Wisdom's Kiss (91 page)

Wisdom's Kiss
began with
Trudy
's roadside
vision
of approaching menace. This is to say that
Wisdom's Kiss
began not only with this inspiration, but for a good many drafts with as the actual opening of the book.

As an opener, it has a lot going for it.
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The scene introduces the reader to Trudy and her devotion to Tips; it demonstrates the power and mystery of her clairvoyance; it even shows her passion for family as she tries to protect a hen and chicks—to be sure, a singularly ungrateful
hen
. I also loved that "muttered fowl curses" line; anyone who's ever worked with chickens knows that warning croon.

But, sweet as it was, the scene didn't light me on fire. It didn't suck me in as the opener of a book should. (Note the first line of
The Titan's Curse,
book three of Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson and the Olympians series: "The Friday before winter break, my mom packed me an overnight bag and a few deadly weapons and took me to a new boarding school." Now
that's
an opener.)

Whenever I thought about this new
Wisdom's Kiss
book I was supposed to be writing, I'd get especially enthusiastic about Tips's diving scene. Felis's description of Tips leaping off that great mossy waterwheel and arcing into the dark water of the pond ... It gave me goose bumps. Still does. When I sent my publisher a proposal for
Wisdom's Kiss
and needed to include a writing sample, I included
that
scene
—not, you notice, the scene of Trudy and the chickens. Plus there was that whole wonderful Felis overlay, his ridiculous memoir title and vainglorious vocabulary and preening self-regard
...
This was a character I wanted to know more about, find out what this boastful little maestro intended to do with such a talented lad. Not to mention that the scene (her lookout for Tips's brother, her knowledge of that eavesdropping-free conversation) also hinted at Trudy's clairvoyance!

But. But the pluses of Felis's memoir were also its drawbacks. For every reader drawn into this succulent prose, another would be irrevocably alienated by the vocabulary. Why toss readers (as it were) into the deep end of the pool? Wouldn't it be smarter (from a marketing standpoint, yes, but also as a storyteller) to draw the reader in gently? To start in the shallow end, with floaties?

Everyone agreed that this was a problem. It wasn't—unlike some other battles I can recall, to my shame—other people telling me it didn't work and me refusing to listen. I saw it too; I just didn't know how to fix it. I also wanted a softer opening, but without sacrificing that juicy Felis extravagance.

So, thinking cap jammed tightly on skull, I ruminated away ... and thus remembered a scene I'd envisioned very early in the outlining process, well before I touched pen to paper. (Okay, before I put fingers to keyboard.) While pondering Trudy's sight, I'd tried to figure out when it first happened, and came up with the idea of a small child inadvertently discovering a villain. It was a great character-development exercise, but as far as the book went, it didn't really work; it would mean beginning the story a decade earlier and then having to contrive one of those "ten years later, our heroes..." type solutions. I hate those. For me, the tighter the chronology, the better. If I could write a book that takes place over twenty-four or even two hours, I'd be thrilled. Tight = taut; stretched = saggy.

Now faced with this crisis, however, I returned to that saggy notion. Everyone who read
Wisdom's Kiss
loved Trudy and agreed she was the central character; it made absolute sense to
begin the story
with her. The memoir prose of
A Life Unforeseen
was far more digestible than Felis's excess. Not to mention—Oh, how I love serendipity!—that introducing Trudy and Tips as children could thus make the dive scene far more dramatic; readers would already know and empathize with this twosome.

I then spun off these two entries—Trudy's childhood plus Felis's dive story—into a separate,
formal introduction
and explained the six-year gap in chronology by titling Part I—creatively enough— "
Six Years Later
." Such is authorial flexibility. Plus the introduction's
title
cracks me up—I always imagine Dizzy being the one who composed it.

More on the
structure
of
Wisdom's Kiss

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Author Commentary: Title and Cover
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Some books have titles that leap from one's brow as Athena, fully formed, leapt from the brow of Zeus.
Dairy Queen
and
Princess Ben
both fall in this category. I thought them up like this:
poof!
Everyone agreed that they were wonderful or at least tolerable. No one ever looked back.

