Still waiting to hear from an agent/publisher/deus-ex-machina/whatever, regarding the book. Another couple of weeks of this, and my fingernails will be chewed off, all the way up to my elbows. All my friends counsel patience, all but one, who recommends zen detachment… and starting on another book. I’ve been waking up in the middle of the night, thinking on this. What on earth could I write about? What is out there that would grab me, and an audience half as thoroughly as the greatest emigrant trail epic that no one has ever heard anything about? It made a nice change from worrying about paying the necessary bills on a combination of a pension, two part-time jobs and some blogging-for-dollars. I loved the experience of writing that story; it took two months and a bit, going full-tilt every day that I could spend at the computer. I had set myself a target of 3,000 words, or half of a chapter a day. I already had a chapter outline, a handful of characters, the plot. all worked out; just put in the little bits, the conversation and incident, and colorful bits of description. Piece of cake. I’ve read how hard it is to work at home, how easily distractable it can be, that everything gets in the way, and …. Oh, Blondie just asked me to mend a hole in one of her tee-shirts… where was I? Yes, things conspire to keep you fiddling around with other things, rather than buckling down to work.
Anyway, I finished it, put it around for some friends to read, did some re-writes as I found more and better background information, took stock of various questions and critiques, rewrote it again, filled out some of the incidents, characters and relationships… and at the every end of it, I fiddled around for days on the last little rewrite. Because after that last page, that last paragraph, it would be finished. I would be done with John and Elizabeth, with Captain Stephens and his faithful Dog, the fearless little Eddie, his mother Isabella and his baby sister… all of them. Their adventure would be over, and so would mine. I had wanted to write about them so badly that I took being laid off with the greatest good will. I’ve been reluctant to even consider full-time employment again, because… to be honest, I don’t want to think about myself as anything but a writer. I don’t really want to be doing anything but writing. I’ve spent all of my adult life spent working in broadcasting, and the military, or in various pink-collar administrative and office jobs because it paid, and I was mostly good at it, if not particularly interested. I kept the scribbling on the side as a private amusement, but this year it just came to a head. I want to do what it pleases me to do, and that is just that. My mid-life crisis, as it were. My friend the zen-master sternly advises against thinking of money or acclaim… just write. You are, therefore you write… but having finished one enormously compelling story… what to do, what to do? Writing “Truckee’s Trail” was in a weird way, rather addictive, sort of what heroin must be like. (Blondie, doing a Bette-Davis sized eye-roll: “Mom, you’ve never done heroin!).
The new book… nineteenth century America still draws me. A historical novel, then; I seem to have a knack for it, anyway. Where we Americans came from, an experience which shaped and I am convinced goes on shaping us; the frontier, of course. But something off-beat, something mostly unknown to a wider audience… something unexpected. It all came together unexpectedly as I was emailing the “zen-master”, lamenting the fact that I didn’t know anything of where I stand as far as the agent is concerned; the perfect next writing project. The Texas frontier this time and the German settlers who came and founded Fredericksburg and New Braunfels. It has everything: very cultured, forward-thinking Europeans, unhappy with the political situation after 1848… one of their leaders was a nobleman, for pete’s sake! They came all at once, and founded their little town on the edge of howling wilderness, and hashed out a treaty with the Indians, and planted gardens, and got along uneasily with the other Texans, and then…and then… and then….
That’s where the fun comes in. I don’t know quite how I will shape the story, or who I will focus on, but I just know there is something in it, and I’ll know it when I see it, once I’ve begun the reading. Think of the shock, the culture clash; coming from Europe, with all it’s tiny old buildings, castles and culture… and standing under the big sky, and looking around at empty hills and oak trees, and seeing… well, nothing built by man. I’m halfway convinced a fair number of European émigrés in the 19th century must have felt like hiding under a heavy piece of furniture and never coming out, except that there was nothing to go back for. What preconceptions they mist have packed with their baggage, what hopes they had, in a new land? How difficult was their adjustment to new and brutal realities on the frontier? It may even be politically current, if Mark Steyn and others are correct about a political melt-down in Europe in the near future. And it’s not much known: I was barely aware of the various German colonies in Texas until I came to live here, and I was a history junkie from the first time I began reading all Mom’s back issues of American Heritage. (Back when they were published in hard covers, and without any advertising.)Best if all, most of it is conveniently located close-by; doing descriptions will be a snap! And so will getting in touch with local enthusiasts. I have written about the German settlers before, even. (sigh… can’t get link to work. It was post last year called “Germantown”)
I can hardly wait to get started….