{"id":41,"date":"2013-11-27T20:04:23","date_gmt":"2013-11-27T20:04:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kimchurch.com\/author\/?page_id=41"},"modified":"2025-01-11T13:59:55","modified_gmt":"2025-01-11T13:59:55","slug":"coffee-break","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/kimchurch.com\/author\/press\/coffee-break\/","title":{"rendered":"Coffee Break: Kim Church on Byrd"},"content":{"rendered":"

Coffee break: Kim Church on Byrd<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Why this book?<\/b><\/p>\n

There was a character I wanted to know, so I had to write her. She needed the space of a novel.<\/p>\n

Why this character? Where\u2019d she come from?<\/b><\/p>\n

Years ago I was having dinner with a man who told me, as casually as he might have asked me to pass the salt, that he\u2019d fathered a child who had to be given up for adoption because he and the mother \u201cwaited too long.\u201d I don\u2019t know why he told me; it was an unexpected story delivered in an offhand way. All I could think was, what about the mother? What a different story if she were the one telling it\u2014assuming she would<\/i> tell it. How would that feel, going through life without the child you\u2019d carried and given birth to? Doing it by choice?<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t know any woman who\u2019d gone through this. I\u2019d never even read about such a character in a book. There are books about mothers; books about women who want to be mothers but can\u2019t; books about women who are somehow forced to give up children. But not, to my knowledge, a book about an independent, capable woman deciding to give up her child.<\/p>\n

So I wrote one.<\/p>\n

With Addie, I wanted to imagine a character who is profoundly ambivalent about motherhood, and whose decision not to be a mother is tested in the most profound ways.<\/p>\n

Are you worried people will try to use your book to support political agendas you may not agree with?<\/b><\/p>\n

Readers always bring their own beliefs to literature; that\u2019s part of the contract. But my book is not meant as a political book. I\u2019ve written a novel, not a message. I hope my characters are lively. I hope Addie doesn\u2019t become some ideological dead butterfly with pins in her wings. If anything, I think her story illustrates how intensely personal a choice motherhood is. The fact that it\u2019s a complicated, loaded choice makes it no less personal.<\/p>\n

How did you go about writing the book? What was your process?<\/b><\/p>\n

Trial and error. Byrd<\/i> is the first novel I\u2019ve attempted; I don\u2019t have a secret drawer full of practice novels. Writing it took time and persistence and a patience I didn\u2019t know I had. (My husband will laugh. Patient\u2014me?)<\/p>\n

Initially I wrote entirely from Addie\u2019s point of view; I wanted the intimacy and immediacy of first person. But sometimes first person can be too limiting, and this was one of those times\u2014though I didn\u2019t realize it until I\u2019d written a complete draft. I remember taking the manuscript to Vermont Studio Center thinking I\u2019d spend a month polishing it and have a finished novel. After a week I could see it wasn\u2019t working; Addie didn\u2019t know enough to tell the whole story. Of course I didn\u2019t want to admit that at first. I\u2019d spent such a long time on the book already\u2014years. I remember telling our visiting writer, Rikki Ducornet, \u201cI\u2019m not going to write my next book this way.\u201d\u00a0\u201cWhy\u00a0wait for the next book?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

For three days after that I walked around\u00a0in the snow, crying.\u00a0Then I went back to my manuscript and blew the thing up.\u00a0Not literally, but I exploded the narrative. I started writing scenes from every imaginable point of view. And when I did that, everything changed. The characters started doing things I hadn\u2019t planned, which is always a good sign.<\/p>\n

This is an unconventional structure\u2014letters interspersed with short chapters and vignettes from different points of view. How did you come up with it?<\/b><\/p>\n

I love epistolary fiction, and Addie\u2019s letters to Byrd allowed for the kind of intimacy I wanted when I started the book. But I also needed some distance on Addie. She makes choices for reasons she doesn\u2019t entirely understand, and her choices have consequences she doesn\u2019t appreciate. To get at those parts of her story, I needed other points of view.<\/p>\n

One book that influenced me structurally and thematically was Madison Smartt Bell\u2019s The Year of Silence,<\/i> about a woman who dies of a drug overdose; the central question is, was her death accidental or intentional? Only one chapter, the middle chapter, is written from the dead woman\u2019s point of view. In the chapters that precede and follow hers, the point of view shifts among other characters, some who knew her well, or believed they did, some who observed her only fleetingly\u2014a stranger in a bar, a panhandler at a fruit stand. Through them, we\u2019re allowed glimpses that would have been inaccessible in a first-person narrative.<\/p>\n

I wanted that sort of prismatic perspective for Addie\u2019s story.<\/p>\n

Do you have an M.F.A.?<\/b><\/p>\n

No, but I\u2019ve trained with some exceptional teachers. My first fiction teacher was Sharlene Baker at Duke\u2014Fiction Fundamentals. After our last class, Sharlene and I went out to eat and she invited me into her writing group.\u00a0I burst into tears;\u00a0I\u2019m just that cool. What a validation.<\/p>\n

I apprenticed with Patricia Henley for two years when I was first working on\u00a0Byrd<\/i>. I\u2019ve taken graduate workshops at\u00a0N.C. State University with Jill McCorkle and Angela Davis-Gardner, and summer workshops with Ron Hansen and Ethan Canin. I was an English major in college, and worked on two literary journals. And I had a life-changing high school English teacher, Mildred Ann Raper. Every sensible thing I\u2019ve ever heard about writing I heard first from her. \u201cWrite fire,\u201d she said, \u201cnot smoke.\u201d<\/p>\n

