Stitching New Stories
The offer for my first novella required a Christmas theme, a log cabin, a romance and less than 20,000 words. Known for writing longer historical novels – from 80,000 to 130,000 words – based on the lives of actual women, I wasn’t sure if I could write something both shorter and without the spine of an historical woman to show me the way.
“This is a good for you,” my agent of 16 years told me. ” You always do better with a challenge.”
She might have been referring to how I felt the first time I wrote a series. The second book needed tons of revisions because I didn’t really understand that readers want to know what happens next to the characters they’ve met in book one rather than be introduced to new characters who might be dealing with the same landscape, problems or even goals. Readers want continuity. It took courage for me to rewrite that second book and then the third but The Kinship and Courage Series went on to be my biggest seller and I wrote three more series after that.
This log cabin novella would be a new adventure overcoming the fear of looking foolish. But as writer Annie Dilliard once wrote, “You can’t test courage cautiously.” So I plunged in.
I gleaned my idea from a Bible Quilt book given to me by a friend cleaning out her closet and a story I’d read about an 1850 quilt made up of signature blocks given to a man who had courted all the signature women. He married none of them but kept the quilt blocks. His new wife quilted them together.
What if I created a thread salesman hoping to help his employer, a widow trying to keep her log cabin store from going under? And what if he decided he’d sell more thread if he suggested to several women on his itinerant route that they each make a Bible Quilt Block and hint that he might just wed the creator of a well-stitched block. Of course he didn’t tell any of the women about the others and he didn’t tell his employer either. What if the widowed owner of the log cabin store found herself falling in love only to discover her thread salesman’s thread-bare scheme. What if her customers held her responsible for being rejected in marriage? What if at the Christmas bazaar, all the individual women involved discover their Bible Block competition? Could I bring those events to a romantic, humorous believable conclusion in less than 20,000 words? That was my challenge.
“A Courting Quilt” was finished and accepted near my 65th birthday. It’s part of nine author’s works in what is now a New York Times Bestselling collection called A Log Cabin Christmas (Barbour) released in September. My foray into new territory stretched my skills, introduced me to new readers and reminded me that we are never too old to learn new ways. New risks can keep us writing.
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