Ann H. Gabhart has published seventeen novels for adults and children. The Scent of Lilacs, her first inspirational novel, was named one of Booklist’s Top Ten Books in Christian Fiction for 2006. Ann lives on a farm in Central Kentucky with her husband, Darrell, a bass singer for the Patriot Quartet. They have three children and six grandchildren. Her third Hollyhill book, Summer of Joy, will be published in February 2008. Visit Ann at her website.Time to crow: What new book or project do you have coming out?
Summer of Joy will be out in February 2008. It’s the third in my series of books about Jocie Brooke and her family and friends in the little town of Hollyhill, Kentucky during the 1960’s. Booklist picked the first book about Jocie, The Scent of Lilacs, as one of their top ten inspirational novels of 2006. The second book in the series was Orchard of Hope. Summer of Joy is a stand-alone story but at the same time it answers some of the questions readers might have about what happens next to Jocie and her preacher father, David.
Another title, The Outsider, is scheduled for publication in August 2008. It’s a historical romance set in the early 1800’s in a Shaker community in Kentucky. Both are published by Revell Books.
How did you come up with this story? Was there a specific 'what if' moment?
After The Scent of Lilacs was published, Jocie and all the other characters were so real to me that I felt compelled to continue their story and write about what happened next in Hollyhill. In Summer of Joy, I focused on the joy of living as I pulled a lot of the storylines together, stirred in a few surprises and a little extra romance and wrote what I hope is a satisfying final book to this era of my Hollyhill books. But who knows? Jocie may make another appearance in a book after she gets older. She’s got a lot of living still to do.
As to a specific ‘what if’ moment, way back when I started to come up with the idea for the first Jocie book I wrote a ‘what if’ question. What if I had a young girl growing up in a small town whose father was a preacher and whose mother had deserted them when the girl was very young? Then while I was planning the third book, Summer of Joy I kept seeing people showing up and knocking on the door to bring the inevitable changes that come in all lives. So perhaps that was my ‘what if’ moment for this book.
Every novelist has a journey. How long was your road to publication? How did you find out and what went through your mind?
I’ve been writing since I was a child, but I didn’t try for publication until I was nineteen or twenty. I was already married then and had two young children. So I started sending out inspirational personal experience pieces to religious periodicals along with short stories to other magazines. My first published piece was a four- line poem in HomeLife followed by several personal experience ‘mothering’ pieces. I wrote short pieces for several years while I was learning about writing. Then I jumped into novel writing and have written very few short pieces since because I enjoy developing my characters and their stories through a longer time frame.
I wrote two novels before Warner Books published A Forbidden Yearning in 1978. I’ll never forget opening that letter from my agent in the middle of my kitchen after a day of working on the farm and reading those great words that somebody wanted to publish my book. (She couldn’t call me because she’d never gotten my phone number.) I felt excited, happy, and relieved. This meant maybe it was possible that I was a real writer and not somebody who just wrote stuff that ended up in a drawer of my desk. Other people were actually going to pick up my book and read my story. No feeling quite like that.
You published your first book in 1978 with Warner Books, a historical romance, but you’ve written in many genres, including YA and middle reader books. Did you weave your faith in the earlier books?
I can’t say I did in any concrete way. I suppose my own personal beliefs did influence how I developed my characters and I always kept in mind my audience with my YA and middle reader books. I wanted to write positive uplifting fiction that would help my young readers feel good about themselves as they read about my characters confronting typical adolescent coming of age problems.
Of course my first book, A Forbidden Yearning, did center on a Virginia church in the 1700’s picking up and moving en masse to Kentucky. I put my fictional heroine and her family in that church and set out on the pioneer trail with them.
What sparked the move to inspirational fiction?
I enjoyed writing historical romances. I enjoyed writing for young adult readers. But I had a period where the books I was writing weren’t finding editors willing to publish them. Over the years, I had wondered about the inspirational market. I think perhaps the Lord was nudging me in that direction, but I kept digging in my heels thinking I couldn’t write properly for the Christian market. I don’t know why. I suppose I thought I would have to be preachy to write Christian fiction, and I didn’t want to preach at people. I just wanted to write a good story.
So when I hit a dry spell with my other books, I decided to do what all the writing experts keep telling us. Write what you know. And what I know is small towns, country life, and country churches. So I came up with the young daughter of a preacher growing up in a small town in the sixties. All things I knew because I grew up in the country during the sixties.
My dad was a farmer, not a preacher, but I’ve gotten close to a lot of preachers over the years in the small country church I’ve been attending for many years. Even then I don’t know that I was intentionally aiming at the inspirational market. I was just trying to write that good story, but I’m glad the book is inspirational fiction. I love writing these stories. The Lord knew all along, but I just wasn’t listening.
