MY
STORY - MY JOURNEY AS AN AUTHOR
I
always loved to read!
When I was young I never dreamed of becoming a writer,
but I always knew I was a reader. It was absolutely my favorite thing
to do. Naturally it all began with my parents reading to me, which they
did a lot. But it wasn't long before I was reading on my own. I
remember the best part of my day would be coming home for lunch from
school, hurrying to my room after eating, and lying down on my bed to
read my book. I had many favorite books when I was young, but the first
ones I remember were the Oz series by L. Frank Baum. Dorothy, a girl
only a little older than me was the heroine. She was always brave, had
a charming sense of humor, and always thought about justice — she
always helped those in need. Her adventures took her to places that
simply delighted me. How did the author think of
such things? For example one of my favorite books in the series was Ozma
of Oz. Dorothy finds herself in the land of the Wheelers
after being tossed into the ocean during a terrible storm. She is
hungry. She spies some trees and goes to investigate.
....One
was quite full of square paper boxes, which grew in clusters on all the
limbs, and upon the biggest and ripest boxes the word "lunch" could be
read, in neat raised letters….
The leaves of the trees were all paper napkins….
Dorothy sits down to eat.
....Inside
she found, nicely wrapped in white papers, a ham sandwich, a piece of
sponge-cake, a pickle, a slice of new cheese and an apple. Each thing
had a separate stem, and so had to be picked off the side of the box….
Each book was full of such gems. One of my other
favorite books was The Secret Garden. And in grade
five, I read every single Nancy Drew mystery that had been written. In
grade ten I remember the principal coming into our geography class to
scold us for not paying attention. He noticed that I had a paperback
hidden behind my geography book. He strode over, grabbed the book, and
said, "This is what I mean! Reading novels when you should be studying
geography!" But then he noticed that the book was War and
Peace by Leo Tolstoy, a classic. "Well," he huffed, turning
red, "you still shouldn't be reading books in class
but if you have to you could read something like
this." My problem was once I started a book I couldn't put it down, no
matter what.
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How
I started to write.
Around that time I was bitten by the theatre bug, and I
began to take acting classes. It wasn't long before I decided I wanted
to be an actor. I still loved reading though, and when I went away to
university I took a degree in English, spending all my extra time
acting in university productions. I loved it, but I also loved studying
Shakespeare and reading all those great authors. When I graduated I
moved to London England for two years to follow my dream and to go to
acting school. I then moved to Toronto and began working as a
professional actor. I was pretty good, I think, and I got quite a lot
of work, but still, as with all actors I did have times when I was out
of work. I hung around with a group of actors who happened to be
writing in their spare time.
They used to share their stories. I remember one day
hearing a story, a fantasy, and thinking it was delightful. I thought
I'd like to try to do that. So I went home and sat down at my kitchen
table with a sheet of paper. But what to write? I looked at the
flowered teapot sitting in front of me. I thought, what if the teapot
were magic? What if there were a brother and sister, home alone,
fighting? What if they tumbled into the kitchen, knocked against the
teapot, and shrank! I stared at the table, which
was beside the window, filled with plants. What if they ended up on the
plant table and met the various plants, and what if the plants had
personalities, which matched their names such as Professor Ivy, the
scary Spider Plant, etc.
I read this story to my friends a few days later. They
liked it! I had so much fun writing it that I decided to write another.
This too was a fantasy. The first story I wrote was five pages long.
The second was ten. The third was twenty. They kept getting longer and
longer. For a couple years I did this strictly as a hobby, never even
considering publication.
It wasn't until I had to take a break from acting
because I was pregnant with my first child that I decided to try
writing my first full-length book. That was the summer of 1977. This
book was also a fantasy. It was the story of a rich boy and a poor boy
who decided to switch places, a little like The Prince and
the Pauper, by Mark Twain. I loved writing it.
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How
I came to write stories for children.
I must say that during all those years I didn't think
of myself as writing for children. I was writing stories that happened
to have young people as the lead characters.
When I finished this book, for the first time I thought
of showing it to someone. I sent it to the National Film Board of
Canada, hoping they would make it into a movie. They didn't, but the
letter I got was full of encouragement. It said I should continue to
write, that I obviously had talent, and that Canada needed more good
writers for children. Was that what I was doing? I didn't even realize
I was writing for children. I thought I was writing fantasy for all
ages.
