Interview with Naomi Miller, author of IMPERFECT ALCHEMIST

Author and Smith College professor of literature Naomi Miller and I geek out about historical research, women authors of the past, and the magic of writing historical fiction! You can get her lovely book here.

Transcript

Susanne 0:27

Hi everybody. It's summer it's July. I can't believe that the year has flown by so far. I'm really happy to be here with Naomi Miller, who is the author of the book, imperfect Alchemist, and also a professor at Smith college in literature and women's studies. And I heard her talk at my 45th Smith reunion and it was just great to, to get to know her there and to read her book. And I just thought it would be fun to have her on this podcast.

Naomi 1:00

I'm delighted to have this opportunity to have this conversation with you, Suzanne.

Susanne 1:04

Great. anyway, so talk a little bit, you know, It's not totally uncommon for professors to people who've been studying his history at least to be, to decide they want to be historical novelists. What from your world as a professor, Literature and women's studies made you decide to tackle this.

Naomi 1:25

Yeah, that's a great question. And I had a really strong impetus to do this because I have been a scholar in the field of early modern women's studies, which is basically. Focusing on Renaissance women authors for the last say, 30 years. And I've published multiple scholarly books on different women authors. And, but after a while you realize, and I teach at Smith college, I teach classes and women authors. So I'm passionate about women authors in the time of Shakespeare, but I realized that, I'm one of a handful of. Internationally known scholars in this field, say all 10 of us really know each other. And there's another 10 outside that circle who are working either as new scholars, excitingly working on this. But so many people have no idea when I teach Shakespeare, they think how did Shakespeare and vet those women characters? And I'll say actually he didn't just make them whole clot out of his brain. He wa he was brilliant, but he was a magpie. He took from all sorts of models and sources, and Shakespeare was very aware of the women authors who were published. At the time that he was writing, and many people don't even realize that there were women authors who were published in the English Renaissance. So I thought it's not enough just to be a scholar or even just a teacher in college level about women authors. I want a wider general public to know there were women authors in the time of Shakespeare. So I thought. I should start writing historical fiction. And I conceived the idea for a whole series of novels called Shakespeare's sisters which is basically an homage to Virginia Wolf who had speculated that a Shakespeare had a sister with the equal gifts. She would've gone mad and committed suicide because she never had been allowed to be a writer. And what Virginia Wolf did not know. At that point earlier in the 20th century, was that there were women authors published at the time. And why did she not know? Because those women authors were suppressed. They weren't put into the cannon. They were actually known in the period. Shakespeare knew about them. Ben Johnson knew about them, dedicated a play to one of them. Milton knew about the writers of the time. Knew about these women authors but they were not admitted into the Canon of what we consider English literature. So they're not, they for many centuries, they were not taught. They were not read in undergraduate classes and we're starting to rectify that. But like I said, I think there needs to be a bigger push to the general public so people can know that.

Susanne 3:36

Yeah, I know I can totally sympathize with that because, I studied, I did music history at Yale and I and I didn't manage to get a teaching job except for one visiting assistant professorship and at Columbia, which was awesome. But but I then realized very quickly afterwards, that there were all these stories that had to do with how women interacted with music in the periods I was interested in, and I could write about them and get them to a wider audience. So I completely understand that impetus for sure. so talk about a little bit about the heroine of your book. Yeah,

Naomi 4:12

so really, I would say there's two female leads in my book. One is the historically renowned figure of the woman author, Mary Sydney, Herbert, who was, who published the first play that Anthony and Cleopatra in blank. Decades before Shakespeare did his own plate actually, and Cleopatra, and many Shakespeare scholars believe he was influenced by Mary Sydney. Herbert's play in his own composition of that play. she retold, she was educated. She knew Greek and Hebrew as well as French and Italian, many languages. She was highly edited. As a member of the Sydney family to let Sydney being the figure that we call now a Renaissance man. So Sidney was a major Cordier scholar, poet, author soldier. And he was kind of a glamorous figure in the Renaissance. She was Phillips Sidney's sister. And she and Phillip collaborated together, both on the song, translating the songs into modern for that time English, because there were very traditional English verse translations of the thumbs and she had. Very significant wanted to make the Psalms more alive and more connected to real people's lives. And so she put, for example, they would do free translations in a sense, they're using language, not used in the king James Bible translations about the phones.

