And it is. Not only am I revisiting an old manuscript (working title: Up Where We Go), but I am revisiting the person I was 25 years ago. The experience is not unlike looking at an old photo album, or rummaging through a chest of toys you had as a child. The writing is youthful and lyrical and, admittedly, derivative (of Hemingway, Faulkner, and Steinbeck). And the characters — naive and idealistic compared to the grizzled and world-weary characters I use today — are refreshing, even though I know that life will beat them down, even during the progress of this story.

But I shouldn’t project too far into the book. I haven’t reread it in all these years, and although I have a rough idea of how the plot unfolds, I am constantly being surprised by what happens next. I have no recollection of writing certain scenes; odd, because sometimes I’ll remember precisely the next six or eight words that complete a sentence I haven’t seen in a quarter of a century.

I’ve also noticed that I use “free indirect style” (a species of third person narration in which the narrator possesses some, but not too much, of the attitude of the character over whose shoulder he is looking). I was just reading about this technique several weeks ago in James Wood’s edifying How Fiction Works, and didn’t think I’d ever heard of it before. Well, in fact, I hadn’t. I just used it in ignorance back when I was beginning to write, before I settled down with more conventional forms of narration.

I’ve just completed Chapter 1. I’ve changed a few things here and there, but I haven’t tampered with the spirit of the story. That would be a mistake. So far, I’m having fun. And I’m very excited to see how it ends.

In any case I haven’t read it since. Nor did I ever submit it again. But a few months ago, I told my girlfriend, Karen, about it, and she asked if she could read it. When she was finished, she said, “This is the most beautiful thing you’ve ever written,” which was a very nice thing to say, but a very depressing thing to hear, because she’s read everything I’ve written since.

I know what she means though. She likes its youthful lyricism, its unjadedness. She likes the fact that it’s a story about a family. She likes the fact that it’s not a murder mystery, that it’s non-genre.

So my next project is before me: to revisit Country Music (alternative title: Up Where We Go) and decide whether I think it’s as good as she does. If I think it’s salvageable (like an old shipwreck still rocking on the ocean floor), I will commit a year to rewriting it. I hope to begin reading it this week. I am looking forward to experiencing again the scenes I worked so hard on a quarter century ago, and I am looking forward to a judicious application of those skills that I have developed in the process of writing six subsequent novels — one of which I never submitted for publication, four of which have been published, and one of which is currently awaiting my editor’s attention — to what may seem to me a callow manuscript.

But part of me hopes that Karen is right. Part of me hopes that it is the most beautiful thing I’ve written.

Next Installment: An Update on Country Music

When I’m not working on a book — as is the case right now — I still have to keep my tools sharp.

READING – One way to keep my tools sharp is by reading; I read the New Yorker Magazine religiously and recently picked up James Wood’s How Fiction Works, Drew Gilpin Faust’s The Republic of Suffering, and John Updike’s The Centaur and In the Beauty of the Lilies.

WRITING – Another method is to write other things — diary entries, a log, letters, or, as I did for a number of years, book reviews. Although I don’t do it anymore, I used to write reviews for Books in Canada and the Kingston Whig-Standard Magazine. The advantage of writing reviews is that it forces you not only to analyze another writer’s work, but to articulate that analysis. Writing about writing can be very instructive.

EDITING – A third way is to edit other people’s writing: at the moment, I am reading my son’s novel in manuscript; he hopes, as all writers should, that an objective eye will help him improve his book. A long-time friend of mine, Roderick Jamer, who was for many years a staff writer with TV Guide, has asked me to take a look at his murder mystery-in-progress; and I am also participating in the evolution of a film script by another friend, Peter Blendell; the script involves a Stanley Cup victory by the Toronto Maple Leafs (some of you will suggest that this project be categorized as fantasy), and Peter hopes that I will be able to help with the scenes that deal with hockey itself. (I have a long history in the game, first as a player — my career peaked when I was 13; it’s been all down hill since then — and as a fan — the Leafs are what I have instead of religion, or more correctly, they are my religion; sitting down to watch a game is, for me, what going to church is for other people. And although I may bleed blue, at least I can say that the only violence associated with my religion is restricted to the arena.)

TEACHING – Although not all writers have the opportunity to teach, those who do know that teaching another writer’s work is an edifying experience. I taught Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises at least thirty times over my 25-year career as a high school English teacher. I know the book like the back of my hand — its strengths, its flaws — and may even have become more familiar with it than Hemingway himself, who wrote it in nine weeks. Hemingway said that studying a still life by Cezanne taught him as much about how to write as anything he read, and, similarly, I have learned as much about how to write from teaching The Sun Also Rises as I have from anything else.

BLOGS – Writing this blog also helps me keep my tools sharp, because I can write about whatever interests me, and I can do it whenever I feel the urge — every writer’s dream. Now if I could only make it pay …

Next Installment – Salvaging a Novel I Wrote in 1983

For the novel I’m writing, Black Tupelo, my two main characters, Campbell Young and Priam Harvey, pursue a miscreant named Wendell Honey through the American midwest and southern states. Although my imagination was up to the task of creating the scenes I needed, I wanted — for the sake of authenticity — to see the actual places I had my characters visit. And so it was that in the summer of 2007 I undertook a journey which followed the itinerary my characters followed, a journey that would eventually consume five weeks, take me to 20 states, and cover more than 12,000 kilometres.

