sponge-ing: kristin hannah

kristin hannah. holy wow. i was absolutely overjoyed with my experience at this event. the place: parnassus books nashville, the time: 6:30 pm. the writer: well, i already told you. 

i'm not posting this the day after it happened because i saw two huge author events in two days...both brought in by parnassus i might add. such a mighty little bookstore. but, i will tell you...i am overwhelmed with the two experiences i have had. whew. while i went to this one, my husband and dog were at my parents' house eating dinner without me, which was the plan, don't worry. so, when i was done with the event, i went back to my parents' house. i was on cloud nine, i was jittery, i was delirious in a way i never get. my cousin even commented on it when i called her afterward to tell her how it went. she said "ash, you never get this way about anyone" and laughed. she's right. i don't. but last night i did. i totally geeked out. and i'm slightly embarrassed and thrilled by that geeking. 

my mom said "honey, you're like a teenager! bouncing around the house!"

my dad was sick in bed and he even commented. 

my husband chuckled. 

and i was delirious almost all night long. 

so, just like with paula hawkins, i will trudge through my notes and give you all i took from this amazing event, which is a lot, i will warn you. she's written 20+ novels, so it's kind of expected. 

here we go again! (and i'm sorry but this one is long. but if you're a fan or a writer, you won't mind!)

• first of all, kristin hannah is normal, charming, a little OCD (she says) about certain things, and thorough. and she was genuine, which isn't always guaranteed. 
• where she got the idea for The Nightingale: while she was researching world war II russia for my favorite of her novels Winter Garden (go read it), she came across a memoir of a 19-year-old belgian girl who documented an escape route fromnazi-occupied france. obviously, she couldn't use that memoir in Winter Garden, but still, it stayed with her. and she kept reading about the french resistance, and about the ordinary women who did extraordinary things throughout. 
• the voice of Winter Garden gave her the confidence to do another historical fiction project, since she usually wrote contemporary.
  
• wrote the first line of the book on page 450 originally...it's an amazing line. after editing and moving it around a few times, she realized it was the crux of the entire story. i always find these details interesting :) 
• her writing regimen (my question to her, of course): she is a rockstar basically because she writes/researches from 8-4 every day of the week and takes 1 month off a year for a vacation. she usually does five months of research, then writes a scene by scene outline, then writes the first 200 pages–then after that, she usually gets bored with it. at that point, she gives it to her writer friend sarah to rip to shreds. (i have a sarah, her name is lindsey!) they share a bottle of wine, and sarah tells ms. hannah everything that's wrong with the first 200 pages. usually there is one thing sarah likes. so then, ms. hannah goes back to work and starts over with that one thing in mind. another 200 pages, another sarah/wine day, etc...and once she gets to 400 pages without getting bored, she finally feels good. 
• she was going to be a lawyer, no doubt about it, until her mother (who was battling breast cancer) told her she would be a writer during her 3rd year. according to KH, she thought her mom was crazy, but then, they started writing a romance novel together to pass the time. her mom chose the genre. after her mom died, she simply put it away, and it wasn't for another couple years, when she was bed-ridden at 14 weeks of pregnancy, that her husband suggested she pull the box of research back out. that's when she really became a writer. she gave herself until her son was in 1st grade to get a writing deal...she got one when he was 3. and 27 years later...voila. 
• in early drafts of The Nightingale, the characters were very cardboard. once she got the history right, she went back to flesh out the characters and their relationships. 
• when asked what she liked to read: "as a writer, you can learn something from every book." amen to that. she reads everything but she loves thrillers and YA fantasy fiction.
• the way she creates fully believable characters is almost entirely through backstory. and it changes from draft to draft until she gets it right: in one draft, a character might be a medical student from a privileged family. in the next, that same character might be a janitor who grew up with nothing, and then the final might be somewhere in between. "i just keep changing who they are until they say what i want them to say. and sometimes i see it for the first time on the page." (paraphrased).  she did this in her latest novel. at one point, the two girls were twins, then best friends, and finally they became sisters, one younger and one older. KH said it took a while to find that perfect relationship. i'm glad to know i'm not the only one who takes a while with this whole writing thing.

• names of characters have to be exactly right or she can't go on. if that's the case, out come the baby name books until they are right.
• she says most of her characters are versions of her
• a character named brian has shown up in at least 6 of her novels, but he's never made it to the final draft (hilarious)
• another question of mine was how she writes (material-wise). she said she writes on yellow, college-ruled legal pads with the same 12-pack uniball pens from costco–which she makes her husband get every time he's there. she writes by hand (whoop whoop!) and her assistant types it into the computer.  oh, and apparently, one written page=one typed page. 
• she wrote 1/2 of Winter Garden sitting on the beach, so yeah, she prefers to write by hand. i concur. 
• my follow up to all this writing by hand stuff (since she writes draft after draft) was whether she ever got tennis elbow. she said the key was to rest your arm on something. and then another woman piped up from the audience and yelled "GET A BOPPY!" you know, the nursing pillow new mothers use? well, i got one the next day, and i love it. i even got a cute non-baby cover for it. see picture:) 
• in general she doesn't do sequels because she has already said everything in the original.
• two of her books made her cry in the copy edit stage: The Nightingale and Winter Garden
• the three books of hers that challenged her (and are her favorite): 

         a. Firefly Lane

         b. Winter Garden

         c. The Nightingale