Exploring How a Single Choice Can Define an Entire Life

Summary

The Shit No One Tells You About Writing

Episode: Exploring How a Single Choice Can Define an Entire Life
Hosts: Bianca Marais, Carly Watters, CeCe Lyra
Guest: Carissa Chen
Release Date: January 16, 2025

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1. Introduction and Guest Biography

The episode kicks off with host Bianca Marais introducing the guest, Carissa Chen, a distinguished writer with an impressive array of fellowships and publications. Carissa's work has graced esteemed platforms like The Atlantic, NBC News, and PEN America. Her accolades include a Fulbright Fellowship, a Kundiman Fiction Fellowship, and an Artist Fellowship from the New Jersey Council of the Arts. Currently serving as the Editing Chief at Hyphen Magazine, Carissa holds an MFA in Fiction from Sarah Lawrence College and resides between New Jersey and Taipei, Taiwan.

Notable Quote:

"It's my pleasure to welcome Carissa Chen."
— Bianca Marais [02:49]

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2. Inspiration Behind "Home Seeking"

Carissa delves into the deeply personal inspiration for her novel Home Seeking. The catalyst was a poignant photograph of her late grandfather crying in front of a grave, holding joss sticks. This image unveiled the intense emotions tied to his separation from his family during the Chinese Civil War.

Notable Quotes:

"A single choice can define an entire life."
— Flap Copy Read by Bianca Marais [02:47]

"I realized what it would be like to be separated from your mother, from your parents for decades and have never seen them again."
— Carissa Chen [04:50]

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3. The Writing Process and Extensive Research

Carissa discusses the extensive research she undertook to authentically portray the historical context of her novel. This involved reading memoirs, academic texts, and short stories from the era, as well as conducting interviews with individuals connected to that time. The research spanned over a decade, ensuring a nuanced and accurate depiction of the tumultuous Chinese history that frames her story.

Notable Quotes:

"This book took me over seven years once it's published, but I spent many years before that just reading articles and watching television."
— Carissa Chen [09:32]

"I emailed her out of the blue and said, can you help me with these things?"
— Carissa Chen [09:32]

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4. Navigating Publication and Finding an Agent

Carissa recounts her journey to publication, highlighting the importance of building a portfolio of essays and short stories that eventually attracted literary agents. Her agent, Michelle Brower, initially reached out to her, leading to a successful collaboration. The novel Home Seeking received a preempt offer from Putnam, allowing Carissa to bypass a bidding war and proceed directly with her chosen publisher.

Notable Quotes:

"Are you still interested? Some of them had moved on already."
— Carissa Chen [12:07]

"It's meant to be, which is that the first agent that ever reached out to me ended up being my agent."
— Carissa Chen [12:07]

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5. The Use of Language and Names

A significant portion of the discussion centers on Carissa's deliberate choice to reflect the immigrant experience through the portrayal of names and language. She explains how the romanization of Chinese names varies across regions and languages, leading to different pronunciations and spellings. This linguistic complexity serves to authentically depict the disorientation and identity shifts experienced by immigrants.

Notable Quotes:

"I wanted to represent faithfully... navigating this experience of being an immigrant."
— Carissa Chen [19:44]

"If you, the reader, find yourself confused, I hope instead of giving up, you might take a moment to imagine what it must be like for those who have to navigate this on a daily basis."
— Bianca Marais [22:44]

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6. Balancing Reader Accessibility with Authenticity

Carissa emphasizes the delicate balance between maintaining authenticity and ensuring reader accessibility. While she acknowledges the potential confusion caused by multiple name spellings and linguistic nuances, she trusts her audience's ability to engage with and appreciate these complexities. Her aim is to immerse readers in the characters' experiences without diluting the cultural authenticity.

Notable Quotes:

"Readers are smarter than sometimes we might worry about... they enjoy having to be challenged a little bit."
— Carissa Chen [25:29]

"My job as a writer is to convey an experience as authentically as possible."
— Carissa Chen [25:29]

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7. Narrative Techniques: Music as a Framework

A standout feature of Home Seeking is the integral role of music in framing the narrative. Carissa illustrates how her protagonist, a violinist, uses music as a coping mechanism amidst the chaos of war and displacement. This motif not only enriches the character development but also serves as a bridge connecting past and present timelines within the story.