I began to think about this business of writing for
children. The next book would be specifically for
young people. I got my inspiration one day glancing out a window in our
apartment in Montreal. My husband, daughter and I had moved there in
78. A huge black moving van was parked on the residential street. Well,
that wasn't unusual. However, when it was still there the next day I
began to wonder. What was it still doing there? A moving van never
stays longer than it takes to load. Whom did it belong to? By the third
day my imagination began to run wild. It was ominous looking, wasn't
it? Perhaps there were bad people hiding in it. Kidnappers! They were
waiting for unsuspecting children to walk by them, spiriting them off
into the van. But why? I had been reading a lot recently about nuclear
war and the danger we were in on this planet. It occurred to me — what
if the kidnappers were from the future? They would need children
because a nuclear war had killed all the children and the human race
was in danger of dying out. So children were being stolen from our
present into the future, by people (deformed from radiation sickness)
using a time machine. A twelve-year-old girl, Rebecca, (the name of my
little girl) from Winnipeg, (living in the same house I grew up in),
would be the main character. Looking out the window early one morning
she sees a boy from her class being kidnapped. She runs to tell her
parents, but they think she's been dreaming. The police agree. And
apparently his father doesn't care and thinks he's just run away,
again. Rebecca never liked this boy but she knows what she saw and she
feels she must do something. So she follows another
child who she sees being pulled into a van — and she ends up in the
future.
I was very fortunate to be able to ask a close friend
of my husband's to read the manuscript for me. His name is George
Szanto. He was a professor of communications at McGill University. He
began to tutor me. He critiqued that manuscript over and over and I did
draft after draft. Really, George trained me in the way I write today.
I still write a first draft quickly but then do numerous drafts
afterwards. I began to send out the manuscript, but it was rejected
time after time. Then I got the idea for my second book. My husband and
I had gone to a movie, Apocalypse Now, based on the
Joseph Conrad book Heart of Darkness. In it a man
who thinks he is sane is really quite insane. It made me think of all
the dictators of the world — men who surely didn't think of themselves
as crazy but men who were crazy. At the same time I had been reading a
lot about genetic engineering and had just seen a long special on it on
TV. So I decided to write about a dictator who controlled the world
through genetic engineering. This book became The D.N.A.
Dimension.
I feel I should include here something about my career
paths. Before I became pregnant I had always intended to return to the
stage. However, after Rebecca was born something odd happened. Every
time I tried to go back to work she got sick. It was as if she had
different plans for me, and it was not to be an actor.
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My
first Science Fiction books.
Eventually I gave up trying to find acting work and
stayed home to take care of her. But I still needed some intellectual
stimulation. So, I turned to my writing. It was during this time that I
wrote my first two science fiction books, the ones I have just
described. I would get a neighbor who was a high school student to come
over every day at 3:30pm. She would stay until 5:30, either taking
Rebecca to the park or staying right there in the apartment. I was
always aware of how little time I had, and I'd sit down and write like
crazy. I didn't think about my story during the day — I seemed to have
the ability to concentrate on Rebecca and then, when it was time to
write I'd tune into the story. (I can't do that anymore — now when I'm
writing I think about the story all the time.) I sometimes wonder if
that's part of the reason my writing style is so fast-paced — I only
had those two hours a day.
I began to send manuscripts out to publishers and
received one rejection after another. In fact I believe The
Fusion Factor, my book about a kidnapped child, must have
gotten at least twenty rejections. When Rebecca was a little older, I
began to think about returning to acting. However, just then I
submitted the short story to a Canadian publisher and it was accepted.
Now I felt I was a writer. Actually the story was never published but
being accepted at that moment made a huge difference to me and was
probably the turning point in my career.
Then came the idea for my third science fiction book, Zanu.
The lead character was still Rebecca and this time she would go into a
future run by big business. As I wrote I continued to send out my other
books. I'd joined CANSCAIP (Canadian Society of Children's Authors,
Illustrators and Performers). The newsletter always included a
marketing section. I'd noticed that Gage Publishing was looking for
manuscripts so I sent them The D.N.A. Dimension and
The Fusion Factor. And, miracle of miracles, I
received a letter in the mail saying that The DNA Dimension
had been accepted for publication. They also agreed to publish the
other Rebecca books at a later date. Naturally, I was thrilled.
It was at this time that we moved from Montreal to
Winnipeg. I lost my mentor, George Szanto, but was excited about moving
to the city where my family still lived. In the fall of 1982 just after
we had moved, my first book was published. I had been using the name
Carol Matas Brask, but when we moved to Winnipeg, the city I had grown
up in, I thought people would remember my maiden name, Matas, so I
dropped the Brask, and stuck with Matas. I suppose having your first
book published is the greatest thrill imaginable. Although I continued
to do some acting for a number of years, writing became my profession.
My husband had gotten a job at the University of
Winnipeg teaching theatre. I'd quickly met his colleagues and other
professors who had offices on the same floor. One of them was a
professor of children's literature, Perry Nodelman. I asked if he would
mind reading one of my books — I had started on a new Rebecca title
about time travel. He graciously agreed and provided me with a
fantastic critique.
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I
learn about the Danish resistance.
