Alison came to visit today, staying from lunch till seven, so I only had a chance to clean the kitchen, bake brownies, and do a mite of brainstorming/planning my novel before she arrived… and now I’m exhausted and depressed from reading first the fictional and then the true story of the Sager orphans. I’m not working on the novel nearly as much as I’d like, but at least I’ve so far done a little bit of thinking about it every single day since the work week started, and that’s more than I can say for even Gone (in those first days)… I think.
I had a good time with Alison, talking over art, crafts, and various other things.
Speaking of the Sagers, don’t you think if you fictionalize a miserable story by turning it into a happy-ending story, you’re only making things worse for your readers when they find out what actually happened? Isn’t it kinder and nobler to try to retell the misery in a way that’s uplifting? Then again, On To Oregon was written in the 1920s, and that’s not an era when they would do such a thing in a book for young readers. But if I were redoing it now, I wouldn’t cover up what really happened. There’s inspiration and strength to be found in a story of struggle that ends happily, but perhaps we could learn something deeper from a story of struggle that’s just that.
satsumabug.com | Lisa Hsia 