Ear­li­er this week, Ron­na Wineberg wrote about say­ing Kad­dish for her moth­er and also shared a delet­ed scene from her first nov­el, On Bit­ter­sweet Place. She has been blog­ging here all week for Jew­ish Book Coun­cil’s Vis­it­ing Scribe series.

The Russ­ian por­tions of On Bit­ter­sweet Place are loose­ly based on my fam­i­ly history. 

When I was grow­ing up, though, I knew only the broad out­lines of that his­to­ry. My pater­nal grand­par­ents came from Lithua­nia and met in Chica­go. I knew very lit­tle about their lives. My grand­fa­ther had died when my father was sev­en­teen. My grand­moth­er didn’t speak about the past except to tell us that we were relat­ed to a great, intel­lec­tu­al fam­i­ly, The Katzenel­len­bo­gens, and to the teacher of Albert Ein­stein. She didn’t talk about her par­ents or sib­lings or life in Europe.

I knew more about my mother’s fam­i­ly. She was the first child born in Amer­i­ca. Her par­ents, old­er sib­lings, aunts, and uncles all came Rus­sia. Our small house was filled with vis­i­tors, rel­a­tives who spoke with thick accents. Though I’m a sec­ond gen­er­a­tion Amer­i­can, I often felt as if I had a foot in each world then, the old and the new. My great grand­fa­ther had been mur­dered in a pogrom. I didn’t know how or when. 

When I was in col­lege, my cousins and I decid­ed to talk to my mother’s fam­i­ly about Rus­sia. We gath­ered rel­a­tives in the liv­ing room of my par­ents’ house and asked ques­tions. We were riv­et­ed by sto­ries of hard­ship, per­se­cu­tion, and flight. The dis­cus­sions were pas­sion­ate; peo­ple dis­agreed about the details of what had hap­pened. My great uncle, a man in his late six­ties, described his father’s mur­der in Rus­sia. As he did, my uncle cried. That moment stayed with me.

I nev­er learned more about my father’s fam­i­ly. I knew I was for­tu­nate to have learned about my mother’s his­to­ry. I knew, too, I want­ed to write about an immi­grant fam­i­ly in the 1920s. But I wrote short sto­ries about oth­er sub­jects, a col­lec­tion of sto­ries, Sec­ond Lan­guage.

Final­ly I went back to the fam­i­ly his­to­ry. Writ­ing On Bit­ter­sweet Place taught me how to use fact in order to cre­ate fic­tion. This is what I learned: 

1. Fam­i­ly sto­ries aren’t enough. I real­ized I didn’t know the his­to­ry of the peri­od. I did research about the world of 1912 to 1928 first. Ques­tions arose as I wrote and revised. I had to do more research. Were match­books used in 1927? Yes, I dis­cov­ered. Was big shot” a phrase in 1927? No, I learned. The details need­ed to be right. 

2. Facts can inter­fere with imag­i­na­tion. I began to write about life in Rus­sia using the facts of my great grandfather’s death. This didn’t work. I decid­ed I want­ed to cap­ture the emo­tion sur­round­ing his death but not to dupli­cate the facts. This deci­sion felt lib­er­at­ing. I cre­at­ed a new fam­i­ly and char­ac­ters. When I dis­cov­ered Lena’s voice, On Bit­ter­sweet Place devel­oped a rhythm, a direc­tion. Lena isn’t based on a real per­son. She led me through the book. 

3. A nov­el begins with an idea: what if. Recent­ly, I read from On Bit­ter­sweet Place at a syn­a­gogue. Dur­ing the Q&A, an eighth grad­er asked, How did Lena know she want­ed to become an artist if she had nev­er tried to draw?” 

Each per­son is dif­fer­ent from the oth­er,” I said, struck by the ques­tion. One per­son wants to draw, anoth­er to swim, and anoth­er to sing. Do you ever get an idea that you want to try some­thing you’ve nev­er done before?” I asked. 

Oh, yes.” He nodded. 

That’s what hap­pened with Lena and draw­ing. She just want­ed to try it. Try to be an artist.” 

I real­ized this is a descrip­tion of writ­ing a nov­el. A nov­el is an idea that comes to a writer. It may be based on a phrase, an image, a fact. The writer doesn’t know if he or she can actu­al­ize the idea. But the writer tries. As I wrote, I won­dered: what if this hap­pened or that hap­pened. I exper­i­ment­ed, sur­prised by the char­ac­ters and plot twists. 

4. Char­ac­ters will guide the writer. Lena’s broth­er Simon pushed me to make him a more impor­tant char­ac­ter than I’d antic­i­pat­ed. Lena behaved in ways I didn’t expect when I began to write the book. 

5. The writer needs time. All writ­ing, espe­cial­ly a nov­el, needs time to per­co­late. I need­ed time to focus on the book in a con­sis­tent way. Since fic­tion isn’t bound by fact, scenes and char­ac­ters can be re-imag­ined and rewrit­ten in draft after draft. That’s one of the plea­sures of writ­ing. The author Paul Ther­oux has said, Fic­tion gives us a sec­ond chance that life denies us.” Every­thing in a nov­el is open to change. Until the book is pub­lished. Then the char­ac­ters and sto­ry fly away from the writer. The book takes on a life of its own. 

Ron­na Wineberg is the author of On Bit­ter­sweet Place and a debut col­lec­tion, Sec­ond Lan­guage, which won the New Rivers Press Many Voic­es Project Lit­er­ary Com­pe­ti­tion, and was the run­ner-up for the 2006 Reform Judaism Prize for Jew­ish Fic­tion. She is the recip­i­ent of a schol­ar­ship from the Bread Loaf Writ­ers Con­fer­ence and fel­low­ships from the New York Foun­da­tion for the Arts and else­where. She is the found­ing fic­tion edi­tor of Belle­vue Lit­er­ary Review, and lives in New York.

Relat­ed Content:

Ron­na Wineberg is the author of On Bit­ter­sweet Place, her first nov­el, and a debut col­lec­tion, Sec­ond Lan­guage, which won the New Rivers Press Many Voic­es Project Lit­er­ary Com­pe­ti­tion, and was the run­ner-up for the 2006 Reform Judaism Prize for Jew­ish Fic­tion. She is the recip­i­ent of a schol­ar­ship from the Bread Loaf Writ­ers Con­fer­ence and fel­low­ships from the New York Foun­da­tion for the Arts and else­where. She is the found­ing fic­tion edi­tor of Belle­vue Lit­er­ary Review, and lives in New York.