Susanne 5:31

Do we have access to those nowadays

Naomi 5:34

they're published. And they weren't published at that time, interestingly, but there were manuscript copies that circulated. So the court knew about these songs. And Mary Sydney, Herbert used the image of a fetus growing in the womb a very much woman's image, right? For one of the images of how God knows us before we are born. But she took it inside the woman's body, which is not something that we usually have. And her niece, Mary Sydney, Roth, who also became a poet and wrote love sonnets. Wrote left sonnets, for example, where she used the metaphor of miscarriage, a woman losing a love as an, a miscarriage that you can't control the loss. And that is one of women's most common experiences of death in the period, right? The miscarriage of their pregnancy. no males on a tear. Shakespeare said me, no one used an image of miscarriage and love saw that was not considered appropriate. So what I found fascinating is that these women authors Mary Sydney, Herbert who's one of the main leads and imperfect optimist and her niece, Mary Bob, who was. My next novel that I'm working on right now, they used women's experiences and female imagery, as we would put it now to tell stories that were, they would love sonnets. They weren't romances, but they told it with a different frame. So that, for example, when Mary Roth wrote her prose. Urania which was a kind of followed through. You could say it's a nod to Philip Sidney's pros, romance Arcadia. These were romances that Shakespeare used in drawing from, for his comedies, young lovers, they all sorts of difficulties. And then they come together in the end and the end of the romance is a young lovers getting together. This will resonate for those of you who are familiar with Jane

Susanne 7:10

Austin. Right. But if the

7:11

women

Naomi 7:11

authors do well, Mary Ross took it beyond. So the women get mad. Their husbands, aren't faithful. They have children, they have grandchildren and they, their female friendships with each other in this female author romance, it is their friendships with each other that sustain them. And so one of my favorite lines I'll share right here is that Nirvana has two characters. One is saying well, but my beloved is unfaithful and her best friend, her female friends as well, what would you expect? He's basically a hero and she says, Expect my own husband to be faithful for fear of a miracle. And then she says to the main character. So he's unfaithful. Let him go. In his path, another is more straight. Another path is more straight for you. Follow that and be the Empress of the world, combating the empire of your own mind. And I still remember reading those words only in her eyes. Her unpublished, handwritten men get her handwriting. This is, but we would consider early feminism.

Susanne 8:09

That just gave me chills to hear that line. Yeah.

Naomi 8:14

And I realized, wow, more people have to know about these women authors. They were saying radical things. Shakespeare in his comedies, doesn't have the women say things like this, that these women authors are using different language, different images, different strategies to tell the stories of women's lives. Lovers and pairing up and it doesn't end with marriage. It continues beyond it.

Susanne 8:33

Yeah. I love that. I love that. it hearkens back to me to Christine to P zone, and that's that sort of thing. And also I'm the third volume of my medieval lung uh, doc Trilogy's coming out September 21st and the whole impetus for that. From my studies the women troubadours, which was a really unusual, my books are all fictional. except I have peripheral historical characters. All my characters are fictional because it's so hard. There's so little about the actual people who were there. And but that is totally, people just have no idea and there aren't many left. There's only one. A song with words and texts known by a woman that has survived. But when you have one, there is one, but we have one. Yes. Yes.

