10 Years After

Where I live, the events of 9/11 were not just images on a television or messages of heartfelt sadness. They were those things, of course, but they were also a motorcade of funerals, a stream of floral arrangements, a vital Thanksgiving meal months later. That day led to random moments of pain and sadness when otherwise meaningless things were noticed to be missing. And it also led to phone calls from people whose voices had almost been forgotten, calling..."just because, well, it's been a while, you know?" and we knew.

For me, 9/11 was highly personal for reasons I won't get into here. But it changed things in me about my writing, about what I wanted to accomplish and be remembered for: Writers write.

Those who know me personally or even merely from random lines in places like AgentQuery Connect or From the Write Angle or via Twitter probably get a sense that I like to joke around. Often, I joke because I take most of life so seriously — sometimes too seriously, perhaps. After 9/11 I took my manuscript very seriously. It had been mostly notes before that day. Maybe a few dozen pages of tripe were written. I don't think any of it survives except for its setting. My story took place in Hoboken, New Jersey, which is just across the river from New York City. The attacks were a point of demarcation unlike any other in my lifetime and I needed to decide when my story took place.

I decided that it was to be a year in the life of a family: From 9/10/00 to 9/10/01. I wrote nightly for months and most of that ended up on the cutting room floor, so to speak. It was my first serious attempt at a novel, and I made the mistakes that most writers make on such efforts. Too much back story, too many details that don't matter. I ended up putting it aside for months and working on other things. Short stories, mostly. A lot of freelance assignments. Some of which I'm proud of.

Eventually, I went back to my story, took it apart piece by piece, and started to build again. Perhaps too subtly, I wove 9/11 into the manuscript. It's there, but the story takes place before the events, so it must be done with care. I've had people tell me to change the date of the story or to make it more apparent. And I still think about it. The manuscript still has elements I'm uncertain about, and I've put it aside several times to work on other projects and let my mind work through those elements and help me decide if they're flaws or just need a bit more polishing.

By the time the polishing is done and it goes off to agents, I suspect I'll have come close to finishing another manuscript and several other short stories and a bunch more articles I'm proud of. But this story is one that will be with me forever, whether it gets published or not.

In a sense, it will be part of my personal 9/11 legacy. If nothing else, I have that.

Attack on the Memoir?

There was a story the other day in the New York Times about a British writer who was not allowed to come into the United States, where he was going to attend an opening party for his new book, Dandy in the Underworld, which is a memoir.

I've not heard of this guy, Sebastian Horsely, before, though I'm not much for memoirs, which seem to have pushed the novel further into the background of the literary world. His work is about his experiences as a drug abuser and frequent user of prostitutes. He chronicles his trips to the Philippines, where a photographer took pictures of him being hung from a cross. (Buy the book, just in time for Easter! Good God, what has this world come to?) Presumably, that's where the image I found online and borrowed for this post came from.

Memoirs and memoirists have had some trouble the past couple of years -- especially in recent weeks -- and I couldn't help but wonder whether, in a way, this decision by the United States is a way to challenge whether Horsely really was telling the truth. What Horsely has that "Margaret Jones" didn't have was indisputable truth that he'd done these things -- at least the mock crucifiction. Jones's tale, while reportedly poignant and stunning, is not her personal experience. Ergo, not memoir. Thank you, try again.

Personally, I have no trouble with fiction. I love reading it and writing it. I believe most readers who say they prefer nonfiction because they want to read about what is real are simply lazy. They literally have not exercised their imagination. Shame on them. A good story -- especially fiction -- should feel real to a reader, otherwise there is no believability and ultimately the work will wither and die on the vine.

I'd like to believe that Margaret Jones, whose real name is Margaret Seltzer, could simply have converted the story to fiction. As the New York Times blog post suggests, that's not always easy. But at least it's honest.

As for Mr. Horsely, well, if I read the article correctly it said that he was trying to get into the United States without a visa -- which, reportedly, is still possible for British folks, as long as they haven't been convicted of a crime involving moral terpitude. Perhaps I'm reading it wrong. I'd have expected his publisher or agent to have checked into securing a visa, but the article is silent on that point.

I doubt I'll be reading about the book about the dandy. I can't relate to drug abuse and using prostitutes, and I don't care to live vicariously through him. I imagine he'll be in the United States eventually to sell another book. Or perhaps the next we hear of him, he'll be admitting that he made stuff up for his book. As he told the Time Out London, "It's better to be quotable than honest."