Buzzy Jackson on the Difficulty of Writing Dark Scenes

First Draft: A Dialogue of Writing is a weekly show featuring in-depth interviews with fiction, nonfiction, essay writers, and poets, highlighting the voices of writers as they discuss their work, their craft, and the literary arts. Hosted by Mitzi Rapkin, First Draft celebrates creative writing and the individuals who are dedicated to bringing their carefully chosen words to print as well as the impact writers have on the world we live in.

In this episode, Mitzi talks to Buzzy Jackson about her debut novel, To Die Beautiful.

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From the episode:

Mitzi Rapkin:  You were just saying about your activism after writing this book about a female member of the Dutch Resistance during World War II.  A lot of times as artists we see what’s going on in the world and our art is a response to it. But you saw what was going on in the world of Dutch resistance during the war and made your art and then you went back into the world as an activist with refugee issues.  Has writing ever done that to you before?

Buzzy Jackson: That’s an interesting question. No, I don’t think so, you know, and writing this book was really different than any of the other books I’ve written before. I think writing a novel, and this book is told in first person, so trying to put myself in the position of Hannie, the main character, and all the other characters in the book was really an intimate and emotional experience that I had not had as a writer before. It’s World War II and a lot of horrible things do happen in this book. Some readers have said, was it hard to write those parts?  Absolutely, it was really hard. I mean, I had times when I would just procrastinate writing a scene because I knew how violent and sad it was going to be. I mean, I knew exactly what I was going to write, but I just kind of thought, I’ll do that tomorrow when I’ve had more coffee. And, there were times when I was writing, and I had to actually just stop and walk away because it was upsetting.  I remember sending the manuscript off kind of thinking it was done, quote, unquote. And of course, there’s like many rounds of revisions from my editors, and getting the book back and realizing Okay, now it’s time to dive back into some of those harrowing scenes was tough. And at one point, this is just so weird, I’ve never done this before, but I was like, I have to get these revisions done, this is an incredibly intense chapter because I have done the research, it’s a true story and I know this horrible thing actually happened. So, just to keep my own spirits up, I don’t know why it occurred to me to do this, I got my phone out and brought up the Pixar movie Toy Story. I just put it on silent and I just set my phone next to my computer so I could have a corner of my eye, like happiness and children and bright colors and toys and you know, something beautiful that had nothing to do with the Holocaust, just to kind of have a little life raft out there. You know what I mean? And it did help. It really did.

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Buzzy Jackson has a Ph.D. in History from UC Berkeley and is a member of the National Book Critics’ Circle. Her debut novel is To Die Beautiful. She is currently working on a new novel based on a historical American true crime.