Naomi 9:19

Wow. It's amazing. Just to finish the answer to the question, which I went off on a detour, I'm sorry, but the other main character and imperfect documents is lady Mary Sydney's. Herbert's made basically her, her serving me because I wanted to show what women experienced at this time. In other outside, just the upper-class marries Sydney. Herbert obviously was she was in the highest class and she was married to a Lord and she was a Countess, but her maid servant with someone who was born. Yeah. in a communist family in the village and her mother was an herbalist. So this is the connection to Mary Sydney. Herbert was not just an author, but also a scientist. She was an Alchemist and she practiced alchemy and basically an early laboratory in her house. And she developed. Cures for ailments. in fact, many of the female alchemists those in the upper classes like Mary Sydney, Herbert, they had money to order special. they could order from abroad, from SalesLoft and from India, all sorts of spices and herbs, and they did chemical cures as well. they've experimented with test tubes and the laboratory. Meanwhile, Rose, who is my servant made character. Her mother was just a, she gathered arrives in her garden and she boiled them and she made remedies for the villagers. So she was very knowledgeable about natural herbs. and oftentimes you would actually find that the upper-class women alchemists would draw on the expertise of the working class women alchemists. And they would say, come to mind. Come to my house. And let's talk about, what are, what remedies have you developed for, to prevent miscarriage, or to help with a headache. And so they would share their remedies and the male alchemists of the time were constantly obsessed. This is parodied by Ben Johnson and his lady alchemists with a search for turning base metals into gold. Yeah. It was the search for gold They wanted to create herbal remedies and healing for real people. So they had a really decent. Orientation as alchemists. And so I wanted to show that women in different classes, this serving girl and this upper-class woman, they both had constraints upon them. They couldn't make their own choices. My Sydney, Herbert couldn't choose who she wanted to marry. She was married off and, she wasn't allowed to publish freely. She had to circulate some of her works in mind. Because women were not supposed to publish at the time. Meanwhile, rose I discovered in writing about her that she is an artist as well, and she didn't have access to a fine art materials, but because she was working with Mary Sydney, Herbert and Mary Sydney wanted her to illustrate the herbs that they were working with. And so she made sure. Rose got training with a court painter, Marcus Gira, who had come to the Sydney family home to paint a portrait, a family portrait. And so as the counters, she could say, I would like you to give training to my mate and she's a gifted artist, but she had drawn with Charles. and chalk not ever painted. So she learns how to mix paints and colors. And so I was really excited to learn a lot about art in the period and how women again, had differential access to art materials, to art training, but the women could support each other. One of my most abiding passion that's in telling women's stories in this series, is that. I have found that often historical fiction about women pairs, the woman with famous man, saying for example, that Emilia linear who's another woman author was Shakespeare, dark lady. She was Shakespeare's mistress. And that's a perfectly. Fictional conceit, but what bothers me is that, why should we know about linear first in the now discredited in the historical terms, people don't believe she was Shakespeare's mistress. She was in fact, the first published woman poet in the Renaissance, even before may Sydney, I would rather look at all of that and consider maybe. She was chasing her sisters, but that's not for me the most interesting thing. There are multiple novels about Shakespeare's dark lady that put this historical woman's name, Emilia Lanier into that role. And don't really look at how she succeeded as an author. I believe that if women authors at the time were writing and being read, they should be known for that. And they should know, be known for their relationships with each other, not just because they were the mistress of a famous. having a VA think about all the novels that Henry the, his wives, those are really popular, which is, I love meeting them. They're entertaining. But how many times do we need to read about another wife of Henry the eighth? Because he's Henry the eighth and he's important. Why can't we read about women authors and figures in the period who are not necessarily paired with a famous map? So that's my vision for the Shakespeare system.

Susanne 13:43

Yes. And and it's actually a very ambitious thing in the world of publishing because there is this fixation with people are not going to read about someone they've never heard of. So you have to mention the marquee names. Can you talk a little bit about your experiences in that realm?

Naomi 14:01

I found that very frustrating. I was so happy to hear from you that you resonated with that experience because I was being told we need market data to give a contract and we don't have any market data that a book, a novel about Mary's Sydney, Herbert. And why is that? Because no one has ever published a novel about Mary's Sydney, Herbert, it's a vicious cycle, right? there's no market data, so we're not going to do it, but unless someone does it for the first time, you won't know. And so these other women authors, I was being told these are interesting stories, but no one knows who these women are. So we are reluctant to publish a novel when these are already big names. And I understand that's why women often get paired with famous men, but I think there's other ways of telling their story. And so I just resolved, I would just keep trying and keep trying, and of course my series is called chase their sisters. So that's a nod to let's get the marquee name up there, There is a figure, a supporting character in imperfect optimist who only appears in the final third of the novel, because it's not about Shakespeare. It's about marrying sitting Herbert. And she didn't interact with him. He was influenced by her. So legitimately I could put him into the story, but my interest was in telling her story. Yeah. It's the imagining fictionalizing, her story, everything. We don't know imagining what it was like.

