Update

So, i've been a poor blogger this summer, but actually have been writing quite a bit. I feel like i'm really moving on this piece, and it fills me with a really great sense of excitement, of fulfillment. I'm trying to get in the habit of going to the library one afternoon a week for a couple hours, i feel like i'll get more done if it's structured.

I had a great discussion with Zosia this summer regarding this piece, and she helped me iron out quite a bit of the material. Though i'm still not sure on a couple of the major plot points, I feel like those will flow as I write. My goal is to have the first chapter and a large section of another chapter completed by the end of the year. Wish me luck.

When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit

At the library book sale last year I picked up this book, which i remember noticing when I was a kid. I went through this phase where I only read books about World War II and the Holocaust. I'm not sure what my obsession was, if it was morbid fascination at the atrocities we can visit upon one another, or if it was something different. Either way, I never read this one, that I recall. I read it on sunday, that is the glory of YA lit, you can read a whole one in a couple hours. It's actually pretty remarkable, smart, and not too morbid. Its a little younger than a lot of the books I've been reading lately (ALA says 9-12) The girl in it is very real, and her internal struggles are exquisitely written, you know exactly what she's thinking, and you remember thinking those things too, even though her experiences are so different.

Thought process - Alex's feelings about being Latvian

So i was just thinking about this time in middle school when this kid kept making fun of me cause i used to wear this "where in the world is Latvia?" shirt all the time. I was a big geek, but I thought being part of a specific ethnic group was pretty cool; it made me feel unique, special, even though i didn't know much about it. Especially Latvian, because it was occupied and fighting for independence, and it was a culture as well as a nationality. So it got me thinking, "how does Alex, the teenager, feel about her ethnicity?" Does she embrace it? Does she abhor it?

And since I have not yet nailed down a specific time frame for Alex's part of the story, that makes it even harder, it is during occupation? After independence? Would it matter to her either way?

A note about fiction vs. reality

Though parts of this novel will by necessity be autobiographical, for the most part it is fictional. No relationships, characteristics, or orientations of characters should be projected onto their presumed real-life counterparts. I have taken great liberties with the characters that are based on real people, so much so that i would consider them not to be based on those people at all.

Not much work done lately

I haven't had a chance to do much work lately, i've been thinking more and more about this piece and getting more and more excited about it. I rarely feel this compelled to write and do the research.

I recieved a bibliography, from my Latvian professor, of books and resources I might find useful in writing the scenes in Latvia. I've also done a preliminary interview with my mom, i will definately need to do some more interviewing/research. I've just got to get my tushy over to the UW library! I also might try to make some connections on the web; i know there is a sort of Latvian "myspace" out there.

I had an ephiphany the other day. I need to flesh out the family and the lives generally of my characters. Even if i don't write about that aspect of them, i need to know it so their interactions are more realistic.

That's about all I have today. So not much progress, but still excited.

the letters

So I have a couple questions I need to answer for myself before I can move much further.

The first is "do I tell the Latvia half of the story only through letters, or do I use letters and scenes stemming from those letters?"

The second is "How does Alex in the states, who has never been to Latvia get a hold of letters that would have been confiscated or censored by the occupying soviets?"

1. My thoughts on this are two fold: I love the medium of letters but I hate it when letters in stories contrive to tell the story in ways that no real person would ever write in a letter.

My mom recently found the letters that her mother had written to her sister during the soviet occupation. Unfortunately the letters my great aunt wrote have been lost to time and new wives. However, the letters were incredible to read, so personal and vulnerable. This is where the idea for the letters that tell Aleksa's story come from. My own great aunt died single with no children. Though there are hints that she at one time had a male lover, she focused much of her life on surviving occupation and taking care of her elderly parents. I wanted to tell her whole story (modified of course) through letters. But I'm beginning to think that may be somewhat contrived. Perhaps i could use the letters to introduce scenes in that story. Things that Alex doesn't know, but the reader does. That may be the easier way to go. I already wrote the last letter, and i couldn't put many details in there. Besides, i find writing a lot of text in the first person a bit disconcerting for some reason. Perhaps i could use the "censored" letters to open the scenes and then tell the "real" story.

2. My thoughts on this aspect have gone around and around. I've thought of telling the stories separately and only at the end does Alex receive the letters from the recipient. So at the end the reader gets to have the "oh, she's going to know what we know now" feeling. I've also thought about them arriving anonymously addressed to her when someone (the recipient) finds her and her family somehow. But that seems too dramatic really, mysterious though...hmmm.
I've toyed with sending Alex to Latvia to find them in the floorboards herself. However, i don't think i want her to have been to Latvia, it might change her feelings about her nationality and i want her to be proud of it in an "I'm different" way more than an actual founded in reality way.
Right now I'm leaning toward Alex's mother goes to clean out the house after the fall of the soviet union. She finds the letters, and never reads them, just packs them up in a box with all the other documents, and sends them back to the states. She finds them in the floorboards, and later we find that these were the letters Aleksa wanted to write to the recipient but couldn't because of the censors. Alex finds them when she is looking for pictures or documents for a school project. She could end up doing her senior project on this whole letters and life thing.

Why I started this blog

I read somewhere that when undertaking a large writing project you should keep a journal, to record progress, thoughts, major points of the narrative, that sort of thing. So, this will serve as my journal for my as yet un-named novel, of undeterminate length.

General thoughts, so far I have written part of one scene, and "storyboarded" about fifty notecards ranging anywhere from plot points to character descriptions.

Right now i need to organize my cards, and answer some of the cards that are just questions. I also need to flesh out a lot of secondary characters...since i have essentially none right now.

I also need to determine the central focus. What am I trying to say? Besides telling this story.

Some research will also need to be done on the Latvian half of the story.