Ignite Your Pen

How I challenged myself to change a false narrative

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Photo by Nishaan ahmed on Unsplash

I’m attending the nine-day Sedona International Film Festival so this is an edited repost of an essay previously published in December 2023. “Anger” feels more relevant than ever to me today.

Looking back, anger struck the match that ignited my writing.

Anger differs from resentment or animosity. It’s a positive emotion fueling protest and the compulsion to take action.

And in this case, a desire to set the record straight.

I’d read a statement, uttered in an interview, that really irritated me. And like a splinter that’s buried too deep to pull out, it festered.

I didn’t see it then, but this reaction added oxygen to a series of decisions. Ultimately, those strides would lead to my leaving behind a 30-year Corporate career and totally commit to becoming a writer.

But even bigger, this desire to right a wrong—to tell an untold story—to protest—would also unspool into an unexpected trajectory of serendipitous support I never could have fashioned or fathomed.

My book, Saving Vincent, A Novel of Jo van Gogh, existed only as an idea back then.

In hindsight, I can see clear as day that I was on the right track because the perfect support showed up at the perfect time to speed me on my way.

When I Got Mad

In 2016, I’d been poking around searching the web for background on Jo van Gogh, the famous artist’s sister-in-law. I’d glimpsed her role on a visit to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam where I discovered her work was critical to Vincent being acknowledged as a great artist, yet I hadn’t ever heard of her. When I came home from the trip and did an internet search, a smattering of articles popped up.

I’ll never forget the one that set my teeth on edge.

Why do you think Jo was so tenacious in promoting Vincent’s work when no one listened to her, the interviewer asked an expert. He answered that she had no choice; she was simply obeying her husband, Theo. That Theo had been so passionate and dedicated to Vincent that when he married Jo, she witnessed his single-mindedness. So, when Theo died just six months after Vincent’s suicide—and Jo inherited the hundreds of Van Gogh art given to Theo—her subsequent work to promote Vincent was compelled by obedience to her husband’s wishes.

Really? Those words “no choice” and “obedience” pissed me off.

As though Jo couldn’t have her own agency, her own reasons.

The annoyance created questions in my mind: What was her motivation then? If not obedience, what gave her agency? Where did her resilience come from? Who helped her? Who stood in her way?

But, above all: Why was Jo so certain of Vincent’s value when the art establishment of her day vehemently disagreed?

I set to work to find out. I didn’t know then what an upward climb I had ahead of me.

Rookie Mistake: Making Too Much Up

If I could talk to my younger self, I would tell her not to jump in with both feet so fast, to get a bigger picture on writing! Understand the publishing business! Instead, in early 2018, I plow right in to “write a book about Jo.” Very little detail is available about Jo’s life, Undeterred, I note the gaps and scribble out imagined filler. With this combination of facts and my imagination, I reimagine Jo’s life.

For the next two years, I work on a manuscript. Along the way it feels like I’m back in school: Two six-month sprints with book coaches Sheila Athens and Jill Angel, a deep manuscript evaluation by Jennie Nash, workshopping the first chapter at a writer conference, and beta reader commentary all teach me lessons about structure, characterization, dialogue and more. As I revise and refine, it feels like I’m learning a foreign language for story craft is wildly different from corporatespeak prowess, which has its place, but not on the pages of a novel.

By the summer of 2020, I finish. My husband breaks out a Chateau Neuf de Pap. We toast! Giddily I post my ta-da! on social media.

Then disaster strikes.

The Van Gogh Museum releases a detailed biography on Jo.

My stomach plummets.

For in the face of facts, my beautiful, imagined story about Jo feels flimsy. Disrespectful even. Now that the details of her art dealing are available— and my goal is to honor her achievement—wouldn’t a reader expect to find out what she actually did?

Ugh. It isn’t really a question. Just a sick feeling in my stomach. The courageous, confident Jo I’d put on the page was silenced. I had to shut this version away, to do the very thing I’d set out to correct by muting her.

I drop the manuscript in a drawer.

I would begin again.

Lost in Translation

With Jo’s new biography as my Bible, in August 2020 I set out to fill in the earlier missing spaces of Jo’s life. Yet, immediately, a new problem arises. The biography is in Dutch, an unfamiliar language to me. Naïvely, I’d planned to use a language app to translate the book’s relevant chapters into English.

Soon I discover the English translation is clunky, sometimes gibberish with a non-English sentence structure.

Gamely, I carry on for a month, trying, and discarding app after app, until in the end, my research notes are a mess. Nearly incoherent.