Susanne 15:12

It is interesting how those decisions are made. when I think of Jesse, Burton's the miniaturist for instance, gorgeous book, fabulous book, but how, but that was not a known person that was not a sort of, marquee name and all that sort of thing. It was fabulous. Yeah. it's I know it's difficult. I think it's like casting rooms in the public,

Naomi 15:35

sending it out there and hoping

Susanne 15:36

and yeah. Yeah. Yeah. so then let's talk just a little bit, how you ended up what your route was to getting this public.

Naomi 15:45

Oh, so actually I had really good advice from a Smith alum. Carol Desante who for many years was an editor at rather than have penguin. And she was actually the editor who first identified pissy shadow years girl with a Pearl earring and published it. So she was a in women's publishing of identifying women, authors of women's fiction. and I was really happy. Yeah. Be connected with her and in a conversation with her. And I sent her my first drafted novel, the one about Mary Roth that has not been published yet. And she said, this is a really interesting novel, but there's, I know that random house huge. They're going to look at market data. There's no market data. Mary Roth is even less known than Mary's Sydney Herbert, because Mary Sydney, Herbert appears as a supporting character. In Debra hardnesses, vampire village, discovery of witches, which I love. I love reading that Deborah Harkness is a renowned feminist scholar of, female alchemy and everything. So I knew Deborah Harkness as a scholar. I knew her writings before I knew her fiction, but in her second novel, in the discovery of witches trilogy, Mary Sydney, Herbert appears as a supporting character. And so Carol Desante said to me, Because of that, she has a little bit more name recognition, right? You can put until she's appeared in a popular novel. Now the one I was writing, the novel, I was reading doesn't have magic empires or anything like that. it's a real historical fiction novel in the real world. It does have witches because which is women were tried as witches in the real world, but there's no. Imagined magic per se. I love that fantasy element of many novels, but that wasn't where my novel was going. But so Carol Desante said to me, I know it's discouraging because I can't give you a contract on the first novel, but I think you should go ahead and write your novel about Mary Sidney, Herbert, that should launch your series because that's the novel that comes first. Anyway, very Sydney Herbert was the odd and godmother of Mary Ross. So if you have that as your. First novel in the series, then the others can all follow. And that was a wonderful suggestion. And another Smith alum who was Carol DeSantis, good friends. they were in the class of the 1980s, I think. and Ruth Zacky, who is a really well-known contemporary novelist. And Carol Desante were good friends at Smith. And Ruth was my colleague in English department because we hired her to be a chaired professor of theater writing in English department. And Carol Desante has been my colleague as well, because she's been a visiting chair. The lecturer in creative writing Smith does a great job of hiring novelists to teach. That's a Ruth Ozeki said to me, I really liked Carol's advice to you, because think about this now, your second, the second novel you're writing, you can learn from all of the mistakes you made in your first novel, which isn't published yet. The second novel that you've drafted will be on the stronger. And that will be your first published novel, ideally. And you can only publish one day. You want to make it the strongest novel you can. So Ruth also said to me, don't be discouraged. Just write the next novel, make it the best novel you can. And that novel got the contract, It was with, I believe it's much stronger novel, cause it wasn't my first novel. Now I'm going back and revising my first novel that I wrote to be a lot stronger because I learned a lot as they both said by writing the process,

Susanne 18:53

yeah. and there's nothing. Nothing can replace the sort of editorial feedback you get once you're. And the sad thing is that a lot of writers can't get that because the market keeps getting smaller and smaller, especially for historical fiction. And so that's partly why it's partly what led me to the book coaching, which is the other side of what I do, because hopefully I help writers get to that point where they can, if they're going to submit their novel is just that much stronger. I definitely,