Notable Quotes:

“He tried to listen only to the single lonely violin that closed out the end of the movement.”
— Excerpt Read by CeCe Leera [30:18]

"I always knew that as I was writing, it just sort of appeared... how I need to have him move through the world and understand things."
— Carissa Chen [37:04]

Excerpt Highlight:

“He had never been religious, but he felt an element of truth to this... the music carried his prayers that he would live to see them again...”
— Excerpt Read by CeCe Leera [30:18]

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8. Editing and Preserving the Author’s Vision

Carissa shares her positive experience with her editor, Tara Sing Carlson, who instinctively understood and respected her vision for the novel. This harmonious collaboration ensured that the narrative's authenticity remained intact without unnecessary alterations from copy editors.

Notable Quotes:

"She instinctively understood that this is what I was trying to do, and they went with it."
— Carissa Chen [25:56]

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9. Final Thoughts and Encouragement

Wrapping up the interview, Bianca and Carissa reflect on the importance of perseverance in writing. Carissa's journey underscores the value of building a diverse writing portfolio and trusting the organic development of one's narrative.

Notable Quotes:

"Working on these short pieces and continuing to sort of send those out... is a great way, not just for you as a writer in terms of practice."
— Carissa Chen [15:20]

"Have faith in your process and allow your story to unfold authentically."
— Bianca Marais [38:38]

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Conclusion

This episode of The Shit No One Tells You About Writing offers a profound exploration of how a single choice—rooted in personal history—can shape an entire life's work. Carissa Chen's meticulous approach to storytelling, her dedication to authentic representation, and her insightful narrative techniques provide emerging writers with valuable lessons in craft, resilience, and the power of deeply personal inspiration.

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For More:

• Purchase Home Seeking: Available on the bookshop.org affiliate page.
• Follow Hosts: Subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts and follow @theshitaboutwriting on social media.
• Join the Conversation: Engage with the hosts on their Substack Newsletter.

Transcript

[Bianca Marais]

Would you like to stand a chance.

[Carly Waters]

Of winning a registration for our upcoming Deep Dive Virtual Retreat so you can learn from incredible agents, editors and authors while also having the chance of winning life changing prizes? Head to the shitaboutwriting.com and go to the Deep Dive page. Scroll down past all the details of the amazing lineup to find an image that you can share on your socials along with the reasons why you would like to attend. Use the hashtag Deep diveorbust and tag the podcast. Each post gets you a ticket into the draw. The contest ends at midnight on the 23rd of January and the winner will be announced on the 24th. We hope it's going to be you.

[Bianca Marais]

Are you looking for the perfect gift for the writer in your life? Are you the favorite writer in your life and you want to gift yourself something awesome? Then come take a look at the Ultimate Planner for writers for 2025. It not only allows to plan for your regular day to day with hourly time slots, it also allows you to brainstorm, research, plot outline, do scene planning and vision boarding all in one. And it's available as a physical planner or as an e planner. Check out Bianca Marais and find the Planner for Writers tab for more information. Remember to order early to avoid the end of year rush. Foreign hi there and welcome to our show the Shit no One Tells you About Writing. I'm Bianca Murray and I'm joined by Carly Waters and Cece Leera from PS Literary Agency. Today's guest is a Fulbright Fellow, Kundiman Fiction Fellow, and a Vona Voices Fellow whose fiction and essays have appeared in the Atlantic, Eater, the Cut, NBC News, Think Long Reads, PEN America, Catapult, Gulf coast, and Guernica, among others. She was awarded an Artist Fellowship from the New Jersey Council of the Arts, as well as residences at Millay Colony, where she was a Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation Creative Fellow, the Virginia center for the Creative Arts, Kimmel Harding Nelson center, the Ragdale foundation, and Walapa Bay Air. She was formerly the Senior Fiction Editor at the Rumpus and currently serves as the Editing Chief at Hyphen Magazine. She received an MFA in Fiction from Sarah Lawrence College and splits her time between New Jersey and Taipei, Taiwan. It's my pleasure to welcome Carissa Chen. Carissa, welcome to the show.

[Cece Leera]

Thank you so much for having me.

