Madison Davis on Following Interesting Threads

Inspiration is a funny thing. It can come to us like a lightning bolt, through the lyrics of a song, or in the fog of a dream. Ask any writer where their stories come from and you’ll get a myriad of answers, and in that vein I created the WHAT (What the Hell Are you Thinking?) interview. 

Today’s guest for the WHAT is Madison Davis, author of The Loved Ones: Essays to Bury the Dead which is the winner of the Dzanc Nonfiction Prize

Ideas for our books can come from just about anywhere, and sometimes even we can’t pinpoint exactly how or why. Did you have a specific origin point for your book?

I had a few! The Loved Ones first existed as a number of different projects. The real “idea” was to weave these disparate threads together into a non-traditional memoir. 

There is a section in the book that follows my research into the death of my great uncle who was killed in action in WWII. This storyline began with something like a “bolt of lightning” moment. I had always been fascinated by the story surrounding my great uncle, but I was driving one day—mind wandering in stop-and-go traffic—when I first thought has anyone in the family really looked into this? I realized that the story had been loosely filtered down from my grandmother in the form of scattered details and questions, but no one had tried in earnest to track down answers in the age of the internet. What followed was years of research culminating in a trip abroad to visit the place he died. 

Once the original concept existed, how did you build a plot around it?

I tried a few different ways to weave the content together. There are a lot of moving pieces—names, places, dates, and familial relationships over generations—so I needed to find a structure that a reader could follow. Ultimately, I decided to dedicate a section of the book to each of the central figures. Then, after all my main characters had been defined and the details of their lives and deaths had been told, the final section revisits each through the lens of the funerals and physical remains. Once the reader is well-situated in the narrative, I found I could take more leaps in that last section, draw more connections. 

Have you ever had the plot firmly in place, only to find it changing as the story moved from your mind to paper?

For the most part, my writing evolves on the page over many (many, many) iterations. There is rarely clarity in my mind before it’s on paper (and not for quite a while after that). I find a lot of enjoyment in editing the raw material. I love taking a piece apart and putting it back together in different ways until I see something new in it. Of course, there have been times that I believe something will work but it just falls apart on the page and requires total reimagining.

Do story ideas come to you often, or is fresh material hard to come by?

I’m always writing. Most of the little threads go nowhere. Other pieces combine into a project or grow into a whole piece of their own. At some point in my life, I began to see everything as writing material, for better or worse. I never know which seeds will grow, but I rarely experience a lack of ideas; a lack of time is the more common problem!

How do you choose which story to write next, if you’ve got more than one percolating?

I tend to have various projects percolating. I try very hard to follow my interest. If I’ve lost interest in a piece, it probably won’t become interesting if I force it. If there is something to it, I’ll find myself pulled back to it again down the road. It helps to have 2-3 projects in a rotation. If I’m stuck or struggling with one, I can pivot to another. 

I have 6 cats and a Dalmatian (seriously, check my Instagram feed) and I usually have at least one or two snuggling with me when I write. Do you have a writing buddy, or do you find it distracting?

I write alongside my dog, Stevie. She’s an excellent writing partner. She reminds me to take walks every so often but is otherwise content to just snuggle up and listen to the typing. When I’m struggling to focus, I like to enlist a human writer friend to work near me. It’s great to feel the productive energy in the room for a specified amount of time (set a timer!) and then have a fun, rewarding break with a friend. 

Madison Davis is a writer and editor based in Oakland, California. She is the author of the books Disaster (Timeless Infinite Light; Nightboat 2016) and The Loved Ones (Dzanc 2023).

Jacqueline Friedland on What Makes a Female Character “Strong”? Then v. Now

By: Jacqueline Friedland

If you are a regular reader of women’s fiction, you’ve probably heard the phrase “strong female character” thrown around with increasing frequency these days. Many of us are in favor of reading books that feature strong female leads, but most bookstore or library patrons don’t stop to consider what it actually means to be a “strong woman” within a story or elsewhere. Once we begin to examine this phrasing, it becomes apparent that as a society, our collective modern-day definition of a “strong woman” has evolved over time and is currently very different from what it once was. 