Do you ever bang your head against the wall from the dreaded writer's block? If so, how do you overcome it?
I do have times when the words don’t come easily. Times when I wonder if there are any words in my head worth digging out. I sometimes imagine I’m having to use a grubbing hoe to pull up the roots of my story. Any of you who have ever used a grubbing hoe know digging out roots isn’t easy. But I’ve found that if I trust my story and keep typing words, any words, that eventually the right words will come and it will all tie together better than I could ever imagine when I’m feeling desperate for the next words, the next scene.
Novelists sometimes dig themselves into a hole over implausible plots, flat characters or a host of other problems. What's the most difficult part of writing for you?
I think describing the setting is one of the most difficult things for me. I want to get on with the story. I love getting my characters talking. I don’t want to stop to let my readers see or smell the roses.
Now after I’ve written so many books, I often have to struggle to keep things fresh and not use the same ideas and descriptions over and over. Believe me, that can strain the brain. What new way can I say my character has eyes the color of a summer sky? As I write, I sometimes hear the echo of a similar scene or description in past books and that’s not good.
How do you climb out (overcome it)?
I have gotten better at pushing myself into the scene so that I do see what the room, etc. looks like. Then I try to use the particular focus points that can make the scene come alive to the reader. As for the fresh ideas, that’s where rewriting and more rewriting helps. It’s good that I don’t mind editing my work, at least when it’s my idea. I’m not always as happy when it’s editing to someone else’s idea of what the story should be. Then I have to work harder to make changes that suit both the editors and me.
Where do you write: In a cave, a coffeehouse, or a cozy attic nook?
When I was a child, I wrote in wirebound notebooks, sometimes hidden away in my closet. After I married, I had a desk in my bedroom but often set my typewriter on the kitchen table so I could write while cooking and keeping an eye on the kids. Later I had a desk in my kitchen. That’s where I wrote my first novel. Now I have an office with windows where I can look out and see the birds eating at my birdfeeders and the deer eating my rosebushes. My big old chocolate lab is too lazy to chase the deer away.
What does a typical day look like for you?
I usually get up early and work a couple of hours before breakfast. Not always writing, however. I do a lot of things for my church and a couple of mornings a week I use those early morning hours for that work. Then I am back at my desk around ten and usually work until around five. I do have grandchildren who come to visit maybe once a week and I help out my mom who is 87 and has some health issues now. So I don’t get to write all day every day, but I want to. I always want to be writing something.
Some authors report writing 5-10 thousand words a day. Do scenes flow freely from your veins or do you have to tweeze each word out?
I wish I could say I pour out the words like that. That’s getting it done! Still I wouldn’t say I have to tweeze out each word. Somewhere in between that free bleeding of words and sweating out each word. Maybe on a good day, a thousand or fifteen hundred words. I don’t have a good day every day. But over the days the words do pile up and become a book.
Briefly take us through your process of writing a novel—from conception to revision.
When I am trying to come up with a new idea, I usually do a ‘what if’ page. That’s where I wrote that ‘what if’ question about Jocie that launched The Scent of Lilacs and started my Hollyhill series. Once I have my initial idea, I come up with names for my main characters. Names are very important for me as the right name helps me see the character. Then I do character sketches and pages of plot possibilities. I get books to research any history or special interests to be included in the story. That always helps the ideas develop even more.
Eventually I’ll start hearing my characters talking to one another in my head, and I know I’m ready to start writing the book. I don’t outline or anything like that. I just start following my characters toward the events I think are going to happen eventually in their stories. Of course things change as I write. New characters pop up to muddy the water a bit.
I usually reread and do some editing on what I wrote the day before to get going on the new writing. Probably about halfway through when I’m despairing that the story is simply a muddle and isn’t developing as I’d hoped, I’ll stop and read it through. It’s always better than I thought. The thread of the story isn’t broken, but is there through the scenes, and so I can go back to work with fresh enthusiasm.
Once I have finally pushed through to the end, I go back and read it through with only minor editing to see if I’ve told the story well. Then I go back and work through it page by page, chapter by chapter cutting and rewriting to try to make the story the best I can. I want the words and scenes to pull the reader along and never jar him or her away from the story. Sometimes last of all I’ll read the story aloud because the ear can catch what the eye sometimes misses.
What are a few of your favorite books (not written by you) and why are they favorites?