[Bianca Marais]

That is one hell of a bio for our listeners. We often speak about bios and query letters and this was one that was really going to grab a lot of attention. So Carissa, we're going to be discussing your journey to publication and inspiration for the novel. And we're going to do some deep dives into the book. For now, I just want to read the Flap copy to our listeners. For those of you who are watching on YouTube, here is the COVID and we will link to it on our bookshop.org affiliate page. So the book is called Home Seeking, and here is our flap copy. A single choice can define an entire life. SUU Kyi first sees Hywin in their Shanghai neighborhood when she is seven years old. Drawn by the sound of his violin, their childhood friendship blossoms into love. But when Hyewin secretly enrests in the Nationalist army in 1947 to save his brother from the draft, Suu Kyi is left with just his violin and a Note. Forgive me. 60 years later, recently widowed Hywin spots Tsuji at a grocery store in Los Angeles. It feels to Hyewen like a second chance. But SUU Kyi has only survived by refusing to look back. In the twilight of their lives, can they reclaim their past and the love they lost? Home Seeking follows the separated lovers through six decades of tumultuous Chinese history, telling Hywen's story from the present to the past while tracing SUU Kyi's from her childhood to the present. Meeting in the crucible of their lives from Shanghai to Hong Kong, Taiwan and the United States, neither loses sight of the home they hold in their hearts. So there we go. You've got the flat copy there, right? So a few things I want to dive into before I dive into the actual book. 1. You wrote about the inspiration of this in your author's note. I don't know if that's going to make the final copy that goes out to readers or if that was just in the arks, but could you tell us a little bit about that?

[Carissa Chen]

Sure, yeah. So the inspiration behind this book was really my grandfather, my maternal grandfather. He passed away in, I think it was 2005. And when we were going through his things afterwards, my grandmother passed away shortly after, as often happens. And so we were cleaning out, you know, their things, and we found this photograph of him, and he's crying in front of a grave. And, you know, my grandfather was sort of a more like, you know, a typical kind of of that generation, Chinese man who didn't really show a lot of emotion. And I was really moved by this picture because he's crying in front of this grave and he's holding joss sticks.

[Cece Leera]

And I asked my mom, you know, what. What is this about?

[Carissa Chen]

And she said, oh, you know, he had gone to visit his, his mother's grave in Shanghai. And when I was younger, I kind of knew that there was something about how he had been separated when he was 19 or so. And I kind of remembered when I was a young girl that he had gone back to Shanghai for the first time and that it was sort of a big deal. But it was really seeing that photograph that I realized, wow, like, you know, and I was an adult by then, I was in my 20s. So it was at that point I realized, like, what would it be like to be separated from your mother, from your parents for decades and you know, have never seen them again? You know, to be separated at 19. I mean, I was older than he would have been at the time when he was separated from them. And to see him like weeping, you know, I was really trying to grapple with the amount of regret that he must have felt and like the longing that would never be fulfilled. So I started to want to understand the history behind that, like, why would he have been separated? What were the historical reasons that kind of were involved in that? And you know, the more I started to research, what became very personal, became something that I understood happened to an entire generation of people. An entire. It was like 2 million people who fled from China to Taiwan after the Chinese Civil war. So understanding their stories required understanding the whole background of what was happening in context. So that really became sort of the jumping off point for me, wanting to write this book or a book that resembled this book. I wasn't sure exactly what form it would take, but wanting to understand that history and writing about it. And so that was the starting point and sort of the rest of the pieces, you know, the love story and all that kind of sort of came much later. But really the basis was seeing that photograph of my grandfather crying, right?

[Bianca Marais]

Yeah. It is amazing how something like that can just spark everything that follows and how something from real life can be the seed of the idea, but then you granting yourself permission to fictionalize everything else. Because I think the problem sometimes is is people will find a grandparents journal or something like that, and then they try and stay too close to their lived experience researching it, as opposed to allowing themselves to go, okay, this is the point from which I'm springing, but I'm going to fictionalize it.

[Carissa Chen]

Yeah, that was actually something that I grappled with for quite some time because I felt like I didn't have the right to write about something that I hadn't lived through. And it seemed like a very daunting task. Also, like, how do I get all the details right? You know, I never lived in Shanghai, 30s and 40s, I guess I didn't feel like, you know, I would be able to do it justice. And that felt very stressful to me. And so for a long time, you know, I. I really wrote about it in, in nonfiction. I was trying to, like, understand my grandfather's story and write essays about it. And I actually did publish an essay around it. But then to be able to give myself the space to fictionalize it, I think required more time and actually required a lot more research. Because once I think I had a really good grasp of the situation of the historical events of the time period, I felt a lot more confident and be able to sit down and be like, okay, now, like, let me not think about all that stuff. Let me just treat it like anything else, the way I would write about, you know, the 2000s. But I don't think I was able to do that until I felt like I understood everything else and could sort of feel confident immersing myself in the world first.

