Sadeqa Johnson on the Writing Process

[1:46]Zibby Owens: This is Zibby Owens, and you're listening to Totally Booked with Zibby. Formerly, moms don't have time to read books. In my daily show, I interview today's latest, best selling, buzziest, or underrated authors and story creators whose work I think is worth your time. As a bookstore owner, publisher, author, and obviously podcaster, I get a comprehensive look at everything that's coming out and spend my time curating the best books so you don't have to. Stay in the know, get insider insights, and connect with guests like I do every single day. For more information, go to zippymedia.com, and follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens. I was so happy to have Sadiqa Johnson back on my podcast. I feel like I've had her on at least two or three other times. We did an event together at the LA Times Book Festival once, and she is just absolutely delightful, and I love her historical fiction novels. This one is Keeper of Lost Children. Stiqua is the New York Times bestselling author of five novels. And her most recent novel before this one, The House of Eve, was an instant New York Times bestseller, a Reese's Book Club selection, NAACP Image Award nominee, Goodreads Choice finalist, and Target Book Club pick. Her previous novel, Yellow Wife, was the Library of Virginia's Literary People's Choice Award, Goodreads Choice Award finalist, and more. Welcome, Sadeqa. I'm so excited to have you back on Totally Bucked this time to talk about Keeper of Lost Children. Congratulations.

[3:20]Sadeqa Johnson: Thank you so much. It was a long time coming. Tell me everything. Okay. How long, how long did it How long? Feels, I mean, I usually try to have a book every other year and this is two years in between because the research was a lot, juggling three point of views, which when I first started off with this novel, I thought it was a good idea. And then as I got halfway in, I was like, what was I thinking? This is a lot to manage.

[3:50]Zibby Owens: Yeah, that was a lot. So why did you pick three and why at the different times?

[3:55]Sadeqa Johnson: You have a lot of different variables going on here. I do. I have three different characters and three different timelines. And the way it came about was that I had discovered the story of Mabel Grammer, who the novel is inspired by. You know, I always have to find a woman who is ambitious and who is working overtime to do something very meaningful in the world. And when I discovered the story of Mabel Grammer, she was a black American woman who was in Mannheim, Germany with her husband, chief foreign officer, and she was lonely and she didn't have children. She couldn't have children, but she discovered this orphanage where mixed race children were living and they were a product, the consequence of war. There were the black American GIs who went over to Germany to help with the war and also with the occupation. And then there were the German women who were often left without, you know, a male counterpart, a German male counterpart because of the devastation of war and the hunger of war. And so these two got together in very unlikely circumstances and children were created. Once the children were born, oftentimes the black American soldiers couldn't marry these German women because of Jim Crow laws and they were separated and they left the women with the babies. And oftentimes the German government would not support the women and these babies because they were illegitimate, they were mixed race. And so that was sort of the beginning idea of the story was how do I pay tribute to this woman, Mabel Grammer, and this monumental moment in history that no one knew about. You know, it's not something we learn about in social studies, which is the thing that I always find. Like, how do we not learn these stories in history class in school? And she really changed the face of adoption overseas, changed the lives of over 500 of these mixed race babies who were left in Germany. And so that was sort of the beginning

[6:03]Zibby Owens: of the story for me was how could I tell her story. And so then what was your next step and how did you pick the stories and the points of view you picked?

