Harper Lee's Second To Kill A Mockingbird

Way back when I was trying to get a blurb from Harper Lee for my second novel, Tobacco Sticks. There was a man named Roy who answered the phone. I have put the book on Ms. Lee's beside table but I cant guarantee she will read it, he said. This went on for months. I would call and Roy would say. Well Ms. Lee is working her way through the stack. She never got to Tobacco Sticks. But of course I know now what she was doing. Writing another novel.

Go Set A Watchman. That is the title of Harper Lees second novel due out in July that predates her first To Kill A Mockingbird. Apparently this one didn't work out and the publisher prodded her into writing Mockingbird. The novel has now surfaced and coming our way in July. Who could  not be excited when the world had decided Harper Lee would be the ultimate one hit wonder along with JD Salinger and Margaret Mitchell. One smash masterpiece and game over.

But of course the world is complicated. Michael Jordan doesn't retire when he should. We live in a world of sequels and for whatever reason Miss. Lee has decided to put this very old manuscript. We have all loved Mockingbird and yes this book will not measure up. How could it? And then of course there is the old just be happy to have another Harper Lee book. I am good with that but then there are those Hemingway manuscripts.

Several books have followed his death and none of them have even been close to the books he put out when he was alive. Writers know which books are good and which ones don't work. Light in Africa and Islands in the Stream are poor substitutes for A Farewell To Arms and  For Whom The Bell Tolls. But again the manuscripts are there so why not bring them out.

So I will read it. Along with the millions. My only question is... did Harper Lee ever get to the bottom of her stack and read Tobacco Sticks?  Come to think of it, I wonder if Roy was lying to me.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
Tobacco Sticks
The Pitcher
 

Harper Lee on Writing

Now, if you were to give advice to the talented youngster who wants to carve a career as a creative writer, what would that advice be?
Lee: Well, the first advice I would give is this: hope for the best and expect nothing. Then you won't be disappointed. You must come to terms with yourself about your writing. You must not write "for" something; you must not write with definite hopes of reward.

Young people today, especially the college kids, scare me to death. They say they are going to be writers. Their attitude is, "I'm going to write it, and because I write it, it's going to be great, it's going to be published and make me great."

Well, I've got news for them. (You must think I regard writing as something like the medieval priesthood—and sometimes I wish our government could see its way clear to support our writers on bread and water and shut them up in a monastery somewhere.) People who write for reward by way of recognition or monetary gain don't know what they're doing. They're in the category of those who write; they are not writers.

Writing is simply something you must do. It's rather like virtue in that it is its own reward. Writing is selfish and contradictory in its terms. First of all, you're writing for an audience of one, you must please the one person you're writing for. I don't believe this business of "No, I don't write for myself, I write for the public." That's nonsense. Any writer worth his salt writes to please himself. He writes not to communicate with other people, but to communicate more assuredly with himself. It's a self-exploratory operation that is endless. An exorcism of not necessarily his demon, but of his divine discontent.

Of course, he gets his material from the world around him. He's on the inside looking out, yet at the same time he has to stand away from it and look inward.  I'm making no sense, I'm sure. But writing is the one form of art and endeavor that you cannot do for an audience. Painters paint, and their pictures go on the wall, musicians play, actors act for an audience, but I think writers write for themselves, and this attitude of "I'm going to write and be great just because I write" is where most young people fool themselves.

Another way they fool themselves is when they study to be writers. They are training themselves, in colleges, to be writers. Well, my dear young people, writing is something you'll neve learn in any university or at any school. It's something that is within you, and if it isn't there, nothing can put it there. But if you are really serious about writing, if you really feel you must write, I would suggest that you follow the advice the Reverend John Keble gave a friend who asked him how to get his faith back. "By holy living."

Further Reading of the interview...check out suggested titles at the end
Tobacco Sticks...Southern Courtroom Drama


 
 

I Will Do a Book Club Anytime and Anywhere

For authors a book club can not be beat. First of all you are in  a room of people who have read your book. Does it get any better than that? And they have all bought your book which is also amazing. And usually it is a group of ten people or more so that means a real nice spike in sales for you. I am always asked if I will speak at the book club...YOU BET. Why not if it is within a hundred miles I am there. It is the least I can do for people who have bought my books.

So then you go there and not only has everyone read your book there is usually dinner first and drinks. Bonus. So now you are being fed and having some glasses of wine or a drink and good conversation with people who want to talk about what you just wrote. Ok. So if there is an author heaven then it has to be a book club of about thirty people who just want to talk to you about what you do. Do any of us get this in this life?