[Bianca Marais]

That must have taken quite a bit of time then. So I'm imagining what, reading novels that were based at that time, reading memoirs, watching documentaries. What did that process look like and how long did that take?

[Carissa Chen]

Yeah, so I, you know, I did all of the above. I read memoirs. There were. There are several memoirs about Shanghai at that time. I did read some, you know, novels that came out of Shanghai about that time period. You know, a lot of it was in translation. I read, you know, short stories written by soldiers who had come over from. From China to Taiwan. But, yeah, I did also read, like, a lot of academic books. You know, there's a lot of scholarship out there, and I'm very indebted to the unsung heroes, the academic scholars who did a lot of this work and so papers and books and, you know, I even had a. A scholar that I corresponded with, Odile Schroeder. She, you know, I. I emailed her out of the blue and I said, hey, you know, you specialize in music of Shanghai at that time period. Can you help me with these things? And, and asking her a lot of questions. Basically anything that I could find, Wikipedia entries, like video footage that was uploaded on YouTube. And, you know, I did try to do some interviews when I was in Taiwan on my Fulbright. Both, you know, I tried to find people to interview who were of that era. But when I got there, people were like, you know, a lot of them have passed away and a lot of them are Also a lot older. So I ended up interviewing, you know, their children or, like, grandchildren, people who had known their stories, which was also, like, very interesting to get that perspective as well. So, all in all, you know, this book took me over. You know, if you count the amount of time I spent researching, it took me over a decade to write. I mean, pen to paper, I think it took about. It will be seven years once it's published. But, you know, I spent many years before that actually just reading articles and watching television and, you know, consuming whatever media I could in order to understand that. So I can't even put a number on it because I think it was just something that was ongoing in my head for a long time of, like, what else can I read? What else can I read before I felt comfortable really starting this project.

[Bianca Marais]

Yeah, I mean, if you think about something like the Olympics, you know, they compete in the Olympics. But everything that came before, Right. It's all the lessons and the practice and the stretching and the. Everything else gets you to that point. So in terms of your journey to publication with such an impressive bio, I am not imagining, Carissa, that you had to query or cold query or send your query letter out to random agents. I imagine you had people sort of knocking down the door going, when will this novel be finished? What did that look like for you?

[Carissa Chen]

Yeah, so I was really lucky. Like I said, I took a very long time to write this book. And in the meantime, I was publishing essays. Like, I was doing a lot of personal essays. I was publishing some short stories as well. And, you know, I did have agents cold email me and say, hey, do you have a project? And I saw your. I saw your essay in so and so place. You have a project in the works. And I was always like, yes, I'm working on something, but it's not even close to being ready. Can I reach out to you when I'm done? And I had, like, a folder in my Gmail account that was just, like, agents who have reached out to me. And I just kept throwing those emails in there. And when it was time, I sent an email out to all those agents saying, like, I'm finally done. Are you still interested? You know, some of them had moved on already. You know, I think agenting is notoriously hard business. So, you know, some agents had already moved on, but, you know, there are quite a few others said, yes, please. I also did make a list of, you know, a couple of other agents that were sort of on my wish list that I also reached out to. But it's really. I think it's not ironic. I guess it's like fate, you know, it's meant to be, which is that the first agent that ever reached out to me, Michelle Brower, ended up being my agent, the agent that I went with. So it all came full circle. You know, she was the first one to believe in me, and it just felt right to go with her.

[Bianca Marais]

I love it. Kismet. And then, I mean, it's Putnam's lead title for fall early next year, so I imagine they weren't the only people to offer on the book. Was there a bidding war? Were there other people interested? How did that look?

[Carissa Chen]

Yeah, so actually, I was very lucky in that Putnam offered a preempt. And so I didn't have any conversations with other editors, but I had a great conversation with my editor, Tara Sing Carlson, and it just felt right. And so we just pulled the trigger on that.