[6:12]Sadeqa Johnson: So then my next step was I was thinking a lot about the black men who went to Germany and what America was like for them before they went. I have a great uncle who's still alive. He's in his early nineties and he was in the air force during the forties. And so I was picking his brain to find out like, what was that like? There was a lot of freedom over in, you know, Europe that these black American men didn't feel here in America. And so I wanted to show the lives of a black man moving through this new world, wanting something really significant for his life, right? He wanted to be educated. He wanted to work in intelligence. He was a very smart character, but because of our Jim Crow laws and even after the desegregation of the army, he was still hitting roadblocks. And so I thought his story was really important. I find that men, especially black men, get left out of the narrative. And so bringing light to his story, I thought was really important. And so that is Ozzy Phillips, who starts off in South Philadelphia and finds himself in Germany. And he meets this German woman and they find each other out of necessity because they're both lonely and hungry and they have this relationship. And then Sophia is my, you know, she's the third character, but really in some ways it feels like she is the main character, even though the book was based on Mabel Grammar and Ethel, you know, plays a really big role. In some ways I feel like you're rooting for Sophia's story through the book because she's young, you know, she ends up as a farm laborer, you know, or she's born into this farm family and she wants nothing more to be educated, but her family wants her to stay as a laborer. And that story came from my research. I found that some of the children that were adopted, in some cases it was, you know, a happy situation, but in some cases it wasn't. And so I thought, let me pull some strings there and see what I can come up with. I'm also very fascinated with schools and school segregation and desegregation. And I discovered that, you know, Brown versus Board of Education happened in the fifties, but that did not extend to private schools and boarding schools. Those, that didn't happen until the mid sixties. And I thought, well, again, we're not talking about this. This is not something that we've known. And I thought, I wanna explore that a little bit. I wanna pull on that string. I wanna explore what identity feels like, what love, you know, young love feels like and the search for identity. And so that was how these three characters came into the story. But the tricky part was making these three stories one novel.

[9:04]Zibby Owens: Yeah. Okay. How do you do this? Because this is an art form that other authors attempt and do often. Right? Weaving narratives, different timelines. Some people have, like, graphs with all the dates and times. Like, how did you, from a craft standpoint,

[9:19]Sadeqa Johnson: accomplish this? So my approach is to write one narrative at a time so that I could spend a certain amount of weeks with one character so that we are locked in. We are getting to know each other. We are in relationship. We are communing together. And so I I start off by splitting the novel in either three or four parts depending on, you know, what book this book is actually four parts. And so I always wrote Sofia's character first. So I would write Sofia all the way up to as far as I knew, as close to the end of part one. And then I would let her story sit. And then I would do the same thing for Ozzy. And then I will let his story sit. And then I would go in and write Ethel's story as far as I can to the end of part one. And then I would literally print all three stories and sit on my office floor and line them up by chapters. So Ethel's Row, Sophia's Row, Ozzy's Row. And then I would just kind of sit there like a jigsaw puzzle and see where the stories intersect. And I would rearrange them by paper. And then I would read the scenes together as like part one to see if it made sense, how I could tighten the strings a little bit. You know, in some places I felt like my hem was showing. How could I pull the skirt down a little bit just to make sure that everything was unified and felt like a full book. So that was, that was my approach. It worked sometimes and some, sometimes it didn't. Sometimes I, you know, I had five extra chapters for one character and it was like, there's no place for this, you know, what am I gonna do? And so I had to figure it out. And what did you do with the chapters? I, I took the chapters out of the book and I figured out a way to tell those chapters in a couple of paragraphs, which, you know, when I'm writing, sometimes it feels like everything needs to be in the book. And then when I sit down with it, it's like, oh, I needed to write all of that because I needed to know it. Now I can say it faster so that the person reading the book will get it much quicker than it took for me to kind of figure out what I wanted to say. So I was able to shrink those down to a couple of paragraphs, but still hold on to that emotion and that feeling that I had written in those five chapters that couldn't, couldn't survive in the book. It was just too much. It's already a very long book. It's way longer than my other book. So I really had to be careful with my words. Today's episode is sponsored by Quince.

