Oh, what I
wouldn’t have given to be able to give Maggie a happy ending, to have Jes grow
into a happy and healthy young man whose only scars are those left by his
troubled father. It wasn’t to be, however. The logic of the story inexorably
pulled me to where it ended.
That’s not
entirely true. The first ending actually had Jackdaw successfully shooting Jes
and then killing himself. So maybe I did pull back a little—at the behest of an
editor friend. The conversation went something like this. “The ending is too
unremittingly dark.” “But Jes has to die. Otherwise no one will buy it.” “Yes,
but does his father have to kill him? AND THEN commit suicide?” Point taken.
That same friend said she bawled in public in NYC at least four times while
reading it. Now THAT is a compliment.
The inspiration
for this story is a friend and coworker who is one of those ideal mothers. If I
could have chosen to have any mother in the world, she would have been at the
top of my list. She had two boys, and then her third boy was born with severe
spina bifida. Watching what she went through was heart-wrenching. When I
decided to write this book, a few years after the darling boy had died at age
6, we sat and talked through what at happened. She said that most people act
like it never happened and so it was good to talk about it. I hope so, and I
hope I’ve in some small way been able to honor what she went through.
Another
inspiration for this story is my history of infertility. My mother had seven
kids including me, and one of my sisters had seven, and so I never considered
that I would have problems having children. Then, my husband and I had five
miscarriages, the first at six months. The medical rigamarole that ensued was
awful. I’m so glad for it though, because we were able to have our happy
ending. A wonderful amazing woman—whom I’d trust almost more than I’d trust
myself—acted as gestational carrier for us, and our twins were born. Our son
was born with a severe cleft lip and palate, and so that was more medical
procedures that we went through. As much as we’ve been through, though, I can’t
express how thankful I am to medical science and the wonderful doctors who made
it all possible.
The first scene
I wrote, I was actually staying in a residential hotel in Denver undergoing IVF
procedure for the twins. All those shots. That was August 2005. The first scene
I wrote was where Maggie walks into the room and Jes just lights up. He makes
her feel wonderful, despite everything, just by the way he beams at her. I
finished a first draft by June 2009. I remember because I completed it for a
Tin House writers conference mentorship with the legendary Little, Brown editor
Judy Clain. The manuscript was an unqualified mess—four points of view with two
timelines going concurrently. Bless Judy’s heart for first of all agreeing to do
the mentorship and second of all giving me such great advice. Help your reader
out. Chronological, chronological! More reflection to let the reader know what
to take away from a scene. Her talking with me was simply the best
encouragement I could have had.
So I went back
and majorly rewrote it. Because of the nature of how I’d written it—two
timelines—the beginning and the end was basically written and I had to write
through the middle. An odd experience, to say the least, but a good one. It
shaped up nicely, although I distinctly remember having writers block and
thinking, this is the most horrible thing I’ve ever read. I do that when I
write—I go through periods of loving the work and then hating it. Especially
when I’m not writing, I think about all the flaws.
Having four
points of view presented its own challenges. If you have a point of view, you
have to have a character arc. Something has to happen to that person. They have
to change. And therefore all the stories have to be coherent in their own right,
yet they have to meld together into this unified whole. “Ambitious,” someone
called it, and at the time I don’t think they meant it as a compliment. My
initial inspiration for form was actually the movie Love Actually. I was fascinated with how that movie was able to
have all those different story lines yet work. I love that movie. It strayed
pretty far away, though, didn’t it? Another big inspiration was William
Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, one of my
favorite books. All those points of view tied together in a country setting. Believe
it or not, I didn’t actually read Kent Haruf’s Plainsong till late in the writing process. Without knowing it, I
had mirrored a lot of that wonderful book, and so when I did finally read it I
was a bit thunderstruck.
I deliberately
try to have all kinds of people in my books. I regret that I don’t have more
diversity in this one, but I am glad I was able to have CJ work through her
sexuality. Race and ethnicity and gender and sexuality are not binaries—they
exist much more on a spectrum—and I find myself continually fascinated with the
complexities of these subjects.
Finally, though I
hesitate to bring it up, I often have an extended metaphor or theme that I’m
thinking of when I write a story or a novel. In the case of Deep Down Things, it’s the story of
Jesus. Many readers would not pick up on it, I think, but Jes’s story riffs on
it with details large and small. I’m a spiritual person—though I’m not a
religious one—and the ideas underlying the story of Jesus are complicated and
compelling and timeless. Self-sacrifice, family relationships, being a good
person—these all are just as relevant today as they ever were. And I find by
using something like this as a framework, an extended metaphor, I can explore
these subjects more deeply. I don’t think of this as a religious book or a
Christian book, but I am very invested in the ideas that Christianity presents
to us. I am happy, however, if this book helps someone affirm his or her faith
or think more deeply about the issues presented.
My final
confession is that the ending still makes me bawl like a baby. I don’t think
writers are supposed to admit that.
– Tamara
Linse, Laramie, Wyoming, 2014
If this interests you, here's where you can pick up the audiobook Deep Down Things.