[Bianca Marais]

Amazing. Our listeners love hearing the journeys to publication because they love imagining it for themselves and for our listeners. Again, this is why doing those essays, doing those short stories is not a waste of time, because you never know where they're going to lead to, right?

[Carissa Chen]

Absolutely. I mean, I think for me, I knew that I was kind of a slow writer in terms of writing a book lengthening. But essays and short stories, I can kind of crank out much more quickly, you know, in a couple of weeks. And it felt interesting to me, too, to be able to have something to work on in between working on this long project. You know, the novel kind of feels like a marathon. You know, you're just kind of chugging away at it. It feels like it's never going to be done. But, you know, you get that little burst of serotonin when you're like, okay, I finished, you know, this one piece, and I can kind of start sending that out and seeing if it wants to be. If anyone wants to place it somewhere. So I totally agree that working on these short pieces and continuing to sort of send those out and kind of getting your publishing chops underneath you this way is a great way, not just for you as a writer in terms of practice, but also, like you said, if you get something that piques the interests of an agent or a publisher, it's there under your belt so that when you are ready with a big project, you can point to these things like, hey, I do write and, you know, I have all that experience. So, yeah.

[Bianca Marais]

And it's okay sometimes to say to your manuscript, we need to see other people for a little while. Right. Because sometimes it can. It can be overwhelming. It could get too much and you're just too mired in it. And sometimes it's like, okay, we need to see other people for a few weeks, and then we'll come back to each other a little bit later on. And sometimes that's the best thing you can do, right? So I want to discuss your notes on languages that begins the novel because and again for for our listeners, I had to begin the episode by before we started taping, I thought I was pronouncing the character's name correctly because I'd asked a friend in Hong Kong how to pronounce it, and he told me this particular pronunciation. And then Carissa had to correct me. And again, it reinforced for me how important this note on languages was. So can you just tell our listeners about it, about your thinking behind it, and why they were so important to you?

[Fellow Host]

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[Cece Leera]

Yes, absolutely.

[Carissa Chen]

So you know, I knew sort of as I was writing the book that I I wanted to be able to navigate honestly the way that especially I think a Chinese person would experience moving from place to place with their names. Because, you know, if people are not familiar with sort of sinitic languages, we, you know, have all the same characters or many, mostly the same characters that can be read and, you know, mutually understandable across, you know, whatever region in China and Taiwan and other sort of sinitic speaking places are. But the languages sound very different and are not actually mutually intelligible. So, like, I can't understand Cantonese at all. I grew up speaking Mandarin, but I don't understand Cantonese. I live in Taiwan now, and I don't understand any Taiwanese either. But, you know, if you write out the characters, you can see the same. So, you know, for these particular characters, the characters in the book, not the characters of the words, the characters in the book, you know, they grow up in Shanghai and they grew up with Shanghainese, which is pronounced one way their. Their names are written, one that can be read by Mandarin speakers, that can be read by Cantonese speakers, but they would be pronounced completely different. So as they're moving through different regions of the world, their names are going to be pronounced differently. And then imagine them moving to the US and now you have a completely different name, possibly, which I think is very common in the immigrant experience. So I knew that that was going to be something that I wanted to represent faithfully because I think that is a really big part of being an immigrant, being somebody who has to find a new home. And your name is such a essential part of yourself that, you know, I wanted to be able to capture sort of that disorientation that comes with having to respond to a new name, you know, and that, that's, that's, you know.

[Cece Leera]

Such a big signifier of yourself.

[Carissa Chen]

And yet you have to get used to that one thing. Now, if that one thing is disorienting, imagine everything else that comes with it. So. But I knew also that it would might be confusing to readers. So I wanted to include a little note to, I guess, point out that I recognize that it might be a little bit challenging, but to also encourage readers to go with the challenge because this is very much part of the experience of being an immigrant and, you know, just be able to. I knew that there would possibly also be Chinese speakers or people who are very familiar with Chinese and to like, you know, go into a little bit of detail about, like, why I chose to use certain spellings versus other ones, because there's a lot of debate if you understand these things about like, you know, which spelling, which Romanization method to use. But all of that was kind of just to set the tone because I knew that it would be a little bit challenging and I wanted People to be prepared and understand my mindset behind that.

