EVENT TRANSCRIPT
Parnassus Books
Laurie Frankel/Nancy Pearl
Thursday, June 10, 2021
Elyse Adler: Hello everyone and thanks for joining us. I'm Elyse Adler, director of events for Parnassus Books. We are featuring best-selling author, Laurie Frankel, who is here to celebrate her incredible book, One Two Three. You can order a signed book from Parnassus Books. She has agreed to take audience questions so put them in the Facebook comments. I have another request: Please stay online for a minute after the conversation. Anne Padgett has a brief message for you. We're thrilled to have Laurie with us tonight. She is in conversation with librarian, Nancy Pearl. I'm pleased to turn it over to them.
Nancy Pearl: I loved One Two Three. I have a question to start. Where do your ideas come from? Beverly Cleary was once asked by a little boy in a class, I understand how you write it, but where do you get your paper? I want to ask you where you get your ideas. Where did Henry Huggins come from? She said I got them from the idea store. He said he had been to that store. We get meatballs there when we go. I assume you don't get them from the Ikea store. Some of your books may have a germ in your life experiences. In general, you are one of the hardest-working writers and readers that I have ever met.
Laurie Frankel: You have said so many nice things to me. I love to be like Beverly Cleary; I would go to an idea store. I get frozen yogurt at Ikea but no writing ideas. If I sit down to think about a story, I can't. But if I go walking or take a shower or go to the store, it comes to me. That works when I'm already into a project rather than the Genesis of it. There's a self-centered seed that comes from me. It's what I was pissed off about. I read a lot and sometimes it's work and sometimes it isn't. I'm a reader by disposition and there's a lot in my brain and some of it gets caught and doesn't leave. That's where the ideas come from.
I read an article in 2016 about a town in West Virginia that had been polluting their water and I couldn't stop thinking about it and reading about. It was in the paper every day.
Nancy Pearl: When I interviewed you for another book, you were working on One Two Three and talking about some of the books you had read. You're like a lifelong learner. You use the books you read like many other authors to help you become a better writer; you were darn good from the beginning. One Two Three is the story of ..... You fill in the blanks.
Laurie Frankel: It's teenage sisters in a small town with a dark past. They live downstream from a chemical plant that is polluting their water. They have specific challenges through generations. In the newspaper articles, they say they are long-term consequences. It's news and then goes away and we don't follow up 20 years later. What do we mean by long term? Some of my research was about that... Towns and chemical spills and climate disasters. Some of it is that I'm reading books to learn how to write and tell stories. This book did not write quickly.
Nancy Pearl: Why not?
Laurie Frankel: Some books write fast and some slow. It's narrated by 3 different people and they come together to tell the story. They tell it in turns. I couldn't add a chapter without adding three. They all had to sound different from one another. At first they sounded alike and like me; it went through a lot or revisions. It needed to be first person, present tense. They were fighting me the whole time. Some books don't cooperate.
Nancy Pearl: You made it easy for the reader to keep the 3 sisters separated. Mab, Monday, and Maribel--they all very in the effects of this chemical spill. Mab, people would describe as normal. Monday is neuro-divergent. Maribel is the most different from her sisters. A young man enters their lives and the story. I love the part where Maribel is attracted to River and her knowledge that it could not go anywhere.
Laurie Frankel: She is severely disabled; a lot of people in the town are. The town is built for the people who live in it. They have been abused and what happened to them is terrible. It's good in some ways; it's supportive and puts citizens' well-being up front. Maribel has never gone anywhere else but is a genius; she's smarter than I am. She's smart in relationships as well. The truth is that most of us do not marry the person we loved at 16 and she sees that in a way her sisters don't.
Nancy Pearl: Did you have a favorite among the sisters?
Laurie Frankel: I do -- I really love Monday. She's my favorite. She's very funny and it's in a way that has nothing to do with me. I don't get credit for that. It may be because she was the easiest one to write. She loves books and language that I share and specificity of language that I share and admire. It's hard to say if it's the character or the love of writing about her that makes her my favorite.