It is impossible to tell your life story in a straight
line. Now it's time for me to backtrack to Montreal. In Montreal my
husband worked at the Jewish community center running the theatre that
was part of the center. At one point an exhibit about the Holocaust
came through. He began to tell me stories of what had happened to his
father when Germany invaded Denmark in 1942. My husband is from
Denmark, and his mother and father were just twelve years old when
Denmark was invaded. They had never told me anything about the war and
neither had my husband until the exhibits jogged his memory. Then he
began to tell the most amazing stories. My father-in-law had started
out with small pranks against the Germans, such as filling the gas
tanks of their trucks with sugar so they couldn't run. If caught, these
small pranks could have got them killed. By the time he was fifteen
years old my father-in-law was a full-fledged member of the resistance.
In fact, one of the stories my husband told me concerned the time that
my father-in-law was the most frightened. His mother had been making
his bed one morning when she felt something lumpy under the mattress.
She picked up the mattress only to find two handguns and a machine gun.
Apparently she almost killed him. He was certainly more afraid of her
than he was of the Germans. The funny thing was, his father was also in
the resistance, but he did not know about his father and his father did
not know about him. Every night after dinner they would listen to the
BBC radio broadcasts. Birthday greetings and other messages would be
code for the resistance groups telling them where to meet. He would
make an excuse, saying for instance he was going to a friend's house to
do homework, and he would leave. His father would do the same — except
he would have a different excuse. It was important that neither of them
knew about the other in case one of them got caught. All resistance
cells were kept small in case someone was captured — should this happen
they would be tortured and inevitably they would give away the other
members of their cell. Therefore the fewer people in a cell the better.
The rule once captured was to try to hold out under torture for
twenty-four hours and then tell everything. If your cell were small
enough it would be quickly noticed that you were missing. The others
would then have time to go into hiding, or as they called it, to go
underground.
As my husband told the stories about his father and
grandfather during the war I decided that I would like to write a book
about a boy in the Danish resistance. Although I was still working on
my science fiction books I began to read and think about Denmark in
World War II. That was when a friend gave my husband a book called Rescue
In Denmark. It was about the rescue of the Danish Jews. This
was a story I had never heard before. It described how the Danish
people had managed to rescue almost all of their Jewish population from
the Nazis during the Second World War. I was shocked. How was it that I
had never heard this story before? After all, I am Jewish, I went to
Hebrew school, I went to university, and I thought I was educated. I
had been taught about the Holocaust and about the six million who had
been murdered. And yet nobody had taught me about this country that had
managed to save its entire Jewish population. How could this be? I knew
I had to write about it.
My science fiction books were all on different topics
(in The D.N.A. Dimension, the idea of a ruler who thinks
he is sane and doing everything for the best, who is really insane; or
in Me, Myself and I, the question of whether a
Utopia is possible; and in Zanu, deception and
illusion — Rebecca when she first arrives in that world likes all the
wrong people and wrong things because they appear beautiful and
orderly, and only later discovers who the truly Œgood' people are), but
they all had one theme in common: one person can make a
difference. In each book Rebecca discovers that even her
smallest actions have an effect on the future. When I read about the
rescue in Denmark I felt I would still be writing on the same theme —
except in this case one entire country made a difference. But never
forget that one country was made up of individuals making individual
choices. So when I finished my final book in the science fiction
series, Me, Myself and I, I decided to write the
book about Denmark, called Lisa. It never occurred
to me that I was now writing historical fiction. I simply wanted to
tell a good story, an important story that happened to be set in the
past.
Just after The D.N.A. Dimension was
published in 1982 I was given some bad news. Although Gage had agreed
to publish The Fusion Factor and Zanu,
their publishing program called the Jean-Pac, so titled because the
covers all had a denim look and the books were meant to fit in the back
pocket of your jeans, was discontinued. Gage informed me that they
would not, after all, publish the next two books. I tried to find a
publisher for years, but had no luck. I received one rejection notice
after another. I was beginning to think that I should give up all
together when something very strange happened. My cousin had gone to
see a psychic whom he thought was very good. I decided to go. The
psychic gave me a reading and I can't remember much of what he said
now. But I do remember one thing. As is often the case, he asked me if
I had any questions. I explained that I was a writer and that I was
unable to find a publisher. I asked him if my books would ever be
published.
"Yes," he answered, "and within the year. They will be
published by a publisher in Saskatoon."
Well, that was certainly specific, but I didn't know
any publishers in Saskatoon. I didn't even know if Saskatoon had
publishers. About a week later I got a phone call from the awards
officer at the Manitoba Arts Council. I had submitted my two books as
background for a small writing grant — perhaps to start work on Lisa,
I can't remember.
"Carol," she said, "one of the members on a different
jury is a publisher from Saskatoon. I thought your books might be
perfect for her. Can I show them to her?"
