Giant Pumpkin Suite

When I first heard about giant pump­kins, I knew I want­ed to write a nov­el about some kids grow­ing one “against all odds” in the city. I was utter­ly smit­ten with both the process and prod­uct of giant pump­kin grow­ing. I was sure this was the stuff of the Next Great Amer­i­can Novel.

I wrote the open­ing chap­ters of Giant Pump­kin Suite as part of my appli­ca­tion port­fo­lio for the MFA pro­gram I hoped to enroll in. Those chap­ters bear almost no resem­blance to Giant Pump­kin Suite—the kids were younger (and not twins), the next door neigh­bor was crab­bier, the neigh­bor­hood trou­bled, and there was absolute­ly noth­ing about Bach or cel­lo, musi­cals or tap danc­ing. There were no love­ly neigh­bors, no library, no oth­er kids at all, in fact. It was … a bit stark, per­haps. I can’t even remem­ber what the title was. But it got me into the MFA pro­gram, and there I fig­ured out some things about what to do with it all.

First off, my writ­ing teach­ers sug­gest­ed I need­ed more going on in the nov­el than just pump­kin grow­ing. I found this dis­ap­point­ing and resist­ed at first. But I could not deny that I was writ­ing chap­ter after chap­ter … in which pret­ty much noth­ing was hap­pen­ing. (Plot is hard for me.)

Typ­i­cal writ­ing advice admon­ish­es us to “write what we know.” This is good advice, I think. But I’m far more inter­est­ed in “writ­ing what I want to know.” And so that’s what I did. I adore Bach’s cel­lo suites. When I was Rose’s age, I was prepar­ing for a con­test in which I would play fif­teen Bach pieces (short pre­ludes and fugues, inven­tions, etc.) on piano. I was not an espe­cial­ly gift­ed pianist, but this was an amaz­ing time for me—it was like train­ing for a marathon. It set me apart (if only in my own mind) and helped me cope with the changes of mov­ing, grow­ing (phys­i­cal­ly), and grow­ing up. Although I nev­er played in the con­test (we moved!) I can still play some of those pieces from memory.

All was grist for the writ­ing mill, as it turns out, because I took that expe­ri­ence and super­im­posed it on the cel­lo suites and dear Rose. I made her ungain­ly tall, as I was at her age, and empha­sized her “dif­fer­ent­ness” by giv­ing her a twin oppo­site of her in near­ly every way. (Plus, she’s kind of intense—she needs Thomas.) And then I gave her my love of Bach and those cel­lo suites and the abil­i­ty to play them, which gave me both the sound­track for writ­ing this book and the excuse to research those amaz­ing suites. Maybe some day I’ll learn to play them myself.

I am so grate­ful to the many peo­ple who advised me on all of the things I did not know so that I could write this book! I learned so much and it was so fun that I’m doing the same in my next novel—it’s chock full of stuff I want to know about and so have giv­en myself the excuse to do the research.