Nancy Pearl: I love her getting ready for the SATs and the language stuff and she was the town's librarian. They gave away a lot of books when the library closed but they kept them in a little house. Maribel learned that her disabilities didn't mean that she had to stay there forever. Good job on those triplets.
Laurie Frankel: Thank you. That's what happens to characters over the course of the book. Things that they think are limiting them really don't. That happens in all novels. Maribel is so smart and learned so much by reading. She is limited in life in a lot of ways. She can go everywhere too.
Nancy Pearl: The only thing that separates her from her sisters is the wheelchair.
Laurie Frankel: Some challenging things can be negotiated. It's true that much of the rest of the world is not set up for handicaps.
Nancy Pearl: This is your first novel told from 3 different points of view. I know you were searching out novels that were told from multiple viewpoints. What were some of them?
Laurie Frankel: I started with Poisonwood Bible which is narrated by sisters in turns in first person; it's a good model. I had read it before. When you read a book a second time with a goal, I wanted to figure out how it was done. It's a different reading experience. It helped me but I thought I can't do that. I reread Empire Falls. It's sort of told from multiple perspectives but not first person. It had teenagers in it. It wasn't a super good comp but was a useful way in. I'm looking for someone who had successfully negotiated the challenges. I never do exactly what they have done; I take little pieces. I can dig out of the hole I'm in.
I lot of authors don't like to read while they're writing; I don't know how they do it. It gives me faith that this can be done.
Nancy Pearl: When you're plotting a book, and it's the blurb on the back of One Two Three, the best part of your books is the characters you created and love. Readers take them into our hearts. I want to know how you go about plotting. Do you have an idea board or notebook? How did you figure out what was going to happen in any of your books? How did you get from page to whatever? This is the longest one--400 pages, but it reads fast.
Laurie Frankel: It was long because of the 3 narrators. The characters figure out the plots themselves; I have no idea. I don't have an idea board or outline. It goes through many drafts and is very messy for a very long time. I don't know what will happen in many of the drafts. I haven't met these people yet. It's the chicken/egg problem. I have to meet them and write them. Eventually I write them into being so they make their own decisions about what happens and then it's working and I'm not calling the shots.
It's a practical thing. Once they become real enough, they act consistently. They act like real people and sometimes go out of character. They do what they want to do and I just follow.
Nancy Pearl: (Cannot hear him/her.) was asked about his characters. His characters are galley slaves and do what he tells them to do.
Laurie Frankel: That's nice for him. I feel like their galley slaves. They say this isn't working. I wonder if he wrote a clean rough draft.
Nancy Pearl: You had this article in the New York Times. Did you start with one teenager?
Laurie Frankel: I knew there would be 3. I want to do lots of characters. I am interested in how people react to circumstances. These 3 girls are triplets and have a lot in common. They live in a small house with an angry mother but they're wildly different from one another.
Nancy Pearl: I interviewed you for This is How it Always Is. You had to cut down the number of siblings in the family. The more characters the better for you.
Laurie Frankel: Yes, it is for me. They all have to have a plot and the reader has to keep track of them so I have to restrain myself. People are interesting. I sometimes have characters who get combined into one person.
Nancy Pearl: You have the triplets and the idea and are moving along. Did you write it in the order that we read it in or did you write all of Mab's, Monday's, and Mirabel's parts?
Laurie Frankel: It seems like that's what you would do but it's not what I did at all and I don't know why. Because my first and other drafts are pretty terrible and I cut constantly. It wouldn't make sense to write all of one sister and then another. I try to write it in the order I think it will happen in. I have to earn the joy of finding and writing the ending. I wrote through to the end dozens of times. I did think at the beginning that each would tell what it's like at home, school, after school, etc., but that didn't work. I borrow a structural rule and then shed it.
Nancy Pearl: In each chapter, the girls move the story further. At what point did you know what the ending would be?
Laurie Frankel: When it came out of my fingers. Writing becomes like reading and it surprises me; I didn't see it coming. That's great when it happens. That's what I mean by having to earn the ending.
Nancy Pearl: So the ending didn't go through changes?
Laurie Frankel: Plot wise, it didn't change but the lead up to it changed. Some chapters changed completely. That's typical for me. I'll rewrite the first chapter 100 times but the last chapter doesn't change.
