Writing a novel is not productive work. It’s a constant dance of two steps forward and twenty back. Backstory is a good example of what I mean here. As I edit manuscripts of new writers, I see that many struggle with backstory, typically erring on the side of excess. One of my consistent notes is: not everything belongs on the page. The author will always know more about the characters, setting, and situation than the reader needs to know.
Case in point, I did a lot of research on eugenics and forced sterilization for my debut novel The Last Carolina Girl, but little of that information ended up on the page. I write historical fiction to explore the unknown stories of women whose lives have been irrevocably altered by the consequences of past events and practices. My focus is on a character who is up against the odds. In this case, the main character is fighting for her future against a world that doesn’t always value the wild spirit of a Carolina girl. Her story just so happens to be set against the backdrop of the wrenching era of state-mandated eugenics and forced sterilization.
A lot of research went into being able to write the book, but it did not get typed out on the page. While I needed to have an historical understanding for the sake of context and accuracy, the reader does not need to know all of that information for the sake of this particular story. But this is why I enjoy book events where I can discuss some of the research I came across.
I’m often asked what the most surprising thing is that I learned along the way. My response: how commonplace the eugenics movement was within our society.
“Eugenics” means well-born or well-bred. The intention is to “breed out” undesirable traits to create a better, carefully selected, and superior gene pool. This was an effort to remove genetic “defectives,” including the insane, the “feeble-minded,” criminals, the promiscuous, those with physical disabilities, living in poverty, etc. The reasons could be rather subjective and unquantifiable, but the thought was that those “traits” could be removed from the gene pool, thus creating a better society through selective breeding.
The eugenics movement took shape in the United States in the early 1900s. Minority women, immigrants, the physically and mentally ill, and the poor were sterilized at the highest rates. Some patients were not fully educated about the procedure they were undergoing. The truth was sometimes hidden from them and labeled as unspecified “medical necessity,” “pelvic disease,” or even appendectomy.
The practice became so mainstream that advocates disseminated propaganda through brochures, posters, advertisements, and more. Below are a few pictures from a scrapbook assembled by members of the American Eugenics Society (source: NPR). Some depict booths set up at fairs where eugenicists would educate people on their movement to create a “superior race.” They would hold fitter family and better baby contests that were essentially beauty pageants where winners were chosen as examples of desirable genetic traits.
The practice didn’t stop with the U.S. Nazis looked at the American program and used it as inspiration for its cleansing of “genetically inferior” races.
It’s estimated that 60,000 to 70,000 people were sterilized throughout the United States between 1907 and 1983. North Carolina alone sterilized more than 7,000 people and my own county, Mecklenburg, sterilized 485—three times the rate of any other NC county. This fact is why I chose Matthews, NC, as the location for part of this story.
In the 1960s, sentiment toward forced sterilization shifted as attitudes toward marginalized groups changed. By the end of the 20th century, legal sterilization ended. But remnants and sentiments persist yet today.
Here’s only a short sample:
Between 2006 and 2010, California sterilized 148 female prisoners, according to a 2013 report from the Center for Investigative Reporting.
In 2014, a Republican Arizona state senator was forced to resign after he publicly called for the sterilization of women on public assistance.
In 2015, the AP reported that Nashville prosecutors were making sterilizations part of plea negotiations with female defendants.
In 2020, a whistleblower claimed that an ICE facility for immigrants in Georgia had performed hysterectomies without informed consent.
None of that information above appears in my novel. While I needed to understand the historical context, the characters within the story did not need to relay that information to the reader. Had I been writing a legal story or a non-fiction book, the case would’ve been different.
And this is why novel writing is not highly productive work, at least not if being productive means having tangible results to show for your efforts. Writing, especially within the historical fiction genre, requires massive amounts of time spent on efforts that don’t have measurable results—research and brainstorming, among them. Even in the parts that do produce measured results in the form of word count, one day’s efforts may be tomorrow’s deletions.
So, if a constant sense of accomplishment and tangible proof of a hard day’s work is what you need for a sense of fulfillment, perhaps don’t consider novel writing.
Sources:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/30/california-prisons-forced-sterilizations-belly-beast