Naomi 19:26

if I had known about you doing book Koshy, I would come to you earlier. I had it. Woman author, former trades, publisher editor, who did that for me for the first novel and helped me through several iterations. I that's invaluable advice, but maybe you could say something about why is it that the historical fiction market I've been told this is narrower and tighter than ever. It's really hard

Susanne 19:46

to get, I think, yeah I don't have a perfect answer for that, but I think part of it is that it's a symptom of the whole industry because all of these Big houses have gobbled up all the smaller presses. No, but I have friends who published and my friend, Annie Easter Smith, who writes about Richard the third, right? she published, there's a hundred thousand copy, sales of a hundred thousand copies of her first two books. She could not get anyone to take the final book in her series. she couldn't get any, she had

Naomi 20:17

a

Susanne 20:17

record, right? Oh my gosh. But it's because things changed and that what they're looking for now is not just solid mid-list books that people want to read. They're looking for that something that might splash out and be a huge bestseller. And the same thing, similar thing happened to me, although I didn't sell a hundred thousand copies of my first novel. that it's okay, you didn't have a breakout, so we're not going to take a chance on you. No matter how good your book is. Ooh,

Naomi 20:42

yes. Because, but not all books can be, massive bestseller.

Susanne 20:45

And of course not. And the thing is that I have. I have people who liked my books and as far as I'm concerned, as long as I can get them out there one way or another, that's what I wanna do. But yeah, so I don't know if that's an answer. I think to that it's a symptom of the fact. People's attention spans have gotten shorter and people are still reading. Now there's still lots of readers out there, but the thing is that novels like ads that were long and dense or like Sharon Kay Penman or Margaret George, all those people. Couldn't a publisher. Wouldn't take those today. If they came with it.

Naomi 21:23

I wondered about that. I thought cause I'm Margaret, George was kind enough to give me a blurb for my novel and perfect alchemists. because my agent also represents her and she read my novel and I've really enjoyed her novels. And I wondered how did she get some of those early. Big novel was published, I guess it was a different time.

Susanne 21:37

Totally different time. Totally different time. my agent worked with me for a year on my first novel. Having told me when I first submitted it to him, that it wasn't actually a novel. Yeah. no, it's just that I, I just didn't know anything. And he gave me reading. I never took it. I never took a single creative writing class or anything. And so I learned, I taught myself and he took me on. And after working with me for another year on the manuscript, got me a book contract in two weeks. Wow. That's what that was. Then that was 2003 or whatever it was, would not happen now. And I know, because I know I've been, part of the whole book coaching thing is really studying the publishing industry and everything. yeah. But but so it's a perennial problem and. What can I say? No, but let's get back to your book cause much more interesting. So tell me about you did talk some about the alchemy, but why imperfect?

Naomi 22:36

Because, what I realized is that when when someone is say a scientist, for example, or an author, you're experimenting with what you're doing. You don't have a final product. That's perfect. you're striving towards perfection, but you have to make errors along the way. And what interested me about Mary Sidney, Herbert as an author and as an Alchemist is that she was an experimenter. She wasn't afraid to try new things. She, one of the things. As I teach her works that really, I love telling my Smith students is that we read when she translated the Psalms English songs. there she translated say 120 of them or so, and she used 147 different verse forms. In the course of translating 120 selves. Now that's really quite why, you get one form, just use it for, at least 50 of them or something trying. She kept experimenting. And it really, when I tried to get, understand her character, understand her as a historical figure, what really struck me was that she used translation as a way of experimenting and moving in new directions that hadn't yet been charted out. And as an outcome is and for me, the image. The is the imperfect Alchemist is that you have to see her failing and things that don't go right before you can see any success. And to me, there are more than one imperfect Alchemist in the novel. Walter Raleigh, who was a very close friend of hers was also an imperfect Alchemist. He was. successful historically in his role in court, but he made you, you have to make missteps and failures. So just the whole idea of an Alchemist is as a scientist, but also there's a kind of a magical element to it, but there's also, you need courage to experiment. And so that to me was part of what both of my female characters were doing. They were taking a chance, doing things that they couldn't know they would succeed in

Susanne 24:20

without trying. Yeah. Yeah. So that's great explanation. It makes total sense to me, but switching gears a tiny bit, let's talk about the difference between doing research for your historical novel and doing your academic research.