I screamed. I blurted out the whole thing about the
psychic. I suppose she thought I was a little crazy. She gave the
manuscripts to Carolyn Heath at Fifth House Press in Saskatoon. And not
long afterwards Carolyn offered me a contract for all three books, two
to come out in 1986, the final one to come out in 1987. I have been to
many psychics since then but never once have I received a reading as
specific or as accurate as that one!
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Meeting
with veterans of the Danish resistance—Lisa's War
I began to research Lisa and did
most of the research for that book in Winnipeg. The first thing I did
was go to the Danish Club with my husband for a war memorial.
Resistance fighters stood and one by one told their
stories. It was a gold mine for an author. I introduced myself to many
of them afterwards and made appointments for interviews. Many of the
incidents in Lisa and Jesper
are based on stories I was told in these interviews, including the last
scene of Lisa.
I had so much material after a while that I simply
couldn't write the book. I remember one day we were over at a good
friend's apartment — Amatzia Huni, who was an Israeli living in
Winnipeg with his wife, Etti. Amatzia had been a filmmaker in Israel.
He suggested that I write from a first person perspective in order to
narrow the material down — after all, that way I only had to include
what my character experiences first hand.
I tried it and I wrote that book in three weeks. It
simply poured out of me, often surprising me along the way. For
instance I had not planned for Lisa to throw up on the German soldiers
in the streetcar. But I had established that she had a "funny" stomach,
so when put under stress, throwing up simply appeared. As in my
previous books I didn't begin with an outline. Basically, I had a rough
idea of how it would begin and how it would end. Then when I wrote the
first draft I would create the rest. Lisa's theme,
of course, was that one person could make a difference.
I ran into an interesting problem when I began to send
the book out. It was taken almost immediately by one of the best
publishers in Canada at that time, Lester and Orpen Dennys. Louise
Dennys called me one day to say that one of the top writers in Canada
had agreed to edit Lisa but only if I did a major
rewrite. "No child will read a book like this," apparently was the
writer's comment. What was wrong? Well, I had no texture in the book,
no details of how things looked, or smelled, or tasted. Also, I didn't
describe my character's thinking, I simply had dialogue and action to
describe the character.
Looking back on it now I think that my early theatre
training has had a huge influence on all of my writing. I write with
what is known as "subtext" in the theatre. In other words, the
character may say one thing but is thinking another. Unlike many
authors, though, I do not describe the character's thoughts. The
readers must deduce their thoughts by their words and by their actions.
For instance when Lisa kills a German soldier she doesn't think about
it — but she does throw up, showing how horrible
the act of killing is for her. And she wouldn't have had time to think
about the act — that wouldn't be realistic. (Some adult readers are
upset by this, but children never are.)
So I had to decide — do I listen to one of the top
writers in Canada and change my style? Perry urged me not to. He was
convinced the book worked very well as is and he encouraged me to stick
to my guns and not to allow it to be changed in any major way. I told
Louise and she acquiesced. In fact it took three more editors before
she could find someone who basically agreed to simply copy edit the
manuscript and leave it mostly intact.
When it was published it came out to only fair reviews
in Canada. And for all the reasons this editor had mentioned. However
it was then bought my Macmillan in the United States and one day I was
told that the New York Times would be running a
review. When I read it I remember literally jumping up and down. I had
never hoped to be reviewed by the Times — but to
get a rave review! The reviewer compared Lisa's War
(Lisa) to Number the Stars by
Lois Lowry and said Lisa's War was a far superior
book. (Of course as I write this Lisa's War is out
of print in the United Stated and Number the Stars
is a Newbery Award Book which will never go out of
print.)
Canadians, as is always the way here, are impressed by
a Canadian who "makes it" in the United States. Everyone in Canada
seemed to forget that it had received lukewarm reviews here and when Jesper
came out all the reviews referred to Lisa as my
"brilliant" book, etc., which apparently it had become, in retrospect. Jesper
(called Code Name Kris, or Kris's War
in the United States) received rave notices from almost all the
Canadian papers and did well in the United States as well.
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Jesper
— Code Name Kris — Kris's War
Jesper is about belief. The lead
character Jesper has a best friend, Frederik, who becomes a Nazi. The
two characters interweave throughout the story, and we see that
Frederik believes in what he is doing just as Jesper does. Is one
better than the other then? Jesper wonders this, the book asks this,
but it, I think says, yes, there is a big
difference. Frederik and the Nazis after all, kill in order to control
others. Jesper kills in order to be free. Back to top
Sworn
Enemies
After writing these two books I became interested in
writing other historicals. I had written about my husband's family and
I began to think about writing about my own family. My grandfather had
escaped from the Russian army then traveled across land to England.
There he saw my grandmother at a theatre but had no way to meet her.
The next night he went on a blind date — and it was she. They
immigrated to Winnipeg at the turn of the century. My mother's parents
emigrated from Romania, also at the turn of the century.
