At her recent July 9 appearance at Baxter Memorial Library, Maine author Monica Wood spoke for about an hour, offering some unique insights into several aspects of her life as a successful memoirist, novelist, and playwright. The presentation was well attended by an enthusiastic audience of people who were clearly fans of Wood and her writings.
She began by reading a lengthy excerpt from her most recent novel, “How to Read a Book”, which was published in May. Without revealing too much of the plot, she described the first part of the novel as being about a young woman inmate, who is anticipating her release date while serving time at the Maine Women’s Correctional Center for a serious DUI offense. Other characters include a retired English professor who teaches a class on classic literature at the prison, a retired machinist, and the machinist’s late wife, who eventually makes an appearance. The excerpted passage described what happened at one of the literature classes, while describing the colorful personalities of the inmates who were in the class. Wood hinted that several mysteries might be revealed as the plot unfolds, including mentioning that the title might be a double meaning (or even a triple meaning).
Wood then talked about how the process of writing the book began. Comparing it to her other projects, she said this one began rather uniquely, with a fully formed character (the young woman inmate) continually emerging into her consciousness and demanding to have her story told. It was somewhat inconvenient timing, as she had recently determined that writing for the theater was her new thing. But eventually she complied and wrote the story down fairly spontaneously, without much prior research or pre-plotting. In time, the other characters revealed themselves, and she wrote their connected stories too.
After completing the first draft, she went back through the chapters and added many details, especially about the work life and careers of the characters. These details were derived from experiences she had both before and during the writing project’s early phase. These experiences included taking a machinist class at Southern Maine Community College, interviewing Harvard experts on avian intelligence, and working as a volunteer instructor in the women’s prison.
At the middle of her writing process, the COVID-19 pandemic happened, with mixed effects on the author and her process. She said, on one hand it gave her much more time at home to focus on writing and editing. On the other hand, the pandemic gave Wood and many others intimations of mortality, which she said may have caused her to want to hurry the publication process. Despite the challenges, she said that this book is in many ways her favorite, because the writing process was shorter (just two years) and less complicated.
Wood then described how recent changes in the publishing industry affected the novel’s content, publication process, and even its name. The publication was delayed over a year by a strike at the publishing company, and the eventual sale of the publishing house which she had been with for many years. This meant that the members of her publication “team” changed. Like shuffling a deck of cards, it caused some key people to leave, but some old friends she hadn’t worked with in years came back onto her team. She had to adapt to working with a mostly much younger editorial team, with meetings taking place on Zoom.
Fairly late in the publication process, the novel was renamed, partially based on research from young techies at the publishing house, who apparently did online research and found that books with the word “book” in the title sell better. Wood acknowledged that the book is selling well with its new title, but added that she still liked her original title, “Meanwhile.”
Before closing out the event by answering a few questions, Wood told some humorous stories about challenging experiences she’s had while on previous speaking tours.