Joanna Davidson Politano on Spinning Tales

Joanna Davidson Politano

When did you start writing?

The first books I remember writing were in grade school, when it drove me nuts that kids were bullied but I was too quiet to do anything about it. So, I wrote stories on stapled half-papers about the bullied kids with super powers and the bullies getting a little justice. It made me feel better, anyway! Then those stories got around the class and even though no one knew who had written them, it caused some waves!


Who were/are two of your favorite authors?

Daphne Du Maurier has been a long-standing favorite in gothic suspense, and a recent favorite is Mimi Matthews. Du Maurier opened my mind to the possibility of different types of stories that included all my favorite things—abandoned old houses, atmospheric tension, and surprises. I think that absolutely inflamed my desire to write, knowing that genre was out there.


What point in your writing career did you feel like you had gone from amateur to pro?

When I decided to go firmly into amateur status! I shelved the idea of writing for publication when my first baby was born, thinking it wasn’t a good time, but all that really accomplished was freeing me up to write the sort of stories I loved most. No one will ever read this, I told myself, so it doesn’t matter if it follows any genre rules, is any certain length, or looks any particular way. Out came the books that I enjoyed most—and when the writer enjoys a project, often so do readers.


What do you look for in choosing a setting for your book?

I always aim to make my setting a character in itself, at least a little bit, so it has to be memorable. Atmospheric. Rich with meaning, maybe symbolism. And more than anything, the setting has to intrigue me. It makes the story so much more fun.


What steps if any are involved in research for your book?

I start out very research heavy, especially when tackling a topic, I’m less familiar with—ballet, for example. I aim to read books written during the period I’m researching for the most authentic flavor of the times. I want to hear first-hand about the people and mindsets so I can sink into it myself. I even read fiction surrounding my topic or time period. The story takes shape from the research, then as I go into the drafting phase, I keep many, many books open around me to check on little details as I go.


In writing your new book, what do you feel makes it stand out?

The Lost Melody has such a heavy setting—the Victorian asylums. Yet I made it a point to combine that setting with music, which is one of the loveliest aspects of this world to me. So, you have a rather dark setting that’s interrupted by the beauty and light of music. That’s symbolic of the whole book, too—light breaking into darkness. Music breaking into the dark places of a person’s mind. Music therapy is also such a fun aspect of this book, and I’ve never seen that in a historical novel before—the origins of it as well as a little of the science behind it. I truly loved researching and including that.


In your new book, what would you like the reader to feel and walk away with?

There was a backdrop of music as I wrote this book—sometimes on my radio, sometimes just hovering in the back of my mind. There was a strong sense of rhythm and order throughout the drafting stage, and I hope readers can get a sense of that too. Music threads through every chapter and shows up in such surprising ways.


What is the best writing advice you have received so far?

To write organically. If you are not surprised, it’ll be hard to evoke that response in readers! Allow your plot to deviate from whatever you had in mind, if there’s something that better serves the story. Go back and read and reread when you start writing every day, so you have a sense of the story and a natural path for the narrative to continue. The more you let the story take over, the better and stronger it’ll be.


What is the worst?

Anyone that ever said, “a story MUST have, or MUST be....” Exceptions make the memorable stories!


What is your schedule for writing?

As a stay-at-home and homeschooling mom, I typically keep my writing to when my children sleep. I wake up before them if I can, and that’s when I research. I write in the afternoon when my baby sleeps and older kids are doing independent work, then I catch up on emails and indulge in social media when they’re in bed in the evenings. Sunday, however, I reserve all free time for fun reading. That’s always a much-needed rest day.


What do you do if you get stumped?

I stop and play with my kids, get silly and do kid things, or take walks. I often message back and forth with a writing friend or two and they can often offer suggestions. Just talking through it aloud to them sometimes frees me up. In the moment, though, I pause and connect with God and try to get a sense of what he has in mind for the story. Often, being stumped just means I need to turn some corner in my thinking—try something new or go a different direction.


Did you or do you make any sacrifices to be a writer?

