What is the date you began writing this piece of fiction and the date when you completely finished the piece of fiction? I broke ground on the novel September 26, 2018 (the eve of my 50th birthday) and completed the book in February of 2020 (shortly before the pandemic kicked off).
Where did you do most of your writing for this fiction work? And please describe in detail. And can you please include a photo? I wrote this book in my garage, which is converted into what is basically a dive bar or elks hall; ping pong table, shuffleboard table, pool table, dart boards, and three thousand albums, and a bumpin’ 1980s stereo.
What were your writing habits while writing this work- did you drink something as you wrote, listen to music, write in pen and paper, directly on laptop; specific time of day? I wrote this book 16 hours a day, three days a week, with the exception of a ten day period when I was snowed in at the cabin, during which time I wrote 140 pages in one feverish go. I drink a lot of beer when I’m writing, but usually not until after I’ve already logged eight hours.
Small World employs over twenty limited points-of-view, across a timeline that is bifurcated by 170 years of American history, thus, organization and preparation were paramount to achieving clarity. I spent weeks synthesizing and distilling an otherwise overwhelming amount of information. My prep work involves maybe twenty sheets of 24×26” posterboard, spread out over the surface of the ping pong table and pool table, and a dozen colors of sharpies. It’s a sophisticated (or maybe just convoluted) system involving color-coded characters, thematic considerations, timelines, set pieces, objectives, logical perimeters for the telling of the story, connective tissue, and a lot of information I’m not sure what to do with yet. Over a period of weeks, I set this information down on the appropriate poster, and eventually, as I start to develop clarity, and metabolize all this divergent information, I begin to synthesize it into fewer and fewer posters until I am down to a single poster, which is essentially my imperative or essence of the novel. Understand, this is not an outline, per say, more of a mission statement and playbook. As far as the actual composition, I write in word on my laptop (MacBook Pro), although at various times during the process, I may return to the work of distillation using my poster-board method.
Please include just one excerpt and include page numbers as reference. This one excerpt can be as short or as long as you prefer.
It was a matter of several hours before Othello deliberately eased himself upright on his pallet, and drew a slow, deep breath, the pallet issuing a plaintive creak as he rose. Gingerly, he stepped over the sleeping bodies one by one. Reaching the door, he cracked it as discreetly as possible, the hinges squeaking in spite of his efforts. When the door was open enough to slip through, the light from the stairwell slanted into the room, slicing it lengthwise. Looking back over his shoulder one last time, Othello’s heart stopped beating. For, the slant of light revealed the nearest man now upright in his cot, staring straight at Othello with an expression Othello was helpless to read.
As he held the man’s gaze, his thoughts racing, his eyes beseeching the stranger to take pity upon him, Othello raised an index finger to his lips, denoting silence. The ensuing moment seemed to last a lifetime, during which Othello’s eyes sustained their desperate entreaty, as the other man’s eyes seemed to waver in indecision. In that instant, before his resolve could be reduced to a puddle, Othello slunk through the partially open doorway without further pause, proceeding furtively up the stairs.
The wooden stairwell protested at every step. Arriving at the edge of the darkened lobby, Othello stopped himself at the threshold and surveyed the lobby from his place in the shadow of the stairwell. He found the night clerk asleep face down on the counter. Heart hammering, Othello took that first tentative step. Instantly the floor creaked beneath him, and the night clerk stirred. Othello stopped dead in his tracks. Suddenly it was obvious he’d made a mistake, perhaps the greatest mistake of his life. As he stood perfectly still in the periphery of the lobby, Othello closed his eyes as though it might make him invisible. When he opened them again he saw that the clerk had settled back into slumber. Proceeding stealthily the five steps across the carpeted lobby to the front door, Othello cupped the cowbell in his hand, pinching the metal tongue between thumb and forefinger as he eased the front door halfway open without betraying himself. Unhanding the bell gently, he let the tongue slip through his fingers and slithered through the narrow opening and eased the door closed
Othello stole down the front steps into the chill, spring air, crossing the squelchy morass in front of the inn. When he reached the road he walked briskly toward the nearest alley and through to the next street. Pausing at every juncture to survey the empty streets, Othello darted through the butt end of town in the shadows. Finally, he reached the outer edge of town, which had thinned down to a few clapboard shacks, darkened at this late hour. It was here that Othello began to run for his life. He sprinted until his sides ached and his lungs were fit to burst.
After a mile or so, he arrived at a manageable pace and emptied his mind altogether. He was three miles outside of Urbana before he had the courage to slow his pace. It was at that point he left the main road, and followed its general progress from some remove, where he was not likely to cross anybody’s path.
After several more miles Othello could go no further. In the dead of night he strayed further from the road, across a flat expanse of clump grass, progressing a quarter mile, fighting off a cloud of mosquitoes.
At last Othello stopped in the middle of the pasture, and laid his body down in the grass beneath the star-spangled bowl of the moonless night. As his breathing began to slow, a cautious smile spread across his face.
He awoke stiff as iron, shivering in an open field miles from anything, his entire body aching, every muscle knotted like a wet rag, every joint stiff and creaky. Feet blistered and raw, he rose slowly to his knees, where he surveyed the vicinity. All around him the field was awash in a vibrant blanket of yellow, spotted black like a leopard: Black-eyed Susans, practically as far as the eye could see, stirring gently in the breeze. How could this spectacle be anything but a harbinger of promise?