Nancy Pearl: Mab gets the first voice and Mirabel gets the last.
Laurie Frankel: In a few spots it was difficult. You have to fix the sticking points.
Nancy Pearl: Can you share some of the sticking points?
Laurie Frankel: It gets really plotty; it's plot driven in a traditional mystery way. These girls set out to solve a mystery like Nancy Drew. I never had written a book like that and had to figure out how and keep it interesting and keep the reader guessing. Their stories had to be equal action scenes and rumination scenes. That took a great deal of editing.
Nancy Pearl: Did you read mysteries to get in the mood? Were there some you were struck by?
Laurie Frankel: I have rigorous standards for the books I like. Like Kevin O'Brien who writes thrillers, people get stabbed and killed and they're scary. It's a different genre. You introduce the scene and play this scene, and reveal the ending.
Nancy Pearl: His books are so scary.
Laurie Frankel: They're so good and terrifying and they haunt you; they don't leave you. I think of them at 3 a.m.
Nancy Pearl: Kevin would love to hear that. Let's talk about you as a reader. When you read a book for fun, you are making notes and nobody will ever see those notes. Fair?
Laurie Frankel: Fair. I do 2 things. I write in the margins. Do you write in your books?
Nancy Pearl: No.
Laurie Frankel: Do I offend you because I do?
Nancy Pearl: No; I put sticky notes. I used to use paper clips and it took a lot of space.
Laurie Frankel: Interesting. I write in the margins. I also write little essays for myself about what I've learned and how I can use it or avoid it. I do it for everything I read. I didn't know that everyone didn't do that. It is my best device and the one thing I've done from the beginning. That is my constant.
Nancy Pearl: Do you write for yourself?
Laurie Frankel: Like fiction?
Nancy Pearl: Do you think, "I wonder if my editor or reader would like this?" or do you write for what you want to read.
Laurie Frankel: I constantly wonder if my editor will like it. I'm not wed to my art.
Nancy Pearl: When you read, is it important to you that a book has a happy ending? Is it important to you when you're writing?
Laurie Frankel: It's important to me that I am happy at the end of it, not necessarily because everyone lives happily ever after. I do want to be happy at the end and am frustrated as a reader with books that make me feel angry at the end. As a writer, I am inclined toward endings that pay off--not necessarily happy but earned.
Nancy Pearl: What about likable or unlikeable characters?
Laurie Frankel: Once you get to know them, they become more complicated so the bad guys become more likable. I wanted people to be evil and they could not be evil.
Nancy Pearl: They mayor was one example. He chose to be in a different way. What are you reading and looking forward to reading?
Laurie Frankel: I started the pandemic with the Hillary Mantel trilogy and it destroyed me. It was amazing. I recommend Sarah Santili's memoir; you have to read it. I recommend Charlotte Mahoney who wrote Once There Were Wolves. She's an amazing writer. She writes huge novels with characters and plots. What are you reading?
Nancy Pearl: One Two Three; I loved it. I discovered 2 mystery writers -- British. I love Maggie Shipstead's The Great Circle. An older title is by Sigrid Nunez, The Friend. Mitz wrote a book about the pet of Virginia and Leonard Wolf's. I loved it. A Place of Greater Safety by Hillary Mantel is set during the French revolution. She makes awful men into charismatic people. You fall in love with them. I share your admiration for Hillary Mantel. Will you ever write a historical novel?
Laurie Frankel: No, it seems undoable to me. I wonder how they do it; it's a miracle.
Nancy Pearl: Even her contemporary novels are wonderful. I think you and I have done a lot of interviews together. It's a delight for me. Good luck with your tour for One Two Three; I hope I get to see you in Seattle.
Laurie Frankel: Thank you for doing this. Are we supposed to take questions?
Nancy Pearl: No, we'll turn it back to Elyse. We can just log off.
Laurie Frankel: It was really lovely and thank you for to everyone who tuned in; I appreciate it. Bye.
Hi everybody, it's Ann Patchett. Now we want you to buy the books and support the bookstore. We need dog biscuits for Sparky. Thank you so much.