One night I went to a local synagogue to hear a speech
my Chaim Potok. At the end of the talk someone asked him a question
about the Kapos in the concentration camps in World War II. Mr. Potok
answered that that had not been the only time Jews had treated Jews
badly. He cited the era of Tsar Nicolas II when the tsar tried to
forcibly convert Jews by conscripting them into the army — especially
very young Jews. Because the quotas for the army were so hard to fill,
often there weren't enough Jews in any one village to comply. A
practice was begun by local communities — they hired a kidnapper to
kidnap Jewish boys so the quotas would be met, otherwise the leaders of
the community would have been taken.
As soon as I heard him talk about this I knew I had to
write about it. True, it was earlier Russian history then I had
imagined writing about, but the moral conundrum and ethical questions
it raised were immediately evident to me. I still believe that Sworn
Enemies is one of my best books, although it is now out of
print in the United States. It was difficult to research in that it was
the first book where I couldn't interview people and I had to find all
my material from books. One day I counted how many books I had on the
floor around my desk — fifty!
In Sworn Enemies, I asked the
question "Is it possible to live a moral life in an immoral universe?"
The two lead characters Aaron and Zev are both religious, Aaron a
scholar, Zev a poor boy who has little capacity to learn. When Zev is
asked to be a kidnapper by the leaders of the community he sees nothing
wrong because he views everything in stark realities — including his
religion, which cannot be questioned. Is he the"good" one because he
will never stray from his faith? Or is Aaron who questions everything?
For me it is Aaron who does not have the answers
who is the hero of the book, not the fanatic Zev.
It was while I was finishing Sworn Enemies,
working with my editor Beverly Horowitz at Bantam Doubleday Dell who
was, by the way, a terrific editor, that my agent (at the time), Amy
Berkower, called to ask if I'd be interested in writing a book for a
new Holocaust Centre to open in Washington, D.C. called the United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Apparently the museum had approached
Beverly and asked her to recommend an author — she recommended me. Some
problems then ensued, and for some reason the museum and Bantam could
not come to an understanding. The project was moved to Scholastic who
had just bought Lisa's War and Code Name
Kris for paperback publication. They seemed happy to have me
remain on the project.
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Daniel's
Story
And then began the most difficult project of my writing
career. It was March when Amy called, March of 1992. The museum was due
to open in the spring of 1993. They needed the book in three months and
I had already committed to a long speaking tour in April. They flew me
to Washington where I met those in charge. I assumed they would give me
all kinds of material but in fact they simply told me this: We are
having an exhibit called Daniel's Story. We want a book to complement
the exhibit so children who have been through it can go to the
bookstore and read about what it might have been like for a real boy.
Our character is an everyboy. Yours must be an individual story. We
want you to use the same name, Daniel; he must live in Germany, be sent
to the Lodz Ghetto, Auschwitz, then Buchenwald. He must live. The rest
is up to you. (Since the publication there is constant confusion about
my book — is it based on the exhibit or is the exhibit based on my
book? Americans almost universally assume the former, Canadians the
latter. Neither is true. They are two completely separate entities, but
complementary) I was then sent home.
Unlike my other historicals I had no time to organize
interviews so I did all my research from books and videos. There is
really an amazing amount of material on video — for instance there was
film shot of the Lodz Ghetto so I was able to see exactly what it
looked like then. I read history books and I also read as many memoirs
and diaries as I could — many of which were found after the war, the
writer not having survived. I cried every day.
Although I had written two books
set in World War II they were not Holocaust books, in the strict sense.
One was about the rescue of the Jews, the other
about the resistance. I had never considered
writing about the Holocaust — I'd felt it was a topic only to be
tackled by those who had been through it. But when the museum asked I
never considered saying no. It was a great responsibility, but I felt
that with them behind me I could tackle it. I had no idea how it would
change my life. More about that a little later.
I had to change my usual way of writing, which was to
research first, spend time thinking, and then write. In this case I
began to write as I was still researching — continuing to read at night
while I wrote during the day. I felt that I was on the right track when
one day I wrote a scene (the one where Daniel is close to death from
typhus and his mother heals him in a dream) and that night after
writing it I read almost the same story in a book called Hasidic
Tales of the Holocaust.
Finally by the end of July I had written three drafts
(as usual Perry Nodelman had read at least one draft and given me a
critique, something he does before I ever send it off to the publisher)
and sent it off.
And then out of the blue I received a twenty-page fax
(in small type) from the museum's resident scholar, listing all the
"mistakes" in the book. I was truly beside myself. Luckily my oldest
dearest friend, Morri Mostow, was in town and she calmed me down so I
was able to tackle this fax. The first thing I did was call the museum
and go over every note explaining where I had gotten the material. It
turned out that their scholar didn't like the historian I was using —
Martin Gilbert — saying his was secondary source work while the museum
worked strictly from primary sources. (Only years later was I told that
many historians disagree with the museum's historian and prefer
Gilbert).
