The Creation of Lauren Yanofsky

Last month my third YA novel, Lauren Yanofsky Hates the Holocaust was published by Orca Books. Quite a few people have asked about the title, and just how I came to write a book about a Jewish teenager who hates the Holocaust. "Why does Lauren hate the Holocaust?" people ask me. I respond, "Please, does anyone like the Holocaust?"

I launched the book at Novel Idea, Kingston's amazing independent bookstore and before I read from the book, I gave a short talk about how I came to write the book. Below is an an excerpt from my talk that evening.

Good evening friends and thanks for coming.

Several of my members of my book club are here and I know many of them might find it amusing that I have written a book called Lauren Yanofsky Hates the Holocaust since I’ve been claiming to them for several years now that I don’t read books about the Holocaust. One would assume that I also don’t write books about the Holocaust, but that appears not to be true, something that also surprises myself. Perhaps I’ve captured some of that ambivalence in the title, because Lauren doesn’t just confront the Holocaust (a title my father suggested) or memorialize the Holocaust, the way Jewish and non-Jewish communities are doing all over the world this week because it is Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, she hates it. She hates it because she believes it has overtaken her Jewish culture and her own Jewish identity. She hates the way it has co-opted what it means to be Jewish, the way mentioning your cultural identity brings up images of gas chambers and death trains.

For many years, I was like Lauren Yanofksy. I just hated the Holocaust. I didn’t want to talk or think about it. I was tired of books and movies and reverent glances of non Jews. Could we not focus on something other than the big H? Even terrorism and war and occupation of Israel/Palestine were couched in the language of the Holocaust. The Palestinians accused the Israelis of being Nazis and the Israeli government would bring up the memory of the Shoah, the Holocaust, at the drop of the hat to justify their actions.

Then, while teaching here in the Kingston area, one of my grade six students made a swastika armband during my French lesson. And it stopped me short. The student claimed to have learned about the Nazis from watching the History channel and claimed not to know about the atrocities they had committed. He seemed genuinely surprised when the principal explained why the armband was so offensive, especially to me. The student apologized, the armband was confiscated and the incident forgotten.

Except I didn’t forget about it. And I was surprised at how emotional my reaction to that armband was. It bothered me because it represented the death of so many people, and it bothered me that the student didn’t know about it, and mainly it bothered me that it bothered me. Even though I had tried to forget the Holocaust and not have it be part of my identity, it still was. And it would continue to be so. There was no avoiding it. Even when I read seemingly non Holocaust books, it would pop up mid way through. Or it would be on the news, or my twitter feed. I talked to my father who was still voraciously reading Holocaust books. He said the Holocaust was an opportunity for teaching tolerance. I sighed, and said, surely there’s another way, a more “Gandhian” way. What I really meant was not necessarily a more peaceful way, just one less personal to me.

The armband incident stuck with me for a long time, and so did my Holocaust ambivalence and discomfort. Then one morning I woke up with a title in my head, Lauren Yanofksy Hates the Holocaust. I knew Lauren would hate it because of the atrocities committed, but also because of the complicated legacy to Jewish culture and identity. I knew I was going to have to write the book to work out my uncertainties and ambivalence. And so I have.



Author Leanne Lieberman with her very excited and enthusiastic friend, Karen Zabel
Novel Idea Bookstore, Kingston ON April 2013



How NOT To Write a Book

I’m in the midst of editing a book and it’s not going well. I also haven’t finished it, which is problematic. The first four chapters just rock right along, and then in the middle section none of the chapters (or are they short stories?)  really link up. Then there’s the unwritten third section. All this has made me quite qualified to write a book called How Not To Write A Book: A Guide To Failed Manuscripts and Other Literary Mishaps. I’ve noticed already that this is not a title I should ever choose because writing it even once is re-activating my tendinitis. (Which leads to a flare-up of TMJ, which is an acronym I always have difficulty unpacking, but it means my jaw really hurts.)

Anyhoo, here are ten possible chapters for HNTWB.

1)      Start in the middle and assume you’ll just figure out the beginning.

2)      Plan to write short stories and then decide to make them into chapters.

3)      Use every single idea you’ve ever had so that you have over eleven significant characters.

4)      Overload your main character with every possible life crises - abuse, miscarriage, early death of mother figure, sleazy husbands and of course, deep dark family secrets.

5)      Send your character to a foreign country to see how she makes out.

6)      Create plots that revolve around specific historical events that make later parts of the book completely implausible. For example, you want your heroine to be old enough to experience World War Two, but you also want her to have children in the eighties.

7)      Write half the chapters in the present tense and the other half in the past tense.

8)      Write half the chapters in the first person and mysteriously change to third person half way through the book. Neither is convincing so change the whole book to the very difficult second person. Spend a lot of time changing pronouns.

9)      Kill off characters early on in the book because they are inconvenient or hold up the plot. 

10)  Include long sections from your personal life or experience that you know have very little bearing on the story but are just too good to leave out. Spend A LOT of time perfecting these, even though you know they’ll get axed later.

How Not To Write A Book will also have a special section on procrastinating for writers: changing font size and paragraphing to look like you’ve done some writing, starting a blog (ahem), and re-reading other failed manuscripts to see if they can be revamped etc.

Wish me luck over the next year as I try to pull this book from its current mess into something amazing.