The Next Best Book Club discussion

Margo,

Thanks so much for your answers so far. I'd like to hear you talk a little about conflict, as a writer who clearly has a much deeper and internal sense of the word than, say, most workshops and young writers. I loved hearing you discuss the origin of Vagabond, with just Ramsy and Stella trying to find their way to each other, and then seeing the addition of outsiders as the solution. It's, of course, a classic story (someone new comes to town), but it's perfect, and deft. Would you talk a little more about finding that conflict, or perhaps just rap a little about your philosophy of conflict? Vagabond, perhaps better than any novel I can think of immediately, doesn't pit any extraordinary forces, any radical changes, against its protagonists. Instead it shifts, only slightly, the alignment of the entire cast of characters, and we find their entire world in disarray. That's a truly wonderful move, and I'd love to hear a little more about it.

Ariel, thank you so much! Some answers for you:

I am very curious about how Ramsy and Stella changed as the novel took shape. Was Ramsy always a veteran? This may sound strange, but I loved his backstory. It was, ultimately, so perfect for his character, how he lost his eye and how his shame fostered his isolation.

This is an interesting question, because defining specifically how Ramsy lost his eye is something I did very late in the game. As I’ve mentioned, this story began as a novella, which I expanded into a novel about five years ago. That was hard. The idea of cracking open a story that felt whole and complete was extremely daunting for me--I wasn’t sure where to begin digging in and mining for new material. The first thing I knew I had to do was explain how Ramsy lost his eye, and I knew this backstory had to be key to his way of relating (or not relating) to others. He was always a Vietnam veteran, but when I started thinking about what happened to him, I wanted to consider scenarios that put him in shady moral territory. I knew his war wound couldn’t be caused by a heroic act, or even basic combat--then he’d have no reason to retreat from the world. His injury had to be shameful in some way.

Hence my decision to link it to his involvement with a prostitute--not because that encounter itself was so shameful but because this is one time in his life that Ramsy actually allowed himself to be hopeful and vulnerable. And he paid a price for that.

Stella is such a survivor. Were you ever tempted to make her more dysfunctional?

I never wanted Stella to be so dysfunctional that her motivations would become incomprehensible to others. Still, I wanted her to have that history of life-altering desperation--searching in bags much, much longer than it made any sense to do so--and I struggled with making that behavior believable. Grief is powerful, and I felt it was important to show how tragedy affected Stella not just in the immediate aftermath of the kidnapping but throughout the rest of her life. Stella was definitely in crisis when she was immersed in her search, but she was able to drag herself past it and go on with her life. She never fully abandoned her hope of finding Lucy, though, and I think this is what makes her such a compelling character. She manages to live a relatively “normal” life alongside a distinctly unusual, even disturbing, alternate reality in which Lucy may actually reappear at any time.

Ariel's third question...

You really captured small town life and how it feels to be an outsider in a place where everyone knows your name and your business. As I read your story, I often wondered if you were drawing connections between this "small town mentality" and American attitudes toward the ongoing refugee crisis in Europe and issues of immigration and citizenship in the US.

I’m a little unnerved by how much this novel reflects current events, because I completed this story in 2012. And yet it’s almost impossible to consider it now without making connections between my outsiders and the many, may people struggling to find a place right now in the U.S.--to the extent that some readers may believe it’s allegorical. I didn’t intend for it to be so, but that happens, doesn’t it? I wrote this book, yes, but it’s in the world now, no longer fully mine, and it’s bumping up against the reality it finds itself in. I may have written it without any notion of connecting my story to broader U.S. issues, but I also can’t deny that this is an absolutely reasonable way of reading it. Those parallels are there.

Some of the rhetoric surrounding us right now seems like it could have jumped right out of Ramsy’s bar.

Turning now to Eric's questions about conflict:

I loved hearing you discuss the origin of Vagabond, with just Ramsy and Stella trying to find their way to each other, and then seeing the addition of outsiders as the solution. It's, of course, a classic story (someone new comes to town), but it's perfect, and deft. Would you talk a little more about finding that conflict, or perhaps just rap a little about your philosophy of conflict? Vagabond, perhaps better than any novel I can think of immediately, doesn't pit any extraordinary forces, any radical changes, against its protagonists. Instead it shifts, only slightly, the alignment of the entire cast of characters, and we find their entire world in disarray. That's a truly wonderful move, and I'd love to hear a little more about it.