[Bianca Marais]

Yeah, I mean, so just for example, there are instances with Suchi's name in when we come back in time or we move to a different time is spelled differently depending on what's happening in the world at that time. And so readers will sit and go, I'm a bit confused. I thought her name was this. But I loved what Carissa wrote. I'm just going to read it to you. It was at the end of that note. So it said, if you, the reader, find yourself confused, I hope instead of giving up, you might take a moment to imagine what it must be like for those who have to navigate this on a daily basis and then forge forward. And I really love that because it made me question, is it our job as writers to make the reading experience as easy for readers as possible, or is it our job to kind of challenge them to rise to the occasion and do some heavy lifting? Like, what's your thoughts there?

[Carissa Chen]

Yeah, absolutely. I think that there's a fine line, right, because you don't want to make it so challenging that it's completely opaque and, you know, readers don't want to try at all. But I think we can give readers more credit. You know, I think that readers are smarter than sometimes we might, you know, worry about, you know, we might worry that, like, okay, they're not going to get it, so I better make this completely, you know, transparent. And I may make it really easy, but I think that, you know, readers are actually really smart and, you know, enjoy having to be challenged a little bit. And I also think that, you know, at least for me as a reader, you know, when I'm reading, I am looking for an experience that. That lets me sort of live in somebody else's shoes for a little bit. And I think for me to, let's say, like, not even, like, define every single word that comes in here, you know, every single foreign word that appears in the book. You know, that to me, is part of the challenge of being like, okay, I am a reader who is on the outside, and these are characters who are on the outside. So I'm having the same experience that they're having, and I can get a little bit of taste of what it must be like. You know, I have the safety of my home I can step out of at any point in time, but at least while I'm in this world, I can sort of experience the story orientation along with them. So I don't think that my job as a writer is to make everything as easy as possible. I think my job as a writer is to convey an experience as authentically as possible. And part of that, for me is the names. It's very much a language. It's very much, you know, allowing these characters to exist on their own terms. And that means that, like, they're not, you know, they're living in this world where they're not catering to some imagined audience. They're just living their lives.

[Bianca Marais]

Yeah, all excellent points. I just know that when it comes to publishing, you get your copy edits back. The copy editor was like, wouldn't it be easy if you did this and that? So is it that you and Tara had an understanding when she began editing this book, that this was your vision for it, and therefore they weren't trying to sort of encourage you to make it easier? Or was it a case of they did try that and you just had to push back against that?

[Carissa Chen]

I was very lucky.

[Cece Leera]

I.

[Carissa Chen]

You know, I didn't even have this conversation with Tara that I can recall. I think she instinctively understood that, like, you know, this is. This is the way that I wanted it to be. We didn't really have this conversation. There might have been one or two words in there that were much more unfamiliar or like, the context wasn't clear enough, in which I think, you know, I did make some changes, but then it wasn't like, oh, let me explain this term, but more like, let me just try to put this in context a little bit better. But I think that, you know, she probably instinctively just understood that this is what I was trying to do. And, you know, even in copy edits, the copy editor didn't try to make any changes either. So I'm very lucky to have had a team that just sort of got that this is what I was trying to do, and they went with it.

[Bianca Marais]

Yeah, it's so important for you to share that vision. Otherwise, I feel like it can feel like you're butting heads and there's a lot of backwards and forwards. Right. So I want to discuss. You begin with an overture. April 1947. Shanghai. And it's like this omniscient POV. It's almost like a very long establishing shot. We start with one character, and we follow them through as the day begins and through this kind of neighborhood as you really set it up for the reader, Immerse us in seeing what this place looks like, what it sounds like, what it feels like to really make the place come alive. Was that always your starting point? That's how the novel was originally Begun? Or was it something you added later? As, you know, we. We talk on the podcast of prologues. I mean, it could essentially be a prologue that's called an overture because of the music. But I'm interested to see what came first.