There have long been multiple definitions of “strength.” For starters, we must acknowledge the fact that strength can refer to superior physical prowess or to a hearty metaphorical backbone, meaning how someone behaves. Let’s start with the easy one: physical strength. Back in the day, (think Victorian times or even earlier), a woman could be considered strong for obvious reasons, like being able to carry multiple heavy buckets of water uphill from the well or heave large piles of laundered clothing along with herself while climbing a ladder up from a cellar. These domestic skills, as well as capability with tasks like sewing, laundering, cooking, and cleaning, were the ones that led a woman to be respected. Even better was if the woman had a body strong enough to birth multiple healthy children, providing her husband with offspring to help work the land or heirs to carry on the family legacy. These were the accomplishments that society applauded, and so a woman who could achieve them with ease was valued for her strength. Today, many women are still engaged in physical labor that requires great strength, but the activities which society values have changed. Now, if asked about females with physical strength, many people would look to professional athletes as the pinnacles of success. Where a useful and industrious homemaker would once have been considered a great asset, domestic work is less valued today than it was in centuries past. With more women working outside the home, new metrics are being used to evaluate female strength.

Long ago, a woman was admired if she had moral virtue, religious piety, modesty, and a strong work ethic. Most of all, self-sacrifice was the utmost commendable trait. Women were believed to be the moral touchstones and influencers for their families. Thanks to restrictive gender roles and pre-set expectations, there wasn’t much a woman could do to impact those around herself in ways that would be considered positive, other than keeping a tidy home, instructing her children in manners, and performing other wifely duties with grace and skill. 

Luckily, there were women who broke the mold, even during those restrictive eras long ago, and acted in ways that those of us with more modern sensibilities would consider to be deserving of the highest praise. We are all aware that women are conspicuously absent from the historical record. It’s not because they weren’t participating in the major events of their day. They just had to do it behind closed doors. Becoming involved in matters outside the domestic sphere required a level of creativity and bravery well beyond what most of us can imagine. 

One woman who challenged her times by participating in activist activities in the form of abolitionist endeavors, is Ann Phillips, who was an American hero born in the early 1800s. Physically, Ann was the opposite of strong. She suffered from a mysterious illness that was never diagnosed and which left her bedridden for days at a time. It is widely conjectured now that the condition she had was rheumatoid arthritis, but that autoimmune condition had not yet been discovered during Ann’s day. Because of her symptoms, poor Ann was often prevented from leaving her house for weeks on end. Even so, she managed to find ways to continue spreading the abolitionist message. Whether by writing speeches for her husband, the great orator Wendell Phillips, to deliver in public or by sending letters that helped create and solidify clandestine abolitionist plans, Ann did not give up. She was a pinnacle of what people in modern times would consider a “strong woman.” 

Now, in 2023, the definition of “strength” continues to evolve. We live in time where women no longer aspire to beauty and domestic bliss as the be-all-end-all. Women aspire to this amorphous concept of strength, which is now associated with resilience, empathy, vulnerability (all of which were qualities that Ann displayed in spades during the antebellum era). A person need only scroll through a social media site to see mothers wishing daughters happy birthday with messages like: “to my strong, resilient, brave, empathetic daughter.” This is vastly different from the wishes sent to women in greeting cards of generations past, that read: “to my beautiful daughter,” or “to the prettiest girl in town.” Similarly, when “influencers” first appeared on social media, advertisers tried to show us all the beautiful people as a way to convince us to buy whatever they were selling. Now, the advertisers have wised up, and they are showing us “real” people instead, people who look like us, women who aren’t wearing makeup, or who didn’t have time for a salon blowout before the photo shoot. We are moving away from images of perfection toward a more realistic approach because society has come to appreciate that a woman cannot be strong without being her authentic self. 

A strong woman seeks happiness actively. She challenges herself and those around her. Strength is no longer about heavy lifting or individual achievement so much as it is about collective empowerment. No longer is a strong woman the one who can make the floor shine brightest with her mop. It is the women who engage, create, resist, persist, and who lift the rest of us up along with them who are ultimately the strongest women of all.

