Writing inspired by the places, people, culture and history of the Midwest.

“Food will win the war” – Women & WWI

June 18, 2013 By Leave a Comment

WW1 - Be Patriotic - PosterMy novel set during WWI has had me digging into how the war affected Americans in their everyday lives. A popular women’s magazine of the era, Ladies Home Journal showed that even before the United States entered the war in 1917, Americans were feeling the impact.

Articles in the February 1915 Ladies Home Journal described “fundamental lessons coming out of the war.” Among them:

  • Every American was being taught economy
  • Women were urged to look for products “Made in the United States of America” and to “Buy American”
  • People were urged to “think of the other person”
  • Readers were advised of the need for humility and interdependence
  • The magazine suggested that, “we’ve wrongly fostered a war spirit in children” (by giving children war toys for Christmas)

All of those actions were voluntary. In 1917, after the U.S. entered the war, what had been left to volunteer compliance became the purview of the government. Congress passed the Food and Fuel Control Act, also known as the Lever Act, and President Woodrow Wilson issued an executive order creating the U.S. Food Administration.

Herbert Hoover, former head of the Belgian Relief Organization won the job of Food Administration administrator. He accepted no salary, arguing that taking no pay would give him the moral authority to ask the American people to sacrifice in support of the war effort.

With the authority of President Wilson, Hoover became a “food dictator,” regulating the distribution, export, import, purchase, and storage of food. “Food will win the war,” Hoover proclaimed.

WWI - Food Will Win The War - Poster Hoover reached out to American women in August 1917 with a full-page article in Ladies Home Journal titled, “What I would like Women to do.” Here are some of the ways Hoover urged women to conserve:

  • Don’t throw food away
  • Order small meals
  • Have nutritional balance
  • Stop catering to different appetites
  • No second helpings. No 4 o’clock teas. No party refreshments. No eating after the theatre.
  • One meatless day a week, one wheatless meal a day, no young meat, no butter in cookies
  • Sign a statement of support

Food conservation continued to be a focus of the war on the home front. Another article provided women with these helpful tips:

  • Put two Fridays in every week
  • Use butter substitutes – beef & mutton fat, lard, sausage drippings
  • Eat meals from the garden. Preserve produce by pickling and canning
  • Use things you might have thrown away, e.g. make peapod soup, use outside lettuce leaves and scallion tops for salad, use crushed eggshells to clarify clear soup.

WWI - Eat More Corn - PosterWheat was an important export to Europe, so American housewives were urged to try new dishes using “war flours.” A few recipe ideas:

  • Corn meal and raisin gems
  • Bran drops
  • Golden corn tea rolls
  • Graham nut bread for sandwiches
  • Potato biscuits
  • Corn muffin dessert with spiced apples
  • Corn crullers
  • Graham and rye cookies
  • Steamed corn meal apple pudding
  • Corn and rice muffins
  • Pumpkin biscuits
  • Rice waffles
  • Use one cup of oatmeal in place of one cup of wheat flour in a griddlecake recipe.

In reading these lists, I was struck by how many of them my mother did as a matter of routine on the farm in the 1950s & 60s – cooking with bacon grease and lard, using cornmeal, pumpkin, and oatmeal in recipes. Gardening, preserving, using everything. Occasionally we observed meatless Fridays in deference to our Catholic hired men, but we had broader meat options than city dwellers. The squirrels and rabbits Dad shot were tasty.

I don’t know if those practices held over from the wars or if farm living simply lends itself to them. In any case, women answered Hoover’s call and went to their kitchens to help win the war.

Filed Under: Farm life, History, Writing Tagged With: , , , , , ,

What is the value of a letter?

June 10, 2013 By 14 Comments

When I was a kid growing up on the farm in the 1950s, I waited everyday for the mailman to stop at our mailbox. It wasn’t as though anyone was going to write to me, but any letter we received was exciting. Before email, Skype, texts, when telephones were used mainly for emergencies, letters were the common form of communication. Letters recorded the everyday; letters recorded the extraordinary. 

For writers, letters are a treasure trove. Where would David McCullough be without the letters John and Abigail Adams wrote to each other? All of the letters telling of their love for each other, their concerns about their children and the farm, their interest in affairs of state. 

Canada Ltr1

Letter from Wm. J. Johnston to Carl Jensen, Esq. Jan. 13, 1910

My maternal grandmother and grandfather were the inspiration for my upcoming novel set in pre-WWI Iowa. Because my grandfather died in 1918 and my grandmother never talked about him, the story I’ve created is fiction. In creating their world 100 years ago, I drew from many sources, among them a handful of letters my grandfather saved.

Canada Ltr2

$300 for three horses – 1910

Before he married my grandmother, Carl Jensen homesteaded in Canada. That didn’t work out for reasons we don’t know and he returned to Iowa. The letter I’ve included here is from one of his neighbors. As short as this letter is, it provided a wealth of information to inspire my writing.

Canada Ltr3

He would “Make a dicker” on farm equipment.

Among other things, I learned how people addressed each other, how they abbreviated names, the price of horses, what kinds of equipment they used.

Canada Ltr4

“… I will come in and get you and you can come out and batch for a while again.”

I learned that terms could be agreed to in a letter and both parties could be comfortable with that. I learned that the mailman didn’t come to every Canadian farm – Mr. Johnson was sending his letter into town to be posted by a neighbor who was going to make the trip to town.

On a personal level, the fact that my grandfather saved these letters said something powerful to me about the loneliness of farming on the Canadian prairie. Only a handful of letters from that era survive, but I treasure each of them.

