Following Ideas That Have Heat
Author Ellen Birkett Morris discusses how following an idea that held heat for her helped her write an award-winning novel.
Every writer has felt the weight of a great story idea, the kind of idea that burrows into your psyche demanding to be addressed. For me that was a 2014 piece on National Public Radio about children with past life memories of war.
The program discussed a research project at the University of Virginia that authenticated past life stories of very young children by comparing details the children provided about their previous lives to news accounts of the time. The children often cited traumatic events like going to war, dying, or being tortured. They offered concrete details like the names of ships, how they died, and who else was present. Sometimes the stories and the facts lined up.
I felt a strong urge to explore the impact such memories might have on a family. When I started writing I had no idea it would take eight years of writing and rewriting, one less-than-great agent, and many submissions before Beware the Tall Grass would find a home. The novel won The Donald L. Jordan Prize for Literary Excellence, selected by Lan Samantha Chang and was published by Columbus State University Press in March.
Beware the Tall Grass weaves the stories of the Sloans, a modern family grappling with their young son Charlie's troubling memories of a past life as a soldier in Vietnam, and Thomas Boone, a young man caught up in the drama of mid-60s America who is sent to Vietnam. Eve Sloan struggles as a mother to make sense of Charlie's increasing references to war, and her attempts to get to the bottom of Charlie's past life memories threaten her marriage, while Thomas is challenged with loss and first love, before being thrust into combat and learning what matters most.
The writing began with the family’s dilemma. All parents argue about how to raise their children, but how many parents are tested by something as dramatic and challenging as a child who has memories of war? Obsession is a hallmark of character building in fiction, so I made sure Eve was obsessed with giving Charlie a perfect childhood.
When it came to plot, I researched the steps someone might take to explore past life memories and sent Eve and Charlie on a journey through the medical system despite of husband Dan’s opposition.
That was going fine, but I had a bigger problem. I am by nature a short story writer, and I wasn’t sure I could write a novel length work with a single point of view character. I decided to explore the experiences of Thomas, who suffers loss and goes to fight in Vietnam.
Thomas’s defining characteristic was a desire to take care of those he loved. The roadmap for his side of the story followed him through basic training and onto the battlefield.
I grounded both sides of the story with specific, authenticating detail. I made sure there was a visual reference point with metaphoric power, in this case the tall grass, “where nothing good ever happens.”
My remaining challenge was how best to depict something as strange as past life memories. I was writing about the unknowable, but I absolved myself of the responsibility of having to explain it. I focused instead on the characters and their dilemmas and kept the drama dialed up.
I created problems designed to test my characters’ weaknesses and illuminate their true natures. I wrote Eve and Thomas’s sections one after the other in the hope of creating echoes between the narratives. I trusted myself to find my way into telling the mystery of the story in a satisfactory way and it worked.
When I was sure I had the story in place, I sent the novel around to agents. I got an agent who used my query to pitch the project to editors and didn’t suggest any edits of their own. They weren’t in touch very often and after a period of time, and warnings from other writers, I ceased that relationship.
I continued to revise Beware the Tall Grass while I looked for the perfect home for it. It became a story of love and courage and the things that connect us all.
When I came across the Donald L. Jordan Prize for Literary Excellence with its criteria of “upholding human values, such as trust, generosity, love, gratitude, or responsibility” I knew I had the right publisher.
My experience writing and publishing Beware the Tall Grass solidified all my beliefs about writing: Follow ideas that have heat for you because they will have heat for readers, build strong characters with distinctive traits and create challenges designed especially for them, provide a central image that encompasses the theme and has metaphoric power, write and rewrite allowing yourself time to understand the story, and search the marketplace for the right home for your work. And, of course, keep your eye out for that perfect idea.
Check out Ellen Birkett Morris' Beware the Tall Grass here:
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Ellen Birkett Morris’s debut novel Beware the Tall Grass won the Donald L. Jordan Award for Literary Excellence, judged by Lan Samantha Chang. She is the author of Lost Girls: Short Stories, winner of the Pencraft Award. Morris is also the author of Abide and Surrender, poetry chapbooks. Her fiction has appeared in Shenandoah, Antioch Review, Notre Dame Review, and South Carolina Review, among other journals. Morris is a recipient of an Al Smith Fellowship for her fiction from the Kentucky Arts Council, and grants from the Kentucky Foundation for Women and the Elizabeth George Foundation. Her essays have appeared in The Keepthings, Newsweek, Next Avenue, AARP’s The Ethel, Oh Reader magazine, and on National Public Radio.