Naomi 24:38

Yes. So my academic research would, I spent, over three decades doing, I love going to archives. I love going into the Bodleian in Oxford and the British library. I just, I love, I am a scholar kind of in my core, and I love that kind of research. You read things that people didn't even know were there in the letters, in the diaries, in the journals and those materials can then be used in your scholarship. So when I published the first academic book ever about Mary Roth, this woman author that I'm doing my second novel on I was able to look at things that Roth wrote that weren't published are rarely available except in archives. As I was looking at Ross, I was a literary critic, right? So I'm basically giving analysis of Ross sonnet sequence and her play. And her pros were Mets. And I could draw on the things that she wrote in her outside publication to make a case for how I see her strategies being used as an author, as a fiction writer. However, What I had to do was basically let loose my notion of expertise. I was asked a great question at one of the book talks they gave about, if you could get rid of one thing and it scholarly toolbox, that would make you a better novelist, what would it be? And I had to really think about that because I've needed all my research for it to supply the world, the three dimensional world in the Renaissance. But I realized what I would get rid of is basically the kind of presumption of experts. Because as a scholar, you're supposed to be the expert and you're supposed to, especially as a woman scholar, you have to show your expertise. So you never make a statement unless it's backed up by evidence. But as a novelist, it's entirely the opposite, right? You don't want to be tied down just to the facts you want to invent and imagine, and create a fully imagined world because there's many things that there are no facts for. So we have to invent them. And so if we, as a novelist, as novelists thought, we had to have a researcher. Justification for everything we invented, we would never write novels. It would be impossible to much is not in the saved record for the Renaissance. and so I had to think I'd rather just be free to be an Alchemist to experiment, Just to invent and not be tied just to the scholarly model. And it was very hard because you've been a scholar as well. It's really hard for me. Actually. I have, I put something up on, on my board, over my writing desk that said, You're basically, you have to be true to the story, not to history. Your story may go in directions that there is a historical evidence for

Susanne 27:00

finding clapping here. Actually, I just literally at midnight on July 1st, I launched a course, an online course called rein in your research for history, historical novelist. and that is my whole point is that you need to figure out what your story needs. Not. not become an expert in whatever it is you're writing about.

Naomi 27:23

That was actually one of the limitations for me with the first novel, because I was a scholar of Mary Ross. I knew far too much about her. So I was hampered by that in invention. When I did imperfect optimist as a novel, I didn't. Taught Mary Sydney, Herbert. I, but I hadn't, I wasn't one of the world experts on my Sydney here, but so I was featured as dance and that made for a much more lively, novel. I loved the idea of what you're talking about, rain in your research, because it can take over and dead and everything pulled it

Susanne 27:51

all down, Yeah, absolutely. It's like there's too much of a good thing is what it can be. But also just more specifically on research, did you. for the things you had to have in your novel, that you hadn't researched as an academic, did you use, what kinds of sources did you use? How did you do that? What was different about that kind of research? That was

Naomi 28:12

really fun because I could try, two new fields for me, one was the field of alchemy and especially female alchemists. And the thing that I learned was that thank goodness for women, feminist historians who have done research into female alchemists because otherwise. A lot of their recipes have survived, but some of those that have survived, these things, this historians published their alchemical recipes, Mary Sydney Herbert's recipes had not survived. So I didn't have anything that I could say. I knew this was her recipe, but I knew she knew some of the female alchemists whose recipes have survived. Recipes for alchemy that were actual documents because as a scholar, I wasn't afraid of historical research, right? Yeah.

Susanne 28:50

But where did you find, were they in published books or did you find them in archives? What was that?

