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Questions: How long did it take you to write this book? Are the characters based on the real people? What was the favorite part of the book to write? What was the hardest part to write?
This is a very different book for me. About four or five years ago I started writing flash fiction which is under 1000 words. I thought this was a good experience because I always tended to be long winded and this really forced me to get to the point quicker. I can’t really say I understood what flash fiction was when I first undertook it and, after taking four of five abbreviated classes, I can’t say I still understand it. As best as I understand it, where in a novel you can meander around some a short story demands you get to the point quicker. A short story allows you to meander around some while flash fiction starts right in the middle and demands you say something profound quicker. What I found is that some of what I wrote took on an artificial quality as you repeated themes that your mind associates with drama.
The first story that stuck in my mind that I might have something here was the story Washington DC 2008 (thank you to my instructor Philip Gardner for the title). This was based on a trip with the union to lobby for the employee free choice act. I saw things that still profoundly affect me but what I wrote certainly wasn’t long enough for a book or even a short story but there was something there. A core. And it just kicked around in my head that I hadn’t given a complete version of what it was like to be down there lobbying as an outsider and observing the trappings of DC.
Were the characters real? Some. There’s an old maximum to never let the truth get in the way of a good story. The basics of many stories are true but the male villain, in that story, wasn’t somebody who was there at all he was just somebody who I wasn’t pleased with at the time. It’s a little like what Joan Baez of the Bob Dylan song “The Ship Comes in.” She observed Dylan getting turned away from a hotel and the next day he plays this great song. As she said, “Who knows what it’s about but, believe me, Bob got even.”
The two DC stories make a complete thought. Émigré and Change are similar. The Greek stories were polished, pared-down, and placed out front to give the collection light. It is like you take a mirror, crack it and you have a jigsaw puzzle. Toward the end, it became filling up the work with perspectives I wanted to touch on. The union experience (only from my wife’s perspective as she often held up our union without getting credit for it) and the alternate media (shout to independent media and Gary Webb). I also wanted to shine a spotlight onto other stories that were going on around the world, which the American-centric press ignores and keep from its own people. The core becomes a collection of its pieces. Some are prose. Many are prose poetry. The ethos of the story is the sum of its parts and hopefully, that’s what makes art. If it doesn’t, it makes for one hell of a bloody mess.
The final part was extended quotes from writing mostly of the 1930s. I saw this almost as another character used to amplify light onto whatever writing came before or after. Why the 1930s is probably for the same reason I wanted to get this out now as we are shifting back into 1930s style economics, employment rates, and business failures. The future just hasn’t caught up with the shocks yet. It is also a way to pay homage to writers who I’ve loved and admired.
The favorite part of this was getting the music right for each section I wrote. I listen to my own voice and go over and over it polishing. I think I’m a perfectionist when it comes to sound. The hardest part was trying to make so many disparate parts look like a concrete whole and I completely got this right but I wanted to keep it under 1000 a flash fiction minimum. I like to think this is experimental and I hope it pushes the envelope of how flash fiction can take on even bigger issues. I’d consider doing a follow-up issue.
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