Wiles mixes friendship and family in a story for young readers
Deborah Wiles's original story for young people, ''Moves the Symphony True," will be published in eight weekly chapters in the Living/Arts section beginning next Tuesday. The story, set in Aurora, Miss., features several characters from Wiles's other books, ''Love, Ruby Lavender" and ''Each Little Bird That Sings."
Wiles was born in Alabama into an Air Force family and spent summers with relatives in a small Mississippi town.
''That town was like an extended family full of Southern characters," said Wiles. ''Today, I write about them and they live on and on in my stories."
In a telephone interview from her Atlanta home, Wiles spoke about her ideas, her writing, and the characters that appear in her stories.
Q. Your story ''Moves the Symphony True" will appear in the Globe in eight episodes. Are the characters based on real people or are they developed in your imagination?
A. I always start with a voice in my mind. A boy who told me his name was House Jackson and he was 12 years old also told me about a ''dead guy" and I knew I had to get it down on paper. Then there was another voice, a girl, 14 years old, named Finesse, who was over-the-top melodramatic and sprinkled her speech with French phrases and wanted to wow everybody at the auditions. She made me laugh, and I scrambled to keep up with her voice as well. As I wrote this story, I discovered that my boy character, House, had a little sister named Honey. She is 6 and wants nothing more in the world than to be a tap dancer. I don't know how I know these things. They come from somewhere inside when I am willing to sit with the story and let come what comes, and capture it.
Q. ''Moves the Symphony True" features a baseball game and a play. Readers become a part of both. What is the connection between the two events?
A. Well, Finesse Schotz, the former artistic terror of Mable Middle School, is directing the children's pageant for the 200th anniversary of Aurora County. Her uncle, who plays Dr. Dan Deavers on the soap opera ''Each Life Daily Turns," is coming to the pageant and every mother in Aurora County has signed up her child to be in the pageant, hoping perhaps that her child will be discovered! The problem is that the entire baseball team has been signed up for the pageant. And this pageant is to take place on the same day as the big game that the Aurora County All Stars play against the Raleigh Redbugs. The connector to both of these events is a death that opens the story. Mr. Norwood Rhinehart Beauregard Boyd has just died -- House Jackson witnessed his death -- and he has a close connection to both House Jackson and Finesse Schotz, and to all of Mabel, Mississippi -- and, to Walt Whitman. It's a story about how all of life -- what we love, what we hate, what we win, and what we lose -- is important, and part of ''the symphony true." It's all the same song.
Q. How does the writing process work for you?
A. Well, that voice is something I count on. I really do have an idea, such as ''I come from a family with a lot of dead people." That's the first line of my new novel ''Each Little Bird that Sings." I have an idea like that -- it's a distinct voice -- and I run for a piece of paper, or if I'm sitting at my desk, I type. I keep up with this voice, this idea, until it plays out, usually within a page or two, and then I sit there and think, ''Where did that idea come from?" Sometimes, I have multiple characters within a few pages, all talking to one another. I just try to capture everything they say, until there are no more words. Then comes the sitting-with-it part. I may have more words the next day, and I may not. I let it all steep, or stew, because I don't know what in the world the story is about, really. It's going to have to reveal itself to me. My job is to show up every day and allow that to happen. Even if I've written no words at the end of a day, I show up at my desk. And believe me, there are many days when I feel like I make no progress, although I have learned by now that my undermind is working away, even when I'm not finding the story on paper. Eventually, I get another strong push, and write more, find out more. And then, when I'm into the middle and nearing the end, I write long hours, every single day, including weekends, on the story until I have a draft. My friends call it a ''white heat" and maybe that's what it is. Suddenly, I know it. And I just write. And write. Then I revise. A lot. A whole lot. I'm a slow writer, I think. It takes my mind and heart a lot of time to discover the story, and I try to give them as much time as they need.
Q. What book or books can readers expect from Deborah Wiles in the future? Will they feature some of the characters we have met in your other books?
A. In this story, ''Moves the Symphony True," you will meet Ruby, Melba Jane, and Dove from ''Love, Ruby Lavender," so if you have read that book, I hope you enjoy seeing these characters again. I loved writing their new stories. You'll also see Bunch Snowberger from ''Each Little Bird That Sings," as the undertaker who has to come pick up Mr. Norwood Rhinehart Beauregard Boyd and take him to Snowberger's Funeral Home. It pleases me to be creating a world, the fictional Aurora County, Mississippi, based on my childhood summers in a small Mississippi town, creating characters that cross over in both my novels and in this story. I love that feeling. My book ''Hang the Moon," which will be a new novel from Harcourt, will also take place in Aurora County and feature some crossover. It will be my first historical novel, as it takes place in 1966, with lots of family and friendship connections and lots of music, including Elvis and the Beatles.
Stephanie Loer can be reached at jimstephloer@comcast.net. To learn more about Deborah Wiles, visit www.deborahwiles.com. 
