Rita Williams-Garcia Q&A Part 2: Decisions, Decisions, Decisions
A garçonnière (bachelor's apartment) similar to the one Byron and Pearce occupied in A Sitting in St. James. Photo from the Library of Congress.
The quantity of creative decisions you have to make when writing a novel, especially in the early stages of the work, can feel overwhelming sometimes.
One reason I love talking with published authors about how they made some of their creative choices is to learn more ways for managing all that decision making. Because you can learn to write compelling fiction.
In Part 2 of my Q&A with Rita Willilams-Garcia about her historical YA novel, A Sitting in St. James (Quill Tree Books, 2021), we turned to one of her themes—entitlement—and some of her other choices for the book, like the omniscient narration and the plot’s focus. (In Part 1, Rita talked about several of her characters and how she created them.)
Michele: Entitlement is a major theme of this novel, especially with the men and the white people (Madame Sylvie!). Was that something that you came to this novel wanting to explore or did it arise out of your research or writing?
Rita Williams-Garcia: Oh, I definitely wanted to take on entitlement. I think that was one of the starting points, because the very first image that I had was of the two boys. Well, one in particular [Byron, the heir to the plantation].
Then when I realized, oh, he loves the land. It’s not just that he is the heir, but that he loves this way of life … even to his own detriment, even though that would force him to live a life that would not truly be his life. It’s so important to him to carry on what is expected of him to uphold the land.
He feels entitled to it, and the living that it provides and he doesn’t see cruelty … This is his environment. He is a big part of it. He doesn’t really see it. He just sees that this is his endowment, this is his inheritance, and that it is something to be proud of.
And in that way, I’m trying to really understand people who come out of that tradition, whose ancestors come out of that tradition, and their sense of pride. That is my way of trying to understand: How can you feel proud of something that exploits other human beings?
The answer being, because they don’t see a human being.
So it’s that feeling of righteousness. Not even to question it. Not even to argue ‘I am right,’ but to feel it, to know it, to not question it.
That was important for me to try to make that visible for readers today, especially young readers, high school readers, trying to grapple with our history.
Because it’s very easy for us to sit here in the 21st century and say slavery was barbaric and cruel and wrong, and you should feel ashamed if that’s where your ancestry comes out of. If you were a slave holder, or in some way you were enriched by or profited by, or your life made easier as a result of slavery, it’s very easy for us to judge from this spectrum.
But I’m always trying to say, ‘How do we get here?’
Trust me, I don’t condone it. I do not, but I’m looking for more than condemnation.
Because we’re still living it. We are still living slavery… But why is that serpent still snaking around? Why is it still here?
The right didn’t invent it, but look at it. It is flourishing. When you give it a chance to rear its head, you see that it’s not just one or two people or places, a few groups. No! It’s fairly rampant.
I think that’s the purpose of books—to open that discussion. And have a discussion, not a screaming match, ’cause if you’re gonna scream at each other, you might as well stay at home and scream, ’cause nobody’s gonna hear anybody.
I think books provide that soul connection. If you can get inside a character, or if you can have enough distance so that you can look and then you come to the conclusion. I don’t think the book has to tell you what to think. I think the book has to present something, and you can argue with it, you can wrestle with it, you can think about it.
Don’t be afraid of critical thinking, ya’ll!
Michele: That’s the nice thing about a novel. Two people can interpret what they read and not feel like they’re being beat over the head by someone telling them they’re stupid for believing X, Y or Z.
Rita: Yeah, exactly, exactly.
Michele: I want to ask about the narration and the omniscient voice, because it was just so delicious. Was it evident from the start that you wanted to use an omniscient narrator given the scope of the story and your big cast, or how did you choose?
Rita: I want to say, ‘Oh, that was all by design.’ I truly want to say all of that, but I think what happened was that I took a year off before I started to really write, to just fill myself up to do the research, to read, to read works in French, Creole, and then 19th-century literature, just so I could establish how I wanted the narrative voice to feel.
I didn’t want to completely mimic the voice of that time, because I think that’s kind of tiresome, but I also didn’t want to betray it either. I didn’t want to write a 21st-century narrative style. And then say, ‘Oh yes. This is historic. This is period.’
I think what happened is that it just came. The one word, “patience,” just came and I was like, well. Who said that? [chuckles]
And then I heard it again at different points because I knew that I would have to do a lot of digression in order to tell the story. Because I didn’t want to say, ‘Okay, we’re going to start from 1754, and then end up in 1860.’
No. So I wanted to just kind of coax the reader and kind of make a pact with a reader... I promise you, I promise you, I will deliver you. Just patience, patience. And so that’s where that came from.
I think it did help me that I was reading narrative with that direct address to the reader, and that was fairly common during the time.
Michele: Yeah, I just re-read A Christmas Carol [originally published in 1843], and Dickens uses “I” as the narrator, and not in first person, but as the omniscient “I.” I did not remember that.
Your characters have such rich and interconnected back stories, and your story is like 200 years long. So how did you figure out what the main plot would be, you know what the focus of this particular book would be?
Rita: So here’s the thing—that’s always first with me. Before I start writing, I already know what the point is. What the end game is. What we call the climax.
I know that now I have a dozen characters and they have to inter-relate and the back stories have to make sense. The main themes that the work is about, they have to swim together and then finally get to that stream and then everybody marries up and moves along.
It helps me a lot to have a timeline. Because this is historical, I had not just one timeline, but I had several. I needed a timeline that talked about what was happening in the world during the period of the novel. So the first one is really for me.
The second one is for the characters. Since Madame is really kind of the through-line character (I don’t know if she is the main character, she might be), I have to know: What would she know?
And then there is the other calendar, the story calendar—that’s for me, so that I don’t get things mixed up. We’re still dealing with time, and so I have to be a time manager.
Here time is going to be very wide and expansive, but as we get toward the ending, time is going to compress and things are going to happen.
Then I kind of look overall. Did I make this connection between something in the first half of the book that is now crucial in the last half? …
Because it’s historical, instead of rewriting the book and trying to figure out, Okay, should this be here or does it belong here, I do it in the timelines, in the calendars, and I do it as I’m writing.
First I have an idea, and then as I’m writing, Oh, take that out because you know what? You don’t need that. Let it go.
And then things start to shift and then I go, Oh, okay, alright, if that is going to happen, then this is going have to happen here. Okay, are we clear on that? Yes, I have those executive meetings with self.
So it’s a whole lot of time management, and only because it’s historical.
In Part 3 of Rita’s Q&A, we talk about revision, sharing drafts, and what she’s working on now.