A Writer Writes!

 Recently I completed my responsibilities in preparing "Prairie Bachelor:  The Story of a Kansas Homestead and the Populist Movement" for publication by the University Press of Kansas scheduled for release December 4, 2020 and available for pre-order now.  So, what does an author do when she hands her book over to the publisher for the last time?  One answer is obvious...she continues the weekly blog she began in 2011.  Thank you so much to all of you who have followed my blog for all those years.  I have many more stories to share.

Until this summer, I had never participated in a writing group.  The Willa Cather Conference in June was held virtually, and because I did not want to miss the conference, I was forced to enter the world of online virtual meetings.  After much trepidation, I signed up and had a wonderful time.  At the close of the conference I saw an invitation to join an online writing group, which would meet monthly via Zoom, using quotes from Willa Cather's books and short stories as prompts to inspire writing.  It sounded like fun.

I joined and have participated in three meetings with other writers from both coasts and the heartland.  The objective is to use a Cather quote to inspire the topic about which we will write.  Our compositions can be fiction, personal biography...whatever Cather's quote inspires.  After 20 minutes for writing, we take turns sharing and receiving comments from the other members of the group. The objective is not to complete a polished composition but rather just to exercise our imaginations and writing skills, and then share positive and supportive comments.   

Our group includes writers who have published books, papers, encyclopedia articles, and work related to professional lives, in one case as a professional dancer.  When I mentioned to the group that I had written fiction that I put away and never showed to anyone, my fellow writers encouraged me to get one of my stories out of its box and work on it.

That is how I came to retrieve a Legal Mystery Novel I had written years ago, even before I "met" Isaac Werner.  Obviously, I have not been idle, since I have posted a blog every week since October of 2011, during which time "Prairie Bachelor" was completed.  But with the group's encouragement, I found my Legal Mystery Novel.  I specifically remember crafting the opening passage as I walked from my car to Fresh Market when we were living in Charlotte, North Carolina.  I had completed a first draft, but when I discovered Isaac Werner's Journal, my Legal Mystery Novel was forgotten.

Actually, that novel had gone into a box when we moved from North Carolina to Texas, and was still in its box when we moved from Texas to the farm in Kansas.  All of our moving made it difficult, if not impossible, to find the manuscript.  With Isaac now handed over to the publisher, I found my long-ago fictional hero, criminal lawyer, Kent Shaffer.  My husband has put up with sharing my time with homesteader Isaac Werner, and just when he thought he was rid of his literary competition, here comes a a fictional lawyer to steal my attention.

As a lawyer, I chose to write books related to the law--a book about the constitutional protections of faith and respect for differing beliefs (Should the Children Pray? published by Baylor University Press); a book about the impact of laws on the new options for creating families (Private Choices, Public Consequences, published by Dutton, a Division of Penguin); and most recently, a book about the Populist Movement that created our nation's most successful third party (Prairie Bachelor:  The story of a Kansas Homestead and the Populist Movement).  Each of these books is related to my love for the law and our constitution.  Now I have returned to a manuscript with a fictional criminal lawyer as its hero.  

While my books are very different, all of them relate to my love and respect for the amazing legal system our nation has, whether constitutional law or civil and criminal law.  I don't know whether  my Legal Mystery Novel will ever be published, and I don't have any idea about how to market a novel, but I share this week's blog to answer the question:  What does a writer do when her book is finished?  The answer is "A writer writes!"

Images:  At top, things from my Baylor Law School years, and at bottom, my Baylor Law Diploma and the certificates for admission to the Bar in Texas, Georgia, and North Carolina, both images shared in this blog because of its subject:  my love for the law.

The Detective Work of an Artist

Clues from old newspapers

Recently I read an article about a performance artist who found a wire recording made in the 1950s in which a family undertakes that awkward effort of acting natural as they record themselves.  Using that recording, the artist created "Say Something Bunny," which she performs in a small Off Off Broadway theater.  When she listened to this unusual wire recording, a technology that predates tape recorders, she became intrigued by the self-conscious conversations of the family, and she set out to discover who they were.  Amazingly, she traced their identities.

Clues from books Isaac Werner read

Having created her performance piece, she wanted to locate a family member to acquire permission to use the recording.  She found the only surviving family member, now seventy-eight years old.  He gave his permission and expressed his amazement in the artist's ability to track down the identities of those on the recording and to find him, saying:  "Allison should really be working for the FBI."

Clues from courthouses

The artist's partner described her efforts in this way:  "A journalist would have started with 'I'm going to find who this person is and get the story from them, but Allison got the story from everything else she could find and put it together."

You have probably realized by now why this newspaper story caught my attention.  I found Isaac Werner's journal, written in 1870-71 and resumed from 1884-1891.  No one is living from that time that I could "get the story from."  I had to be a detective and 'get the story from everything else I could find and put it together.'  Whether you are a writer or a playwright or a narrative poet or some other artist, basing your work on actual historic events, you must be a thorough detective.

Clues from public memorials

There are places to discover the secrets of the past, even when those people about whom you are writing are no longer living and were never famous.  Of course libraries are an obvious place to begin.  In my case, I knew the titles of books in Isaac's own library from the inventory of his estate sale and comments in his journal, and by reading what he read, I learned much about him and the times in which he lived.  Certainly I read books about the period--histories about the Populist Movement, biographies and autobiographies of key figures of that period, books about prohibition and specific historic events.  But, I also interviewed descendants, visited sites relevant to Isaac and the period, walked cemeteries where people mentioned in the book are buried, read old newspapers, and used the valuable information in the local courthouses from deed records and court documents.  

Isaac's journal is an amazing document in itself.  I came to know his community very well, and one of the most difficult challenges in writing my manuscript has been limiting what I can include.  As an editor told me, "Does it advance the story?  If it doesn't, take it out."  

Clues from cemeteries

My manuscript is not a diary or simply Isaac's journal.  Rather it is, as the title suggests, Isaac's story as it reveals the historic Populist Movement, its leaders, and its impact on America both at that time and to the present.  I was unable to include the scandalous story of the runaway elopement or the tragic story of a 15-year-old girl's murder and the lynching of her killer, exciting as both were.  They were both historical to the period and the region, but they did not advance the story of the populist movement that I had chosen to tell.  A detective must follow the clues that will solve the case he is handling, and an artist must advance the story she is telling.

You can enlarge the images by clicking on them.  To read more about "Say Something Bunny" you may go to the June 26, 2017 issue of the New York Times and read the article "The Detective was a Performance Artist" by Elizabeth Vincentelli.