1. Here’s a facsimile of a long, typewritten letter from Rose Wilder Lane to her mother, Laura Ingalls Wilder, about the early draft of By The Shores of Silver Lake. As I learned only recently, Rose was the editor–probably even the ghostwriter–of the Little House series, and an editor and author in her own right. She and her mother had a difficult relationship, so there’s a little of that, but mostly blunt (good) editing advice about finding a theme and leaving out what you can’t explain easily.
2. And here’s a quote from a memoir/cookbook I just finished (A Homemade Life) which follows a recipe about a cake named “The Winning Hearts and Minds Chocolate Cake”:
What it all comes down to is winning hearts and minds. Underneath everything else, all the plans and goals and hopes, that’s why we get up in the morning, why we believe, why we try, why we bake chocolate cakes. That’s the best we can ever hope to do: to win hearts and minds, to love and be loved.
This is good stuff. I edited / ghost wrote a personal essay that my mother started…. and she was hung up about facts, rather than focusing on the truth and themes that moved the narrative forward.I don’t remember where I learned about the “smoking gun” theory, but its that idea that every detail needs a purpose. You don’t brandish a weapon just to see it glitter — that’s just authorly masturbation. I also really appreciate Rose’s comment about understanding the audience. Rape is not a subject for children’s books, and so one may need to change the facts in the narrative in order to link a chain of events leading to a pivotal point or fatal flaw–this is the art of rhetoric, or drawing out the truth of the matter. Facts are not so always as useful as a truths. People go to war over “truth.” Rose would probably have made an astute political strategist if she’d just been born two generations later. Funny… I can barely remember any of the details, fact of fiction, but I do remember loving those books!!