One Writer's Process: Augusta Scattergood

It took Augusta Scattergood almost ten years to write her first novel, Glory Be, a coming-of-age story which has received glowing reviews from such publications as School Library Journal  (“Glory is an appealing, authentic character whose unflinching convictions, missteps, and reflections will captivate readers.") and Publishers Weekly ("Scattergood's effective snapshot of the fight against segregation, one town at a time, makes personal the tumultuous atmosphere of the times.").

The middle-grade novel started, says Scattergood, as a short story for adults, then “tried to be a novel for kids titled Junk Poker. Pretty soon, fortunately, that title got tossed out the window! I submitted it way too soon. I tucked it into the proverbial bottom drawer. But I loved the story a lot, so I never gave up.”

In the mysterious way that writing works, Scattergood thought about the story for a long time. “I actually started the version that’s closest to my finished novel after hearing Ruby Bridges speak at the New Jersey school where I was working,” says Scattergood.

But that wasn’t the true start of the story, she admits. “I need to go back a bit to tell you that this story really started in 1964 when I worked for my state’s Library Commission as a summer college intern,” explains Scattergood, who worked in Sunflower County, Mississippi, in the heart of her native Mississippi Delta. “It was Freedom Summer, 1964. History unfolded while I shelved books and ran story hours. “

As a library intern, Scattergood says, she worked with a director who stood up to a library trustee who wanted to close down the library, or at least remove all the chairs, rather than allow it to be integrated. “By the end of that summer, Story Hour had turned into a remedial reading class attended by children who’d never been inside a library. That same summer, I briefly met a young, white civil rights worker from Ohio. In town to register voters and teach in the new Freedom School, she spent her off hours hanging out in the library. It’s not a reach to say I learned a lot that college summer.”

Over the years, as Scattergood worked on the manuscript, she would tuck it into a drawer while taking classes on writing at the New School in New York. She joined an SCBWI writing critique group, and turned to craft books on writing to help her continue to revise her manuscript.

“Then I struggled some more,” she says. “Thought a lot. Worried, revised, rewrote. In the end, I decided to give Glory a lot more of what my grandmother called gumption than we all had ourselves.”

It was a grandmother who had helped inspire her love of reading. A fourth-grade teacher, her grandmother gave Scattergood a book for her birthday every year. By seventh grade, she was bragging to all her friends about reading Gone With The Wind, all 1,048 pages.

And it was her grandmother who may have transmitted something of the Southern storyteller’s gene to her. “I was a fill-in Canasta player for her group,” says Scattergood, “and oh could they talk! I was a good listener.”

Now, Scattergood says, she does her best work at a local community college that shares space with a public library. “I get there early and try to grab a study room. I reward myself with a walk on the trail afterwards where I think about what I just wrote, revised, messed up, and put back together. Working at home has way too many distractions.”

Scattergood, who lives with her husband most of the year in St. Petersburg, FL, returns during the summer months to New Jersey, where she used to work as a librarian. Recently, she was kind enough to take a break from her work-in-progress to share thoughts on writing with wordswimmer.

Wordswimmer: If writing is like swimming...how do you get into the water each day?

AS: I'm a morning person. I usually spend a few minutes looking at my email and Facebook, then I dive right in.

Wordswimmer: What keeps you afloat...for short work? For longer work?

AS: My shorter work is mostly book reviewing. I stay afloat by reading some really great things. Books written by Mississippians or about the South, for Delta Magazine. Mostly middle-grade fiction, with the occasional Young Adult novel thrown in, for the Christian Science Monitor. And anything that strikes my blogging fancy. It's easy to kick back and enjoy this part of my writing.

But the novels? The more than 800-word-count challenges? I have to love the characters and really wake up each morning channeling the voice of the narrator. What's that kid trying to tell me today?

When that's not working--when I'm sinking fast--I'll do almost anything. Write letters to my characters, ponder their closets and refrigerators, all those tricks I refuse to start with. And later, when I'm barely treading water, sometimes wish I had!

Wordswimmer: How do you keep swimming through dry spells? 

AS: I'm new enough at writing that I haven't had a true dry spell. I find I have too much to say. Ask anyone who knows me.

Wordswimmer: What's the hardest part of swimming?

AS: Figuring out the "What ifs" of plot. I can write myself into a situation that just doesn't have an answer. That usually comes when I jump in without first surveying the landscape, the lilies in the pond and the stuff lurking beneath the surface of the lake.

If I do enough prep work, maybe that won't happen. But I'm anxious to dive right in. Oddly, I'm much more cautious when it comes to swimming in real lakes and oceans with scary stuff.

Wordswimmer: How do you overcome obstacles, problems, when swimming alone?

AS: I get by with a little help from my friends! No, really.

