Showing posts with label American history. Show all posts
Showing posts with label American history. Show all posts
Thursday, November 19, 2015
Thursday, November 29, 2012
The Art of Plugging Away - Part 5
This is where I tell you that all is well.
Now that the novel is complete. Oh wait, that's not true. IT ISN'T.
That was a lie, or what I'm telling myself.
The first draft of a very complicated work-in-progress is COMPLETE. But that doesn't mean the work IS DONE.
Remember I spoke of the Dreaded Second Draft? Well, now that I'm in this phase, historical research and the sense of place is what I am trying to accomplish.
Regional accents, dialects, the details of daily life during the Great Depression, how law enforcement worked with local vice squads and morality committees is new information to me.
There was segregated housing (homeless shelters and 'poor houses' weren't immune) by race and by gender: sorry 21st-Century Folks! 'Shacking up' was a definite No-No in the 1930s, and a landlady/landlord could evict a tenant on such grounds!
Especially if said tenant's partner/lover was caught in the apartment, and during after-hours, when everyone was suppose to be asleep!
The realization I came to: that no matter this misguided notion that I missed some crucial details while living in New York City (I left at nine, so there was nothing to be done about it), there would have been no possible way I could recreate a New York of the past!
Even if I wrote a story in recent years, my New York City of the 1980s is long gone!
Once I came to this sort of thinking, that is what freed me.
Another, more concrete, reason I came to this decision was from David Nasaw, the history professor-cum-author of the book "The Patriarch", a leaner accuracy of who the Kennedy patriarch was like: as a man, a father, a husband, and as a human being.
He explained that, and I am paraphrasing the good Dr. Nasaw, no matter what point in history one chooses to write it, trying to recreate the past as a writer is like going to a fantasy land.
In other words, what does a historian and historical fiction writer have in common with a fantasy writer? Everything!
The past is a nebulous thing. It can never be touched, even by those who lived in that time, ever again.
Now with that thought in mind, I will continue the story.
Now that the novel is complete. Oh wait, that's not true. IT ISN'T.
That was a lie, or what I'm telling myself.
The first draft of a very complicated work-in-progress is COMPLETE. But that doesn't mean the work IS DONE.
Remember I spoke of the Dreaded Second Draft? Well, now that I'm in this phase, historical research and the sense of place is what I am trying to accomplish.
Regional accents, dialects, the details of daily life during the Great Depression, how law enforcement worked with local vice squads and morality committees is new information to me.
There was segregated housing (homeless shelters and 'poor houses' weren't immune) by race and by gender: sorry 21st-Century Folks! 'Shacking up' was a definite No-No in the 1930s, and a landlady/landlord could evict a tenant on such grounds!
Especially if said tenant's partner/lover was caught in the apartment, and during after-hours, when everyone was suppose to be asleep!
The realization I came to: that no matter this misguided notion that I missed some crucial details while living in New York City (I left at nine, so there was nothing to be done about it), there would have been no possible way I could recreate a New York of the past!
Even if I wrote a story in recent years, my New York City of the 1980s is long gone!
Once I came to this sort of thinking, that is what freed me.
Another, more concrete, reason I came to this decision was from David Nasaw, the history professor-cum-author of the book "The Patriarch", a leaner accuracy of who the Kennedy patriarch was like: as a man, a father, a husband, and as a human being.
He explained that, and I am paraphrasing the good Dr. Nasaw, no matter what point in history one chooses to write it, trying to recreate the past as a writer is like going to a fantasy land.
In other words, what does a historian and historical fiction writer have in common with a fantasy writer? Everything!
The past is a nebulous thing. It can never be touched, even by those who lived in that time, ever again.
Now with that thought in mind, I will continue the story.
Saturday, August 11, 2012
Writing in Ethnicity - Art of Plugging Away
Now, because I'm working on this new short story, have I abandoned the dog historical drama?
Perish the thought!
I've spent the better part of over two years working on this story, and much of my life from 6th grade summer school trying to figure out how to write it!
Now that I have 13 filled journals and a stockpile of empty ones, as well as time and money put into purchasing a reference LIBRARY alone for this novel, there is NO WAY.
Just this week, an employee of mine asked, while we lunched together, if with this story, what kind of dog breeds I use for the different ethnic groups, and I remember a young friend asked a similar question.
The young friend feared that I, even using non-human characters, would settle into stereotypes.
Because societal viewpoints are constantly on my mind as a creative type, I often want to go against the grain.
I don't appreciate when others take the easy way. I strive to make stories that I know I would read, that I would prefer watching.
I assured my young friend then, and my employee this week, that I use not only breeds indigenous to a region/country/nation, but I work on creating an individual first.
Also, because it's New York, have numerous mix-bred dogs (I just love mutts! Both cats and dogs!).
Consequentially, history reveals that organized crime had people of many ethnicities working together for the common bad! Though the Italian mob is more widely known, serialized, idolized, satirized and mythologized, it was NOT the established mob of the U.S.
This distinction actually went to the Irish, who, when the exodus of Southern Italians came to American shores, ran up against a brick wall: the Irish, in earlier years, harassed, oppressed, and racially held back, had established themselves in parts of American society where other Americans, who were called 'Nativists' then, couldn't touch: in politics, the police, and an in-grained infrastructure within the underworld.
By the '30s, the ethnic groups who were controlling most of organized crime weren't just the Irish and the Italians. There were the Jews, the Germans, the Polish, and the Blacks!
There is much of what I assumed, that has fallen apart since I began this story anew. I hope to see it through and let it open eyes as it has opened mine.
Perish the thought!
I've spent the better part of over two years working on this story, and much of my life from 6th grade summer school trying to figure out how to write it!
Now that I have 13 filled journals and a stockpile of empty ones, as well as time and money put into purchasing a reference LIBRARY alone for this novel, there is NO WAY.
Just this week, an employee of mine asked, while we lunched together, if with this story, what kind of dog breeds I use for the different ethnic groups, and I remember a young friend asked a similar question.
The young friend feared that I, even using non-human characters, would settle into stereotypes.
Because societal viewpoints are constantly on my mind as a creative type, I often want to go against the grain.
I don't appreciate when others take the easy way. I strive to make stories that I know I would read, that I would prefer watching.
I assured my young friend then, and my employee this week, that I use not only breeds indigenous to a region/country/nation, but I work on creating an individual first.
Also, because it's New York, have numerous mix-bred dogs (I just love mutts! Both cats and dogs!).
Consequentially, history reveals that organized crime had people of many ethnicities working together for the common bad! Though the Italian mob is more widely known, serialized, idolized, satirized and mythologized, it was NOT the established mob of the U.S.
This distinction actually went to the Irish, who, when the exodus of Southern Italians came to American shores, ran up against a brick wall: the Irish, in earlier years, harassed, oppressed, and racially held back, had established themselves in parts of American society where other Americans, who were called 'Nativists' then, couldn't touch: in politics, the police, and an in-grained infrastructure within the underworld.
By the '30s, the ethnic groups who were controlling most of organized crime weren't just the Irish and the Italians. There were the Jews, the Germans, the Polish, and the Blacks!
There is much of what I assumed, that has fallen apart since I began this story anew. I hope to see it through and let it open eyes as it has opened mine.
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