Oh yes! Most of my free time goes to writing, and honestly, most of my free brainpower does too. Even when I’m playing with my kids or teaching a history lesson, the creative wheels are pinning, and I jot down ideas in a notebook. I love this backdrop to my life very much, but at times it’s a little draining!

Did you choose your genre, or did it choose you?

I first chose a lot of other genres in my pursuit of publication, but once I gave up on the idea of publishing, I discovered the genre I loved more than any! When I wasn’t trying to do or be or say anything in particular, just enjoy myself, I found the most natural type of story for my heart, and it fit like Cinderella’s glass shoe. Just right.


What is the best way you found to market your book?

Authors usually aren’t sure which effort leads to book sales but having “cheerleader” friends seems to have paid off more than anything. I have absolutely wonderful friends—local reader friends and other author buddies—who get excited about my stories and spread the word to other readers. I’m eternally grateful for all those word of mouth recommendations.


Did you actively build a network of readers and if so, how?

A lot of my first readers came from other authors telling their readers about my books. I set up a launch team for my first book when several sweet authors told their readers about my books, and they were willing to try them. I don’t know how people do any of the writing process without a very kind network of other writers who all get behind each other!


What advice would you like to give new authors that would help them?

Based on my writing journey, I’d say enjoy yourself FIRST and foremost, before you expect anyone else to enjoy your stories. They should be fun for you, the writer, and trust me, that enthusiasm is absolutely contagious. And at the end of the day, even if you don’t get published, you are still enjoying the process either way. Also, along those lines, let the story tell itself. Don’t shoe-horn plot points or character actions or moralizing lessons in where they don’t want to be.

Joanna Davidson Politano is the award-winning author of Lady
Jayne Disappears, A Rumored Fortune, Finding Lady Enderly, The Love Note, and A Midnight Dance. She loves tales that capture the colorful, exquisite details in ordinary lives and is eager to hear anyone’s story. She lives with her husband and their children in a house in the woods near Lake Michigan. 

You can find her online at www.jdpstories.com.

Authentic Stories

 

Joanna Davidson Politano

There’s nothing better than discovering an authentic-feeling novel that makes you experience the settings and truly know the characters.

So how do you create that sense of realism in your own writing?

1.    

   F    Focus on where you’ve been in the story, not where you’re going

 

It’s tempting to write toward the next plot point that needs to happen, or some phenomenal ending, but be prepared for a stilted, unnatural narrative if you make these your focus. Instead, return to the story you’ve already written and sink back into it, immersing yourself in the story and allowing for a natural progression. Hold those future plot points and fantastic ending ideas loosely—let the story unfold itself rather than forcing it to meet certain important points.

 

Constantly ask yourself, what would actually happen next? What would my characters really do here? Let yourself go down that path, even if it takes you somewhere you hadn’t planned. Sinking into what you’ve written and letting the existing narrative guide your next words will make the story seem like an organic thing unfolding piece by piece.

 

2.      Experience your characters’ lives

 

My latest novel is about the Victorian ballet theater. I’ve never lived in Victorian England, nor am I anywhere close to a ballet dancer, but you better believe I bought myself ballet shoes and tried out all the moves. I drove myself and my daughter to live performances and soaked in the environment.

Then I sank into novels that were written during (not about) the Victorian time period. This allowed me to experience the language, the nuances of society, and the feel of the place as much as possible.

 

I read a lot. I also experienced a lot. I saturated myself in dance and rhythm and theater, in Victorian England and the bustle of London. I wanted to understand what my heroine loved about the beauty and symmetry of ballet, and what that sort of passion feels like.

 

3.      Let your characters breathe

 

Try not to assign them strict numbers on the enneagram or the 16-point personality profile, because that’s not realistic. No one’s a sold number four or a complete INFJ. We tend toward one type, but there are always invading traits from other categories too, aren’t there? Let your character be wonderfully complex and unique, with natural contradictions and surprising combinations of traits. Let them be human.

