing from my own life in that sense. The problems and driving energies behind my writing have more to do with the love of the genre than to lay out my memoir-esque experiences.

For, as much as I adore Austen, Dickens, Bronte, Alcott, Hawthorne and the rest – they LIVED the social climate they wrote about. It was their world. Except for Hawthorne, who ventured into Puritan territory with “The Scarlet Letter,” they didn’t write about other time periods. So, their lives lend such an authenticity to their novels.

I don’t know if I could write about the 21st century the way they wrote about the 19th century. My social freedoms don’t lend themselves to creating enough conflict for a main character, especially a female one. That may be the reason I don’t put iPhones or divorces in my story. But the pressures, moralistic obligations, financial situations and extenuating circumstances facing men and women in the 19th century make for way better novels! There’s so much conflict built into the social structure that I can lay it on thick – and THAT keeps pages turning!

Well, once the story is finished I will definitely reach out to readers and ask if the story stands on its own 21st century legs. I’m still not sure if it draws too heavily from past authors and classic works, but the elements of good storytelling are definitely there – a strong and well-defined main character, a simple but deep plot, great villains, wonderful supporting cast, intrigue and mystery, secrets, lies and a whole lot of motivation bubbling under the surface.

My particular take on classic novels is to make them exciting for today’s reader. Update them with a more modern style and more visceral details. I’m not afraid to peek under corsets, but neither am I willing to buck all traditional convention. It’s okay to make 19th century characters human – really human. It’s okay to add post-Freudian psychological depth to villain motivation. It’s okay to break antique teacups in the quest for the truth.

That may be the best thing about being a 21st century writer: my social era gives me courage.