That’s hard to answer since there are so many great books, but here are a few I remember offhand and why. The Chosen and The Promise by Chaim Potok because his characters were so vibrantly alive. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams because it was so off the wall and totally crazy. Watership Down because Richard Adams made me believe rabbits had their own little universe. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy because it stretched my imagination. The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver because of the beautiful writing and the lovable little girl. There are so many wonderful books I could never name them all. I read the classics as a teenager and cried over Black Beauty and Little Women when I was a little girl just beginning to discover the magic of books.
What’s the best writing advice you’ve heard?
Write what you want to write because if you don’t love what you’re writing no one else will either. That’s not the exact words, but close to advice I once read from Katherine Paterson, the author of Jacob Have I Loved.
Second best – Keep writing. By the time your first novel has made the rounds of all the publishers and received a zillion rejects, you’ll have your second novel finished and ready to make the rounds again. That was from Dorothy Unthank.
Third best – Rejections and acceptances – treat the imposters the same. That’s a slightly mangled quote I thought was from Nathaniel Hawthorne that I came across very early in my writing career. But when I looked it up just now the original quote is from Kipling and says, “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those impostors just the same.” Triumph (acceptances) and Disasters (rejections). I suppose the quote I came across early on was a writer’s slant on Kipling’s quote.
What do you wish you’d known early in your career that might have saved you some time and/or frustration in writing? In publishing?
I wish I hadn’t been so timid about trying to write for the inspirational market. I wish I’d spent the last ten or twenty years writing inspirational books. As for publishing, I’m still wishing I knew more about that.
How much marketing do you do? What have you found that particularly works well for you?
Marketing is not my strong point. I love talking to people and enjoy meeting people, but I’m not very good at tooting my own horn. I’m hoping to get some speaking opportunities in the coming year and build up my reader base.
I like doing Internet interviews like this or really any kind of interviews. As I said I love to talk. And I’m planning to do a blog in 2008. I’m trying to explore new ways to connect with readers.
Do you have any parting words of advice?
I suppose you mean advice to other writers or want-to-be writers. If so, my advice would be to keep writing. Nobody expects to be a great basketball player or pianist without putting in hours of practice. So why should we expect to be good writers without practice? And everything you write is practice.
Of course the best advice to any aspiring writer is to read. Read anything and everything and somehow all those words burrow down in your brain and help make you a better writer.
Last of all never give up. If you want to be a writer, write. Persistence is often the key to success. And with prayer all things are possible.
Summer of Joy will be out in February 2008. It’s the third in my series of books about Jocie Brooke and her family and friends in the little town of Hollyhill, Kentucky during the 1960’s. Booklist picked the first book about Jocie, The Scent of Lilacs, as one of their top ten inspirational novels of 2006. The second book in the series was Orchard of Hope. Summer of Joy is a stand-alone story but at the same time it answers some of the questions readers might have about what happens next to Jocie and her preacher father, David.Another title, The Outsider, is scheduled for publication in August 2008. It’s a historical romance set in the early 1800’s in a Shaker community in Kentucky. Both are published by Revell Books.
How did you come up with this story? Was there a specific 'what if' moment?
After The Scent of Lilacs was published, Jocie and all the other characters were so real to me that I felt compelled to continue their story and write about what happened next in Hollyhill. In Summer of Joy, I focused on the joy of living as I pulled a lot of the storylines together, stirred in a few surprises and a little extra romance and wrote what I hope is a satisfying final book to this era of my Hollyhill books. But who knows? Jocie may make another appearance in a book after she gets older. She’s got a lot of living still to do.
As to a specific ‘what if’ moment, way back when I started to come up with the idea for the first Jocie book I wrote a ‘what if’ question. What if I had a young girl growing up in a small town whose father was a preacher and whose mother had deserted them when the girl was very young? Then while I was planning the third book, Summer of Joy I kept seeing people showing up and knocking on the door to bring the inevitable changes that come in all lives. So perhaps that was my ‘what if’ moment for this book.
Every novelist has a journey. How long was your road to publication? How did you find out and what went through your mind?
I’ve been writing since I was a child, but I didn’t try for publication until I was nineteen or twenty. I was already married then and had two young children. So I started sending out inspirational personal experience pieces to religious periodicals along with short stories to other magazines. My first published piece was a four- line poem in HomeLife followed by several personal experience ‘mothering’ pieces. I wrote short pieces for several years while I was learning about writing. Then I jumped into novel writing and have written very few short pieces since because I enjoy developing my characters and their stories through a longer time frame.