Parnassus Books
Laurie Frankel/Nancy Pearl
Thursday, June 10, 2021
Elyse Adler: Hello everyone and thanks for joining us. I'm Elyse Adler, director of events for Parnassus Books. We are featuring best-selling author, Laurie Frankel, who is here to celebrate her incredible book, One Two Three. You can order a signed book from Parnassus Books. She has agreed to take audience questions so put them in the Facebook comments. I have another request: Please stay online for a minute after the conversation. Anne Padgett has a brief message for you. We're thrilled to have Laurie with us tonight. She is in conversation with librarian, Nancy Pearl. I'm pleased to turn it over to them.
Nancy Pearl: I loved One Two Three. I have a question to start. Where do your ideas come from? Beverly Cleary was once asked by a little boy in a class, I understand how you write it, but where do you get your paper? I want to ask you where you get your ideas. Where did Henry Huggins come from? She said I got them from the idea store. He said he had been to that store. We get meatballs there when we go. I assume you don't get them from the Ikea store. Some of your books may have a germ in your life experiences. In general, you are one of the hardest-working writers and readers that I have ever met.
Laurie Frankel: You have said so many nice things to me. I love to be like Beverly Cleary; I would go to an idea store. I get frozen yogurt at Ikea but no writing ideas. If I sit down to think about a story, I can't. But if I go walking or take a shower or go to the store, it comes to me. That works when I'm already into a project rather than the Genesis of it. There's a self-centered seed that comes from me. It's what I was pissed off about. I read a lot and sometimes it's work and sometimes it isn't. I'm a reader by disposition and there's a lot in my brain and some of it gets caught and doesn't leave. That's where the ideas come from.
I read an article in 2016 about a town in West Virginia that had been polluting their water and I couldn't stop thinking about it and reading about. It was in the paper every day.
Nancy Pearl: When I interviewed you for another book, you were working on One Two Three and talking about some of the books you had read. You're like a lifelong learner. You use the books you read like many other authors to help you become a better writer; you were darn good from the beginning. One Two Three is the story of ..... You fill in the blanks.
Laurie Frankel: It's teenage sisters in a small town with a dark past. They live downstream from a chemical plant that is polluting their water. They have specific challenges through generations. In the newspaper articles, they say they are long-term consequences. It's news and then goes away and we don't follow up 20 years later. What do we mean by long term? Some of my research was about that... Towns and chemical spills and climate disasters. Some of it is that I'm reading books to learn how to write and tell stories. This book did not write quickly.
Nancy Pearl: Why not?
Laurie Frankel: Some books write fast and some slow. It's narrated by 3 different people and they come together to tell the story. They tell it in turns. I couldn't add a chapter without adding three. They all had to sound different from one another. At first they sounded alike and like me; it went through a lot or revisions. It needed to be first person, present tense. They were fighting me the whole time. Some books don't cooperate.
Nancy Pearl: You made it easy for the reader to keep the 3 sisters separated. Mab, Monday, and Maribel--they all very in the effects of this chemical spill. Mab, people would describe as normal. Monday is neuro-divergent. Maribel is the most different from her sisters. A young man enters their lives and the story. I love the part where Maribel is attracted to River and her knowledge that it could not go anywhere.
Laurie Frankel: She is severely disabled; a lot of people in the town are. The town is built for the people who live in it. They have been abused and what happened to them is terrible. It's good in some ways; it's supportive and puts citizens' well-being up front. Maribel has never gone anywhere else but is a genius; she's smarter than I am. She's smart in relationships as well. The truth is that most of us do not marry the person we loved at 16 and she sees that in a way her sisters don't.
Nancy Pearl: Did you have a favorite among the sisters?
Laurie Frankel: I do -- I really love Monday. She's my favorite. She's very funny and it's in a way that has nothing to do with me. I don't get credit for that. It may be because she was the easiest one to write. She loves books and language that I share and specificity of language that I share and admire. It's hard to say if it's the character or the love of writing about her that makes her my favorite.