Naomi 28:55

actually one starting place. some of them, I knew to look for them. Some of the historians I looked into bibliographies and I looked at, I looked up for other, I really looked at bibliographies for everything from a bibliography to a book about a woman author. What other things do they be a bibliography about a male optimist? What were some of the sources? So then I could go and look up the sources and know how to access them as well as, and this is for anyone out there, I would look at all the bibliographies for any Wikipedia. And before I use anything, I would actually go and read the original sources. So I'm never going to base something just on a Wikipedia entry, but that will be my starting point. I'll think that's interesting, but no. Where did that come? So

Susanne 29:32

I have to clarify that I did not pay you to say

Naomi 29:39

with each other

Susanne 29:41

degree. I it's. One of the things I say in my course is thank God for Wikipedia. It's the starting point, but not the end. Yeah,

Naomi 29:52

stop there, but do start there because it tells me things you never realized anything. okay. Wait, let me go. See, where does that come from? That's how I learned about some of the female alchemists, because there would be Wikipedia, citations and I would look them up and, it's, I've also, and I know this I'm very privileged to be a professor at a college, Which has access to a library system, the five college library system here in Western mass. I can get almost any academic book that I want to through the. College, the university library system. And I know that's not so easy to do if you're not already a professor of, or in an academic setting, but still I found great resources in the public libraries, which I've used a lot as well.

Susanne 30:30

yeah, but the other, what I, one of the resources I put in my courses, book finder.com. Have you, do you know that book find your.com? I swear it's a terrific search. You can search in any language. If you have the title of the book, you can go in there and see if it, if you can get a copy of it. And it's how I discovered I actually managed to get a copy when I was back when I was a handle scholar of a book of poems by Elizabeth Tallaght of which they were there only about six living in the world. and I fought one, that's only that one right up here behind me. Yeah. And I also You can, they have used in new and all that. It's sometimes they're really expensive. but you can find just about anything there that, so sometimes if you don't have access to the library and you can afford it, you can buy things that way. But the other thing is that I also say that J store is you can get, usually get into it's from your public library. A lot of them have that.

Naomi 31:31

Yeah. Tastes probably my other most precious resource for getting all sorts of scholarly articles and just being able to read them just online and also you'll find depending on what your field is, that you're researching, that there are many more now online additions of things, Previously available, including women authors, women painters, there's a lot more online materials, so you just need to look for it, but it doesn't all need to be purchased in hard copy, yeah,

Susanne 31:57

absolutely. Yeah. it's like. Being obsessive about getting your hands on, on, on primary sources to write a historical novel. You don't have to do that, right? Because it is fiction.

Naomi 32:10

It is fiction.

Susanne 32:11

Absolutely. Yeah. Oh I'm so happy to hear you say it's very validating.

Naomi 32:20

And had I known you earlier, you would've been my mentor and move you through this process because as you yourself did, I had to learn this all pretty much myself. Yeah,

Susanne 32:28

absolutely. And everywhere, like maybe half a mile away,

Naomi 32:33

but I was so excited to find out that you actually lived in the same

Susanne 32:36

town. That is so funny and we will get together for tea at some point. But anyway is there anything else about your book that I haven't asked you about that you would like. Talk about tell people,

