Since there is no way that I know of to archive SheWrites.dom novelist group chats on the site, I’ve copy-pasted (and very slightly edited) our March chat with Painted Girls author Cathy Marie Buchanan for anyone who missed it or anyone who wants to revisit what was said. Please note that it’s a live online chat, so answers don’t always directly follow questions.
If you find archiving the chats helpful, please leave a comment below, and I’ll try to do this more regularly. If you think it might cramp your style to have these chats memorialized, let me know that too. And thanks to everyone who participated. – Meg
Me
Sisters, dance, art, ambition, and intrigue in late 1800s Paris. Cathy Marie Buchanan’s The Painted Girls offers the best of historical fiction: compelling characters brought backstage at l’Opera and front and center in Degas’ studio. It’s Cathy’s second novel, and it’s already a huge bestseller.
Cathy Marie Buchanan
Hello, all!
Me
I’m really delighted to have Cathy here to chat with us.
And I’m going to step in and ask the 1st qu if that’s ok.
(or even if it’s not!)
Cathy, I’ve read both your novels and love the richness of the writing. Would you start by sharing how you write? Routine? or occasional inspiration? or something else?
Cathy Marie Buchanan
I am a disciplined writer. I sit down and write 5 days a week, inspired or not. I’m at my desk at 8:30. I try to write for 4 hours before I move onto other things (though I have been failing at that miserably lately).
Me
(She’s preaching my sermon, yay!)
And how long does it take you to write a novel? How many drafts?
Cathy Marie Buchanan
I came from the corporate world and was very used to the 9-6 gig before I turned to writing.
Mark Hughes
Did you find that business discipline helped your work?
Cathy Marie Buchanan
I’d say it’s takes 3-3.5 years. Countless drafts. 50??
Me
I knew there was a reason I love you and your writing 🙂
Jenny Darlington
Hi, Cathy! Is some of that 50 individual chapters? Or all, the overall manuscript?
Me
What is a draft anyway? (rhetorical; no answer required)
Mark Hughes
I agree; it’s amorphous
Cathy Marie Buchanan
Yes, Mark. I’m used to goals and objectives. It also made me comfortable with public speaking and I was at IBM for 10 years so am very comfortable around a computer.
I meant 50 drafts.
Mark Hughes
Structure as well – from business?
Leanne Sparks
Do you stop in between revisions, and let it sit? For how long, before you get back to it?
Cathy Marie Buchanan
Yes, that’s true, Mark. I studied biochemistry at university and I think there is something to be said for the discipline of learning to think logically and in an organized fashion.
Jen Haeger
Cathy, How/why did you make the jump from business to writing?
Cathy Marie Buchanan
Leanne, I don’t take breaks but on the occasions when I am waiting (for my agent to read, let’s say) I find stepping away from the work is a huge help.
Urenna Sander
I’m considered a “seat of the pants writer.” I’ve tried to structure an outline. I find myself going back to the beginning and changing my outline.:-)
Jenny Darlington
I do the same, Urenna! (I just read a great article about it in Writer’s Digest – Organic Writing)
Cathy Marie Buchanan
Jen, there was a crazy 4 year period when I was still working full time by day and cramming in a bit of writing or taking a class in the evening.
Mark Hughes
I know that life.
Cathy Marie Buchanan
Urenna. I’ve heard people say, why bother writing the book if you know how it will end, and have a friend who has 3 pages of bullet points per chapter before he starts first draft. I am somewhere in between.
Me
Man, I never could write when I was working
Leanne Sparks
Do you work on one project at a time, or do you have several started (and then one kicks in)?
Jen Haeger
Cathy, is Paris a city that you have visited a often, or do you write about it from copious amounts of research?
Urenna Sander
Jenny, Thanks. I’ll read the article.
Cathy Marie Buchanan
I work on one project at a time when I can. With The Painted Girls though I was writing away and continually being interrupted by the editing (with publisher) of The Day the Falls Stood Still. Now I’ve begun a 3rd novel but I continually pulled back to belle epoque Paris promoting TPG.
