Erasure

AI generated image of Frankenstein's monster using an eraser.

I would call myself a storyteller more than an author. I'm much more concerned about the narrative arc of the story than I am about the language used to craft that narrative arc - to a point. I have read accounts in which authors compare writing to childbirth, in which they write about the blood, sweat and tears required to 'birth' a manuscript. I won't go there for two reasons: 1) as a man, I will never compare anything I do to childbirth, and 2) for me, it's actually much more like creating Frankenstein's monster. Part of writing is trying to return to the same state of mind day after day, week after week, month after month. When you craft a narrative over a period of two or three years, and you get done and look at it as a whole, you will see (or at Least I do) an assembly of mismatched parts that look like they come from a dozen different corpses.

(Writer's note: Corpses, the plural of corpse, is another word that always wins a storyteller points.)

Before you will this 'monster' into life, you have to make sure all the parts function together as a whole. If you are lucky, the only body parts you have to cut off and replace are fingers and toes. It is messy work, but necessary. It is more difficult if your narrative does not have a leg to stand on, and you might as well start over if your work is missing its spine or heart.

If you study writers from a certain period of time, you can look at the evolution of their text from draft to draft to finished manuscript (if they saved their notes, and an amazing number of them did.) You can see what was crossed out, erased, replaced or just eliminated. It is fascinating. With the advent of the PC, all of that is invisible. Now readers just see finished projects. All those changes are invisible.

That is what leaves me scratching my head over the Administration's Executive Order about the Smithsonian Museums. When you edit work that is already public, everyone can see what you did. By ordering the removal of 'racialized' versions of history (i.e. the truth) the President is trying to erase histories that have already been told, and heard, by hundreds of millions of people. They won't forget. And when you attack the National Museum of African American History and Culture, you attack every American, whether they are Black or not.

I was in high school when Roots first aired in January 1977. Roots was watched by ~140 million Americans (half the population!) not because it was one of the first mini-series, but because 140 million Americans wanted to hear this story, regardless of their race. My small high school (100% white students and teachers) videotaped it and showed each episode the following day because those redneck teachers thought this was a story worth hearing and they knew that some families in our community would not watch it. They thought that it was so important that every student needed to see it. The final episode of that initial broadcast is still the second most watched TV show in American history.

Americans don't want white-washed history. Most of us grew up with white-washed history in our systemically white school systems and knew, even as children and young adults that much of what we were learning was incomplete at best and an outright lie at worst. They don't want their LGBTQIA friends erased from our culture. They don't want billionaires cutting the social safety net for America's poorest citizens. It is time to acknowledge that the actions of this administration are racist, sexist, homophobic and transphobic.

I cannot abide cruelty. I hope you will not, either.

Win a free Kindle edition of Love: a novel of grief and desire: I work with Reader's Favorite on the Kindle book giveaway. If you go to readersfavorite.com/book-giveaway you can sign up for the monthly giveaway. You can scroll through the list of giveaways (over 500 each month) or sort the list by title or author to find Love: a novel of grief and desire and put your name in for this month's drawing. Good luck!