Naomi 32:48

part of what I really, as a novelist enjoy the most in writing my novel was partly with. Invented character rose the serving mate, who was an artist that I learned about her as I wrote about her. And so I would really encourage anyone who's writing novels and listening to Suzanne's podcasts to consider how well you can get to know your character and what they, what you will learn about them as you write them. And so Ruth Ozeki is a novelist friend and colleague, I mentioned, said to me, what you want to do is really get to know your character. Put them in a situation and see how they behave. So I never have plotted out all the novel and where it was going to go in advance. I've always, I've had certain points that are historical facts, That I know this happened and I get it touch on this. But with rose and invented character that I brought in, I didn't even know she was an artist until she has a young girl, goes to the Greek house to become to become the made ladies made to the great lady and she's nervous and scared. And she drops her sack of belonging. And some things spill out of the stack. So I'm writing, I remember this experience really clearly. I'd gone on a solo writing retreat just for myself to get away from the college and all my teaching responsibilities. So I was in, in a little BNB, in Maine and writing. Everything spills out of Rosa SAC. And the great lady says, rose, could you show me what these are? She picks up some papers that spilled out and rose is really nervous and hands her, these papers, which it turns out or her father who's, who was a cloth merchant, his account papers on one side on the other side was blank. And so she had started sketching herbs from her mother's garden on the back because they couldn't afford. art paper for her to draw on blank paper, that would be very expensive. But on the back of her father's account paper, she had started sketching. And so her, the great lady said, you are an artist. This is amazing rose. And I was so excited, but I didn't know rose was an artist. And then it turns out that rose as an artist has an entirely different personality than Mary Sydney. Herbert, who's an author, right? Very verbal. She's a great lady. She's a Countess. She is very bold. And courageous. And she speaks up she's very eloquent. Rose is very quiet. She's an artist. And she watches people that she sees things. And there is Sydney Herbert, who is so having to carry on her role as a Countess. Mrs. And so rose will see things about relationships between people like the young male doctor who falls in love with Mary city, Herbert and Ray Sydney, her things he's in love with her niece and rose. No, my lady, let me show you these drawings. As she shows drawings, she sketched were nice. And Herbert thinks what you can see that Matthew Lister, this doctor is looking at Mary Sidney, Herbert with kind of adoration and his eyes and Mary Sydney. Herbert didn't allow herself to even consider that possibility. But when her artists, ladies made shows her these drawings, she realizes rose the stuff. She completely. So I loved it that you, depending on what your point of view is, right? You can show something entirely differently. because I had two characters and two points of view rose in first person, and Mary's point of view told in a third person narrative, but it was still Mary's point of view. You could see similar scenes happening from two entirely different points of view. And so I encourage all of you who are writing your characters to say, what does your character see in that scene? Not just, what is your agenda for that character, what you bought them to say in that scene, but what are they hearing? What are they thinking? so being a novelist is not knowing it. Is that everything about your characteristics? So that you can learn about it as they

Susanne 36:13

absolutely. Absolutely. But what you do have to have in your mind, I think is to understand what your character fears, what your character wants, all of those things, what the whole, that, that sort of thing. And then, once you have That basically set and you let them go on the page that kind of helps you guide them as well. Yeah. Yeah. Suzanne,

Naomi 36:35

what they fear and what they hope, What they decide. And then if you know what their first memory is, that's nice. And then later you realize, oh, this is the moment in the novel. I wish that early memory is relevant. I'm not going to put it in just because I'm putting it in to show because it actually happens because of the scene. It calls to mind that really great. Or an early, excitement.

Susanne 36:55

yeah. That whole thing of how to handle the backstory. That's a huge, that's a huge

Naomi 36:59

piece as well. Absolutely. Weigh it down. If you're trying to provide better, to let them know all this stuff happened and that can really be.

Susanne 37:07

Yeah. Yeah. yeah, it was just, I felt like I would get up

Naomi 37:11

each morning to write the next chapter and think, I wonder what's going to happen today. For me, that process of composition was exciting and just, it was a learning process. And so that's part of what I love about being a novelist is learning about my characters deeper and deeper, more than they might know about themselves

Susanne 37:26

as I write. Yeah. And then your readers see things that you never see. That's right. That's the other thing. Oh, wow.

Naomi 37:33

And then later you, I listen to the audio book recording by these wonderful British actresses right. Of my novel, which is just great because obviously they're British, that was writing these English women in the 16th, 17th century. but to hear these British women, after, since meeting their voices, all of a sudden it made my novel, have a life apart from me. I. Her things that I hadn't consciously put in when I was writing, but I thought, oh, wow, that connects. I didn't know. I didn't plan that, but you have to get some distance on your own text right here, what you've done.

Susanne 38:03

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. this has been a really fun conversation. I know. I know. Absolutely. And when your next novel comes out, I'll read it and we'll get we'll talk again. But before, long before then we will meet for tea in north Hampton. absolutely right. It's a total pleasure.

Naomi 38:26

I really enjoyed it. Thank you through that.