Nell Bight is the main character in my novel Child Bride, but in another life, her name was Claire and she was a minor character in the first novel I wrote that has never seen the light of day.

It was in the early 2000s, after I had published two poetry book collections, that I decided to try my hand at writing a novel. I quickly learned that the work of writing a novel, while similar to writing poetry in some ways, was extremely different in most. First, it was simply the long development a novel needed for each scene and character that was a departure from poetry or prose. In poetry, I’m able to capture a sentiment, an image, or feeling in as few as words as possible and yet with enough descriptive words to grab the reader’s attention.

Feedback

As I asked people to read parts of my first novel, their feedback centered on my “telling” not “showing” in my writing. This baffled me, since “showing” is how I successfully communicate through poetry. But I wrote on with a strong belief that my writing skills could transition from one genre to another if I just kept at it. Over three hundred pages later, I wrote “The End” with a sense of tremendous satisfaction. I then set out to use my contacts in the literary world to find a publisher or agent for my “first” novel. People were willing to take my calls and agreed to read the manuscript. I waited anxiously for the offers to come in, but, you guessed it—that never happened. I did, however, get something that has proven invaluable: honest (even brutal) feedback and suggestions from professionals in the industry.

One agent gave feedback along these lines: “Telling, telling, telling, typical first-time novelist mistake. . . and oh the grammatical errors!”

Another said, “I did not like the characters, even if you had developed them better.”

But one comment virtually everyone made who gave me feedback was that, “The only thing of interest in the whole manuscript is Mother Claire. I’d like to know more about her.”

Mother Claire

The manuscript was about Mother Claire’s children as young adults. She was represented in the novel as the elder person they turn to through turmoil in their lives. I had no intention of making her anything other than a minor character. But based upon the feedback, I began to rethink Mother Claire.

Several years later, after letting the manuscript ruminate in my file cabinet drawer, an idea started to emerge. I sat at my computer one day and scanned the manuscript for all references to Mother Claire. I then read those sections without any focus on the stories that led up to where she is mentioned. Then I saw it. It was as though I was looking at the sketch of an image within an image. This character’s essence came blazing through and I knew I had to write her story.

My debut novel, Child Bride, was born from the failure of my first attempt at writing a novel, and from the strong voice of its minor character, Mother Claire, who became the protagonist, Nell. I will always be grateful for the honest criticism people offered of the first manuscript that gave me the ability to hear Nell’s voice and the strength to carry on.