I’m a character-driven writer. I’m intrigued by people, and particularly by the small moments that lead to epiphany. Unfortunately for me, that focus on small moments--gestures, even--can be fatal to telling a good, sound story. And I struggled mightily with conflict when I was working on Vagabond. I had these two characters I adored (who, as I’ve said, arrived in my life more or less whole)--and no clue what they should do. I’d describe my first attempts at Vagabond as “plotless ruminations.” They were moody and had lovely sentences and plenty of atmosphere...but nothing happened. Ramsy and Stella would pine for things, and reflect on things, and even realize important things--but my plot stopped short of actual conflict.

For Vagabond, the idea that guided me as I shaped the conflict is the very first sentence: “It was an ordinary fall until the gypsies came.” Ramsy and Stella were interesting enough to me that I fell into the trap of going on and on about their ordinary lives--but the conflict, the story, could only begin when things were no longer ordinary. The day after the ordinary day is the important moment that finally got the story moving. All of that plotless ruminating took place before page one. When the outsiders arrived, everything tilted, and, ultimately, everything changed. Tracking how those changes came to be is how I created the plot of Vagabond.

That shifting of my characters’ world is, as you said, slight. But small, isolated Shelk doesn’t need much to be unsettled, and I think this is why the scale of my conflict was able to work. Nothing of any magnitude ever happens in Shelk. People like it that way. They rely on it. And they’re also ill-equipped to handle threat when it arrives. If I created the world of Shelk successfully, then the tremors caused by the outsiders’ arrival, their petty thefts, and their uncomfortable domestic intrusions should feel like great quakes.

Writing and rewriting Vagabond has taught me more about conflict than any MFA workshop ever did, but I still struggle. In my work in progress, my characters still realize things, and discover things, and I’m working really hard to define and create the conflict that leads to those realizations and discoveries.

Hey Margo,

I finally finished! What an amazing novel! Okay, so...just a few more questions for you :)

1. Could you comment on your decision to leave Lucy's fate un-resolved?

2. Any thoughts in the future of revisiting the gypsy/transient motif?

3. I appreciated that the resolution for the novel was equal arts somber and hopeful. Did you consciously strive to make it not too much one or the other?

I truly adored this book. Thank you!

Do you have any special rituals or superstitions when you write.?

Tabitha, I’m so glad you finished the book and enjoyed it! I was hoping my answers wouldn’t give too much away as you continued reading.


Could you comment on your decision to leave Lucy's fate un-resolved?

Central to Stella’s character--and the novel as whole--is the idea of how a person manages to live with unbearable grief. The loss of Lucy is all the more hideous because it is unresolved; Stella never had the deep comfort and closure of a funeral or other formal ritual of farewell. The closest she comes to any kind of closure is receiving Lucy’s blanket after Seth dies, and even then it’s not 100% certain that Lucy is dead. She probably is, but she might not be. Stella has lived almost all of her adult life with that destabilizing uncertainty.

Resolving that for Stella would have been somewhat easy to do. The detective in Ohio could have known something; some evidence one way or another could have been discovered in Seth’s house; and Stella could have gone on with her life--never getting over her loss, of course, but with the new possibility that she might one day be able to put it behind her.

But what purpose would this have served? It was much too neat and tidy. Life isn’t that easy, and as much as I love Stella, I’m afraid her fate as my character was to adapt her entire life to her grief and wild, stubborn hope. The beauty of Stella is that she manages to do this. As Ramsy observes on the final page of the novel--Stella will always wonder maybe… when she encounters girls who would be Lucy’s age. She has to do that. It’s how she survives. Erasing that terrible unknown for her would take away the slanted grace that makes Vagabond what it is.


Any thoughts in the future of revisiting the gypsy/transient motif?

I don’t have plans to revisit these elements directly, but the idea of outsiders--being an outsider, relating to an outsider--is definitely a big part of my current work in progress. I’ve heard many times that writers write the same story again and again--with different storylines and characters and settings, of course, but the same central obsession. That’s true for me, for sure. I feel like I’ll always be exploring questions about belonging to and searching for a home and community.


I appreciated that the resolution for the novel was equal arts somber and hopeful. Did you consciously strive to make it not too much one or the other?

This was a balancing act. As I mentioned earlier, I really really wanted a happy ending, but not too happy. I think your description is good--the ending provides a somber hopefulness. Ramsy and Stella gain so much. But so much was lost to get them to that point, and it’s certain that neither one of them will ever forget that.

From Rhonda:

Do you have any special rituals or superstitions when you write?