Nancy Pearl: I love her getting ready for the SATs and the language stuff and she was the town's librarian. They gave away a lot of books when the library closed but they kept them in a little house. Maribel learned that her disabilities didn't mean that she had to stay there forever. Good job on those triplets.
Laurie Frankel: Thank you. That's what happens to characters over the course of the book. Things that they think are limiting them really don't. That happens in all novels. Maribel is so smart and learned so much by reading. She is limited in life in a lot of ways. She can go everywhere too.
Nancy Pearl: The only thing that separates her from her sisters is the wheelchair.
Laurie Frankel: Some challenging things can be negotiated. It's true that much of the rest of the world is not set up for handicaps.
Nancy Pearl: This is your first novel told from 3 different points of view. I know you were searching out novels that were told from multiple viewpoints. What were some of them?
Laurie Frankel: I started with Poisonwood Bible which is narrated by sisters in turns in first person; it's a good model. I had read it before. When you read a book a second time with a goal, I wanted to figure out how it was done. It's a different reading experience. It helped me but I thought I can't do that. I reread Empire Falls. It's sort of told from multiple perspectives but not first person. It had teenagers in it. It wasn't a super good comp but was a useful way in. I'm looking for someone who had successfully negotiated the challenges. I never do exactly what they have done; I take little pieces. I can dig out of the hole I'm in.
I lot of authors don't like to read while they're writing; I don't know how they do it. It gives me faith that this can be done.
Nancy Pearl: When you're plotting a book, and it's the blurb on the back of One Two Three, the best part of your books is the characters you created and love. Readers take them into our hearts. I want to know how you go about plotting. Do you have an idea board or notebook? How did you figure out what was going to happen in any of your books? How did you get from page to whatever? This is the longest one--400 pages, but it reads fast.
Laurie Frankel: It was long because of the 3 narrators. The characters figure out the plots themselves; I have no idea. I don't have an idea board or outline. It goes through many drafts and is very messy for a very long time. I don't know what will happen in many of the drafts. I haven't met these people yet. It's the chicken/egg problem. I have to meet them and write them. Eventually I write them into being so they make their own decisions about what happens and then it's working and I'm not calling the shots.
It's a practical thing. Once they become real enough, they act consistently. They act like real people and sometimes go out of character. They do what they want to do and I just follow.
Nancy Pearl: (Cannot hear him/her.) was asked about his characters. His characters are galley slaves and do what he tells them to do.
Laurie Frankel: That's nice for him. I feel like their galley slaves. They say this isn't working. I wonder if he wrote a clean rough draft.
Nancy Pearl: You had this article in the New York Times. Did you start with one teenager?
Laurie Frankel: I knew there would be 3. I want to do lots of characters. I am interested in how people react to circumstances. These 3 girls are triplets and have a lot in common. They live in a small house with an angry mother but they're wildly different from one another.
Nancy Pearl: I interviewed you for This is How it Always Is. You had to cut down the number of siblings in the family. The more characters the better for you.
Laurie Frankel: Yes, it is for me. They all have to have a plot and the reader has to keep track of them so I have to restrain myself. People are interesting. I sometimes have characters who get combined into one person.
Nancy Pearl: You have the triplets and the idea and are moving along. Did you write it in the order that we read it in or did you write all of Mab's, Monday's, and Mirabel's parts?
Laurie Frankel: It seems like that's what you would do but it's not what I did at all and I don't know why. Because my first and other drafts are pretty terrible and I cut constantly. It wouldn't make sense to write all of one sister and then another. I try to write it in the order I think it will happen in. I have to earn the joy of finding and writing the ending. I wrote through to the end dozens of times. I did think at the beginning that each would tell what it's like at home, school, after school, etc., but that didn't work. I borrow a structural rule and then shed it.
Nancy Pearl: In each chapter, the girls move the story further. At what point did you know what the ending would be?
Laurie Frankel: When it came out of my fingers. Writing becomes like reading and it surprises me; I didn't see it coming. That's great when it happens. That's what I mean by having to earn the ending.
Nancy Pearl: So the ending didn't go through changes?
Laurie Frankel: Plot wise, it didn't change but the lead up to it changed. Some chapters changed completely. That's typical for me. I'll rewrite the first chapter 100 times but the last chapter doesn't change.