Othello allowed himself only a moment to revel in this possibility before he began moving north through the pasture, through the rippling blanket of yellow flowers, then into the high grass beyond. Only once did Othello pass any sign of life: a small and very distant cabin, its chimney issuing a plume of smoke into the morning air.
Eventually, the pastureland gave way to intermittent woodlands and uneven terrain. Othello encountered few signs of life. Hiking parallel to the road at varying distances, he passed in and out of the scrubby woods, crossing pastures and fording creeks, up and over rolling hills he marched on. When fresh water presented itself, he drank greedily from it. Food was another matter.
That evening, Othello camped in the woods, huddled in a shallow gulch amongst the reeds. His sleep was dull and dreamless through the first half of the night, then restless and fitful into morning, a state of affairs Othello attributed to hunger more than nerves. On this occasion, Othello awakened to no magnificent field of flowers, but the persistent thrum of insects swarming about his face. He wasted no time in resuming his journey north.
By late afternoon, carriages were passing regularly on the main road in both directions. The further he hiked, the more his path was cut though with dirt crossroads, and the more houses he passed. Soon it was impossible for Othello to proceed in solitude. The roads, the horses, the people were too many, until finally, like a vision from the future, a great iron steam engine, just as Master Worthy had described it, hissing and churning, and wheezing slowly betwixt the muddy warehouses.
For two hours Othello wandered through the thrall of Chicago looking for some marker to lead him to Mr. Seymour’s estate. Once he crossed the river, and could see the lake sprawling to the north, gray and endless, Othello managed to get his bearings, and slogged through the muddy streets toward Seymour’s estate.
At last Othello reached the lake, and could see the great mansions spread out on the shoreline to the north and the south. And there among the great estates, away from the struggle and noise and industry of the city lay Mr. Seymour’s mansion. And more importantly, Cora. Poor, unsuspecting Cora, who had not exchanged so much as an actual word with Othello in their few short hours of proximity, Cora, who had no earthly idea or any reason to suspect the force of this total stranger’s infatuation, this stranger born into slavery, who amounted to a fugitive, with no legal birthright of his own, in a strange city, in a strange land. This was the rock upon which Othello was currently building his unknowable future: that somehow Cora would save him.
When at last Othello found his way to Mr. Seymour’s estate, he recognized it by its wide colonnade of poplars, and its long, curved drive, which swung in purposefully to follow the shoreline for effect before arriving at the front of the house. Othello circled round to the service entrance before he ever reached the front of the house.
The sun had already set and dusk was settling in by the time Othello mounted the lone back step, and knocked on the service entrance, his welling heart suddenly frozen.
It was a young black woman who opened the door.
“Who are you?” she said.
“I’m here to see Cora.”
“What you want with Cora?” said the woman. “Haven’t I seen you before?”
“No,” said Othello.
“I could swear I’ve seen you before.”
“Can you get Cora?” said Othello[A1] .[PJ2]
“Hold on,” she said, pushing the door three-quarters closed before retreating down the corridor.
In a moment, he heard footsteps approaching, and no sooner did his heart swell than a gray-haired man swung the door open to greet him. The man was dark-skinned, and though he was garbed in a grease-spattered white apron, he carried himself with dignity.
“Who are you?” said the old man.
His squinted eyes held the light of suspicion, though his face was not unkind.
“I’m just a friend, passing through,” said Othello.
“Friend of who?”
“Friend of Cora.”
“Friend from where?”
“How does that matter?”
“I’m her father,” said the man.
Othello cast his eyes down.
“What’s your name, son?” said the gray-haired man.
“George,” said Othello with conviction.
“George, huh?” said the man. “George what?”
“Flowers, sir. George Flowers.”
George Flowers, born in a field of Black-eyed Susans. No more Othello from Louisville, Kentucky, born into slavery, the son of slaves, the grandson of slaves plucked from the jungles of West Africa like fruit for the white man’s taking.
Click on link below to order SMALL WORLD from Amazon
Why is this excerpt so emotional for you as a writer to write? And can you describe your own emotional experience of writing this specific excerpt? For me, this passage was powerful to write because I’m a firm believer in the power of reinvention, and also, I like to reward the reader with the opportunity to make big connections. In this case, I had the opportunity of connecting George’s epiphany in the field with something of abiding heft, the new name he would carry throughout the rest of his life, and would remain his family name five generations later, when we pick up the story of his great-great-great-grandson, Malik Flowers in 2019.
Click on the link below to read a review by Washington Post Reviewer Charles Arrowsmith
https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2022/01/21/jonathan-evison-small-world-book/
Were there any deletions from this excerpt that you can share with us? And can you please include a photo of your marked up rough drafts of this excerpt. Unfortunately, I don’t think I have any marked up drafts, and if I do, I would not know where to begin looking for them! I was able to view my editor’s track changes on this passage, and it was very clean, a few commas and some small syntactical errors.
Click on link to visit Jonathan Evison’s Facebook page
https://www.facebook.com/jonathan.evison
Most of the INSIDE THE EMOTION OF FICTION links can be found at the very end of the below feature:
http://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2021/03/stephenson-holts-arranged-marriage-is.html