Current location:	The Writing Desk
Current mood:	restless
Current music:	something bitter?
Entry tags:	blogging, class, draft, fiction, non-fiction, novel, obama, politics, race, research, storytelling, travel, writing

Why I Write
People probably don't even remember that this is supposed to be my writing journal. Time to stop lurking and start posting, eh?

There have been three facets to my writing over recent months, all rather disparate from one another. I occasionally am inspired to take notes about some potential humor article or other diversion, but I've succeeded in focusing on more long-term projects, even as they refuse to draw me income for the simple fact of being written. ;)

The last you heard from me, I was scrambling to edit my NaNo 2007 novel. In under three weeks, I was able to scan and clean up a 120,000-word novel and order a printed copy. The story draws from numerous influences (intentionally - I decided to embrace allusions on this project, even goofy ones, rather than pretend I was entirely original), but one of the most important is a particular friendship I have shared since high school.

My best and most loyal friend is also my polar opposite in many ways, yet we have always maintained a place for one another in our lives, and our differences have been a source of strength for maintaining the friendship. This novel attempts to present a debate of faith in equal, non-judgmental terms; as I am most certainly not a believer in any traditional sense, I have been inspired and dependent on this friendship to keep the characters human, even and especially when I personally could not relate to them. The reason for the December rush was to have a copy of the second draft printed to give this friend for Christmas.

I finished the revision in under three weeks, and was able to order a trade paperback (complete with a cover I designed with oil pastels) with time to spare. I sneaked (I'm sorry, I'm from the South, that word just sounds wrong) over while he was at work one night and left the book with his wife. She knew he had a knack for snooping, so she waited until Christmas morning to bring it out. Their house was hosting numerous parents and siblings as they opened gift after gift and littered the floor with decorative paper. After all of the tumult had died down, the wife pretended to pull the book from beneath the tree and told her spouse there was one more for him (though it was not labeled).

When he opened it, he didn't realize what it was right away, just a book, but he recognized my pen name on the cover and it slowly came to him. At first he thought I had already published it, but he quickly realized it was just a draft. His wife told him to open it and read the dedication (to him of course). Then everyone wanted him to read it aloud.

I got a text message shortly after then saying it wasn't nice to make people cry on Christmas morning. :D

He's only read the first of four parts so far, but he seems to be liking it and has already offered some critical insight into the behavior of church-going Christians that I had overlooked. Some time in the coming months, when I need a break from my big project, I will order additional prints for my other writing confidants, but for now it is just our 120,000-word secret.

OK, I guess that was an ominous cliffhanger two posts ago. Kind of like when He-Man had that big expansion that didn't quite culminate before the toy line was canceled. Remember that? Anybody? Anybody? Nevermind.

I've been paying close attention to race since middle school or earlier, and I've spent most of my adult life looking for a way I could participate in the national conversation on racial healing. But along the way, I've found the pontification of most Whites who talk about race very distasteful... Either everyone who is not White is a criminal or they are a victim. And on any tough issue, if you get too far from your scene (or it was never yours to begin with), no one is going to talk to you. You've got to work from what you know. So what could a White guy like me contribute? How could I approach the issue without pretending I was something other than I was?

It wasn't until I was campaigning last fall that the idea came to me on how I could write exactly what I know. Instead of talking down like the conservative talking-heads I rejected in childhood, or kissing ass of the liberal elites I had rejected on the east coast, I decided to shut up and listen to the people around me.

The vast majority of the people I knew growing up were working class: smart but not educated, accepting but not without bias, peaceful but frustrated. Most of the adults were White, but did not really see themselves as participants in much of the privilege that has kept race so contentious a topic. Many have used it as proof that the privilege no longer exists, and over time they have become angry with every insinuation otherwise. Others have embraced a color-blindness that seemed unattainable only forty years ago but does nothing to bring people closer together except to say unity is a good idea. For the most part, the White working class I know is too busy struggling to keep food on the table to even think about getting involved in any heated public debate. Ironically, it is this silent majority that has the most in common with their Black and Latino peers and could have the most (of any Whites) to contribute.

The book will be ridiculously ambitious. My topic will be the intersections of race and class and my focus will be on the perspective of working class White Americans. It will cull from historical research, wonkish statistics, and good ol' fashioned storytelling to present something that is at once broad and personal. It will include important stories from my life and the lives of other people who are living the lives they only talk about on the nightly news. Hoping to separate political opinion from personal experience, I want to uncover a segment of the population that has rarely been discussed from within--not as a leering ethnographer, but as an ambivalent son.

It's a slow process without funding, but the more I develop my outline and early chapters, the more I will have to show potential funders or publishers that this topic is not only viable, but necessary, and that I am the person to write it.

Lastly, I have continued my political blog, though like all things special to me, it has strayed somewhat from the original track toward something better. I like asking questions and I want to prove that politicos like myself can hold their own heroes accountable, but I am not a consistent enough blogger to hold any real fire to the feet of Obama or anyone else.

What has emerged instead is a travelogue where I can recount my personal and professional (?) travels with an eye toward politics but also one toward stories and personalities. It allows me to combine my flippant humor with fact-finding and to develop and practice the semi-narrative voice I need for my nonfiction project. And I can stretch out details in episodic fashion about once a week. Check it out at Quix_Tic.