Normally, when writing a book, I might do all of my research first, which in this case would have meant rereading all of Little Women before writing my own version. But I didn’t do that. Instead, I’d read one chapter of Alcott’s book and then write my own version, keeping the plot points and whatever else I wanted from hers, while inserting Emily into the story and adding my own twists. This chapter-by-chapter correspondence goes on through Chapter 30. Alcott’s Little Women continues for another seventeen chapters while my version veers off there into the epilogue. I leave the story before Beth dies, although the reader now knows that eventually she will, that no matter what Emily did, she couldn’t stop that.
Here’s the most surprising thing I found while rereading Little Women, something I never noticed when I was younger, but that Emily comments on several times during her journey through the book—it’s all so random! Sure, there’s a plotline, but family members and friends and even events enter the story from out of the blue, like the meeting of the Pickwick Club. The March sisters have been seemingly meeting regularly to put together their own newspaper, but no mention is made of the club before or after the chapter in which that one meeting takes place.
So if readers of my book occasionally think, “Wow! That thing that just happened was so random!” chances are the original book was random first.
One thing that may surprise readers is how I came up with the ending. Most of the time when I write a book, I know how it’s going to end practically from the beginning. Not so with Little Women and Me. Louisa May Alcott wrote her book in episodic fashion, and so it was with me and mine. But about two-thirds of the way through, I had one of those epiphanies that sometimes happen while writing a book, and I realized: Whoa! Emily’s not the only time traveler in the book—Amy’s a time traveler too … and Papa! That’s when I knew how the book would end: Emily and Amy would confront each other, and eventually Emily would “fix” the story, making it so that Jo would wind up with Laurie, thereby earning her way back to her own life.
It was while I was writing the epilogue that another moment of inspiration struck. Earlier, I mentioned the Pickwick Club. In my chapter about that unusual writing society, just as in the original version, the March sisters wear badges with the initials “P.C.” on them wrapped around their heads like crowns. There’s a great book on writing by Christopher Vogler called The Writer’s Journey. It primarily discusses writing for film, but a lot of it can be used for writing novels as well. It breaks down a story’s structure into twelve parts, and one of the parts near the end is called “the return with the elixir”—think of the elixir as some tangible item that the hero or heroine brings back like a reward for their successful journey or, in Emily’s case, proof that the journey even happened. In the epilogue, after Emily talks to her teacher about her paper, she’s still stunned by everything that’s happened, still unsure if it was all a dream or if it was real. Then the paper crown with “P.C.” on it falls out of her notebook—the elixir Emily didn’t know she brought back with her—and the truth finally hits: she time traveled into Little Women and she changed the ending.
I hope you enjoyed Little Women and Me even half as much as I enjoyed writing it. Thanks for reading!
Also by Lauren Baratz-Logsted
The Twin’s Daughter
Copyright © 2011 by Lauren Baratz-Logsted
First published in the United States of America in November 2011
by Bloomsbury Books for Young Readers
www.bloomsburyteens.com
Electronic edition published in 2011
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to
Permissions, Bloomsbury BFYR, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10010
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Baratz-Logsted, Lauren.
Little Women and me / by Lauren Baratz-Logsted — 1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Modern-day teen Emily March turns to Louisa May Alcott’s famous book for a school
assignment and finds herself mysteriously transported to the world of Little Women, where she
undergoes surprising changes.
eISBN: 978-1-59990-514-3 (ebook)
[1. Space and time—Fiction. 2. Sisters—Fiction. 3. Family life—New England—Fiction. 4. Conduct of
life—Fiction. 5. New England—History—19th century—Fiction.]
I. Alcott, Louisa May, 1832–1888. Little women. II. Title.
PZ7.B22966Lit 2011 [Fic]—dc22 2010038095
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