Returning from Hiatus

Can it really be called a hiatus when I never announced one? Doubtful. This newsletter has been on an unofficial and unplanned late summer hiatus for all the ordinary reasons—laziness, slovenliness, poor prioritization, too much time in the sun… Among the myriad excuses I could provide is this: over the past couple of months I have been in deep revision of a new novel, revision that has gotten it across the finish line. While an overhaul of the book has been nearly a year in the making, the last weeks have been focused on revisional responses prompted by the gracious, clear-eyed critiques of a cherished few precise readers. The new manuscript is titled A Different Breath. It is a historical novel set in 1926 at the heart of the Jazz Age and rooted in a reimagining of the Orpheus and Euridice myth. My peculiar addition to the Orpheus cannon features a smart, driven, irreverent flapper, a singer-songwriter reluctant to showcase his talent, and a priest who is in the midst of a faith crisis. Much of the novel is a road story, albeit one featuring the speakeasies of the American Intermountain West and Southern Great Plains rather than the famous clubs of New Orleans, New York, and Chicago.

As I venture out once again into the uncertain landscape of trying to find the novel a publishing home, I’ll keep you abreast on developments. Should it reach landfall somewhere, I will write about the revision process of this book, for I long thought it a failed manuscript, one that has been deconstructed and reconstructed too many times. But as a result it does make for an interesting case study in revision and the resilience required to find the book that hides in the tangled detritus of a faulty mind.

Today I return with a staple of this newsletter, a writing prompt/pondering for you who write, a reminder about the state of books in perilous times, and a new music feature. On Saturday I will post a robust, spirited new essay on patriotism and its corruption.

As always, I welcome comments, thoughts, questions (and answers).

A Writing Prompt? (Maybe), A Writing Thought (Definitely)

I’m also at the halfway point of another manuscript, this one a follow-up to The Other Side that again features detectives Stephen Wendell and Stacey Knudson. As I have discussed in this space before, I am committed to what I call organic writing, which to me essentially means pursuing a manuscript rather than leading it. The classic example is learning to listen to the characters, something that was long a roadblock for me in A Different Breath. But this also means at least two other things to me: thinking about manuscript decisions in terms of the book’s emergent themes, and trying to focus on realism found in character reactions by replicating them, as best possible, in the reader’s experience. In this new Wendell book I’ve spent more than half of its final length carefully developing a central character who will—and I really don’t think there’s a plot spoiler here—ultimately disappear. I spent time developing two chapters that pursue the plotline of that disappearance, following the trails of human trafficking, only to realize, reluctantly, that they just weren’t working. The solution I am now attempting tries to provide the reader the same experience as the characters by abruptly removing the central character from the story entirely. Isn’t this the reality for the loved ones of those who are victims of human trafficking? Can I help the reader experience something parallel? We’ll see if the experiment pans out, but it does act upon an editing principle I’ve often employed: that sometimes the surest way around a roadblock is to remove it entirely. I can’t tell you how often I have struggled with the same passage for weeks, returning to it again and again, tweaking it, reworking it, only to realize the passage does nothing to enhance the text or advance the story. Each time it is a difficult lesson. It’s not always a solution, although I remain surprised how often it is.

So a kind of exercise to consider for you writers out there…think about a work-in-progress, and stepping back from it, ask yourself if there is something you want your reader to experience emotionally at a critical point? Is there any way for you to parallel the reader’s literal reading experience with something the manuscript’s characters are feeling/experiencing? OR…find that pesky passage you’ve been fighting and strip it out (don’t worry, this isn’t the age of stone tablets, so you can cut and paste it into another document if you fear you just can’t let go). Kill it. Read a portion of the manuscript again and see if the loss of the passage harms the text.

Banned Books Week

It’s the American Library Association’s Banned Books Week, and if you follow me on social media, you know I’ve been posting reminders. Books are under assault in the US and public and school librarians have been placed on the frontlines without asking for it. The list of books that are considered classics and have been banned is sufficient alone to remind us that those who ban books do so at the peril of history and culture and do so our of fear. I believe there is no room for censorship, full stop. If it’s kids we’re worried about, and I think that is frequently a mythical excuse, then “banning” them from reading a book is a parent’s job, not the government’s or an institution’s or an official’s. So parents, be parental. And while you’re at it, unless you monitor every action your child takes on the Internet, you’ve got a WHOLE lot more than books to police (and by the way, if you want to ban something, how about banning anyone under the age of fourteen from possessing a cellphone with connectivity to the Internet).

My favorite quotation about censorship simply because it is SO apt is by by Laurie Halse Anderson from her YA novel Speak, the story of a teenage girl ostracized for reporting her rape.

"Censorship is the child of fear and the father of ignorance."

Anderson gets it spot on. If you want an ignorant society, ban them from reading.

The ALA tells us that George Orwell’s novel 1984 is the most frequently banned book in the US over time. The irony, of course, is inescapable, for the same people who say they stand against big government and for individual rights are the ones who ask for bans on a book that warns against the danger of totalitarianism amid the threats of government surveillance, manipulation of truth, and suppression of individuality. This assumes that those who wish to ban books could define totalitarianism or have studied how past totalitarian regimes have formed. (Below is the 1st edition cover (1949); if you want some interesting history, look up the various editions that have been published over time where, perhaps most interesting is to compare the 1954 plain UK cover to the American cover of the same year that contains mildly salacious images meant to titillate American readers and grab their interests at newsstands despite being antithetical to the book’s themes.)

And I can’t close a discussion of banned books without quoting Margaret Atwood, whose own novel The Handmaid’s Tale is frequently banned. This is one of those book bans that defines censorship out of fear, a book that feels entirely prescient for our current culture.

"A voice is a human gift; it should be cherished and used to utter fully human speech as much as possible. Powerlessness and silence go together."

(Another first edition cover.)

What I’m Listening To

Music is essential to my writing and my life. I have wildly eclectic tastes. If you read the description of A Different Breath, you won’t be surprised that music is everywhere in this novel, even to a greater extent than its importance in Man, Undergound. A few bands on heavy rotation for me lately include jam band Goose, who we saw perform last Friday night in Bonner, MT in an amazing concert experience, The Macarons Project, a Canadian duo who found their audience on YouTube, and The National Parks.

Enjoy. And thanks for reading.