The Accidental Writer -- I did that in the Name of Research?
Julia Michelle Dawson -- January 21, 2009
Sure, research is important. A good writer will do whatever research is required by a writing project. But sometimes real hunting is required.
It was September 11, 2001.
"Mama, Why are you so sad?"
I couldn't respond to my son. Was he really this intuitive? Or could the devastation I felt from the World Trade Center bombings, where I had worked more than a decade earlier, be evident to even a three year old?
That night I wrote for the first time. A poem called Crushing the Cathedral of Capitalism. Astonishing, considering I rarely read poetry and always shied away from writing. Being a finance major, I hid in the world of objectivity and never had to suffer the subjectivity of a teacher's critique. I can count on one hand how many papers I had to write in college.
The next unbelievable step in this non-writer's life still amazes me. While driving down the street with my friend Marjorie, she said, staying home at night when her husband traveled left her scared, so he gave her a gun -- an elephant gun.
I laughed hysterically. I couldn't imagine my petite friend holding an elephant gun. I knew nothing about guns but assumed this thing must be a tank. I laughed and said, "Marjorie, that's the funniest thing I've ever heard. If I ever write a book that's what I'm going to call it: Marjorie and the Elephant Gun."
The very next night I found myself writing the story, but I didn't know how to write! It started at the Nairobi Airport and the protagonist, a woman named Marjorie, worked as a safari pilot. The story just flooded my mind. There was no rational thought behind this; no plan, I just wrote. Imagine that! A finance major who can't spell taking up writing. I had no idea what Point of View meant. I knew nothing about story structure or characterization. I just wrote and sobbed like a soap opera queen when my protagonist's friend died in a plane crash. Who would have ever imagined?
Soon I knew the story was longer than a poem. Next I knew it was longer than a short story. And then I found myself drowning in what was apparently a novel, but I didn't know how to write. I figured I better take a class. I signed up for the Santa Barbara City College one day writer's workshop. There I met Leonard Turney. For those of you who know him, you understand how lucky I was to being sitting in his class as my first experience. As I furiously scribbled notes, I thought, Wow, how can I get into his class without enrolling at UCSB? Next was the Santa Barbara Writers Conference and there he was again. How lucky can an aspiring writer be! Still I thought, how can I get into his class without being a full time student? At the end of the week he announced that he did a writers workshop once a week in Santa Barbara and one in Santa Ynez -- my home town. Wow!
Leonard, the saint, had amazing patience and the ability to find good in any piece of terrible work. ("Excellent placement of this one comma, Julia.") Even if ninety percent of it needed to be thrown out, he could still make me feel good about the ten percent. He kept me writing. As I slowly improved he was able to bump up his critic. When he first met me he knew I was Creative Writing 101 material. By the second novel, his lecture raised to 102.
In the creation of the first draft of Marjorie and the Elephant Gun, I wrote about my protagonist going on a wild boar hunt on her property in Tanzania. Woops. I knew nothing about hunting. Since my adventurous blood is always looking for a test drive, I decided to get a hunting license.
I strolled into the Santa Maria Gun Club and approached the receptionist. She looked up, saw me, furrowed her brow, and said, "Are you lost dear?"
On the first day of class, I learned there is no such thing as an elephant gun -- there goes my title.
At the end of the series, two teenage boys who had been there with their fathers came up to me, "You're not planning on going out there and shooting those targets are you?"
"What I don't look like a hunter?"
After I passed the written exam and had some practical shooting experience at the Winchester Gun Club, I signed up for a wild boar hunt at Rancho San Fernando Rey. With 32,000 acres, it is an original land grant parcel nestled in between the Santa Ynez Mountains and Lake Cachuma.
I have to admit this was princess hunting. At the crack of dawn, a girl friend (with more hunting experience) and I met our professional hunting guide and loaded into his truck. He found the herd. He chose which boar to take. He even laid (or is it lied -- I don't think I ever get that right) down on the ground next to me and told me when to squeeze the trigger. Next thing I knew he was field dressing it and we were off to the butcher's shop. My refrigerator was stuffed with pork and my note pad full of ideas. Maybe finding out about hunting on the internet would have been easier, but this kind of research was definitely more interesting.
Two novels later, what can I say? I still can't spell, but I do know what point of view is and I have a hunting license, along with ten pounds of wild boar sausage in my freezer. Boy, what a writer will do in the name of research.