Confessions of an Amateur Writer, Part III

In the summer of 2011, a Pepperdine public relations officer contacted Guideposts Magazine — a Christian version of Reader’s Digest – and got them interested in doing a story on the relationship between me and Henry.  A few weeks later, Rick Hamlin (Executive Editor) came out to Pepperdine from New Jersey to meet with me.  During lunch, he asked if I’d considered writing a book about my relationship with Henry and my experiences in Uganda.

As previously described in Confessions of an Amateur Writer, Part I, and Part II, I was in the process of doing just that and told Rick.  He kindly offered to read what I’d written thus far.  I was, of course, honored and shared with him what I had.

Over the course of the next year, he was more generous with his time and energy than I had any right to expect.  He made gentle suggestions and answered numerous questions along the way.  Like the literary agent I was pursuing, Curtis Yates, he explained what I was writing needed to read like a novel – “and that means dialogue, Jim, lots of dialogue.”

As a Torts professor, I teach students that anything a reporter places within quotes that knowingly fails to accurately reflect – word for word – what was actually said can potentially subject the reporter to a defamation claim.  I told Rick this and asked, “These conversations took place more than a year ago – how can I possibly write them as dialogue with any level of integrity?  And won’t that destroy my credibility with readers?”

Like so many others who graciously assisted me along the way, Rick was both patient and direct.  “I understand your concerns and you’ll have to decide for yourself how comfortable you are with how much dialogue you place in quotes.  But you won’t have readers to worry about if you don’t have a book.  And you won’t have a book if what you write is almost entirely narrative.  Just think of all other nonfiction books you’ve read – do you think all the dialogue in those books is word for word?”

All the other nonfiction books I’ve read.  That again.  I had just begun my initial foray into actually reading books, so I understood at least some of what he was saying.

He continued, “In fiction, writing dialogue isn’t a problem – the author is making up everything anyway.  But in nonfiction, readers understand that dialogue that took place in the past won’t necessarily be reflected ‘verbatim,’ but instead accurately captures to the best of the author’s recollection the substance and tone of what was said.”

This made perfect sense, and was quite liberating.

And as I delved deeply into reading nonfiction books, I saw exactly what he meant – Unbroken, Boys in the Boat, Wild, etc., are littered with dialogue that I, as the reader, accepted without questioning the integrity of the writer even though it’s clear there is no way the conversations are recorded exactly how they occurred years (or decades) before the book was written.

This epiphany freed me from the shackles of boring narration and empowered me to tell the story in a much more readable manner.  Converting dense block paragraphs into light and fast-paced dialogue cannot be described as “editing” without robbing that word of its meaning.  I essentially started over.

As I voraciously consumed most of the NYT bestseller list, I started noticing patterns and commonalities in the writing.  While each of the books generally moved along chronologically, none of them began with the earliest event reflected in the book. Instead, most started with an inciting event and then back-filled along the way with flashbacks and memories to provide context and depth.

Monkey see, monkey do.  I, the monkey, tried to give this a shot.  As I was discovering at nearly every turn in my amateur writing foray, this is much harder than good writers make it look.  As I was struggling with this, I had a conversation with a close and trusted friend at work (Dana Hinojosa) whose husband Jason is a real writer, and who knew I was trying to write a book.

“Jason struggles with this also.  All writers do.  But there are books about how to do it.  You should get one,” she suggested.

So I did.

While this book was quite good, what was most helpful was to re-read a book I recalled doing this well.

Serendipitously, another book I read at about this time, provided another excellent how-to guide for me.

Distilled to its essence, this process is all about transitions.  Good writers create connections – images, words, thoughts, locations – that bridge the present with the past, or with what is currently happening on one continent to what happened in the past or in the future on another.

So what finally emerged when I weaved what I learned together is the opening sequence of my “manuscript” (I hesitate to call it a book until a real publisher does).  Here it is, in its current form:

CHAPTER ONE — THE CATALYST

“Is that really Africa, Dad?” Jessica asked.

My thoughts floated somewhere across the water stretching out before us as my family and I stood along the cliff’s edge.

“Dad? DAD? Are you even listening to me?” my inquisitive thirteen-year-old daughter persisted.

“What, sweetie?” I said, snapping back to the present.

“Is . . . that . . . Africa?” She was pointing at a smudge of brown on the horizon separating the water from the sky.

“Yes, it’s Morocco, and that’s the Strait of Gibraltar in front of it. We’re standing on the southernmost tip of Europe.”

“Are we going there?”

“No, sweetie. We’re going to drive around Spain for a while before heading to London for six months.”

My eight-year-old, Jennifer, took off her rainbow-rimmed sunglasses and sighed. “When can we get some ice cream?”

“I want some too,” my burr-headed middle child, Joshua, added.

“No, dad.” Jessica stood on her tiptoes until she and her furrowed brow were centered in my field of view. “I mean, are we ever going to Africa?”

“Nope. I have no plans to go to Africa. Ever.”

“Why not?”

All she got in reply was a shrug. I turned her shoulders around to face the horizon and placed her head under my chin. What would we ever do in Africa?

“Hey Jim, let me get a photo,” my wife Joline said as she lined us up against the rail and we squeezed together to fit in the frame of the picture. This was the only memory of Africa I expected our family ever to share.

Jim, Jennifer, Joshua, and Jessica – Europa Point, June 2008

Had Joline’s camera lens been able to focus over my shoulder on a small village 3,358 miles south of Gibraltar, it would have captured a deceptively innocuous scene – a dusty peasant farmer hiring an itinerant herdsman to tend his nine cows.”

With this transition, the story moves to Uganda and into the inciting event in Henry’s life that set us on a collision course – the mob killing of a herdsman that led to his initial arrest.

I had finally figured out how and where the story would begin.  I had no idea, however, it would be just as difficult to decide how and where the story should end.

In the next installment in this Confessions of an Amateur Writer series, I will describe what a Book Proposal is, how critical it is in the publishing process, and how I learned the hard way how to write one.  I will also discuss how I decided what the last chapter would be.

Thanks for reading.