Then there were specific disagreements. For instance
the museum was uncomfortable with a scene I had written when Daniel's
aunt is attacked for being a Jew on the streets of Frankfurt. This
attack happened before Kristalnacht, which
according to my research was accurate. However they wanted my readers
to think of Kristalnacht (the night of the broken glass when the brown
shirts attacked Jewish shops and broke their windows, burned, looted,
and beat up Jews) as the beginning of the violence. I loved the scene
and didn't want to lose it, and besides I knew that my research was
correct. Perry came up with the compromise. He suggested making the
scene a bad nightmare Daniel has before Kristalnacht actually happened.
The museum was happy with that.
Another note here: because I was dealing with the
museum, Scholastic, and Daniel Weiss, the packager who had put the deal
together, they had decided I should only have one contact — my editor
at Daniel Weiss, so I didn't have three different people telling me
what to do. This was resolutely stuck to except for the one
conversation about the fax. It was for the best, but sometimes it would
have helped if I could have fought things out directly with the museum.
Another problem the museum had was the scene where
Daniel dressed up in a Hitler Youth uniform. They felt it was immoral
for a Jewish boy to do such a thing, but I had read about exactly this
happening in one of the memoirs and I thought it worked. I wouldn't
back down on that, but I did put in a scene where Daniel himself
decides to put it away, not wanting to wear the uniform of such
brutality, even if it meant less freedom for himself.
Another fight didn't end so happily. They insisted I
take out all references to the Jewish Police in the ghetto. I felt they
were being revisionist, not wanting me to discuss the fact that Jews
worked with the Nazis either to gain privileges for themselves and
their families, or because they felt they could enforce the rules in a
more humane way than the Nazis. I rewrote those scenes over and over,
but each time they came back with a "no", take it all out. On this they
refused to budge. I did finally take out most of my references. It
wasn't until the museum opened and I was able to speak to Susan
Morgenstern at the museum directly (remember this had all gone through
my editor) that she told me that the reason they didn't want the police
included was not because they were trying to deny it happened but
because they felt the Jewish Police were as bad as the Nazis — not
something I could have dealt with in such a short book. I still
disagree with that decision but it was the only thing (and we are
talking about a few paragraphs) that I really never felt comfortable
with.
Finally all the big and small changes were made and the
book was done. Scholastic was so pleased they decided to do a limited
run in hardcover. When the reviews came out, unfortunately, they
reviewed the book as if it were no more than a novelization of the
exhibit. Scholastic's publicity department was partly to blame because
they basically said that was what the book was in all their press
releases. It was only years later when I met the Scholastic publicity
head in person that I was able to convince him of his mistake (I had
tried, my agent had tried, but they just didn't seem to understand!) It
didn't matter though. The book had been review proof. It is now on the
curriculum of many school districts (including all of Illinois, I
believe) and continues to sell strongly all over North America, far
exceeding the small expectation of a book to be sold in the museum book
store.
I mentioned earlier that this book changed my life. Let
me go into that in more detail. When I was a child I learned about the
Holocaust, became so distraught and upset at the cruelty, that it was
probably the beginning of my loss of faith. After all, if there was a
God, how could God permit such cruelty? From then on I basically tried
to avoid the topic, doing no reading on it, avoiding anything about it
because it was too upsetting. When asked if I would write this book I
can't really say why I agreed so quickly — it never felt like a
decision. I simply would never have said no to such an offer. But once
into the material I had to confront all the cruelty I had been avoiding
all my life. It was then that I became so depressed I decided that the
world, the human race, didn't deserve to exist as we were capable of
too much evil. But in the middle of this terrible depression I suddenly
realized something else. Who was I to make such a judgment? Wasn't it
similar to the judgment the Nazis had made about the Jews — the Jews
didn't deserve to exist? I had to accept that the world is. And as is,
it is populated with human beings, each one of whom is capable of good
or evil. I would have to accept that.
The key scene of Daniel's Story is
when Erika expresses this view to Daniel and Rosa. And then she tells
them that they do have choices — the choice to choose love or hate. And
I believe that to be true. No matter what, we can always choose — even
during the Holocaust those who's free choice had been completely taken
away, those who were brutally murdered, could chose whether to die in
love or hate. And so many had love in their hearts (not for their
enemies, that is not the Jewish way) but for their families. The Nazis
could not destroy that.
I suppose that was the beginning of my return to some
kind of faith and to a belief in God — not an old man looking down on
us God, but God as Creator, as One. I now read a lot of Jewish
Spirituality, Rabbi David Cooper, Lawrence Kushner, and in a slightly
different vein, the Dali Lama! So strange that writing about the worst
of human kind could return my faith.
