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Finding hidden treasure

Irène Némirovsky (1903–1942) was a French
novelist who died at the age of 39 in Auschwitz
concentration camp after being arrested by the
Nazis as a Jew. Her older daughter, Denise, kept
a notebook containing the manuscript for Suite
Française for 50 years without reading it, thinking
it was her mother’s journal or diary, which
she imagined would be too painful to read.
In the late 1990s, however, Denise decided to
donate her mother’s papers to a French archive,
and looked at the notebook, only to discover
that it contained two novellas portraying life in
France between 4 June 1940 and 1 July 1941,
when the Nazis occupied Paris. In 2004 she
arranged to have the book published in France,
where it became a bestseller and was translated
into many languages. In 2007 another
novel by Némirovsky, Fire in the Blood, was
published after two French biographers found
a complete manuscript in her archives.
Writers often also use material deposited in museums and libraries. Very
seldom are these letters, diaries or journals well written and interesting
enough to stand on their own; often they require heavy editing, or a writer
uses the information in them but rewrites them entirely.
Such sources can be invaluable for providing factual information and for
revealing how people thought, felt and wrote during a period.
1. Find an old diary or letter, either from your family or one printed in a
book.
2. Write a few paragraphs imitating the style.
3. Think about how you can adapt this source material to make it more
interesting for a modern reader: what needs to stay, what needs to be
added, what taken away?
4. Write a story about what’s in the letter or journal; add to and elaborate
it as much as you like.
5. Write about a character finding a copy of that story and reacting to
what’s in it.