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[13:56]Zibby Owens: I mean, you really threw out three books. Yes. Essentially. Right? I mean, you you could have had a book with just one character and not intersect at all, and it would we could also talk about that. Right? It definitely felt like that for Ozzy's character. I think because

[14:12]Sadeqa Johnson: I was thinking a lot about my own family history, you know, I grew up in Philadelphia. He was from Philadelphia. I could really feel him in my bones. And I felt I felt like his story could have gone on and on and on and on and on. And so he was the person who I had to trim and cut and fit into smaller spaces because at one point my editor said, you know, he's taken over the story. This is, this is not his book. And I was like, oh my gosh. So that's when I have to go in and figure out how to do a little bit of surgery,

[14:42]Zibby Owens: take stuff out and stitch it back together. And what about this whole thing of, like, you can only write from your own perspective. Right? That's, like, one of those things floating around the world, and yet you can write from a man's perspective and all of this. Like, I mean, I don't buy into that. I'm like Yeah. You have to use your imagination. Like, that is what fiction is, is made up stories. But talk a little bit about that. And did you even think about that?

[15:08]Sadeqa Johnson: You know, I always feel like that stories choose me. Mhmm. And the stories that choose me are rooted somewhere in my DNA. I mean, it could be ancestral, it could be guides, it could be angels, it could be any of those things. And so I always feel like when the characters choose me, I have to feel them, I have to feel them like in my blood, I have to feel it in my gut really. And so to answer your question, you know, when I was thinking about Ozzy's story, when he meets his German woman, her name is Jelka, I for a minute thought that I wanted to write her point of view because she was the German, you know, she was a German mother. I thought that in order to tell the story, needed to give her point of view. But for me, I also felt like she was harder for me to access because, know, I, I don't have any German relatives. I, I went to Germany one time to research the book, but that does not make me, and you know, most of the libraries and museums were in German. So it was only so much that I could learn. I couldn't swallow her whole in my body, which is what I need to be able to do in order to write a book. And so for me, it has to be someone who I feel like that I'm, we're walking alongside the story together. And that was why I chose the characters that I chose. But, you know, I'm like you, I'm open to whoever needs to tell what story, if it's in your bones and you feel it, then I think you should tell it. Totally agree. Totally agree.

[16:41]Zibby Owens: Your next book, are you going to alternate viewpoints or are you like never again?

[16:47]Sadeqa Johnson: Okay. Who told you I had another book in my head? I'm just guessing.

[16:50]Zibby Owens: I'm just going out on a limb here.

[16:54]Sadeqa Johnson: Very, I'm at the very beginning stages of, I was telling my agent that before I can write a book, I'm actually walking around with the characters just kind of sitting in my belly. So they almost like they have to like be, they have to grow inside of me before I can birth them. And so I do have a story that's kind of just kind of sitting there. I've been thinking about it. I've been doing a little research on place and it looks like right now that I may be telling the story from two points of view, which is crazy because when I finished the novel Keeper of Lost Children, I said, Oh, never again. Like, I'm just gonna write like one character point of view. I think I'm just gonna write a straight up romance. Like, not that that's easier, but it is a little bit easier for me. Right? That, you know, so I'm like, maybe I'm just gonna just, you know, and I'm right back in historical fiction. I'm right back to two character points of views. I'm like, how did this happen? Who am I? When did I become this writer?

[17:56]Zibby Owens: Well, like you said, it's like you you're like a vessel for the stories to come out of. I love, like, all the times you've referenced them sort of living in different parts of your body. It's like, you know, this is not

[18:09]Sadeqa Johnson: it's almost like you don't even have free will. You just have to tell them. Yeah. That is that's exactly how it feels. And when they are going to bed with me and waking up with me and I'm walking around and they're just, you know, they're they're with me, that's when I know like, oh, this is the story that I'm supposed to tell. And that's kind of what's happening now, but I need to clean my office first before I can really I can really sit down and figure this thing out.

[18:34]Zibby Owens: When you are living with characters like these three and the two upcoming, how much do you talk to the actual people in your life about them?

