Maybe it’s my Midwesterner niceness, but I constantly find myself apologizing to readers when they tell me that my books make them cry. I don’t set out to write tearful stories. Honestly, I’m a pretty happy person overall, but when it comes to my novels, I can’t help but delve into some rather emotionally-wrought material.
My husband keeps asking me when I’m going to write something funny. We’ve been married for nearly 25 years and one of our favorite pastimes is making one another laugh. So, I understand his sentiment, but so far, I have been drawn to the stories I tell because of a sense of urgency. And because I seem to have a thing for melancholy, but it appears I’m in good company.
Music plays a large role in inspiring my writing. I create playlists for each book, and sometimes listen to one song on repeat while crafting. For my current work-in-progress, that song is Billie Eilish’s “What Was I Made For.” For my second novel, The Girls We Sent Away, it was Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now.”
One day, I happened upon another song by Joni: “The Magdalene Laundries.” In the video clip below, Joni explains how she came to write the song. I instantly connected with it in two ways: the subject matter of maternity homes and how Joni talked about melancholy in her writing.
She tells that a friend of hers asked, “You know Joni, you’re basically a cheerful person but you write these melancholy songs. Seems to me you should write more in the daylight.”
So she tried. She began composing a cheerful chord progression. Then a headline caught her eye. It was about the discovery of unmarked graves at an Irish Magdalene Laundry. These laundries were institutions in Ireland that were similar to American maternity homes. They were run by the Catholic Church as a place to confine “fallen women.” This could include unwed mothers, those deemed promiscuous, and prostitutes. In 1993, authorities discovered the bodies of 155 women on the site of one of those former laundries.
After Joni read the news, she took those cheerful chords and layered them with lyrics that paid tribute to these women who had been mistreated.
To summarize why Joni, a happy person, writes emotionally-heavy songs: Beauty has a little melancholy in it.
I’ve found that to be true. But I still find myself apologizing to readers when they post reviews such as these (all taken from GoodReads):
“Another well-researched, poignant, heart-wrenching, fabulous, tissues-needed book.” ~ Elizabeth of Silver’s Reviews
“This was such a beautiful and heartbreaking book and the fact that this is a part of our history is really devastating… Have tissues (and I mean A LOT) of tissues on hand for this one.” ~ Danielle Pollman
“This book had me actually sobbing, finding myself going to my children and hugging them tightly.” ~Kera’s Always Reading
With pretty much every apology, readers have assured me that the tears are good. They say that the emotional response shows how invested they are in the stories and the characters.
Like Joni, I am a basically content person, though when I write, I can’t ignore the melancholy of life. I keep feeling an urgency to write these deeply emotional stories. And, the truth of the matter is, they sometimes break me, too. I can’t tell you how many tissues I went through in the writing and rewriting of a very pivotal scene (no spoilers!) in The Girls We Sent Away. As another early reader said of that scene:
“Without offering spoilers, I'll say that the scene…is one of the more emotional I've read in my life… I do not often feel that level of connection to characters and the story as I'm reading a novel.” ~ Olivia Caridi
So, dear Reader, I’m doing my best to not be sorry for the tears you may shed. It’s hard for this born-and-bred Midwestern girl to bring you discomfort, but I will take those tears as a compliment. And I’ll suggest to my marketing team that we make tissues available with each purchase.
The Girls We Sent Away hits bookshelves everywhere March 5, 2024. It’s the story of Lorraine Delford, the girl-next-door who seems to have it all – an upstanding family, a perfect boyfriend, an idyllic home complete with a white picket fence, and the ambition to become an astronaut – until she finds herself pregnant out of wedlock and is sent away to a maternity home to hide her secret shame. Set in the 1960s during the intersection of the Baby Scoop Era and Space Race, this powerful and affecting story explores autonomy, belonging, and a quest for agency when the illusions of life-as-you-know-it fall away.