I'm really excited to be talking to author Alina Adams this week, whose latest novel, Go On Pretending, comes out this May! Alina's path to authorhood is a fascinating one that began in the world of soap operas -- a theme that plays an important role in Go On Pretending. Check out our conversation below for more on this connection, the best writing advice she's ever received, and so much more!
Q: I tend to think that descriptors like “sweeping” or “epic” get overused when it comes to books, but Go On Pretending covers three generations of women in one family, spans three-quarters of a century, is set in NYC, the USSR, rural New Hampshire, and the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, also known as Rojava (a place, I must admit, I had to Google), and is inflected with historical events that include the Spanish Civil War, Loving v. Virginia, the invention of TV soap operas, Perestroika, the fall of communism, September 11th, and ISIS-related trouble in Syria: a truly sweeping epic if I’ve ever read one. As a reader, though, I always felt closely connected to the protagonists and their plotlines despite the vast amount of time and space covered in the novel.
As a writer, how did you go about accomplishing this?
A. I don’t know! I never consciously thought about it. What I think happened is, no matter how big any situation is, I think about how it affects individual people. Stalin has been credited with saying, “One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.” (Though the evidence is spotty, if he didn’t say it, he certainly wouldn’t have disagreed with it.) So I try to focus on the one. In the Spanish Civil War scene, it’s a tiny squirmish, not even a full battle. And yet it’s still so devastating to Rose that it affects pretty much every decision she makes for the rest of her life. When it came to the political situation in Rojava, I admit, I had a hard time keeping track of the factions, the geography, who was on who’s side and who they were fighting at any given moment. But that didn’t matter as much as the story of a mother chasing after a teen-age daughter who up and decided to play revolutionary. That’s what keeps the story grounded. And that’s what makes it universal.
Q. Did you know before you started writing where each character’s storyline would take them, or did you figure it out as you went?
A. I am definitely a plotter, not a pantser. It comes from working in soaps. Soaps have a document called a long story, the long story is broken down into weeks, the weeks are broken down into days, and the days are first summarized, scene by scene, in a breakdown, and then a dialogue writer comes in. I approach my novel writing the same way. I do a very detailed chapter by chapter, scene by scene outline, so I never don’t know what comes next. It’s great for avoiding writer’s block. You just have to turn the summaries into scenes!
Q. What were some challenges you faced as you wrote this incredibly complex yet cohesive plot?
A. Giving everybody equal weight and time. It’s hard to compare being in a war zone in Spain or Syria with trying to sell your TV show to a sponsor. One has… slightly higher life and death stakes. On the other hand, selling the TV show feels like a matter of life and death when you’re part of an interracial couple in 1956 and your options are very limited. One thing I try to do is give all my characters respect, even if I disagree with their life choices or their reactions to them.
Q. Writing a multi-generational-plot novel like this strikes me as a challenging type of novel to write, especially when the plot is so rooted in historical events. What tips do you have for writers who are working on similar plots?
A. Let history help you! Don’t know what should happen to a character? Just look up what happened to other people just like them. Now all you have to do is figure out how they’d react to it. I always tell aspiring writers that historical fiction is the easiest genre, because you don’t have to make up what or where or when. You just have to think of who (they are) and how (they respond). (And the first half of that answers the second.)
Q. Go On Pretending has a very diverse cast of characters. What is your philosophy on/practice for depicting characters who are different than you (in terms of race, ethnicity, religion, socio-economic beliefs, etc.) with care?
A. By definition, in historical fiction, you are writing outside of your area of experience. Even if the character fits you demographically to a T, you still weren’t that person in that time, in that place. For instance, I am a Soviet-Jewish woman who worked in soap operas married to an African-American man who grew up in Harlem, and is ridiculously overeducated. We live in New York City. But we got married in 1999. That was a very different time than when Rose and Jonas are dating in the mid-1950s. (As my husband and I note, “That’s when people really gave a damn.”) All of that said, the scenes of how they get treated, whether they are on the Upper East Side, the Upper West Side, uptown or downtown, all come from our real lives. So maybe people still give a damn… just a little.
Q. Switching gears a bit: what do you think is the biggest challenge that Jewish writers who want to tell Jewish stories face in today’s publishing market?
A. As Dara Horn wrote, “People Love Dead Jews.” (My oldest son, who has lived and worked in Europe concurs. Europe loves Jews. As long as they’re dead.) So that’s always a safe bet; Jews who are long gone, living in a time period which is not controversial and, even better, if it’s before anything controversial happened so they don’t need to have an opinion on it. I… didn’t follow my own advice.
Q. What is the best writing or publishing advice you’ve ever received?
A. It certainly wasn’t “write the book of your heart.” My heart does not have a single, marketable instinct, it would seem. Write, instead, the book you want to write within the parameters of what’s selling. But here is the most important part: You have to love the genre you choose to write in. Readers can smell a cash grab. If you don’t love romance, don’t write romance. If you don’t love teen-age vampires, don’t write teen-age vampires. I happen to love family sagas, they’re my favorite types of books to read, so that’s what I wrote. I added a background and setting that I was both familiar with AND one that was close enough to mine that I would be considered eligible to write it. And then I wrote what my heart told me to. But it had to pass through my brain and my nerves, first.
Go On Pretending hits bookstores on May 1, currently available for pre-order wherever you get your books! Can't wait for May? Check out Alina's website for more about her novels, including My Mother's Secret (which I downloaded and binge-read as soon as I finished Go On Pretending!) and The Nesting Dolls, which deal with similar settings and themes, particularly multiple generations of complex women family members!