You\u2019re also a lawyer. How do you balance law and writing?<\/b><\/p>\n

Not easily. I\u2019ve made big changes in my law practice. In the 90s I was a litigation partner in a prominent firm working with lawyers I admired and loved, trying hard cases, breaking new legal ground. It was a heady, exhilarating time. I rarely slept. My work consumed me.<\/p>\n

When I took up fiction, I knew I couldn\u2019t keep practicing law in the same way\u2014I couldn\u2019t honor my commitments to my partners and clients and the court and\u00a0<\/em>make a serious commitment to writing.<\/p>\n

I chose writing. I resigned my partnership and scaled back my courtroom practice.<\/p>\n

Do I need to tell you how scared I was? My friends pretended to admire me but secretly thought I was crazy. My husband\u2014a woodworker and artist\u2014was encouraging but nervous. A week before I left my firm, he went out and bought a case of black beans and three pairs of Eddie Bauer work boots.<\/p>\n

Now I work independently, helping other lawyers with trials and appeals. It’s more behind-the-scenes, and it suits me\u2014especially the appellate work, where I get to think and write about and sometimes help shape public policy. And, and this is a big and, my schedule leaves me time and energy for my own writing.<\/p>\n

Like anyone with two careers, I\u2019m constantly juggling. Nothing is ever in perfect balance. My law work is still demanding; my fiction projects always take longer than I expect. But, in the words of Sheriff Andy Taylor, \u201clove don\u2019t hold a stopwatch.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why, when you had an absorbing law career, did you take up fiction?<\/b><\/p>\n

A convergence of circumstances.<\/p>\n

I was working on a wrongful death case for the family of a woman who had killed herself in a hospital where she should have been on suicide watch. It was a devastating case\u2014the woman was my age, a wife and\u00a0working mother of\u00a0young children. The court set an expedited trial schedule, which meant I was working on the case day and night. Suddenly my life was all about death.<\/p>\n

In the middle of that, I lost my father. He caught a cold, it turned to pneumonia, and he died. He was fifty-eight.<\/p>\n

It was as if someone had written in the sky, Life is short, Kim. Whatever you mean to do, do it now.<\/p>\n

Writing was my first love. I had always written\u2014poems, songs, but never fiction; I didn\u2019t think I had the material. Then I happened on a remaindered copy of Raymond Carver\u2019s Where I\u2019m Calling From. <\/i>Carver was new to me, and his stories knocked me out. I knew<\/i> these characters; they were my people\u2014hard-working, well-meaning people routinely sabotaged by their own demons. It hadn\u2019t occurred to me that such familiar lives could be the subject of literature.<\/p>\n

In the year after my father died, I read all of Carver. Then I sat down and wrote my first short story, \u201cWild Turkey.\u201d Woeful, as Joey of The Commitments would say, but it was a start. Within a few years I was publishing fiction.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve\u00a0outgrown my Carver infatuation, but I credit him with opening fiction writing for me in the same way Joni Mitchell says Bob Dylan opened songwriting for her\u2014by showing that you can write about anything. It\u2019s all material. The art is in how you see and express it.<\/p>\n

Has your law practice informed your fiction writing?<\/b><\/p>\n

Sure, and vice versa. Trial lawyers are storytellers. The difference is, in law, you\u2019re working from a given set of facts, not making up your own. At trial, the attorney who can shape the facts into the most plausible and compelling story usually wins. It\u2019s a matter of recognizing the telling details and deciding how to present them most effectively\u2014through which witnesses and exhibits and in what order. One thing I\u2019ve learned from law is the power of a timeline. Another thing: it\u2019s important to remain open and curious while working up a case. One mistake lawyers can make\u2014writers, too\u2014is to decide too soon on a story. If you try too hard to make the evidence fit the story you want to tell, you\u2019ll miss the real story. Juries, like readers, know when you\u2019re forcing things or being a trickster.<\/p>\n

Speaking of timelines, did you work from one with Byrd<\/i>?<\/b><\/p>\n

Not at first. I began in the middle of the story, with Addie\u2019s pregnancy, and worked backward and forward from that. I kept a timeline as I worked and referred to it as I shaped and revised the book, but it wasn\u2019t my starting point.<\/p>\n

What’s next?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’m doing research for a family-inspired novel about women in the textile mills of North Carolina during the period between the world wars, a critical and little talked-about period in labor history.<\/p>\n

Photo by Anthony Ulinski<\/em>
\nDavidson County Public Library cup courtesy of Marty Hargrave<\/em>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Coffee break: Kim Church on Byrd Why this book? There was a character I wanted to know, so I had to write her. She needed the space of a novel. Why this character? Where\u2019d she come from? Years ago I … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":14,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"onecolumn-page.php","meta":{"footnotes":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kimchurch.com\/author\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/41"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kimchurch.com\/author\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kimchurch.com\/author\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kimchurch.com\/author\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kimchurch.com\/author\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41"}],"version-history":[{"count":41,"href":"https:\/\/kimchurch.com\/author\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/41\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2535,"href":"https:\/\/kimchurch.com\/author\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/41\/revisions\/2535"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kimchurch.com\/author\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/14"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kimchurch.com\/author\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}