Guest Post: Mary Sharratt, Author of Daughters of the Witching Hill

I’m pleased to welcome Mary Sharratt, author of Daughters of the Witching Hill to Jenn’s Bookshelves.  Mary’s post discusses apprenticeship, a key aspect of her book:

The Lost Art of Apprenticeship

My path as a writer appears more convoluted than other people’s. It had its beginnings not in an MFA program or even with a creative writing handbook, but alone, in obscurity, scribbling the first draft of my first novel in a notebook I kept in my sock drawer.  

The year was 1988. Just out of college, I lived in a freezing rented room in Innsbruck, Austria. By day I taught English at the Ursuline Sisters boarding school for girls (surrounded by nuns, school girls, and Alps, it was very Sound of Music), but by night I entered that magical world conjured by my pen. In that pre-internet era, I didn’t own a television. Writing was my Great Escape.  

After the year of my Fulbright Fellowship in Innsbruck ended, I married and moved to Munich, Germany, where I taught English to adults. And kept on writing and rewriting my sock drawer drafts. My only “teachers” were the novels I read by people like James Baldwin, Emma Donaghue, and Marge Piercy. Looking back on those years of expat isolation from any larger, English-speaking writing community, I marvel at how happy I was, with no weight of expectation hanging on me. I could allow my writing to unfold organically, caught up in the joy of the process. Slowly but steadily I mastered my craft.  

In 2000 my years of apprenticeship came to fruition. Independent literary publisher, Coffee House Press published my debut novel, Summit Avenue, to glowing reviews. The book went through three print runs. My second novel then sold to Houghton Mifflin. The upcoming publication of my fourth novel, Daughters of the Witching Hill, by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, is a mark of how far I have come, thanks to the foundation of all those years spent quietly working on my sock drawer manuscripts.  

Is it just me, or has the world speeded up out of control since 1988? When I’m invited to teach or speak at writers conferences, I’m struck at what a hurry some aspiring writers seem to be in, clamoring to be discovered by agents and editors when they haven’t even finished the first draft of their first novel.  

I wish I could give them all a copy of Marge Piercy and Ira Wood’s So You Want to Write: How to Master the Craft of Writing Fiction and Memoir. The authors stress the importance of apprenticeship and how we as a society have grown poorer for devaluing this lost art in our modern rush for instant gratification. I wish I had the power to grant every aspiring writer the gift of happy peaceful hours carved out of their busy lives and dedicated to the bliss of learning their craft, without pressure or competition. “Overnight success” is generally the culmination of many years of patient practice.  

Mary Sharratt currently lives near Pendle Hill in Northern England, the setting for her novel Daughters of the Witching Hill, which brings to life the true story of the Pendle Witches of 1612.

Thank you, Mary!

Thanks to the publisher, I have one copy of Daughters of the Witching Hill to give away! To enter, please fill out the form below. Open to US and Canadian residents only.  Winner will be announced on Wednesday, April 14th.