Jacqueline Friedland is the USA Today best-selling and multi-award-winning author of He Gets That From Me, That's Not a Thing, and Trouble the Water. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and NYU Law School, she practiced briefly as a commercial litigator in Manhattan and taught Legal Writing and Lawyering Skills at the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law. She returned to school after not too long in the legal world, earning her Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College. Jacqueline regularly reviews fiction for trade publications and appears as a guest lecturer. When not writing, she loves to exercise, watch movies with her family, listen to music, make lists, and dream about exotic vacations. She lives in Westchester, New York, with her husband, four children, and two very lovable dogs.

The Saturday Slash

Don't be afraid to ask for help with the most critical first step of your writing journey - the query.

I’ve been blogging since 2011 and have critiqued over 200 queries here on the blog using my Hatchet of Death. This is how I edit myself, it is how I edit others. If you think you want to play with me and my hatchet, shoot me an email.

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If you’re ready to take the next step, I also offer editing services.

My thoughts are in blue, words to delete are in red, suggested rephrasing is in orange.

Six clans are threatening to tear apart. This doesn't work well, in terms of a hook. It doesn't mean anything to me, emotionally. If I said - six people are about to get into a fight - you wouldn't really care a whole lot, b/c you don't know those six people and don't have any connection to them. I also don't know what is being threatened here - a union? each other? And I don't really know why it matters, or what is it stake. The words below will fill me on in that, for sure, but I think you need a better hook.

Saoirse Cavanaugh, heir to the throne of Aineoi, only wants to be blessed with light on her sixteenth birthday. Doesn't really matter to me, b/c I don't know what that means But when she instead finds herself bequeathed with shadows – and therefore unable to claim her inheritance – she flees, terrified of her newfound darkness, leaving her younger sister, Eabha, behind. What does it mean that she was given light instead of darkness? It's an interesting concept, but the worldbuilding isn't present, so I don't know how significant it is, or what it really means.

Despite it being Saoirse’s sixteenth birthday, fifteen-year-old Eabha finds herself bestowed with light, an opposition to her sister’s darkness. Who is bestowing this? Gods? Magic? What does it signify Struggling with her unanticipated power and the burden of what was once Saoirse’s inheritance, she desperately searches for her sister, not physically, I assume? Through what means? all while fighting the encroachment of Dubhian – a rival clan – upon Aineoi, and attempting to battle the growing bond between her and Torin, heir to Dubhian’s throne.

When Saoirse stumbles upon a group of patriots desperate to raise a fallen clan, what does that mean? she realizes that aiding them in their quest to find their lost patron goddesses would perhaps rescind her darkness and bless her with light, and therefore return her to her rightful place as Aineoi’s heir. But fighting against her shadows what does that look like? only allows them to grow claws and teeth and strength to defeat her, and soon the former crown lady odd phrasing here? is trapped in a war against herself.

As both sisters drive towards their seemingly impossible goals, they realize that something far more sinister is simmering beneath the surface of the clans. Secrets have lay forgotten for far too long, and if the sisters don’t uncover answers soon, they risk far more than their inheritance. A new darkness is rising, and this time, light is not enough to stop it. Love this last line, but I think we need more of an idea of what that overall threat is. My advice is to shear down the individual sister's storyline paragraphs, and give more room to the overarching story of this darkness that is rising

SISTERS OF THE NIGHT, an 86,000-word YA fantasy novel inspired by medieval Ireland, will appeal to fans of The Queen’s Rising by Rebecca Ross and Sky In The Deep by Adrienne Young. [personalize letter to agent here]

I live in the South amid the incessant heat, spending my time trying to cram more books into my overflowing shelf while shooing away a spunky dog who loves to pester me while I’m writing. This is my first novel. Bios are tough when you don't have writing credits. I personally think anything cutesy isn't valuable. I know that you have a very Irish name - instead of sharing little personal details that aren't relevant, go for an interest and knowledge of Irish legend and folklore, your own ancestry, etc.

Overall, the writing here is good, but you're relying on the reader having some knowledge of world building that they just don't have - what does it mean to be gifted with light or darkness? Who is gifting this? You use six clans in the hook, but I don't think six are mentioned in the query. I don't know what they are tearing apart, or why it matters. There's too much attention paid to the individual storylines without really showing how they will intersect and come together to culminate in this overall plot - which I really don't have a grasp on at all.