What a Year

Every year, on or around January 1st, I choose a word for the year, a word that serves as a theme for the year or that sums up my goals for the year. It's a testament to the kind of year I had that when I sat down to write this annual recap, I could not for the life of me remember what word I chose. I had to look back in the blog archives to find out.

Turns out, my word for 2014 was seek. Apparently, I believed wholeheartedly in the concept of "seek and ye shall find." But that's not quite how the year turned out. I spent a disproportionate amount of the year seeking payment from a delinquent client. I spent that interim time between being owed the money and finally receiving payment seeking ways to make ends meet. And all of that redirected my energy from what I wanted to seek to what I had to seek. So by the time I started thinking about writing this reflection, I was feeling pretty frustrated with my year.

The more I thought about it, though, I realized my year was actually more successful than I remembered:

I finished Drafts 3 and 4 of The Novel and entered it in a couple of contests. The feedback I got in those contests was mixed, but the experience helped clarify for me the type of writer I want to be. So The Novel is on the shelf, and I'm plotting The Next Novel.

I learned how to write query letter and found out I'm actually pretty good at it.

I learned that filling the empty-feeling parts of my life takes some addition (volunteering at the animal shelter; joining a book club; joining a new writers' group) and some subtraction (distancing myself from certain people and patterns; purging my house of stuff I don't need).

I finished last year convinced by my vet that my dog wouldn't survive the winter. Nobody told the dog. He's still kicking. In fact, he's curled up next to me right now, and even though he's moving slowly these days, he's not showing any signs of going anywhere any time soon.

So, on the whole, I'm feeling pretty good about my year, and that feels like a good way to start the next one.

Happy New Year!

The Story Behind the Story: Faith in Victory

Quite some time ago, in the early days of my editorial career and light-years before I began freelancing, I worked on a series of books about twentieth-century Japan. The project forced me to go back to many of the books I had read while working towards my Master's Degree. One of them stuck with me: Japan at War by Haruko Taya Cook and Theodore Cook.

A newer edition of this book is available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

A newer edition of this book is available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Japan at War was, and remains, one of the most unique books about World War II I've ever encountered. It tells the story of the war through chronologically arranged first-person accounts from all walks of Japanese life. It's a perspective that's missing from many sources: what was it like to be an ordinary Japanese citizen during the war?

There were details from those accounts that I couldn't shake: the naval intelligence officer who'd known nothing about the attack on Pearl Harbor until after the fact, the school boy who built balloon bombs at school, Tojo's announcement of the Pearl Harbor attack. Those details shaped themselves into a story.

As I researched even more, I stumbled across another gem: a short film from 1941 called "Children of Japan." (You can watch the video from the Prelinger Archives at the Internet Archive by clicking here.) Given the year of the film, it is a remarkably objective picture of the life of a middle class family in Japan, and it gave me more details to add to young Sato's story.

 

As I reread "Faith in Victory" now, many years after writing it, I can't escape the idea that it can be so much more. It has the roots to become a novel, and I hope to make that happen someday. Right now, though, that kind of magnum opus seems beyond me in both time and skill.

 

Click here to read "Faith in Victory."

The Story Behind the Story: The Envelope

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Back in the spring and summer of 2012, I was working on a massive U.S. history project as part of my day job. As I edited a series of lessons about American involvement in Vietnam, I found myself wondering what it might have been like to receive a draft notice. What would it have been like for a young man who had already lost an older brother to the war?

The more I researched, the clearer the story became. I scoured the Internet and found images of the Orders to Report for Physical Examination and Orders to Report for Induction. Being so used to digitally generated form letters, I was struck by the uneven typewriting on the notices. I had to put that detail in the story. After all, it's those kind of details that bring to life the history in historical fiction.

During the story's planning stages, I thought maybe Quincy would fail his physical examination. By the time I started drafting, though, I knew with absolute certainly that Quincy would pass, forcing him to wrestle with his options. Ultimately, he would decide to dodge the draft, catching a bus to Canada instead of reporting for induction as ordered. But my characters, I have found, often have minds of their own and Quincy was no different. He caught a bus, alright---just not the one I had planned.

I took a draft of the story to my then-writer's group, one of whom is a Vietnam veteran. I admit to being a little nervous about his reading the story. I'd read parts of his memoir about his service in Vietnam, and I wanted very much to do justice to the Vietnam experience. To this day, I cannot recall with any clarity what feedback the other members of the group gave me, but I do remember Dan's. He told me his experience had been similar to Quincy's; he too had kept his draft notice secret from his family. I still cherish his words, because they validated my interpretation of events. I had gotten my story right. Thank you, Dan! (On a side note, someday Dan will publish his memoir. I, for one, can't wait to read it in its entirety.)

 

Click here to read "The Envelope."