I wrote two novels before Warner Books published A Forbidden Yearning in 1978. I’ll never forget opening that letter from my agent in the middle of my kitchen after a day of working on the farm and reading those great words that somebody wanted to publish my book. (She couldn’t call me because she’d never gotten my phone number.) I felt excited, happy, and relieved. This meant maybe it was possible that I was a real writer and not somebody who just wrote stuff that ended up in a drawer of my desk. Other people were actually going to pick up my book and read my story. No feeling quite like that.
You published your first book in 1978 with Warner Books, a historical romance, but you’ve written in many genres, including YA and middle reader books. Did you weave your faith in the earlier books?
I can’t say I did in any concrete way. I suppose my own personal beliefs did influence how I developed my characters and I always kept in mind my audience with my YA and middle reader books. I wanted to write positive uplifting fiction that would help my young readers feel good about themselves as they read about my characters confronting typical adolescent coming of age problems.
Of course my first book, A Forbidden Yearning, did center on a Virginia church in the 1700’s picking up and moving en masse to Kentucky. I put my fictional heroine and her family in that church and set out on the pioneer trail with them.
What sparked the move to inspirational fiction?
I enjoyed writing historical romances. I enjoyed writing for young adult readers. But I had a period where the books I was writing weren’t finding editors willing to publish them. Over the years, I had wondered about the inspirational market. I think perhaps the Lord was nudging me in that direction, but I kept digging in my heels thinking I couldn’t write properly for the Christian market. I don’t know why. I suppose I thought I would have to be preachy to write Christian fiction, and I didn’t want to preach at people. I just wanted to write a good story.
So when I hit a dry spell with my other books, I decided to do what all the writing experts keep telling us. Write what you know. And what I know is small towns, country life, and country churches. So I came up with the young daughter of a preacher growing up in a small town in the sixties. All things I knew because I grew up in the country during the sixties.
My dad was a farmer, not a preacher, but I’ve gotten close to a lot of preachers over the years in the small country church I’ve been attending for many years. Even then I don’t know that I was intentionally aiming at the inspirational market. I was just trying to write that good story, but I’m glad the book is inspirational fiction. I love writing these stories. The Lord knew all along, but I just wasn’t listening.
Do you ever bang your head against the wall from the dreaded writer's block? If so, how do you overcome it?
I do have times when the words don’t come easily. Times when I wonder if there are any words in my head worth digging out. I sometimes imagine I’m having to use a grubbing hoe to pull up the roots of my story. Any of you who have ever used a grubbing hoe know digging out roots isn’t easy. But I’ve found that if I trust my story and keep typing words, any words, that eventually the right words will come and it will all tie together better than I could ever imagine when I’m feeling desperate for the next words, the next scene.
Novelists sometimes dig themselves into a hole over implausible plots, flat characters or a host of other problems. What's the most difficult part of writing for you?
I think describing the setting is one of the most difficult things for me. I want to get on with the story. I love getting my characters talking. I don’t want to stop to let my readers see or smell the roses.
Now after I’ve written so many books, I often have to struggle to keep things fresh and not use the same ideas and descriptions over and over. Believe me, that can strain the brain. What new way can I say my character has eyes the color of a summer sky? As I write, I sometimes hear the echo of a similar scene or description in past books and that’s not good.
How do you climb out (overcome it)?
I have gotten better at pushing myself into the scene so that I do see what the room, etc. looks like. Then I try to use the particular focus points that can make the scene come alive to the reader. As for the fresh ideas, that’s where rewriting and more rewriting helps. It’s good that I don’t mind editing my work, at least when it’s my idea. I’m not always as happy when it’s editing to someone else’s idea of what the story should be. Then I have to work harder to make changes that suit both the editors and me.
Where do you write: In a cave, a coffeehouse, or a cozy attic nook?
When I was a child, I wrote in wirebound notebooks, sometimes hidden away in my closet. After I married, I had a desk in my bedroom but often set my typewriter on the kitchen table so I could write while cooking and keeping an eye on the kids. Later I had a desk in my kitchen. That’s where I wrote my first novel. Now I have an office with windows where I can look out and see the birds eating at my birdfeeders and the deer eating my rosebushes. My big old chocolate lab is too lazy to chase the deer away.
What does a typical day look like for you?
I usually get up early and work a couple of hours before breakfast. Not always writing, however. I do a lot of things for my church and a couple of mornings a week I use those early morning hours for that work. Then I am back at my desk around ten and usually work until around five. I do have grandchildren who come to visit maybe once a week and I help out my mom who is 87 and has some health issues now. So I don’t get to write all day every day, but I want to. I always want to be writing something.
Some authors report writing 5-10 thousand words a day. Do scenes flow freely from your veins or do you have to tweeze each word out?