I don't like early drafts, but I have one writer friend who'll read almost anything I email her at the drop of a hat. (Thanks, Janet!) Another who seems to be waiting for my phone call when I most need her. (Leslie's great at brainstorming.) And of course, my critique groups.

I may be swimming alone for long hours, holed up in my quiet spot at the public library, but I'm never really alone. Must be all those years of synchronized swimming when I was a kid.

Wordswimmer: What's the part of swimming that you love the most?

AS: I actually love the editing, perfecting my strokes, so to speak. Finding just the right colors for the sunset or the sounds of a swimming pool in July.

In addition to being a lifeguard and teaching swimming classes when I was younger, I edited my high school newspaper, typed friends' term papers, worked on a monthly magazine.

Water and red pencils—I can't seem to escape either.

For more information about Scattergood, visit her website:

http://www.augustascattergood.com

And to read more interviews with her, visit:

http://smack-dab-in-the-middle.blogspot.com/2012/04/interview-augusta-scattergood-author-of.html

http://www.npr.org/2012/01/07/144829261/glory-be-a-tale-of-the-south-for-young-adults

http://hollyschindler.blogspot.com/2012/04/interview-with-mg-author-augusta.html

http://damselsinregress.wordpress.com/2012/05/24/3432/

http://greetings-from-nowhere.blogspot.com/2012/02/augusta-scattergood-is-in-house.html

Weaving Magic

Have you noticed how the voices of Southern writers weave a kind of magic spell over readers?

You can feel that magic throughout the pages of Augusta Scattergood's first novel, Glory Be, as she weaves her spell with the sweet sounds of a Southern dialect, an unerring eye for details, and heartfelt compassion for her main character, Gloriana June Hemphill, who is struggling to learn how to be true to herself in a world that seems to be changing so fast that the truth is sometimes difficult to discern.

The story is set in Hanging Moss, Mississippi during the summer of 1964. Every year Glory celebrates her birthday on July 4th with a party at the public pool, but this summer the pool has been shut down to avoid integration.

Not only does her friend Frankie betray her, but her older sister, Jesslyn, is no longer her best friend now that she’s discovered boys, and Glory's new friendship with a girl from Ohio places Glory under suspicion that she’s helping the troublemakers from up north.

These are just some of the challenges that propel the plot as Glory tries to figure out a way to re-open the pool so she can celebrate her birthday as she always has in the past. But the present, she realizes, is changing, and she has to decide how she feels about the changes as her birthday approaches and the story unfolds.

Here’s an example of Scattergood's magical voice from the book's opening page:

Franklin Cletus Smith has been my best friend since we hunted doodlebugs together in my backyard. Some people call him Frankfurter ‘cause he’s got hair the color of a hot dog. I call him Frankie. I squinted down the sidewalk, and finally here he came, dragging his towel with his bathing suit hiked way up.

"It’s a million degrees out here. I’ve been waiting forever."

“Well, hey to you, too, Glory,” he said.

There’s an assurance to this voice, a deep knowing which this voice conveys to the reader. It's a voice that belongs to a tradition of Southern voices, and you can sense the assurance and confidence of this voice right from the start of the story.

Part of what gives this voice its Southern charm and magic, I think, are words like “doodlebugs” and “hair the color of a hot dog,” and the way Glory describes the day (“It’s a million degrees out here. I’ve been waiting forever.”) and the way Frankie responds (“Well, hey to you, too, Glory.”). The phrasing, the way Glory shares her life with the reader, is what sets the reader firmly inside Glory's world and heart.

Here's another sample:

After supper, Laura and me sat on the back steps listening to the crickets start up. You could about catch a lightning bug by holding your hand out. Before we knew it, we were slapping mosquitoes and I had to turn on the stoop light to see real good.

And one more:

I took a deep breath, smelling the chlorine and the coconut suntan lotion, trying to remember hot dogs frying on the snack bar grill, and the lifeguards' whistles. I stood between Jesslyn and Laura with the warm sunshine beating down on my neck.

"You remember last July Fourth?" I asked Jesslyn. "The watermelon race? Me and you and Frankie and our cousins at my birthday party? And that cake you and Emma made me, shaped like a cat? Remember?" They weren't really questions I was asking Jesslyn. I just needed us to remember.

"I'm sorry, Glory," Laura said.

"I don't think the Pool Committee's worried about your birthday" was all Jesslyn said.

Here I was, sure that one little part of this town had changed. That maybe people like Frankie's daddy finally got together to decide opening the pool up for everybody, just in time for a Fourth of July celebration, was the kind of thing you should do on our country's birthday. But I was wrong. My thinking was all mixed up.

In the Author’s Note that you'll find at the end of the story, Scattergood writes:

There’s a saying that “Mississippi grows storytellers.” I was raised with stories told around the Sunday dinner table. Most nights, my grandmother dreamed up new bedtime tales for us. English teachers and librarians introduced me to the very high bar set by my state’s great literary heritage. Since I was old enough to listen, I’ve been hearing Mississippi in my head. This is one story I needed to share.