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How I write.
At this point in this essay I'd like to stop going over
each and every book and write a little about my writing process in
general. I have developed a particular way of working. First comes the
idea — a story and along with the story an issue, ethical or moral,
that I want to explore. I start to think about it, live with it.
Characters begin to form in my mind. If it is an historical, I begin my
research and reading and do my interviews. When I really settle down to
work it probably takes three months to do most of my intensive
research. I then write the first draft which takes perhaps three of
four weeks. I give it to Perry to read. He reads it, we meet, he gives
me his thoughts — often a very detailed critique. I rewrite the book,
which takes another three or four weeks. Then I send if off to the
publisher.
Over the years I've had a number of different publishers
because I write so many different kinds of books — I've never been able
to find one publisher who wanted to publish all my different books. One
wants my historicals, one prefers fantasies, and another likes the
contemporary fiction. The closest I have ever come to a publisher who
is open to all sorts of different books is my present Canadian
publisher, Scholastic Canada. They are definitely the most flexible of
any publisher I've dealt with — something I credit almost completely to
my editor there, Diane Kerner.
At any rate my editor, or as is often the case, my
editors — one in the United States, one in Canada, will give me their
critiques. They can consist of many small things, or as in the case of In
My Enemy's House, the addition of three more chapters! David
Gale, my editor at Simon and Schuster, felt The Garden
started too slowly, so chapter three became chapter one, to start the
story off with more punch. Some editors make fewer suggestions, some
make very detailed suggestions. The only editor I had a really hard
time working with was the editor of Jesper, in
Canada. She had previously only worked on nonfiction books and she
demanded changes, almost sentence by sentence. To make matters worse,
if she didn't like what I'd written, she would rewrite it herself! It
is one thing to say to an author, "This doesn't work, change it." But
when you discover half your manuscript rewritten, it is a nightmare. I
was young then (as a writer) and I acquiesced far too much, although I
also fought her over practically everything. Now I would simply send
back the manuscript and demand a different editor. In fact, there are
some sentences in that book that are not mine at all — or I don't feel they
are mine, she interfered so much. Other than that experience my editors
have been wonderful to work with — Beverly Horowitz, who edited Sworn
Enemies and The Burning Time; Barbara
Berson, who edited The Race, The Freak
and Telling; David Gale, who edited After
The War, The Garden, Greater
Than Angels, In My Enemy's House, the
entire "Mind" series, and continues as my editor at the time of this
writing; Diane Kerner who published all of the same books as David and
had her editorial input as well as editing Cloning Miranda
and The Lost Locket; and Peter Atwood who edited
Of Two Minds. Since I have published 25 books at this time,
there are more editors I have worked with, but these are the pivotal
ones.
So, I finish the third draft and send it back to my
editor. There is always a fourth draft. This is mostly little things —
details that are not clear, sentences not working, etc. For instance I
rewrote the scene in The Garden when Ruth shoots
the Arab soldiers at least ten times before David felt it was clear
enough. Finally, it is time for the copy edit. This is the part I like
the least. Grammar, small inconsistencies…. I had one copy editor (they
are different for each book) who was a comma maniac. She put commas in
every single sentence I'd written. I couldn't simply take them out
without considering each one. A week later and with the biggest
headache of my life, the manuscript was practically back to the way it
looked before she'd done the copy edit. Commas are very important. I
like to leave them out at times, to give the feeling of real thought,
to keep a certain rhythm.
Finally, there is the last draft or the galleys, or
page proofs. This is the way the book will look when it goes into
print, so it is important to try to catch any typos. Actually, I'm not
very good at that — most writers aren't. We are too familiar with the
material. That is why the publisher hires a totally separate person to
copy edit — someone who's never seen the manuscript before and will see
the little mistakes.
During this time there is work on the title and the
cover. I'm not very good at titles and often my titles have been
thought up by my editor, or a friend — sometimes Perry. Usually the
title I like, the publisher hates, thinking it won't sell the book.
Covers are another issue. The publisher is supposed to send you a rough
draft of the cover and is supposed to consult you. I find that often I
don't see it until it is a finished copy and too late to make any
changes. I have a couple favorite covers and a couple I hate. Most are
O.K. In My Enemy's House is a favorite. The
Burning Time, and The Race, my least
favorite. I also loved Of Two Minds, the Simon and
Schuster version.
This entire process usually takes two years from the
beginning to the end when the book comes out. Because of the way I
work, however, I don't only produce one book every two years. Usually I
produce two books every year. This is because I like to work — and
while a manuscript may be sitting with my editors, for instance, I can
be working on a draft of another title.