I don’t have rituals or superstitions per se, but I’m definitely a creature of habit. I write a lot in longhand, with black extra-fine-point Pilot pens in paperback Moleskine notebooks. I almost always write at my desk, and I’ve reached a point where I can basically sit down and flip a mental switch to access my creative space--having extremely limited writing time over the past few years has made waiting for “inspiration” a luxury I can’t afford.

I do keep some talismans around me--three storyteller figures from Taos, a variety of very tiny objects from my childhood.

And I guess I should add that when I found out that my novel was a finalist with UNO Press, I felt compelled, for the first time in my lapsed-Catholic life, to offer up some prayers to St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes. Who better to watch over my book? Of course Vagabond won because it was the right book for the right group of readers with the right openness to a quiet story...and yet. St. Jude. Part of me does wonder.

Do you have plans to continue to push the major publishing companies, or are you pretty determined to stay with UNO since this is where you got your break?

Hi Margo I appreciate you explaining how the story expanded from a Novella into the book it is today. Are there any particular highlights that were new to the rewrite? Was it all information that was part of your original world building just added to the page or did you develop new plot points? Is revisiting a book to expand the story anything like your experience rereading a favourite book after a long time? I find that when I reread a book I love that I have been thinking about the characters all along. Even though the book itself hasn't changed my understanding of the characters evolves.

Margo thank you again for your thoughtful answers. I've enjoyed reading them all!

Tiffany, thanks for the question:

Do you have plans to continue to push the major publishing companies, or are you pretty determined to stay with UNO since this is where you got your break?

It feels decadent to even consider this question because it assumes that I will, at some point, have another novel that is publication-worthy! Let’s say I do manage to pull it off. I would love to get an agent and take another swing at the big houses. UNO Press has done a beautiful job with Vagabond--and their love of the book is everything I could hope for. But it’s a crowded world of books out there, and it’s hard to get mainstream attention for a literary novel from a small press. Big houses have marketing muscle and an insider’s access to reviewers and other publicity avenues. I think I owe it to my future work to aim big, to take a chance.

That said--if a small press turns out to be the best home for my work, I wouldn’t hesitate to go with UNO Press again if I had a book they felt as passionately about as Vagabond. Mutual enthusiasm from the writer and the publisher is really the only way a book can be published well.

From Rachelle…

I appreciate you explaining how the story expanded from a Novella into the book it is today. Are there any particular highlights that were new to the rewrite? Was it all information that was part of your original world building just added to the page or did you develop new plot points? Is revisiting a book to expand the story anything like your experience rereading a favourite book after a long time? I find that when I reread a book I love that I have been thinking about the characters all along. Even though the book itself hasn't changed my understanding of the characters evolves.

This is a really good question. I had to think about this a little--the story seems so complete that it’s hard to even remember when some parts weren’t there. I do remember being completely overwhelmed by what I’d undertaken. The novella just seemed like this smooth, perfect sphere; it was already so sparse; and I couldn’t imagine taking a sledgehammer to it--which was basically what this kind of project required.

Much of the new material was, as you pointed out, world building. The explanation of Ramsy’s eye, for example, was just a deepening of an element that was already there. I added more scenes between Ramsy and JT to flesh out their relationship. I added more descriptions of Shelk, and delved more into Ramsy’s relationship with Liza.

But world building was not going to get me 150 new pages, which is what I was aiming for. I had to reimagine the story itself--not change it wholesale; but figure out ways to intensify it. So, many of the plot points that seem pretty crucial to Vagabond were brand new. I developed the storyline of Stella, Adrienne, and Adrienne’s baby specifically for the novel. The pigeon shoot and the spaghetti dinner, which JT and some friends anger everyone by attending, were new. Kitty and Emilian’s affair was new. All the vignettes were new. This is interesting, because those specific elements--Stella intruding on Emilian’s turf to care for Adrienne, the men’s boiling-over that begins at the spaghetti dinner, the affair that enrages Jack Kurtz, Emilian’s killing of the woman that’s described in one of the final vignettes--are what build the tension and lead to the final violence.

So yes--you ask if returning to this work was like rereading a favorite book with new understanding of the characters, and this seems right. Seven years passed between my finishing the novella and expanding it into a novel. That’s a long time, and I changed a lot (as anyone would) in that period. The characters’ voices and the world of Shelk were familiar to me, but I was newly able to identify areas that were begging for further exploration. Stella, in particular. I understood her so much more. The whole journey to Ohio to retrieve the blanket--and the emotional fallout Stella experiences from this, and the way she turns to Ramsy in those moments--was new, and so important to this character.

