You're invited!

In Pieces is the featured selection for two online book groups in September, and you're invited to join us for one or both! 📚 Plus, signed copies will be on sale now through the end of the August, here on my site.

Sept. 3rd info and sign up: members.smartcatholics.com/events/chrism-press-book-club-in-pieces-by-rhonda-ortiz

Sept. 27th: Live on Instagram with @faithfulfictionbookclub. instagram.com/faithfulfictionbookclub

Signed paperbacks: rhondaortiz.com/store/in-pieces

Hope you can join us!

I took Molly to the beach.

I’ve been avoiding a full reread of the first book. For many writers, myself included, reading one’s past publications can be emotional, weird, cringe inducing, depressing…you get the idea.

However…

However.

“When is the next book coming out?” is a question I hear at least once a week. It’s flattering and encouraging—that readers like Molly and Josiah makes me happy. But the question has yet to shake me from my writing malaise and frustration with the several times revised but still not solidified Book 2 manuscript.

Until yesterday.

Yesterday I called my grandma. It had been a while since we’ve spoken. She and Grandpa are in their mid/late eighties, and her health is not great. I should call more often.

Grandma told me she loved my book. She said it kept her engaged and wanting more. And then she asked me the question:

“When is the next book coming out?”

After nearly a year and several frustrating revisions, it’s time to be brave and face my own writing. Get my bearings on the story, and get it done. My grandma is waiting on me.

I could have sworn that I’ve blogged about this before, but apparently I haven’t.

Historical fiction writers are often told to eliminate contraction usage so that the prose sounds “historic.” In truth, contractions— “I’m”, “don’t”, “can’t”, etc.—have been used in spoken English forever. The briefest glance at any Shakespeare play proves that point.

The confusion arises when one looks at novels and other prose from the past. In the opening chapter of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, for example, you will not find a single contraction. Austen uses contractions sparingly in her writing, reserving them mainly for uneducated and/or silly characters. Same with her personal correspondence. She used abbreviations to save space, but few contractions.

This may be an Austen thing, or an English thing, or a “this is a book so I need to write more formally” thing. But prose like Austen’s—and probably Austen’s in particular, given her popularity and the sheer number of contemporary Regency romances out there—is what people expect of Georgian- and Regency-set fiction.

But is formality historical? How did English speakers actually talk in the Georgian and Regency eras? For myself, the question is even more specific: how did Americans talk? The United States’ wealthiest class—merchants, lawyers, plantation owners—were steps removed from England’s aristocratic and gentry classes. We were their country bumpkins.

These questions arose for me while revising In Pieces ahead of acquisition by WhiteFire/Chrism. And I wanted an answer—a good, historically accurate answer!

The closest record we have of informal speech is correspondence. My friend and editor Roseanna pointed me to her own research on contractions and American usage. I took her work and went a step further, searching the Founders’ correspondence at the National Archives for not only usage, but frequency of usage.

I also compared and contrasted the Founders’ writing styles. As you can see above, most used contractions consistently. The outliers were Benjamin Franklin, whose letters are practically littered with contractions, and James Madison, who rarely used them, if at all. And if we consider the age, history, and personalities of these two men, we see that this makes sense. Franklin was the son of a candlemaker, he attended school for a few years but never graduated, and he was of an older generation. Madison was younger, he was a Virginian plantation owner, and he was a stick in the mud. Of course his letters were formal to the point of being stilted!

As for American dialects, we don’t have nearly as much evidence. But writing dialect is difficult and fraught with dangers, no matter the time period. So I avoid it.

Armed with this knowledge, I set out not to eradicate contractions, but to employ them for the sake of characterization, as Austen did:

This said, I can’t “write old.” Some authors can write in a historical style and succeed—Eleanor Bourg Nicholson comes to mind. And I wish I could! My writing would be better for it! But my ear isn’t good enough.

So, like Sigrid Undset, I use contemporary prose to depict a historical setting, leaning on description to depict the period: objects, activities, events, etc. My stylistic goals are modest: write cleanly, avoid anachronisms (with a few exceptions), avoid contemporary sentence cadence as best I can, and sprinkle in Georgian idioms for color. That’s it.

Some think this is a flaw in my writing. They’re not wrong! I love the late Georgian period and “get” it, culturally and otherwise. Yet I have to write around my limitations.

Update 8/15/22:

Another point worth noting, at least with regards the Molly Chase series: Boston is a port town and Josiah Robb is a sailor. As one person in the Patrick O’Brian Appreciation Society pointed out to me, elisions and contractions are natural to nautical speech. Setting and characterization matters!

Thoughts? Contact me here.

Last night, the kids and I watched Encanto together. Normally I use their movie time to do something else, and therefore I had only seen bits and pieces of it. Mea culpa. This movie is fantastic. Just when you think Disney has sold out completely and forgotten the heart of humanity, they go and write a story rooted in sacrificial love:

After the movie, my eight-year-old daughter and I turned on the sing-along version and rewatched the songs. When we came to “Dos Oruguitas,” in an attempt to explain the gist of the song to her, I latched on to the word futuro. “He gave his life for his children, for the future,” I told her. “That’s what a good father does.”

Cue the emo moment. We finally have a song for Molly Chase.

If you’ve read In Pieces, or even if you’ve read the first paragraph of the back cover blurb, you will understand why. Molly’s father acted the opposite of Abuelo, taking his life rather than giving it. The story that follows is Molly’s search for reconciliation. “Dos Oruguitas” taps into this longing. In the context of the movie, it is a song about betrothed love, paternal love, sacrificial love, confession, reconciliation, and restoration—personal, familial, and communal. Ultimately it’s a song about theosis.

Something has shaken loose with this song. Full confession: I have been battling a stubborn case of writer’s block. I’ve put a lot of pressure on myself to finish the next book of the series, motivated largely by a desire to please others. Only yesterday I was saying to my husband that I wasn’t having fun with it, that I had lost something fundamental. Last night’s Encanto viewing restored it, whatever it was. Ultimately, I cannot write to please readers, or editorial, or my publisher, or even myself. I write to please God and the muses.

This emo moment couldn’t have come at a better time.

Lyrics available here.

Spanish version.

English version.

Thoughts? Contact me here.