 

Along with this, sink deeper into their point of view as you write. Be in their head and approach every plot turn and character as they might—let the words on the page be in their voice, commenting on things they would notice. You as the author are not the voice—your character, whoever is leading a particular scene—is the one telling the story. Infuse your story with the color of their unique personality and heart and watch it come alive.

 

Joanna Davidson Politano is the award-winning author of Lady Jayne Disappears, A Rumored Fortune, Finding Lady Enderly, and The Love Note. She loves tales that capture the colorful, exquisite details in ordinary lives and is eager to hear anyone's story. She lives with her husband and their children in a house in the woods near Lake Michigan. 

You can find her at www.jdpstories.com.

A Surprise Novel ~ Part 2

Joanna Davidson Politano

Part 2

. . . I ended up using the outline for about three chapters and scrapping the rest (then going back and changing those three chapters later). I’d heard plotting made the work faster, but that’s just not how my brain unfolds mysteries!

I can’t tell you how many times I’d write about ten chapters, feel totally wrong about the story, and delete six of those. (My motto is when you feel like your draft is bad, delete to the point where you were still smitten with it and go a different direction for the rest. It feels like backtracking, but you move forward with smoother, better material.) I’ve done the “fast and furious” first draft with promises to myself to go back and fix it later, but that’s another one of those “not my style” tricks. I need a solid foundation laid with each chapter for the next to be any good. So I actually did a lot of deleting and rewriting with this book, and it became a frustrating one.

Then I stumbled upon my inspiration. During one of my “stuck” periods, a friend suggested I watch a related show called, “Signed, Sealed, and Delivered” and I truly fell in love. In the evenings of that drafting stage, I binged every episode about the dead letter office and misplaced letters. I didn’t glean plot ideas, but I was inspired. The subtle way truth was woven in, the gentle but authentic dynamic between well-drawn characters, it all invited me to craft an even better story.

When I finally had the first draft done, with a month until deadline, it still felt wrong. I sent it to my mentor for feedback and he told me hey, I know you think this is the theme, but it’s actually this totally different thing over here. He had many other helpful notes too, but that single sentence woke me up to the “point” of my story—after I’d already written the whole thing in another vein. But he was right, and the theme he brought forward actually did exist strongly in the book already. I reimagined the ending, the part that would “drive home” the theme, and out blossomed the most surprising, beautiful truth about the human search for love, to know and be known. At last, I was deeply in love with this story and the truth it brought out. The entire story came together as a cohesive whole around this other theme I hadn’t even seen before.

I learned a lot in this project about not forcing anything—chapters that don’t work, writing techniques meant for someone else, and even themes that aren’t quite what the book is trying to say—even if it’s what you intended to say. I will say though, that moment of revelation concerning this story’s (really cool) theme came pretty late in the game, but it was very much worth the wait.

Joanna Davidson Politano is the award-winning author of Lady Jayne Disappears, A Rumored Fortune, and Finding Lady Enderly. When she’s not homeschooling her small children, she spends much of her time spinning tales that capture the colorful,exquisite details in ordinary lives. She is always on the hunt for random acts of kindness, people willing to share their deepest secrets with a stranger, and hidden stashes of sweets. She lives with her husband and their two children in a house in thewoods near Lake Michigan and shares stories that move her at www.jdpstories.com.

A Surprise Novel ~ Part 1

Joanna Davidson Politano

This novel surprised me. I was desperately scrambling for a nugget of an idea to offer my publisher when they requested it. I had two ideas already but no glimmer of a third, so I frantically looked around. The first thing I saw was a framed photo of my grandparents, coy smiles and all, from when they were dating. They’d met only a handful of times, and their entire relationship was carried out through letters while my grandpa was overseas in WWII. How cool, I thought—but also dangerous. How easy to misinterpret something or miss information in a dropped letter… or even have someone else write it! When you barely know a person, so many things can go wrong. Which, of course, is perfect for a story.