Margo, which character did you enjoy writing the most? Which one did you dread writing?

Lori's question...

Margo, which character did you enjoy writing the most? Which one did you dread writing?

I loved writing Ramsy. He’s such an unlikely character soulmate--aside from his small-town home, his background and life experience don’t overlap with mine at all. He’s the first character I ever wrote who was so completely unlike me, and I think this is what made him so much fun to create. His voice was immediately powerful, and figuring out what made him tick required listening to him more closely than I’d ever listened to that writer-voice before. He’s so flawed, so withdrawn, but he has so much depth--I could have written him endlessly.

I didn’t really dread writing anyone. I felt real anxiety while writing the scenes with Stella in Ohio, but I was also very invested in that phase of Stella’s development, so I didn’t dread it.

Did the economic troubles of the Rust Belt factor much into your work on this novel? I feel sort of trained, I guess, being from outside the area, to look for that as a big marker in anything set in Pennsylvania or Ohio or thereabouts. Certainly see a lot of books that really ground themselves in the effects of the collapse of the steel and mining industries, anyway. Shelk definitely seems to carry those scars and burdens, but--I guess going back to its being a quiet novel--it's (nicely, I think) a piece of the backdrop supporting the very personal concerns and conflicts of Ramsy and Stella. Did you ever feel any pull, or even outside pressure, to further develop those sort of big-picture themes?

From Marvin...

Did the economic troubles of the Rust Belt factor much into your work on this novel? I feel sort of trained, I guess, being from outside the area, to look for that as a big marker in anything set in Pennsylvania or Ohio or thereabouts. Certainly see a lot of books that really ground themselves in the effects of the collapse of the steel and mining industries, anyway. Shelk definitely seems to carry those scars and burdens, but--I guess going back to its being a quiet novel--it's (nicely, I think) a piece of the backdrop supporting the very personal concerns and conflicts of Ramsy and Stella. Did you ever feel any pull, or even outside pressure, to further develop those sort of big-picture themes?

You’re right--the economic struggles of southwestern Pennsylvania are omnipresent in work set in the area. Those struggles inform everything, from how you live to what you hope for. As a native southwestern Pennsylvanian--and as a writer--I’m particularly compelled by the disjunct between the deep the economic devastation and the stunning landscape. So much ugliness, and so much beauty.

The implied economic scars in Shelk are integral to the locals’ reaction to the outsiders. Those scars inform their protectiveness of their homes and valuables, and their adherence to a moral code that embraces sticking to the familiar and “shooting from the hip.” They’ve been left behind by mainstream economic development--pursuing a job in the quickly growing Pittsburgh tech industry wouldn’t even cross their minds--and I think their awareness of having lost their economic strength influences their reliance on physical shows of strength. They’ve been weakened, but they’re not weak. Much of what they lost from dying industries was out of their control--but preventing losses from a bunch of thieving outsiders is well within their power.

So it’s there--the impact of those big-picture themes. But this wasn’t a story that warranted deeper examination of the economic factors that have ravaged towns like Shelk. The focus of the story was--as you described--the personal concerns and conflicts of the people living their lives in this environment. I hope I succeeded in infusing everything with the hopelessness and struggle brought about by the shrinking of the coal industry--but at the same time, maintaining a laser focus on the characters. What’s done is done, economically; these characters are not reacting to new and shocking changes. The economy is a baseline, white noise in the background. I think anything more than that would overwhelm the story, and I never felt any external pressure (from early readers or editors) to expand that element.

Hi everyone--

Just wanted to say a huge thank you for all the great questions this week. What a privilege to be able to think closely about my process and Vagabond's creation! Add to this thread in the future if you wish or find me on my Goodreads author page or my website, margoorlandolittell.com. I'm so grateful for the time you all gave to this story. And Lori: you're the best--thank you for having me!

Thank you so much.loved your book love reading all your answers .Looking forward to your next book.
Lori thanks for introducing me to this book telling all my book friends about it,This discussion has been fantastic.

Awww thanks you guys!

Margo, there would be no discussion if you and UNO hadn't had an interest in supplying us copies and taking the time to hang with us! It was an extraordinary experience getting behind this book! I am so grateful for the time you took to be here and to respond to everyone's questions....

And hooray for spreading the word! I was so happy to introduce you guys to it. It still remains one of my favorite reads of this year. And one of my all time small press favorites!