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My
collaboration with Perry Nodelman — the Minds books
I'd like to talk a little, here, about my collaboration
with Perry Nodelman. We have written four books together to date. It
all started when I gave him a first draft of a fantasy I'd written. As
usual he gave me his critique, I went away, did some rewriting, came
back and he re-read it. He told me I hadn't done anything he'd
suggested — which mainly was to expand the male character, Coren. I
told him I couldn't, and if he thought it was so easy then he should do
it himself! He said fine, he would! And so began our collaboration. He
did draft two. I did a third one. He did a fourth. We went on like that
for years until we felt it was good enough to send out to publishers. A
local publisher, Bain and Cox, was starting a new fiction line and
decided to take it. One winter day, at thirty-five degrees below zero,
Perry, Peter Atwood, the publisher and the editor of Bain and Cox, and
I met at the University of Winnipeg for an editorial session. A tire on
my car had burst from the cold just as I arrived for the meeting and so
we were stuck there for hours waiting for the CAA repair truck. We sat
in Perry's office as Peter put his finger on what wasn't working — and
then Perry and I started brain storming. By the time the afternoon was
over we'd completely restructured the novel. Perry up until then had
been writing the character of Coren, I'd been doing Lenora. After that
we stopped taking a character each but continued to alternate drafts,
never actually writing together. After each draft we would discuss what
needed to be done next and whoever's turn it was would go and do the
work.
In fact we've worked that way ever since. We brainstorm
the outline, then I do the first draft, he does the second etc. It's a
lot of fun working together because you don't have half the pressure of
working alone — well, in fact, you have half. If you get stuck there's
always someone to call. And I always enjoy our brainstorming sessions,
which usually take place on the phone.
As well as my collaboration with Perry I've also
collaborated with my husband, Per Brask. He has been a huge support to
me throughout my writing career. When I write a first draft, I read
whatever I've written that day to him, every night. He doesn't
criticize much, he just tells me that he wants to know what happens
next, and that really helps me keep up my momentum. We decided to adapt
my book Lisa for the theatre. He is a professor of
theatre and teaches play writing. He is also a playwright. I think he
did more of the writing in this case than I did, but both our names are
on the play. It had very successful runs across Canada and may be done
soon in Israel. We also adapted Jesper together,
and on my own I did an adaptation of Sworn Enemies,
called The Escape, that was produced in Winnipeg.
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The
Primrose Path
My book The Primrose Path is the
title I'd like to end this article on. I consider it one my best books.
It is not, however, one of my best-sellers, for the reason that it has
quietly been taken off the shelves (or never put there) by most Jewish
libraries and it could never find an American publisher. It is about an
Orthodox Jewish rabbi who molests children. Publishers were afraid to
publish it, afraid they would be accused of being anti-Semitic. As for
me, I got a lot of advice — most of it to change the rabbi to a priest!
Jews didn't want anyone thinking they could be or do bad. But what does
that say? Doesn't it say that we Jews are better
than everyone else, not having both good and bad? Doesn't it say to any
Jewish children who may have been abused — keep quiet, it doesn't
happen to Jews? The other thing that really upset me about this was the
adult assumption that child should be "kept" innocent. The first
problem with that is that they are not innocent.
They have encountered the school bully, a mean friend, even a cruel
parent. The second thing is that this so-called innocence is really
ignorance and ignorance is not bliss. Knowledge is
power. And children must be empowered. When I look
back at most of my books the central character is not the one who has
the answers. She is the one who asks the questions. But she must also
make decisions, decisions that will matter to her and to those around
her. And pretending the world is different than it is, is no help to
young people. They need help dealing with reality. They also deserve to
have fun and enjoy themselves.
At this point in time I have twenty-five books
published, with my twenty-sixth on the way. I have just finished a
second draft of my book on the Civil War and am waiting, anxiously, to
hear from my editors. I hope to continue doing what I'm doing as long
as I can — because I love it. There's really no other reason. And as
long as I have a story to tell, and a question to ask I hope I'll
continue to write books that young people like to read.
Which brings me to my last point. Since writing my first
word my goal has always been to tell a good story, and like my hero, L.
Frank Baum, delight my readers. Many of my books are considered
controversial because I deal with topics I think young people are
concerned about, even if they are things adults don't like to deal
with. I know I write about heavy topics. But more important is the fact
that I write so that who ever is reading won't want to put the book
down — they'll want to read after lights out, or after they've been
called for dinner. And when they are finished they'll be a little
sorry, because they had fun. Few people these days seem to talk about
the pleasure of reading, but that is the main reason I write. Even when
choosing a topic, I always choose one that hasn't been done before,
thinking what fun it'll be for the reader to read on a topic they've
never encountered before.
So happy reading.
This article was published in Something About
the Author volume 112 by the Gale Group in 2000. All rights
reserved. Back to top
Carol Matas's Journey as an Author for Children, Middle Grades, Teens and Young Adults