Jenny Darlington
Maybe this is a newbie question, but is it difficult to keep your characters, plots etc straight when you’re writing more than one thing at a time? Or does one help inspire the other?
Cathy Marie Buchanan
Jen. I’ve visited often, mostly purely as a tourist. I did go on a research trip (1-5days) that was wonderful to though. Mostly I wanted to soak up the atmosphere. Best of all was attending a class of fourteen-year-old girls at the Paris Opera Ballet school.
Julie Maloney
Cathy, What do you find is the hardest part of revising…for you, individually. I’m sure it’s different for everyone.
Me
Newbie questions always welcome, Jenny!
Jenny Darlington
Thanks, Meg 🙂
Mark Hughes
It’s those advanced questions that vex us 🙂
Cathy Marie Buchanan
Jenny, I feel like it adds nothing to work on more than one thing at a time. For me, anyway. I only do it when I have no choice.
Urenna Sander
Cathy, how long does it take you to complete a book?
Cathy Marie Buchanan
Jen, I live in Toronto so we have a great library system where I can access almost anything I need. Also all of the Le Figaro newspaper articles from the 1870-80s are online, so I was able to access them from home.
Jenny Darlington
That’s great! (I think I’d prefer the research trip to Paris, though, haha!
Cathy Marie Buchanan
Urenna, here’s my rough guess. Research 6 months. 1st draft 1 year. Rewriting on my own 1.5 years. Rewriting with professional editors 6 months. So 3.5 years. I am slow.
Mark Hughes
Cathy – when you go back and reread your books, what’s your emotional experience like?
Urenna Sander
I feel better knowing this. I’m slow too.
Jenny Darlington
Wow! I didn’t expect you to say your own re-write for 1.5 years!
Me too!
Me
I don’t actually think any of that is slow!
Cathy Marie Buchanan
Jenny, I can’t complain. Researching in the Paris Opera museum at Paalais Garnier has got to be about the most spectacular place to research in the world. Not to mention the pain au chocolat.
Me
Good writing takes time!
Mark Hughes
Me either.
Jenny Darlington
I can imagine! 🙂 What an amazing experience!
Me
or the chocolate chaude, which is something completely different from American hot chocolate!
Leanne Sparks
Where are you going on your next research trip?
Mark Hughes
Okay, we’re running off the rails now 🙂
Cathy Marie Buchanan
Mark, mostly I feel proud. Sometimes I get caught up in the tension, which is laughable. I do sometimes changer certain words when I am reading publicly. Editing on the fly.
Mark Hughes
Eternal editing.
Me
oh but who needs rails anyway, Mark?!
Jen Haeger
Where did you find the idea/inspiration to write TPG?
Mark Hughes
Ha
Cathy Marie Buchanan
Leanne, it’s set in Iron Age Briton on the eve of Roman conquest. 2000 years ago. The setting is modern day Cheshire, not quite am glam as Paris I’m afraid.
Urenna Sander
If you are writing about Paris. I suggest you read France Today. I think you should read the newspapers about the country and era you’re writing about. You can go online and get a subscription to world news.
Cathy Marie Buchanan
Jen, On its unveiling in 1881, the public linked Little Dancer with a life of vice and young girls for sale. She was called a “flower of the gutter”, and they said her face was “imprinted with the detestable promise of every vice.” The notion was underpinned by a long history of less than noble
liaisons between the wealthy men who held season tickets and the young ballet girls. While it is the nature of art to acquire new meanings over time, the degree to which this is the case for Degas’s now beloved Little Dancer made writing about the sculpture irresistible to me.
Mark Hughes
Is this the sculpture at the Norton Simon museum?
Jenny Darlington
When you first began writing, while you were still in the Corporate world…did you just jump in to writing, or did you research articles about HOW to write, etc?
Cathy Marie Buchanan
Yes! The original was wax but there are bronzes in galleries all over the world.
Jenny Darlington
I have always been in love with Degas’ work. He’s amazing. I had the privilege of seeing many of his pieces in person at the Musee de Orsay in Paris (did you go there during your trip? You’d love it!)
Cathy Marie Buchanan
Jenny, I was enrolled in continued ed night school creative writing classes for 4 years.