[18:43]Sadeqa Johnson: Oh, so my poor husband, you know, he's his first point of contact. I'm like, you know, I'm having this idea. What do you think about, you know, X, Y, and Z? So I'm constantly talking to him about it. My kids could actually catch me. They were just all here for Thanksgiving. And, you know, just one little thing will be like, well, did I tell you about the characters that's living in my head right now? They're like, mommy, what is it? You know? So the people who are around me, they get it. But my agent is really good that we've been working together since my very first novel. My first novel was self published and she was the editor that I hired to help me get that book And out to the so now she's been my agent since. Oh my gosh. Wait, what year was that? My first novel came out in 2012. So she and I met probably in 2010. I think about 2010 we met. So we've been working together for over fifteen years. So she knows me very well. So what I'll do is, is like, we'll have like a conversation about Keeper of Lost Children. Like, okay, what's going on with publicity? And then I'm like, so I was thinking about, you know, and I'll give her little bits and pieces. But then we'll schedule a call, like once I'm really like, before I'm about to get into it, but I've really spent some time with the outline and the characters, we'll have about an hour call where I tell her every single thing I think is happening in the story. And then she'll help me kind of think it through. She fills in some blanks that maybe I wasn't thinking about or pushes me a little bit to think a little bit differently here or push a little bit there. Once we have that conversation, then I'm ready to like go and write the novel. So it's a, it's definitely like an internal process that takes a while to rev up. And then when it's just like, can't wait any longer,

[20:25]Zibby Owens: I have the conversation with her and then I'm ready to go. And are you one of these writers who can't read other books while you're writing, or are you inspired by others? And if so, is there anything good you've read lately? I'm definitely

[20:38]Sadeqa Johnson: trying to read throughout. And I read a lot more, like, right now since I'm in that in between space, I'm reading a lot more because I wanna be inspired. Like, I just finished Broken Country. Oh, so good. Gosh. Love that book. That, I love that book. And when I finished it, I sent a message to Claire. And I was like, Claire, you made me miss writing. Like, because I haven't been writing for a couple of months now. Right? So I'm like, you really made me miss writing. Like, you have given me the courage to like jump back in. So that was the last book that I read. I'm currently reading a book called We Don't Talk About Carol, which is kind of like a cozy mystery, which is keeping my interest, but everyone keeps talking about the correspondent. So I think that's my next read. Yeah. I think that's my next read. Amazing.

[21:25]Zibby Owens: Do you have any advice for aspiring authors?

[21:28]Sadeqa Johnson: My advice usually is to schedule your writing, just like you schedule a dentist appointment, just like you schedule your child, vaccine appointment, vaccination.

[21:42]Zibby Owens: In my head, I'm thinking, actually, I need to schedule a dentist appointment. Actually, I need to schedule my kid's doctor's appointment. So maybe that's why I can't schedule writing either.

[21:53]Sadeqa Johnson: Anyway, keep going. Yeah. So you need to schedule it for yourself, you know? You know, for people who work outside of the house, or even if you work from home, get up thirty minutes early and just write for thirty minutes. Or if you're a night owl, write thirty minutes before you go to bed. The thing about the muse is that she comes when you're consistent. I find that she needs to know that I'm serious. When she knows that I'm like getting up early and I'm at my computer, I'm a morning writer, I'm at my computer, you know, before the house gets, you know, crazy or whatever. And I keep my appointment with her, then she keeps her appointment with me and she shows up. So I say for writers, you have to keep your appointment with your writing and with your muse and she'll show up for you. I absolutely love that. And congratulations

[22:38]Zibby Owens: on the book, on making it through it, on it all coming together so beautifully. So congratulations.

[22:45]Sadeqa Johnson: You so much. I'm so excited about this book being out in the world and the reviews so far have been great. So I'm excited to see what it does. Me too. It's gonna be great.

[22:55]Zibby Owens: Alright. I'll leave you to clean your office. Okay. Thank you, Zibby. So good to see you. Bye. Take care. Alright. Bye. Bye bye. Thank you for listening to Totally Booked with Zibby, formerly moms don't have time to read books. If you loved the show, tell a friend, leave a review, follow me on Instagram at Zippy Owens, and spread the word. Thanks so much. Oh, and buy the books.