And then the discussion begins. You get to listen to not only peoples view on your book but also far ranging discussions on theme and relevancy and what they liked and didn't like. It is mostly a stacked deck and pretty much everyone likes your book. And the booze continues and sometimes these things go pretty late and then you drive home feeling very good about being an author.

So I say it loud and clear. You want me to do your book club then email me. bhazelgrove@gmail.com
I'll be there with bells on.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher

Why Sagas are so Popular

Take a Southern tale and wrap it around a big Southern family that never moves and has been there for generations and then have the world change around them....that then is a saga. Downton Abbey. Lonesome Dove. Gone With the Wind. Tobacco Sticks. These are all sagas. Big changes coming down with the wind that blows over the established family and their traditions and if it is a good saga then all those traditions get blown away.

It is delicious. As a kid I read Gone with The Wind all the time. I love Downton Abbey. I love Dr. Zhivago. I love anything with the sweep of history because it tells so much about the time and the people and our humanity. Big stories demand big characters and these characters hack it out against the changing times and they are tested over and over. This is why sagas are so interesting. We love to see people tested because we are always being tested.

And because most sagas are historical they are interesting. We loved to see how other people lived. Be there Southerners or Englishmen. We love a story with a lot of detail and historical facts to fill it out and then all the little idiosyncrasies of their time. Why else does Downton Abbey spend so much time with the servants and their routines. We are in awe of all those people just running a house.

Writing a saga takes a good amount of time. Research. Getting it right. But the payoff is a place and a time and a people who are of another world.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
Free Download of Tobacco Sticks


 

The Real Women of "The Help"

In Virginia and Baltimore everyone had a cleaning person. Or a maid. Or a cook. Or an Annie. Or a Belle. Or a Polly. All my friends had black "Help." I would go to their homes and Annie would make us sandwiches and mysteriously disappear in the evenings and then come back early the next day. That was in Baltimore. In Virginia my father was raised by Addie. I wrote about her in Tobacco Sticks and she was the mother of my character in more ways than once. She was the classic Gone With The Wind Mammy who was large and drank a lot and swore even more. But that was who raised my dad. His mother was any of the woman of The Help playing bridge and drinking highballs.

For me in Baltimore we had Belle. She was large too and more updated than the Virginia Help that actually wore uniforms. I remember looking through a fan vent once and seeing our neighbors the Helfers maid doing laundry. She saw me and waved and I ducked back down. It was standard to assume everyone had Help and they were all black. That is until we moved up to Chicago. Suddenly there were no black people in the suburbs. I wondered where they all went. They were in the city and everyone had Polish cleaning woman. My mother found Polly then; the last black maid in Chicago.

Polly carried a gun for the bus rides in Chicago. I think it was a thirty eight and I saw the silver handle sticking out her purse. She said it was a Saturday Night Special. She said she had been bothered more than once and stuck it in the face of one man and said you want to live NI&^%$? He did and never messed with her again. Polly stayed with my mother even after the divorce and then she just disappeared and hard times along with the end of something, maybe an era, did away with any type of HELP after that.

When my wife and I had cleaning people they were always Polish. I never even wondered if they would be black. They charged so much we stopped and haven't had any help for years. We are the Help now. But when I read THE HELP, I knew those women very well.  In a way, I grew up with them.

Getting Harper Lee to Blurb my Novel

When I published my second novel, Tobacco Sticks, a friend said he thought Harper Lee might be amenable to giving me a blurb. He knew the man who took care of her, Roy, and said that I should just call up and see if she would read the book. So he gave me her number and I called and a  man with a deep Southern accent answered and said, yessssss. I introduced myself and told him I had sent a book to Ms. Lee and would she consider reading it. Roy said, well, I tell you, I will leave it on her nightstand when it arrives. Good enough.

Several weeks went by then several months. I called back and Roy answered. Yessss. I politely asked Roy if Ms. Lee had a chance to read my novel. Well, I tell you. Ms. Lee has been feeling a might poorly, but I have it by her bed on her nightstand and I will ask her if she has had a chance to read it yet. I thanked him and hung up. Another month passed and still no word. I sent another copy with a polite letter. Another month passed and I called again.


Yessssss. I asked Roy once more if Ms. Lee had a chance to read the book. Well, I tell you. She has just been so busy lately and is behind on her correspondence and letters. But I have put your other book on her nightstand and so she now has two copies of your novel there. I sat there in silence and then asked Roy if he thought she might ever read my book. Well, now, you never know do you? So I thanked him and hung up and my book went to press a month later without a Harper Lee quote.

I called Roy several months later. Oh yes. The books are still there and I think Ms. Lee will get to them soon. I hung up and wondered then if Roy ever put my book on Harper Lee's nightstand. But as Roy said, well now, you never know, do you?

www.billhazelgrove.com
Rocket Man will blast off this summer