Nancy Pearl: Mab gets the first voice and Mirabel gets the last.
Laurie Frankel: In a few spots it was difficult. You have to fix the sticking points.
Nancy Pearl: Can you share some of the sticking points?
Laurie Frankel: It gets really plotty; it's plot driven in a traditional mystery way. These girls set out to solve a mystery like Nancy Drew. I never had written a book like that and had to figure out how and keep it interesting and keep the reader guessing. Their stories had to be equal action scenes and rumination scenes. That took a great deal of editing.
Nancy Pearl: Did you read mysteries to get in the mood? Were there some you were struck by?
Laurie Frankel: I have rigorous standards for the books I like. Like Kevin O'Brien who writes thrillers, people get stabbed and killed and they're scary. It's a different genre. You introduce the scene and play this scene, and reveal the ending.
Nancy Pearl: His books are so scary.
Laurie Frankel: They're so good and terrifying and they haunt you; they don't leave you. I think of them at 3 a.m.
Nancy Pearl: Kevin would love to hear that. Let's talk about you as a reader. When you read a book for fun, you are making notes and nobody will ever see those notes. Fair?
Laurie Frankel: Fair. I do 2 things. I write in the margins. Do you write in your books?
Nancy Pearl: No.
Laurie Frankel: Do I offend you because I do?
Nancy Pearl: No; I put sticky notes. I used to use paper clips and it took a lot of space.
Laurie Frankel: Interesting. I write in the margins. I also write little essays for myself about what I've learned and how I can use it or avoid it. I do it for everything I read. I didn't know that everyone didn't do that. It is my best device and the one thing I've done from the beginning. That is my constant.
Nancy Pearl: Do you write for yourself?
Laurie Frankel: Like fiction?
Nancy Pearl: Do you think, "I wonder if my editor or reader would like this?" or do you write for what you want to read.
Laurie Frankel: I constantly wonder if my editor will like it. I'm not wed to my art.
Nancy Pearl: When you read, is it important to you that a book has a happy ending? Is it important to you when you're writing?
Laurie Frankel: It's important to me that I am happy at the end of it, not necessarily because everyone lives happily ever after. I do want to be happy at the end and am frustrated as a reader with books that make me feel angry at the end. As a writer, I am inclined toward endings that pay off--not necessarily happy but earned.
Nancy Pearl: What about likable or unlikeable characters?
Laurie Frankel: Once you get to know them, they become more complicated so the bad guys become more likable. I wanted people to be evil and they could not be evil.
Nancy Pearl: They mayor was one example. He chose to be in a different way. What are you reading and looking forward to reading?
Laurie Frankel: I started the pandemic with the Hillary Mantel trilogy and it destroyed me. It was amazing. I recommend Sarah Santili's memoir; you have to read it. I recommend Charlotte Mahoney who wrote Once There Were Wolves. She's an amazing writer. She writes huge novels with characters and plots. What are you reading?
Nancy Pearl: One Two Three; I loved it. I discovered 2 mystery writers -- British. I love Maggie Shipstead's The Great Circle. An older title is by Sigrid Nunez, The Friend. Mitz wrote a book about the pet of Virginia and Leonard Wolf's. I loved it. A Place of Greater Safety by Hillary Mantel is set during the French revolution. She makes awful men into charismatic people. You fall in love with them. I share your admiration for Hillary Mantel. Will you ever write a historical novel?
Laurie Frankel: No, it seems undoable to me. I wonder how they do it; it's a miracle.
Nancy Pearl: Even her contemporary novels are wonderful. I think you and I have done a lot of interviews together. It's a delight for me. Good luck with your tour for One Two Three; I hope I get to see you in Seattle.
Laurie Frankel: Thank you for doing this. Are we supposed to take questions?
Nancy Pearl: No, we'll turn it back to Elyse. We can just log off.
Laurie Frankel: It was really lovely and thank you for to everyone who tuned in; I appreciate it. Bye.
Hi everybody, it's Ann Patchett. Now we want you to buy the books and support the bookstore. We need dog biscuits for Sparky. Thank you so much.