Thanks to Scattergood’s gift, we can hear Mississippi in our head, too.

For more information about Glory Be, visit: http://www.augustascattergood.com/books/bk_glory.html

And for more info on Augusta Scattergood, visit her website: http://www.augustascattergood.com/

and her blog: http://ascattergood.blogspot.com/

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Honoring Our Teachers: Mrs. Glassco and Leslie Davis Guccione

Many thanks to Augusta Scattergood, who reads, writes and blogs from St. Petersburg, Florida and Madison, New Jersey, for sharing her thoughts on two teachers who inspired her to write:

The first real flesh-and-blood author who took me under her wing and red-penciled my verbs was my senior English teacher at Cleveland (MS) High School. Mrs. Effie Glassco, the most frighteningly challenging teacher I ever encountered, wrote a weekly column for the local newspaper’s Society page. Using a tricky pen name, “I.C. All,” she reported on travels--her own and others--weddings, baptisms, parties, all with a flair.

Tiny, black-eyed, full of fury by the time my class rose to senior status, Mrs. Glassco was a fierce defender of strong verbs and of choosing just the right word. She disdained weak writing: “Wonderful?” she’d shout, waving a classmate’s essay in the air. “Why write the word wonderful? Wonderful is not specific. That wastebasket is wonderful, the chalk board! Wonderful tells me nothing!”

Even today, if my fingers dare to begin typing W-O-N…, I can’t get past the N.

Mrs. Glassco introduced our class to the English Romantics and to the great Mississippi writers. One fall Friday, after she’d begrudgingly dismissed the football players early from homeroom, she called me to her desk. She wanted to share her copy of Lanterns on the Levee. She’d lived through the Great Flood of 1917, was a friend of William Alexander Percy, and had scribbled her personal reflections in the margins of that book.

“Miss Effie,” as she became known to me, was quite possibly the first real writer who sat by my side, crossing out large sections of my prose. After I left her tutelage and eventually realized her bark was much fiercer than her actual bite, we became friends. From Effie Glassco, I learned to be attentive to words and to love great literature.

From my most recent writing mentor, novelist and teacher Leslie Davis Guccione, I learned to dig deep into writing specifics.

When she invited me to join her writing group, Leslie was already a friend. She and another member, Lee Stokes Hilton, welcomed me and my critique partner into their living rooms. Each Tuesday morning, Leslie put on her editor’s cap and (nicely, always) showed us how to improve. She encouraged us to polish our writing and get it out into the world, all while making us laugh.

Leslie taught me to spurn floating body parts. Before I joined the group, I don’t know that I’d worried about FBPs. Possibly, I wasn’t even aware of this horrible writing phenomenon. But now, you’ll never catch me (intentionally) floating a head in the wrong part of a sentence.

No more of these sorts of sentences:

1.She retrieved the arm that she'd wrapped around Annabelle and reached toward her son.

2. She pulled her body out of his arms.

3. MacFarland's eyes roamed the hillside.

4.The nurse's head peeked out from the door and smiled at her.

5. His eyes traveled to the bathroom.

No longer will eyes travel to the bathroom or any other place in my writing.

Another of the many lessons Leslie gently taught our group (and me specifically) was the importance of choosing the right names for characters. Of course, I already had huge lists of great names from old high school yearbooks, notebooks sprinkled with Bubbas and Lynettes, Miss Sister, Lady Margaret, Big Mama.

Leslie, however, showed me how just the right name can influence a character’s personality. You can write to type or write against type, purposely call up stereotypes or not, really manipulate the reader. She brainstormed one of my characters whose name surprisingly appeared in a different middle-grade novel set in Mississippi, just as I was getting to know her. When we came up with Gloriana as a new name, the character and the story took on a new, better life.

And Leslie believes in paying it forward. Early in her career, she helped another writer mentee of hers get started. That writer became a friend and advisor to me. I hope some day I can pass this gift along. This is what Leslie does for her students in Seton Hill University’s MFA in Popular Fiction program. Her fans are many, her advice priceless.

Thank you, Leslie Guccione. Thank you, Mrs. Glassco.

Augusta Scattergood, a former librarian, now writes middle-grade fiction and reviews books for The Christian Science Monitor and Delta Magazine. With the assistance of her "amazing" agent, she's in the process of finalizing the sale of her first novel, historical fiction set in Mississippi.

You can follow Augusta Scattergood's blog at http://ascattergood.blogspot.com/ and can read more of her work at A Good Blog Is Hard To Find http://southernauthors.blogspot.com/ where this piece first appeared in slightly different form. It’s reprinted here with permission of the author.