I reach out to the Van Gogh Museum. “Is an English version of Jo van Gogh’s biography coming out soon?”

“If we’re lucky, a year. Maybe two. There’s no sure timeline with the pandemic.”

Dead end. And it’s so strange. I can literally hold the heavy three-inch-spine biography containing all the answers I need in my hands, yet Jo’s story is still elusive.

I am so sad.

Then in September 2020, a possible solution pops up. Upon hearing of my dilemma, an author in a writers’ group, Pamela Stockwell, tells me she has a Dutch friend, Annelies, in the Netherlands, who has done a little translation work. Because of the pandemic her in-home day care is closed. Perhaps she’d translate the book chapters for me?

On pins and needles, I dm Annelies on Facebook. And you know what? Her big heart reaches right across the Atlantic. “I’ll help you” springs tears to my eyes.

We calculate that if she translates ten pages/week, I’ll have all the chapters I need by year end. I’m on my way again. Jo’s story, her true flesh-and-blood imperfect, crazy, joyful tale will be told.

As the pages come in, I realize the biography is written thematically, dancing back and forth in time. So, resisting my usual stiff-arm Excel reaction, I create a spreadsheet.

As the chapters arrive, Jo’s activities, life events, people she encounters, exhibitions she holds, specific paintings she sells, quotes, are added in chronological order. Gradually, row after row, the spreadsheet grows. After adding notes from Annalies’ last submission on December 3, I print out the spreadsheet: It’s a 55-page chronological gloriously rich record of events in Jo’s journey from being a widowed 29-year-old single parent to a triumphant 43-year-old art dealer (1891 - 1905).

My heart is light. In celebration, I sit down to read through the spreadsheet start to finish, but a few pages in my enthusiasm begins to falter. Something’s off. Midway through, I have to stop reading. I am a fool. A new problem is glaringly apparent.

I don’t have a story yet.

Unlocking Narrative Power

Reading the spreadsheet, the familiar drumbeat of biography thumps: This happened, then this happened, then this happened. Yes, I know I am reading a spreadsheet, but still, there’s no inciting incident, moment of opportunity, stakes, no dark night of the soul, no thrilling climax.

The spreadsheet is a bland retelling of events. No heartache or elation. None of Jo’s panicky worry over single parenting her son; no twinge of guilt when she takes a lover.

How do I stay true to the chronological, factual flesh-and-blood progression of Jo’s life and make it compelling? Inspiring? Fun?

I’m cornered again.

Enter my friend and author, Nancy Yeager. who intrigues me with a story structure idea taught by Michael Hague, founder of the Story Mastery program. He advocates telling a story in three acts, six stages and five turning points. Each section carries the narrative forward through elements like a New Situation, Change of Plans, Point of No Return and more. I study it, pondering whether Jo’s true account can fit the framework.

If so, it will give me a structure for a character arc to take her from timid girl to confident heroine. I also see I need a Bad Guy, a nemesis to stand in Jo’s way.

So, I invent Georges Raulf, a male character to be a composite stand-in for all the arrogance and misogynism that I—oops, I mean—Jo experiences in her life. And then—fair is fair— he gets a fleshed-out character arc too, so he’s more than a caricature.

Slowly, using a tool called the Inside Outline by awesome book coaching entity Author Accelerator Jo’s story gradually comes to life. Based on fact, with fictionalized dialogue and other elements, her story, her accomplishments, her trials begin to emerge.

With the completed Inside Outline beside me, one month later I open up a new Word page and begin to write. By June, 85,000 new words are born. Next comes collaboration and revision with my author friend and wonderful developmental editor, Kim Taylor Blakemore. By January 2023, the manuscript is done.

Done!

My heart is singing.

What began seven years ago as a mental protest against a glib remark is now a story on the page. A labor of love, for sure, but not a labor I did alone. Did you notice the names in this post? Sheila, Jill, Jennie, Pamela, Annelies, Nancy, Kim. Sisterhood on steroids. No zero sum game here.

I’m grateful.

Is my heart still on fire?

Oh, yes.

For there’s more corrections to be done against false narratives today.

Warmly,

My book, Saving Vincent, A Novel of Jo van Gogh, will publish in April 2025.

In the early twentieth century, a timid widow—and sister-in-law of the famed painter—Jo van Gogh takes on the male-dominated art elite to prove that the hundreds of worthless paintings she inherited are world-class in order to ensure her young son will have an inheritance.

Preorder here

P.S. Speaking of gratitude, shout-out thanks to

Marie W. Watts

for featuring a Substack guest post from me called 1 Difficult Journey Changing Your Mind.

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