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.

Research Rapture

Reading the 1880-1890s County Capital newspapers

While going through the clippings and notes I save, I discovered a clipping from a newspaper--probably the 'New York Times' judging from the typeset.  The essay is written by Janice P. Nimura, and she introduced me to the term "research rapture."  The experience she describes in the article is not new to me.  She describes research rapture as "the rare and ecstatic moment when you slip the bounds of the present and follow a twinkling detail into the past."  Of course, she is talking about an author doing research.

Those of you who follow my blog know about my discovery of Isaac Werner's journal and my decision that his story, and the story of the southcentral region of Kansas during the Populist Movement, should be told.  I believed that his story deserved more that simply transcribing the journal for publication, although I did transcribe it.  Rather, I began researching his community during the Populist Movement, keeping Isaac's journal at the heart of my story but expanding my quest to cemeteries, courthouses, museums, Ancestry.com, old newspapers, photographs, state archives, interviews with descendants, visits to towns where Isaac lived, the internet, and of course, books.

Visiting the river near Rossville, Il where Isaac loved to walk

In Janice Nimura's case, she was searching for a subject, knowing only that she was interested in Japan in the late 1800s.  Her moment of "research rapture" came from a memoir titled "A Japanese Interior," which finally gave her direction to a book subject after three years of searching.

In my case, I knew I wanted to write about Isaac and the Populist Movement, but I was open to finding the best way to tell his story.  My "research rapture" happened many times as I explored Isaac and the late 1800s.  Some of my discoveries found their way into this blog, although they did not fit directly into the manuscript.  Nevertheless, they enriched my understanding of the region during that time period.  They helped to guide the direction I would ultimately take in telling history.

Visiting Isaac's Grave

I prefer reading from what I consider "real" books, not e-books or audio books but rather printed books in my own hands.  In doing my research for the manuscript, our library grew.  I read books mentioned in Isaac's journal, books from that era, locally published books about the region or specific communities (often published for centennials or other special occasions), biographies and autobiographies, documents from the period, and scholarly books.  Of course, I also searched online.

It was Nimura's comments about searching online that drew me to her article.  She wrote:  "Search algorithms leave no room for serendipity, and without that, some of the magic leaks out of the pursuit of the past.  I had to be efficient in my research; that's where Google came in.  But whenever possible, I tried to create space for aimless wandering, and every time, the story became more vivid."

Those words spoke directly to me. Nimura's "aimless wandering" may have been done online, but my wandering was not confined within a keypad, book covers, or walls.  My husband and I visited Rossville, Il and Wernersville, Pa, although there is little in the book about those places Isaac lived before coming to Kansas.  We visited his mother's lonely grave in Abilene, Ks., as well as graves of his father and siblings.  I researched the genealogy of all of Isaac's neighbors and acquaintances mentioned in the journal.  I spent days reading all of the weekly editions of the County Capital, the populist newspaper in St. John to which Isaac subscribed and for which he often wrote.  Whether this wandering ended up directly in the manuscript or not, it deepened my understanding of Isaac and the period about which I was writing.

As Nimura wrote:  "It's not enough to find every mention of a specific event, even though algorithms make it easy.  Sometimes the telling detail--the yeast that makes the whole lump rise--isn't in the headline you're reading.  It's in the gossip column on the next page, or in the classifieds tucked in the back."  In my case, the telling details may have been found in such places as an old cemetery or inside an old volume at the courthouse.  Thank you Janice Nimura for putting so beautifully into words the importance of research rapture and the unanticipated discovery.  It is what has lifted Isaac Werner off of the faded pages of his journal to bring him and southcentral Kansas back to life as farmers struggled to survive and created a political movement to help them.  

Reading what Isaac read