I regret that we don’t write letters so often anymore. I wonder what writers of the future will use for their research? From time to time, I print out significant emails, but the fact that I print those and discard the others that deal with the mundane also says something.

What about you? Are you still writing letters? Do you save any that you receive? Writers – Have you used letters as research for your writing?

Filed Under: Farm life, History, Writing Tagged With: , , , , ,

Trusting my “baby” to beta readers

June 6, 2013 By 8 Comments
The Prose Crows book club knows how to make an author feel welcome!

The Prose Crows book club knows how to make an author feel welcome!

Sound the trumpets! Strike up the band! Last month I reached a milestone in writing my novel. I had a draft that was as good as I could make it. The story was complete. The characters were developed. There was lots of conflict. The historical setting and facts were in place. It felt good.

But not so fast. What do I know? Just because I like the story doesn’t mean anyone else will. The real test is in what readers think.

So I took the next step and put my manuscript in the hands of two groups of beta readers – people I’d gauged to be thoughtful readers, representative of my target audience. One group includes members of my own book club. I looked to balance the fact that these women know me really well with other readers who were not so familiar. The second group was the Prose Crows, a lively book club that had invited me to join them last February when they discussed my memoir Growing Up Country.

Along with the manuscript, I gave these volunteer readers a list of questions for reaction. Questions that ranged from overall reaction to the story, to story structure, and character development. Because I’m writing historical fiction, I also probed whether there was too much historical detail or too little and if they spotted anachronisms. I encouraged candor, assuring them I could take it. Whatever “it” was.

Letting go of the manuscripts made me anxious. My stomach roiled. My blood pressure rose. The feelings were akin to watching my five-year-old walk off to school alone for the first time. For the past month, my heart has been pushing out of my chest and into my throat. Anticipation – eager or anxious – can be uncomfortable!

Over these five weeks, I’ve lived with my vow not to revisit, revise, or rewrite even one word of the manuscript. Instead, I’ve focused on marketing, gardening, the incessant rain, pretty much anything to keep from thinking about reader reactions. By next Monday night, I’ll have received all the feedback. Then my baby will be back in my hands again. Then I’ll know what has to happen next. I am excited!

I know many authors use beta readers for that first level of market reaction. How have you chosen them? What guidelines have you given? What has been your experience?

Filed Under: Marketing, Writing Tagged With: , ,

How do you see the differences in writing fiction & memoir?

May 28, 2013 By 30 Comments

WritingSince I’ve written memoirs and am close to completing my first novel, when the question of differences in writing fiction and memoir came to me in response to a blog post, you’d have thought I’d be able to respond right off the bat. But, I was stumped. By definition, memoirs (based on the factual happenings in the author’s life) and novels (story made up by the author) are different, but how else?

Without making a conscious decision about style at the time, I blurred the lines between memoir and fiction when I wrote my memoir Growing Up Country as creative nonfiction. As author Lee Gutkind described it, “the primary goal of the creative nonfiction writer is to communicate information, just like a reporter, but to shape it in a way that reads like fiction.”

I use some of the same techniques in writing both memoir and fiction.

Visualization. Before I can write, I have to be able to see the places and people I’m writing about. Recalling the details for my memoir was as easy as closing my eyes and mentally walking into the barn on our farm, smelling new-cut hay, or seeing my grandma’s rolled down nylons.

To write historical fiction set in the WWI era, I had to be able to see the places and people just as clearly. I chose a Victorian house I’d been in often as my character’s home. That way I knew how the rooms flowed; I could imagine the furniture. I visited the Living History Farm in Des Moines where I talked with the interpreters at the 1900’s farm and attended a funeral at the 1880 Victorian house. I found pictures and videos. Anything that would let me immerse myself in the time so that it was as real to me as if I’d lived then myself.

Research played a role in both my memoir and in the novel. My family was the research source for the memoir. Memory plays tricks on everyone and to the extent I could, I verified the details I included about farm life. Research for my novel went to a much deeper level and took on a life of its own. I am thankful every day for the Internet where I can learn to drive a Model T or set up a professional photo studio. 

Though the techniques are similar, the challenges in writing memoir and fiction have been different for me.

Imagination vs. Reality – One of greatest challenges in writing fiction has been that I’m used to writing based on facts. The writing I’d done during 30+ years in public relations and marketing was journalist/business writing – all based on the facts of client products. My memoir was based on the reality of my life. With my novel, even though I started with a few actual places and dates and events in mind, the rest is the product of my imagination.

I’ve come to enjoy the ability to add people and events when the story required them.  When my manuscript was all but complete, I realized the need for another character and a minor subplot.  I was amazed at how simple it was to develop this man, create a life and motivations for him, and retrofit him into an existing story. It took some time, but I’ve come to revel in the freedom of “making it up.”

The Story Arc. Both memoir and fiction have to tell a good story. Structured as a series of relatively independent short stories, my memoir did not adhere to the standard novel story arc. Yes, there is a gentle progression in my memoir from stories when I’m younger to those when I’m a little older, from memories that are more naïve to those that are more mature and challenging. But these progressions are not as structured or dramatic as those of successful fiction.

Learning the craft of novel writing has been an ongoing delight, from inciting incident to crisis, climax, and resolution. In three acts. With escalating pulses. Some writers may know this inherently; I have to learn it. All fun, but a definite difference.

These are the similarities and differences I see in writing fiction and memoir. Writers – What differences do you see?  Readers – This could all be behind the scenes shop talk, but are there differences you see in the way fiction and memoirs are written?

 

Filed Under: Writing Tagged With: , , , , , ,