[Carissa Chen]

Yeah, no, this was something that I added in towards the end, before I sent it out to agents. I had always had sort of a prologue, but the prologue was a different prologue. It actually originally was sort of their. You know, I'm not giving any spoilers because this is. This is sort of in the flat. But, you know, it was originally their. Their parting scene first and much more. You know, I think this prologue sort of still takes place on the same day, but it sort of ends earlier. Whereas I think this. The original, I had had their fight in and all that stuff, and it just wasn't working. I think there was. There's something about it that just felt not important enough to be a prologue, you know, and there's often, like, cautioning of, like, you know, prologues. Are they even necessary? If you have a prologue, maybe you should just cut out the whole thing. And so I was kind of examining, and I was like, I don't know if this prologue earns its place, you know, as it's written. Why is it even here? But there was something I wanted to establish sort of the place and the. These characters and their relationship, like, early on, because we spend so much of the book with them apart. And so I was like, I think it's really important to have it start off where we at least get a sense of what their relationship is like. And it was only like, you know, towards. Right before I sent it out to agents, I was talking to a friend who had read a version of this, and I was like, I don't know, there's something off. And I had always had a version of this, but written somewhere more in the middle or something like that. And I was like, I think maybe this belongs the beginning. Like, maybe what I need to be doing is establishing everything first. And. And I do love. You know, I do think about my writing in a very cinematic way. And so I was like, oh, like, this is like that, you know. Yeah, like the flying overhead and you see all the house roofs and stuff like that. It was so, you know, like I said, this book took me a very long time to write. And this was probably only added in a couple years ago, towards the very end.

[Bianca Marais]

Yeah, yeah. It was so effective as that establishing shot. You zoom in, you zoom out. It was very cinematic. Extremely, extremely cinematic and really really set the tone. I've got so many more questions for you, Carissa, but we are running out of time and the one thing I wanted to discuss, and I want wanted you to read it for our listeners is how something like music can be used to frame a narrative and how it can also be used to move the plot along in some instances. Now you've got, I think it's pages 86 to 89. Could you possibly read those for our listeners so that they can see exactly what I mean there?

[Cece Leera]

Sure. He'd imagined this very piece, Brahms's lovely second movement. Through two years of marching with his unit through the desolate countryside of northern China, hiking through dusty mountains and wading through icy rivers he could no longer name. His lifelong habit of muting the world so he could focus on the melodies in his head had been handy through nights of cold, hunger, boredom, fear from that first battle, at the moment when his commanders had shouted Sha, the word almost lost amidst the chaos of machine gunfire already rhythmically punching the air, he had instinctively shut everything out. Moving forward with his rifle, he tried to listen only to the single lonely violin that closed out the end of the movement. He would not stop to think about his friends falling around him, would not see the humanity oozing from them, soft and raw. He would not hear the percussion of explosions happening somewhere near or far, nor heed the popping bullets landing with a metallic ping or airy thud or gooey thwack. He would go forth in this horde of men, kill if he must kill, but if he were to die, it would be with Brahms, strings reverberating in his mind. In later months it was Bach, his double violin Concerto in D minor or Mendelssohn, his violin Concerto in E minor, sometimes Mozart or Sibelius. Music he no longer was certain he remembered how to perform in its entirety, but could hear in his mind as clear as the recordings of his old violin teacher, Mr. Portnoy, used to play on a prize Victrola.

[Carissa Chen]

Mr. Portnoy once told him music was.

[Cece Leera]

A composer's conversation with God, that in playing or singing anyone, priest or pauper, Christian or Jewish, old man or young woman, would have an audience with the heavens. Aside from the occasional temple visits his parents had forced upon him as a boy, Howard had never been religious, but he felt an element of truth to this, for he did experience something otherworldly vibrate in him when he played particularly well. So when in 1949 he found himself finally back in Shanghai, or rather on its banks, hurriedly boarding a crowded military ship to flee the encroaching communists. He turned once again to music, as a bomb sent a spray of water not two dozen feet from where he and his fellow soldiers ducked. He retreated into the meditative opening chords of the third movement of one of Beethoven's string quartets. He tried to catch a glimpse of his childhood home through the chaos, regretful there'd been no opportunity to stop by the Shikumen and find his family, ensure their safety, no chance to hold SUU Kyi. But the music carried his prayers that he would live to see them again, that they would remain well until that day came. The music didn't stop after he stepped off the boat and into Keelung harbor in Taiwan.

[Carissa Chen]

It wouldn't stop until nearly a year.