Then there are the titles that lurk like blind, eyeless cave fish in the unlit pits of one's subconscious, refusing ever to reveal themselves. Into this latter category falls
Wisdom's Kiss.
I was most moved, while watching the movie
Julie & Julia,
by the scene in which Julia Child and her editor struggle for hours on end to come up with a title for
Mastering the Art of French Cooking.
Good gracious, I know that pain.

The original title of
Wisdom's Kiss
was "Fortitude, Wisdom and Tips," which from the get-go I knew was bad, not least because its abbreviation is far too close to one of those naughty modern acronyms. "WORKING TITLE!" I wrote on the cover, just to clarify that even the author knew it stunk. Then we started spitballing. Make any amalgam of Wisdom, Tips, Trudy, Fortitude, Cat, Magic, Air, Farina, Froglock, Misadventure and/or Adventure, Passion, Love, Gold, Whiskers—you'll come up with at least one of our suggested titles. I can't remember exactly what Julia Child/Meryl Streep says in
Julie & Julia
when they finally settle on
Mastering the Art of French Cooking;
something akin to "I'm too tired to think! Why not?" That's how I felt when we finally combined "wisdom" and "kiss": why not. (And then we had to go through the whole bloody process again with the subtitle. I'm still bummed that "oysters" didn't make it:
A Thrilling and Romantic Adventure, Incorporating Magic, Oysters, Villainy, and a Cat
—isn't that fun? But there wasn't room on the page, or something.)

My feelings about the
Wisdom's Kiss
title have since blossomed from acceptance into heartfelt affection, though I confess that in my private notes I refer to it as
WisK,
mentally pronounced as "whisk." I haven't said this aloud—yet—but I will soon, and will then be regarded with justifiable disbelief. Possibly horror. To be honest, I have never viewed myself as the kind of author who writes titles featuring the word "Kiss"—kissing is a relatively minor element in my fiction—but live and learn.

Once we settled on this title, I had to go back and weave in subtle
references
to the phrase "Wisdom's kiss," a job I enjoyed enormously. The
deleted stuff
is better still.

Like a book's title, the cover art requires synthesizing a complex, multicharacter narrative into a package that will appeal to the broadest selection of readers while also conveying its most important themes and emphasizing its originality and nuance.

Good luck with that one.

But Houghton Mifflin—hands together, everyone—pulled it off. That picture of ball gown + hair + cat (there's a girl in there too, somewhere, but really it's all about the dress) blows me away. When I showed it to my sister, she gasped: "This is every picture you ever drew as a kid!" Which, oddly, I had not realized ... Although on some level I must have because I did, you know, write the story that inspired the art. I will take credit for the cat. In an earlier, different cover version I pushed hard for a cat, feeling that it would enhance the cover's humor and quirkiness. Doubtless the designer thought of it independent of my suggestion, but I'm still content to look at that sable beauty and think, "You're mine, dude. You're all mine."

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Author Commentary: The Challenges of Magic
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If I had magical powers, I would use them all the time. Not for profit or crime or fame, but definitely enough that other people would notice. And why not? Who in their right mind wouldn't want to fly if flying were available, or shoot fire from their fingertips, or turn annoying cellphone-blabbing drivers into frogs?

Such a gift, however, presents two serious problems—by which I mean two serious authorship problems; we won't get into traffic safety.

First is the conundrum of fitting sorcery within the cultural parameters of human society. Magic is—by definition—supernatural. Its practice would attract relentless attention. Why bother with a story about a young witch who wants a boyfriend; when the news about her witch-ness breaks, boyfriends will be the least of her problems. In real life, the very existence of magic would overwhelm all other characters and conflict, and negate any other story an author might be trying to tell.

The most common solution to this dilemma can be seen in books such as
Harry Potter
and
The Lightning Thief,
where magic practitioners are required by law or some other force to keep their magic secret. Show off and you'll end up nailed by the Ministry of Magic. Or an author can create an impediment that restrains the hero's activity: in Justine Larbalestier's
Magic or Madness,
practicing magic shortens your life. Show off and you'll die at twenty. Conversely, make the magic socially dangerous: show off and you'll find yourself slaughtered by a mob. All these parameters put a damper (to say the least) on magical expression, thus focusing the fantasy novel on other, hopefully more interesting plot lines.