I decided on a lost love letter concept for my third book idea and hastily scratched out a paragraph to send my publisher. A career-minded girl finds a passionate love letter in the crack of an old desk and becomes determined to deliver the note that was never opened, and to play matchmaker to the unknown couple. Back at the seaside manor home where the desk (and letter) came from, someone else finds the letter when the heroine misplaces it and the poor maid believes she has a secret admirer—perfect story fodder. Trouble ensues. Confusion, suspicion, secret longing, denied love… all great stuff. I’d work out the details later, and let the story percolate—or even come up with a better idea to send them—while I wrote the other two books in the contract.

Plot twist—they wanted me to write the love note book first! So with nothing but a short paragraph to go on, I constructed a story about a declarative love letter from some unknown individual that was never opened—was it not found? Had someone refused to open it and set it aside? I had a brilliant answer for all that. Really brilliant. What if the letter was slipped into the old desk for the heroine (to whom the desk was given as a hand-me-down) to find, and her childhood friend wrote it for her? How cool!

And predictable, and a little too coincidental. I wrote with that ending in mind but at about sixty percent I could sense how cliché that twist actually was and knew I needed to make a sharp turn in a new direction. Not that I knew who wrote the letter or who it was for, but the cliché answer was gone. I felt much better after that, so I kept turning more and more corners, and surprising (and amusing) myself completely! I probably drove my poor characters nuts with how off track they really were so many times in their search for the letter writer.

That wasn’t the only big shift I made in this book, though. I started out attempting to plot this book out before writing it, which was utterly disastrous. Not to say plotting doesn’t work—it certainly can. It’s writing in a style that is not YOU that makes for an epic fail. I spent weeks, maybe months, on a plot outline that, when it went into actual story form, was really quite terrible and full of unnatural bridges from one scene to the next. I ended up using the outline for . . . see part two tomorrow to see what outline she used . . .

Joanna Davidson Politano is the award-winning author of Lady Jayne Disappears, A Rumored Fortune, and Finding Lady Enderly. When she’s not homeschooling her small children, she spends much of her time spinning tales that capture the colorful,exquisite details in ordinary lives. She is always on the hunt for random acts of kindness, people willing to share their deepest secrets with a stranger, and hidden stashes of sweets. She lives with her husband and their two children in a house in thewoods near Lake Michigan and shares stories that move her at www.jdpstories.com.

Writing an Unexpected Ending

By Joanna Davidson Politano, author of  Finding Lady Enderly

A twisting ending

“That’s not her name.” A mama looks down at her new baby and tries to wrap that special name around the person now in her arms, but it doesn’t fit. That’s how I felt when I had about two-thirds of my novel, Finding Lady Enderly, drafted and done. It wasn’t the name that bothered me though, but the core of the story—the twist. It wasn’t that story’s ending, and it had to go.

The entire story idea actually grew out of the original twist. It started with Princess Diana, and my mother’s speculation that her death was faked so she could slip away to live on some island with the man she loved. Originally, that’s what had happened to our dear Lady Enderly who the heroine fears is kidnapped or murdered. But as I wrote it, and those vague characters became flesh on the page, that ending was such a bad fit—and it sort of felt familiar, like something I may have read before.

I blame Daphne Du Maurier for my addiction to unexpected endings, and I delight in attempting it. 

Here are my secrets.

1.      I give about 70% of my manuscript to a handful of readers and have them guess at as many possible endings as they can. Then I throw them all away. I write something totally different and unexpected. I did this for my debut novel, Lady Jayne Disappears, and happily surprised many readers.

2.      For a manuscript that isn’t working, I outline the whole thing and mark where it turned trite, forced, or predictable. I throw in something wildly unexpected right there—even if I have no idea how it’ll play out. I let it ripple through the novel and see what comes of it! My second novel was rescued this way, and I had amazing, very touching scenes that included characters who were actually dead in the first draft.

3.      I turn my ending upside-down and challenge myself to make it work. Even if I don’t keep it that way, I often have lots of brilliant ideas to play with. I make the character I intended to be the villain into a victim of heart-rending proportions. I see where I’ve layered in assumptions and then prove them wrong in big ways. (Oh, you’re cancelling out this suspect and that one because they couldn’t possibly have killed your dad? Ok, that works. Except it wasn’t your dad who was murdered, but this person over here. Dad just died of natural causes.)