FROM CHAPTER 13 OF BLACK TUPELO:

It was noon by the time Leonard picked Harvey up in front of the library. Harvey insisted the cab driver have lunch with him, and they went to Leonard’s favourite restaurant, an unassuming diner just outside the Quarter.
“This is the best sausage I’ve ever eaten,” Harvey said, midway through the meal. “And red beans and rice go really well together.”
“They was made to go together. Benny!” Leonard called out to the waiter. “More beer!”
“More beer?” Harvey said. “Don’t you have to drive this afternoon?”
“I’m takin’ it off, gonna show you ’round my town.”
Several hours later – after standing in line at the Toulouse Street wharf with a bunch of old people carrying deck chairs; after taking a two-hour cruise, featuring a calliope concert, of the lower Mississippi River aboard the steamboat Natchez; after a leisurely drive up St. Charles Avenue through the Garden District to Tulane University; after several cold Coors at the Famous Door on Bourbon Street; and after a visit to Leonard’s favourite tourist attraction, Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum (“It’s goin’ out o’ business,” Leonard told Harvey. “I gots to see it one last time.”) – Leonard dropped Harvey at the Best Western. They shook hands and said goodbye. “Y’all got my number if ya need me,” Leonard said.
“I will. Thanks for everything.”

A follow-up conversation between Campbell Young and Priam Harvey expands the visit to the Ripley’s Believe It or Not Museum:

“What did you see there?”
“Well, let’s see, I saw a wax reproduction of Robert Wadlow, the tallest man who ever lived, and a model of the London Tower Bridge made out of two hundred and sixty-four thousand matchsticks, and the car Lee Harvey Oswald drove the day he shot Kennedy. Oh, and the world’s largest tire. Thirteen thousand pounds.”

There’s a fine line between using such details to make scenes richer and simply showing off. The writer must be careful not to overdo it: within the context of Chapter 13, these details should occupy a very small space.

Next installment: How I keep my tools sharp

But I did, and a couple of  years later, I began my second novel, Men in Groups, which was about teachers and teaching. When it was finished, however, I came to the conclusion that I didn’t like it and never submitted it.

Recently I reread both manuscripts and have decided to see if I can’t resurrect them. As soon as I’ve completed one more revision of my Campbell Young mystery,  Black Tupelo — which should happen within the next week or two — I’m going to start with the teacher novel.

The prospect of retyping these manuscripts (I only have hard copies of them, nothing on disc or floppy or memory stick, let alone hard drive) was daunting, so I was mightily relieved when the proprietor of the local printshop agreed to try to scan them onto disc for me. I gave him the 500 pages of Men in Groups, and a week later he gave me –  for the very reasonable price of $85 — a disc with the novel on it in both Microsoft Word and Word Perfect. There are some glitches (the scanner read “home” as “horne”) but they will just make the process of rewriting the novel more challenging.

Because the novel is set in 1983, one of my first decisions will be whether to keep that setting and, if so, how to make the novel into a period piece. I’ve never written a period piece, but the idea of the research involved appeals to me. I could, I suppose, move the setting to the present day, but I haven’t been in a high school classroom in almost ten years and have no idea what teaching is like today. However, I do know what it was like back in the good old days, when I could not only choose what literature I wanted to teach (The Sun Also Rises, The Sound and the Fury, the poetry of Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath, for example) but the students actually read it.

Next installment: Finishing Black Tupelo

As well as being a writer of consummate style, Updike was prolific. Compelled to write, he tried to produce at least one book a year. In the end, he wrote almost 30 novels, more than a dozen books of short stories, nine collections of poetry, as well as books of essays and criticism and autobiography. During 2008 alone, he published two short stories, a memoir, and three book reviews in The New Yorker Magazine. Especially poignant are his musings on getting old  in “A Desert Encounter” (20/10/08); and in his powerful short story “Outage” (07/01/08) he flexes his muscles one last time on the subject of sexual tension in suburbia. His last short story (26/06/08) was — ironically and wonderfully — called ‘The Full Glass.’ He was a writer to the end.

What Updike gave me (aside from lessons in the craft of writing: he was a master and mentor, a guide and father-figure) was this: his subject matter, as sordid as it sometimes was — the bedroom society of Couples (1968), for example — was about ordinary human behaviour; he always dealt with it candidly and non-judgmentally. He was a chronicler of our time. When I learned of his death, I felt a personal loss, as if a close friend or relative had died. And that is exactly what did happen. Although he never knew me, I knew him (or at least I believed I did, and still do) through his writing, and I loved him for his candour — for showing me that he saw the world much the way I did, and for reassuring me that despite our weaknesses as human beings, we are all still capable — as he and his characters were — of noble deeds.