Mark Hughes
Part of the ten thousand hours.
Jenny Darlington
wow!!
Me
(Outliers! I so agree with that book.)
Mark Hughes
Absolutely. Writing is a profession like any other, to my mind
Cathy Marie Buchanan
Jenny, yes I did. They have an excellent collection including one of the bronzes of Little Dancer. The Met has the best Degas collection I’ve seen in the US, including a bronze Little Dancer. Art Institute of Chicago is also great.
Mark, exactly.
Jenny Darlington
Ah, the MET, one of my favorites (a tangent, but my husband actually proposed to me there). It’s a very special place to me.
Urenna Sander
Cathy, how do you choose the title of your books?
Leanne Sparks
and how many variations do you go through?
Cathy Marie Buchanan
I also studied ballet extensively as a teenager. And there were in fact Degas ballet girls prints tacked to the walls. So I get to include that in my 10,000 hours.
Me
🙂
Mark Hughes
We
We’ll let the judges mull that one over 🙂
Me
Love to hear the answer to the title question. And then do we have time for one more, Cathy?
Cathy Marie Buchanan
Urenna, we really struggled with The Painted Girls. Eventually I invited my girlfriends over and we drank copious amounts on wine and my great pal writer Ania Szado came up with the title. Earlier possibilities included The Van Goethem Sister. Flowers of the Gutter. Little Dancers.
Karen A. Wyle
Just showed up!
Me
I think it was called Little Dancers when I read it. But I LOVE Painted Girls.
Mark Hughes
If I might ask one more: what kind of structure/arc do you try to achieve in your stories?
Jenny Darlington
The Painted Girls is such a fantastic title! Mysterious enough alone to draw a reader in 🙂
Urenna Sander
I like the title too. I can’t wait to read it.
Leanne Sparks
Oh good…I am on my 3rd with my current WIP
Cathy Marie Buchanan
I love TPG title. I love the gentle suggestion of prostitution and in ties in with the book’s theme of the ballet girls (mostly Parisian demimonde) being dressed up and painted up to appear other than are in fact were.
Me
exactly. so evocative
Cathy, perhaps you could answer Mark’s structure qu, then I have one quick one before we wrap up.
Repeating Mark’s qu, since it can be hard to find upstream: what kind of structure/arc do you try to achieve in your stories?
Cathy Marie Buchanan
Mark, I think of the beginning of the book as setting up the stakes, the middle as increasing the tension around the stakes and the end as the resolution. As I was writing TPG, I sometimes felt the tension wane and then I would ponder who to ratchet it up again before proceeding.
Mark Hughes
Sounds like classic three acts.
Cathy Marie Buchanan
I think my agent drilled this kind of thinking into my head.
Me
🙂
Cathy Marie Buchanan
Mark, yep. Nothing new here!
Mark Hughes
It’s only worked for 3,000 years…
Cathy Marie Buchanan
Mark, true.
Urenna Sander
Great advice.
Me
And one last question, since the half hour is already long gone: What did you do to celebrate hitting the NYT list? Or the Canadian one for that matter?
Cathy Marie Buchanan
Urenna, thank you.
Cathy Marie Buchanan
Hmm. I kind of feel like I have not properly celebrated the book’s success. Publicity demands have been to great. Isn’t that the way though? I’m about to go to Mexico for a week and plan lots of celebrating time there.
Mark Hughes
And no snow…
Me
I once heard an author say she was on tour when she hit the list, and celebrated with a glass of champagne … alone in her hotel room. 🙂
Jenny Darlington
Ha, Mark is on to something there! 🙂
Mark Hughes
No one chooses this life, right? Alone, celebrating. Like the work…
Me
Cathy, thank you SO much for joining us! And if you haven’t already done so, folks, read Painted Girls!
Cathy Marie Buchanan
Good luck with all your writing endeavours, everyone. Keep at it. I could honestly wall paper my office with rejection letters I got from submitting short stories to lit fiction magazines.
Urenna Sander
You’ll have a movie offer in the near future.
Me
I’ll look forward to seeing everyone’s font on the group wall and the discussion threads, and again here next month.