Most of all, my best secret is that I’m extremely flexible, receptive to wild ideas and bursts of inspiration, suggestions from friends and crazy dreams. Even if they seem far-fetched, I let them play around on the playground of my mind. I have to be honest—nothing is more effective than changing my novel’s ending as I write. If I’m surprised, the reader probably will be, too.

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Joanna Davidson Politano writes historical novels of mystery and romance, including her debut Lady Jayne Disappears. She loves tales that capture the colorful, exquisite details in ordinary lives and is eager to hear anyone’s story. She lives with her husband and their two babies in a house in the woods near Lake Michigan and you can find her at www.jdpstories.com. Author website/blog: jdpstories.com - Social Media Links: www.facebook.com/joannadavidsonpolitano/  https://twitter.com/politano_joanna https://www.instagram.com/joannadavidsonpolitano/ https://www.bookbub.com/profile/joanna-davidson-politano

Five Ways to Refresh a Dried-Up Imagination and Rediscover Your Love of Story

By Joanna Davidson Politano 

Cracking your heart open and pouring it onto the page can be draining—especially in an industry full of discouragement, competition, and long waits. I’ve had to replenish my creativity several times, and here’s what’s worked:

Change your finish line. Before you are published, that first sale is often the goal. Then you cross that finish line by contract or self-publishing and there’s a whole new set of benchmarks, from awards and good sales numbers to positive critic reviews and future contracts. Striving for these things can be draining because they only multiply. Instead, set a goal that brings you back to why you started writing—the love of spinning a story out of hand-picked words, delight in creating, or the advancement of an important message. Strive for excellence in that rather than a numeric, success-driven benchmark and watch your creativity flourish again.

Post intentional one-liners in front of your face. On a stick-a-note, write out your project’s “takeaway,” describe one specific reader you hope to reach, or note the spark that made you start on this particular project. They say it’s more damaging to be stepped on by a stiletto heel with a narrow focus of pressure than an elephant’s foot. Hone down the important elements of your project or your vision for short, poignant reminders as you write.

Let your imagination run wild by giving in to it. We all encounter ideas that are a little “out there” or not in the writing schedule, but you think, that would be so fun to write! Sink into that idea for a while and give yourself over to it, whether it’s a scene, a short story, or a novel. Explore and enjoy it, knowing that no one will ever see it. Although I’ll warn you, my “for fun” project ended up being my first contracted novel. Either way, a writer’s enthusiasm for a project is utterly contagious to readers!

Do something ridiculously child-like. I have two small kids, so this is easy for me. During the day I race toy cars, read Dr. Seuss, play tag, and sing with abandon. Drawing out this forgotten part of yourself will bring creative power to your writing. No story ever suffers from the candor, energy, or out-of-the-box thinking of a young heart. Let go of your task list and carve out joyful playtime—then take that liveliness and let it spill onto the keyboard.

Return to your absolute favorite books. Sink into them and let the magic you’ve always found in their lines saturate your dry imagination. Dissect what’s effective there and look for general ideas you can use. For example, one favorite author made it impossible to guess the ending “answer” of her book since she had readers focused on the wrong question throughout. It was fantastic and I began thinking of how I could also distract my readers from the truth until the end.

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Joanna Davidson Politano freelances for a small nonfiction publisher but spends much of her time spinning tales that capture the colorful, exquisite details in ordinary lives. She is always on the hunt for random acts of kindness, people willing to share their deepest secrets with a stranger, and hidden stashes of sweets. She lives with her husband and their two babies in a house in the woods near Lake Michigan and shares stories that move her at www.jdpstories.com.

Her social Media links: Website: jdpstories.com Blog: jdpstories.com/true-stories-the-blog/

www.facebook.com/joannadavidsonpolitano/  https://twitter.com/politano_joanna

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