See Jeet Heer’s piece in The National Post (28/01/09) and M. T. Kelly’s piece in The Globe & Mail (29/01/09) by clicking here and here.

Next Installment: My next project: Men in Groups.

One such occasion occured in Dodge City, Kansas, when we visited a racetrack called Dodge City Downs. Everyone at the track was  Mexican; very few of them spoke English. My high school Spanish (”Dos cervezas, por favor”) was horribly inadequate, but we were taken under wing by Andres Lima, an owner and trainer of quarter horses, who told us that if we returned one week later, we could enjoy a full day of racing at the track and see several of his horses run.

So that’s what we did. We headed west to Denver, drove up into the Rockies, camped on the Arkansas River at Poncho Springs, camped at Mesa Verde (site of the ancient and spectacular Anasazi ruins), camped at Desert View in Grand Canyon National Park, hung out at Crazy Bill’s Saloon in Flagstaff, explored several hundred miles of Route 66 (and many of its landmarks: the Museum Club, the Twin Arrows, the Jack Rabbit Trading Post, the Wigwam Motel, the Cadillac Ranch), turned back north at Amarillo, hung out at the Thirsty Dawg Saloon in Holcomb, Kansas (which led to a drive-past of one of the most infamous murder sites in American history: the Clutter family farmhouse), and were back in Dodge in time for the vaunted day of racing, reconnoitred with Andres Lima, met his wife and daughter and granddaughter, watched two of his horses win their races, and had an all-round amazing time, all of which resulted in me writing a scene for my new book, Black Tupelo, a scene made all the more vivid because I saw how the Mexican men dressed (white stetsons and colour-coordinated — lime or salmon or powder blue — shirts, belts and ostrich skin boots), I smelled the aromas of the food that was for sale (tortillas con carne, elotes con paprika), and I heard the music played by the 14-piece salsa band imported from Mexico for the occasion.

Imagination is great, but nothing beats experience; it adds authenticity to one’s writing. Unexpected developments during our trip led to unexpected experiences which resulted in unexpected scenes. One took place in the flood-damaged Ninth Ward of New Orleans; another took place in tornado-flattened Greensburg, Kansas; and so it went. And that’s why it’s important, in my opinion, to augment your imagination with experience.

Next Installment: What I’m going to work on next.

A year and a half later, I am happy to report that the book is finished. The title is Black Tupelo, and the story follows Campbell Young and his friend Priam Harvey as they attempt to catch up to a man named Wendell Honey in order to a) save his life, and b) extract from him certain information which will help them solve a murder. Complicating their search is the fact that another man, Oscar Lima, is also interested in finding Wendell.

During our travels, I maintained a blog called American Odyssey on the definingcanada webpage and received so much support from readers that I thought now would be a good time to take a break from fiction-writing and resume blogging, maybe write a little bit about how the trip informed Black Tupelo and, as well, write about my next project, which will most likely be one of the following: 1) the resurrection and revision of a novel I wrote 27 years ago and which Doubleday came “this close” to publishing in 1983; 2) a second look at a novel about teaching which I wrote 20 years ago and abandoned; 3) a new novel set in Prince Edward County about the murder of a vintner.

Next Installment: How our American Odyssey helped me write Black Tupelo.

As a result, I’ve got some promising ideas for Campbell Young #5 (including a particularly gruesome death involving a horde of flesh-eating crawfish in the Atchafalaya Swamp), and am looking forward to sitting down to some serious writing in the next few months.

It was great to be gone, but it’s great to be home. And if you happen to be in Picton tomorrow evening (Tuesday, July 31), we’ll be at Steve Purtelle’s Acoustic Grill on Main Street about 5:00 p.m., enjoying a drink with our friends. Join us if you can.

So ends our blog. Thanks for your company.

Dean Wilson, our Atchafalaya Swamp tour guide, had given us a large piece of bald cypress driftwood, which we had been carrying with us for the last week. Even after we discovered that it was infested with ants, we sprayed it with Off! and kept it with us. When it started to smell, I encased it in a plastic garbage bag and we kept it with us. However, when the unfortunate young woman assigned to our “case” removed the still sodden contents from the interior of the Jimmy, just about everything within a twenty-foot radius suddenly smelled worse than a week-dead armadillo on the side of a Texas highway. “What is this?” she asked me, and I said, “It’s a piece of bald cypress driftwood from the Atchfalaya Swamp south of Lafayette, Louisiana.” “Well,” she said, “you can’t take it with you.”

An hour later, back in Canada, the Jimmy smelled much better, and by the time we reached the home of our friends, Jane and Whitey Hamill, in London, Ontario, we were much relieved that the driftwood had been disposed of. And we were so happy to have home-cooked food again that we consumed an alarming amount of Whitey’s expertly barbequed steak and Jane’s pasta salad and garlic cheese bread, and the next morning an equally alarming amount of bacon and eggs and toast and jam. Not only was it good to eat home cooking again, but it was good to be with friends again. Complete strangers had been very good to us during our travels, but now we were home.