I wish I could say I pour out the words like that. That’s getting it done! Still I wouldn’t say I have to tweeze out each word. Somewhere in between that free bleeding of words and sweating out each word. Maybe on a good day, a thousand or fifteen hundred words. I don’t have a good day every day. But over the days the words do pile up and become a book.
Briefly take us through your process of writing a novel—from conception to revision.
When I am trying to come up with a new idea, I usually do a ‘what if’ page. That’s where I wrote that ‘what if’ question about Jocie that launched The Scent of Lilacs and started my Hollyhill series. Once I have my initial idea, I come up with names for my main characters. Names are very important for me as the right name helps me see the character. Then I do character sketches and pages of plot possibilities. I get books to research any history or special interests to be included in the story. That always helps the ideas develop even more.
Eventually I’ll start hearing my characters talking to one another in my head, and I know I’m ready to start writing the book. I don’t outline or anything like that. I just start following my characters toward the events I think are going to happen eventually in their stories. Of course things change as I write. New characters pop up to muddy the water a bit.
I usually reread and do some editing on what I wrote the day before to get going on the new writing. Probably about halfway through when I’m despairing that the story is simply a muddle and isn’t developing as I’d hoped, I’ll stop and read it through. It’s always better than I thought. The thread of the story isn’t broken, but is there through the scenes, and so I can go back to work with fresh enthusiasm.
Once I have finally pushed through to the end, I go back and read it through with only minor editing to see if I’ve told the story well. Then I go back and work through it page by page, chapter by chapter cutting and rewriting to try to make the story the best I can. I want the words and scenes to pull the reader along and never jar him or her away from the story. Sometimes last of all I’ll read the story aloud because the ear can catch what the eye sometimes misses.
What are a few of your favorite books (not written by you) and why are they favorites?
That’s hard to answer since there are so many great books, but here are a few I remember offhand and why. The Chosen and The Promise by Chaim Potok because his characters were so vibrantly alive. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams because it was so off the wall and totally crazy. Watership Down because Richard Adams made me believe rabbits had their own little universe. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy because it stretched my imagination. The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver because of the beautiful writing and the lovable little girl. There are so many wonderful books I could never name them all. I read the classics as a teenager and cried over Black Beauty and Little Women when I was a little girl just beginning to discover the magic of books.
What’s the best writing advice you’ve heard?
Write what you want to write because if you don’t love what you’re writing no one else will either. That’s not the exact words, but close to advice I once read from Katherine Paterson, the author of Jacob Have I Loved.
Second best – Keep writing. By the time your first novel has made the rounds of all the publishers and received a zillion rejects, you’ll have your second novel finished and ready to make the rounds again. That was from Dorothy Unthank.
Third best – Rejections and acceptances – treat the imposters the same. That’s a slightly mangled quote I thought was from Nathaniel Hawthorne that I came across very early in my writing career. But when I looked it up just now the original quote is from Kipling and says, “If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster and treat those impostors just the same.” Triumph (acceptances) and Disasters (rejections). I suppose the quote I came across early on was a writer’s slant on Kipling’s quote.
What do you wish you’d known early in your career that might have saved you some time and/or frustration in writing? In publishing?
I wish I hadn’t been so timid about trying to write for the inspirational market. I wish I’d spent the last ten or twenty years writing inspirational books. As for publishing, I’m still wishing I knew more about that.
How much marketing do you do? What have you found that particularly works well for you?
Marketing is not my strong point. I love talking to people and enjoy meeting people, but I’m not very good at tooting my own horn. I’m hoping to get some speaking opportunities in the coming year and build up my reader base.
I like doing Internet interviews like this or really any kind of interviews. As I said I love to talk. And I’m planning to do a blog in 2008. I’m trying to explore new ways to connect with readers.
Do you have any parting words of advice?
I suppose you mean advice to other writers or want-to-be writers. If so, my advice would be to keep writing. Nobody expects to be a great basketball player or pianist without putting in hours of practice. So why should we expect to be good writers without practice? And everything you write is practice.
Of course the best advice to any aspiring writer is to read. Read anything and everything and somehow all those words burrow down in your brain and help make you a better writer.
Last of all never give up. If you want to be a writer, write. Persistence is often the key to success. And with prayer all things are possible.
Thanks to Ann for the encouraging words and to Ane for the great interviews NJ always has! rose
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed this time with Ann. Wonderful words of advice. Kipling's splendid poem titled IF hangs on my son's bedroom wall. So I recognized those words: IF you can meet with triumph and defeat and treat those two imposters as just the same . . . yours is the earth and everything that's in it and which is more you'll be a man, my son.
ReplyDeleteAll the best in your writing career.