Butt in Chair

Every successful writer offers some variation of this piece of advice from Anne Lamott:

               How to write: Butt in chair. Start each day anywhere. Let yourself do it badly. Just take one passage at a time. Get butt back in chair.

This my work chair, without my butt in it, because lately it’s been empty a lot.  

I am writing an historical novel based on my grandmother Fannie’s life. You will note that I did not say “about my grandmother,” because I know so little about her. I know the town she left in Russia, the ship she took to America, the name and occupation of the man she married (and later divorced). I know the date she married my grandfather. I know from pictures that she was beautiful. Everything else is fiction. Everything else is from my imagination.  

When I sit in the chair and the story flows, it is exhilarating – almost enough to make me forget the dread of the blank page. Last week I wrote the first draft of Fannie’s wedding night.  Even if I had asked my grandmother every question that would give me a picture of her life, I’m sure I never would have asked her about her first sexual experience. So, my task was to write a believable description of an 18-year-old girl, living in 1910, just married to a man she barely knows, experiencing sex for the first time. Her mother has given her “the talk.” But she has no idea what is expected of her or how it will feel. She has no language for what happens to her body. It was far easier for me to describe her embroidered pillowcases!

I am sure the reasons I have avoided putting my butt back in the chair are not unique. What if what I’ve written isn’t true to the character I’ve created? What is its cliched? What if it’s just bad writing?

Nevertheless, I’m back in the chair. Even if it’s not my grandmother’s story, it is a story I feel compelled to tell.