General

This is part of the Claim Your Authority series.
The French have an expression, ‘trouver sa voie’. I translate this as ‘ to find her path’. It can also be spelled ‘trouver sa voix’, which means ‘find her voice’.
When I set out to write a novel, I thought I was being clever. I thought writing about Sylvia Beach would allow me to avoid that first, autobiographical novel.
Writing from Sylvia’s perspective, I loved my lyrical passages where I tried to inhabit Sylvia’s world.
But after I came back from a week researching in Sylvia’s archives in Princeton, my enthusiasm for the novel ground to a halt. I could only go so far inventing Sylvia’s truths for myself. I respected her too much to try to push her gentle struggles into a sensationalistic spotlight. She would have hated that.
Shortly after my return from Princeton, I had a breakthrough. During a free writing session with my group, my pen lead me to engage Sylvia directly in a dialogue. Instantly the writing was electrified. Instantly I was closer not only to Sylvia but to something vital in myself.
I showed the pages to Carl and he said, Yes! Write more of that!
So I kept going with this me-like character and her interactions with Sylvia Beach, because it felt much better than trying to write Sylvia’s story. I had no idea how I was going to deal with what had effectively become a ‘time travel novel’, but I plunged forward anyway.
This character became Lily Heller. She made plucky choices that I wouldn’t have dared. As I wrote, I both met and grew myself. The story helped show me who I am and what is important to me.
Making this change put me solidly on my path. I became a witness both of Sylvia and myself. 
Here’s a truth I discovered that’s at the core of my coaching, teaching and my own creative quest: we need role models but those role models can only take us so far before we have to forge our own path.
With Sylvia as a distant guide and the novel as an intimate and challenging proving ground, I kept questing for my voice/path. Staying with this project forced me to see and understand insights I would have lost if I had skipped to other, simpler projects.
Finding your voice as a writer is one of the biggest challenges in writing. I’m still finding my voice. But writing and publishing this novel has taken me a long way toward discovering – and owning – my voie/voix.
What has helped you find your voice and path? What role models have taken you to the edge and forced you to find your own way?
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I was talking with a friend the other day about blogging. She asked, What would Sylvia Beach blog?

I laughed. Then I thought about it. Even though I have studied Sylvia for a long time – 15 years, holy cow! – I can’t comfortably say I know exactly what she would think, say or do in any given situation.
But it is fun to imagine, isn’t it? And that’s what I had to do to make a historical figure a character in my novel, Chasing Sylvia Beach.
So let’s play and imagine what Sylvia would blog about. I bet Sylvia would put up a blog because she thought she should, but perhaps it would be spottily populated.
Maybe she’d delegate the blog to one of her assistants, perhaps the character in my novel, Lily Heller, who gets a job working alongside Sylvia.
Here’s my best guess about her subject matter:

Sylvia’s mission was to bring Anglophone literature to readers in France. She would make short posts to feature new books that had come into the bookstore.

She’d blog about the literary magazines such as Transition literary magazine that she carried in her shop Shakespeare and Company.

If we read Sylvia’s blog, we might also see reports of readings she held in her shop, like the one in 1937 with novelist Ernest Hemingway and poet Stephen Spender. (This is a scene in my novel that I have fictionalized.)

Sylvia might dish on the books she was reading, and would probably love sharing her opinions on them.

Sylvia would never blog about:

Herself or her private life. Sylvia was an intensely private person, and I imagine that she’d think any kind of personal blogging would be ridiculous.

She’d never gossip or spread news about her friends and their private lives.

She would never blog a novel because she would never write a novel.

It’s fun to imagine what someone in 1930s Paris would blog about, isn’t it?
What do you think Sylvia Beach would have blogged about? What do you think makes for a good bookstore blog?

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In the mid-1930s Paris, the Golden Age of the City of Light was waning. The Great Depression was in full effect and Hitler’s power was on the rise.
Americans were ditching the once-carefree lifestyle of Paris and fleeing for home. But Sylvia Beach, the owner of Shakespeare and Company bookstore, stayed.
This determination to stay in Paris at any cost was one of the main things that attracted me to Sylvia. Why did she stay when everyone else was headed for safety? How did she do it?

Sylvia’s tenacity inspired my own

Sylvia’s model of tenacity rooted in my imagination. Through this obsession with her, I developed my own tenacity. I have been researching and writing about Sylvia since 1997. In 1999, the stories I was crafting about her veered toward a novel. Now, nearly thirteen years later, the novel Chasing Sylvia Beach (June, 2012, Original Impulse) is nearly ready to be published.
I never considered myself to be the tenacious sort. Because I have a lot of interests, I shift gears often. (You, too?) Certainly I’ve never had Sylvia’s courage to move to Paris and stay – to immerse myself in the city beyond its romantic stereotypes, to wend my way through French bureaucracy in order to establish a business there, to deepen and nourish relationships beyond superficial connections.
But I persisted with the novel, guided by Sylvia’s example of dedication. I immersed myself in her world, witnessing from afar the decisions she made. The kind of person she showed herself to be impacted my own character.
I appreciate her willingness to work without financial reward but at great personal and creative gain. I resonate with her desire to connect and converse with other book lovers. First a bookseller like Sylvia, then a businesswoman, I found a better version of myself in writing this book.
Why was she so tenacious? From my research, I can infer that Sylvia was one of those no-nonsense people not easily deterred by obstacles. She was more interested in being of service to others than concerned about her own comfort. She lived in an apartment above her bookshop with no running water.

Sylvia didn’t go back to the comforts of home in the US because after more than a decade on the rue de l’Odéon on the Left Bank, Paris had become her home. This model of giving and commitment helped me set aside fears enough to get Sylvia’s story – and mine – into book form.
My parents’ tenacity showed me up-close how to stick with it despite challenges. My dad was a businessman who worked every day to build a beautiful life for his family. Whenever I cried, “I can’t!” he’d reply, “Can’t died in the cornfield!” I still don’t know exactly what that means but I know its essence is ‘Don’t give up.’
My mom was a dynamic saleswoman, and then her own businesswoman, building high-end custom homes. They married super young and are still married after 51 years. I owe much of my grit to them.

Grow your tenacity

While writing your book or creating your next great thing, you will have doubts. Your friends, family and peers may try to dissuade you. The economic climate and your own internal radar of safety will collude to assure you that it’s best to just give up and do something safe.
But now more than ever we need people to dedicate themselves to what they know to be true and right, despite the odds, despite the ‘norm’ and despite what seems ‘logical.
What helps you grow your tenacity? What books or heroines help you persist despite all odds? Share your stories in a comment below.