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Harriet Scott Chessman

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A writing morning leads to the morning of a story

June 8, 2015 By Harriet Chessman Leave a Comment

“Morning here is not like any mornings Hannah Pearl has ever known.”

Sometimes a first sentence surprises you, and you just thank the spirits of your writing morning.  You know it’s a good start, because it opens a door to a whole landscape you can start to discover.  As soon as this opening announced itself, for a short story to be called “Once, Something,” I started wondering, what other mornings has this woman known?  I knew she was an old woman, who had lost an ocean of memory, and I had to know:  what remained for her?

Over time, this short story became a chapter in a novel filled with seven such interlinked stories: Someone Not Really Her Mother.  My character’s morning opened up into glimpses of the story of Hannah’s, her daughter’s, and her granddaughters’ lives.

I have so cherished the chance to come back to this novel, after eleven years.  This is unusual, for a writer, to have this chance!  With the insightful and astute help of my publisher Mark Cunningham of Atelier26 Books, I have combed through this fiction a few times, catching this and that, pruning here, adding there, making sure the seeds of the story have scattered in the way I wish, getting the shapes and colors into a satisfying whole.

I hope you will enjoy entering into this landscape, through this particular fictional morning, “not like any mornings Hannah Pearl has ever known.”

 

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