[Cece Leera]

And a half later. In that time, the military moved him around from northern Taiwan to the sweltering Penghu Islands to Joseon island off the coast of Ningbo and so close to home he considered stealing a boat or swimming across the Strait. By mid-1950, when he found himself back in Taiwan, building military housing he didn't qualify for during the day and squatting in an elementary school at night, the music had begun leaking away like a sieve, had opened up in his brain. Notes, colors, and textures he had once known perfectly disappeared. He awoke in panic at night, trying to recall if a phrase rose to an F or an F sharp, if it had been a cello or a viola that had entered a measure. And then one day he tried to conjure up Brahms and found the symphony had vanished. Not a single note of it remained in his memory. All he had left was the echo of the feelings it had once evoked, of hope and regret and faith that life held meaning. Years later, once he was able to afford a record player, he walked into a music store and found a recording of the Brahms symphony. That night, after they had finished dinner and Lin Yi was cleaning up, he set the needle on the record. The opening swells ripped through him. The pain, the terror, the homesickness. They all flooded through his system. He remembered his friends who had fallen right next to him, the surprised faces of the men he had shot, the ache in his fingers after his unit had been commanded to retreat, his hands unable to loosen their grip on his gun. I Jun 5 at the time, had sidled up to him with an anxious expression on her face. What is it, Baba? She had asked, her voice a whisper. Why are you crying? Over the next week, he returned to that record store every day to purchase all the pieces he had forgotten, playing them nightly with the Same terror and captivity. Lin Yi said nothing until on the sixth night in bed, she turned to him and said, you're scaring the girls. You know, they don't understand why their father sits for hours listening to the same music, repeatedly weeping. He began to explain, but she shushed him. I don't need to know what it is those pieces dredge up. I assume it's something you're working through. I just wanted you to know the girls are watching. The next night, he started to remove the new record from its sleeve. Mozart's Violin Concertos. But he stared at the partially torn plastic wrapper and put the record down. He went to the closet and found the battered brown case he had hidden behind his clothes. He plucked at the a string, the one he'd had to replace with an erhu string. It sounded slightly off in timbre, but workable. He called the girls over. I want to play you one of the earliest songs I ever learned. A folk song you both will recognize, he said, cradling the violin to his neck. Their faces were curious, expectant, shining. He lifted the bow and closed his eyes. His fingers miraculously remember the first familiar notes of Jasmine.

[Bianca Marais]

Yeah. Geez, I got goosebumps when I read it, and goosebumps listening to you read it. And for our listeners, have a look at how masterfully Carissa did that. We go forward and backward in time. We are all over the place in terms of time, and yet what is threaded through constantly is the music. Was that always something when you started the book, Carissa, that the music was going to frame so much of the narrative? Or was that something that came with time and with the reworking of the novel?

[Carissa Chen]

I always knew that he was going to be a violinist, or I should say that as I was writing, it just sort of appeared. You know, I'm sort of a pantser when it comes to writing. I just sort of see what happens on the page. And so, you know, suddenly he was a violinist as I was writing him, and I was like, oh, okay. And so after I once I knew that he was going to be a violinist, then it became obvious that, of course, then music would be how he saw much of the world and how he worked through much of what was happening to him. You know, as a. As a violinist and as someone who carefully attuned to music and to sounds and to things like that. I was like, okay, this is how. How I need to have him move through the world and have him understand things. So that was always there. And that passage you just had me read was written quite early on.

[Bianca Marais]

As a pantser myself, this is exactly why I pants because when things come, you know, out of nowhere, you could have plotted and plotted and that would never have been there. And yet it informs so much of the novel. I cannot imagine this novel without him being a violinist. So for those of you pluck very tightly, open your yourself up to the occasional painsing Carissa, thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us. For our listeners, we are putting home Seeking on our bookshop. Org affiliate page. Buy it there and you support an independent bookstore and the podcast at the same time and get your hands on this book. It is just beautiful. Thank you Carissa. Thank you so much.

[Carissa Chen]

Thank you so much.

[Podcast Announcer]

A reminder that this is an unscripted program and our conversations have been edited and condensed and is not a full picture of our feedback or conversation directly with you. Each author, as always, refer back to our written notes for the fulsome picture. Carly Waters and Cece Lira are agents at P.S.

[Fellow Host]

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[Podcast Announcer]

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[Bianca Marais]

And that's it for today's episode. I hope you'll join us for next week's show. In the meantime, keep at it. Remember, it just takes one. Yes Would you like to stand a.

[Carly Waters]

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[Bianca Marais]

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