The First Anniversary of "The Fourteenth of September:" The 50th Anniversary of Everything That’s In It 🎂

It’s been a year since the publication of my debut novel, The Fourteenth of September, and I can’t believe it either. To answer so many of your questions, yes, it has done well (outperforming the average independent book, I’m told) and continues to be of interest. It’s fulfilled all my hopes and dreams, and I’m humbly grateful for the wonderful year I’ve had due to the support of many of you. I intend to continue the ride as long as it lasts, however wild. This last quarter of 2019 alone is filled with the fiftieth anniversaries of so many of the seminal events of the time that are dramatized in the novel: the Chicago Conspiracy Trial, the first Moratorium Against the War, the March on Washington, the first Draft Lottery. Their commemoration shows us how the decades can seem very long ago, and yet as short as a heartbeat, with in-your-face reverberations today.

To be honest, everyone is right when they say publication is not for sissies. Though incredibly affirming and rewarding, it’s also been, in the favorite words of the colorful Joe Dragonette, “three yards and a cloud of dust.” To my surprise, the part that gets so many writers, the marketing, was often overwhelming even to my PR veteran self. But the biggest challenge was always that my topic was so fraught on so many levels. Me, being me, I just couldn’t begin with a simple starter novel with a few characters and a feel-good climax. And that made the hill I had to climb pretty high, though a few major things did finally break in my favor.

 Following is top-line some of what I learned during the year of the launch of The Fourteenth of September.

Vietnam is No Longer the Voldemort of Wars

read the first chapter which takes place September 14, 1969

Timing is everything, and there was a long period when I thought I’d totally blown mine for publication. The book took thirteen years to write (and that’s once I actually put fingers to computer) and I suffered through many questions about why I was writing about Vietnam—a subject no one cared about, I was told. It was the Voldemort of wars, as one of my book-launch salon participants put it: We lost, there were atrocities, and we treated our vets badly. Nothing anyone wants to revisit. And besides, it’s the past, not relevant for today. Why waste your time?

Fortunately,my au contraire moment was created by Ken Burns (The Vietnam War PBS), Steven Spielberg (The Post), the writers of This is Us, and other popular culture curators who reminded us at the fifty-year point after the war that it was time to look back, learn, and even—be still my heart—be entertained. In addition, with the interest in women’s issues and diversity, there was increased openness to new points of view. As a result, once I published, I became part of the zeitgeist. In fact, the New York Times recently pointed out that three of the current bestselling novels are also at least partially set in 1969, with Vietnam themes or plot points: Summer of ’69, Mrs. Everything, and Chances Are…, the latter of which is actually about three college buddies whose lottery numbers pretty much determined their lives.

Unfortunately, world events have lined up to show that if not examined, history will always repeat itself. So alas, counterintuitively, what’s uncomfortable for the country makes The Fourteenth of September more relevant than ever. It was chillingly familiar when Pete Buttigieg reminded us in the second Democratic Debate that wars are “very easy to start and very hard to end.” He was referring to Afghanistan, but the echo to Vietnam, that limped on five years after Kent State turned the country firmly against the war, was loud and clear.

It’s time to embrace the subject of the Vietnam War as we would any in history. Check out the article I wrote about this for Independent Publisher: “Five Reasons Why It’s Okay to Write about Vietnam Today.”

Vietnam Is Still a Tough Subject, but Not One to Shy Away From

—People actually do want to talk about Vietnam, given the opportunity. In over thirty events during the past year, I’d say, men, in general, are eager to share their particular stories—how they did or did not get out of the draft, the near-miss life-saving efforts of helpful doctors, the miracles of lost or destroyed draft documents. They also remember where they were on Lottery Night—in a bar, huddled around a TV in a dorm, in a pool hall—afraid to listen, feeling powerless, their destiny out of their hands. They shared stories personal and painful as if they’d been just waiting for an opening. They talked about what got them through—tales and talismans. The real-life model for the character of Wizard in my novel pulled the remnants of his draft card out of his wallet and reassembled them on a countertop to show me they never left him.

—Women are mixed. They usually don’t feel they have stories of their own and start with those of their men: fathers, uncles, husbands, sons, students, relatives relegated to the dark and never talked about. Once they “claim” their experiences, their stories are as compelling. One woman told me she’ll never forget picking up the paper on the front porch the morning after the second draft lottery to read that if she’d been one of her five brothers instead of a girl, she, too, would have the lowest lottery number and been off to Vietnam. Many were apologetic—they’d been focused on raising kids, or writing papers at college amid the chaos, or just keeping their heads down and their lives moving forward as the world was blowing up. One of the most telling comments was from a seventy-nine-year-old woman in Wisconsin who came up to me after a book club. “I got married young and didn’t go to college,” she said as if I’d judge. “My husband was on the road as a salesmen five days a week and I was overwhelmed raising three kids. I thought all the protesters were entitled rich kids, causing trouble.” She thanked me for showing her their perspective as she revised her own.

—Young people are very curious. Not so much Millennials, who find it hard to relate, but Xers and younger who say they want to hear more about a subject no one talks about or teaches. They haven’t heard about the Lottery and have a hard time believing that it happened as it did—like a game show on television. They instinctively feel that Vietnam is an important part of their history and that others have decided it’s not to be shared. They want to understand why.

It Still Hurts. Time Helps but Doesn’t Heal.

—Vets are still angry. Some violently so. Several of the comments to my Facebook Ads were pretty hot, by vets viscerally reacting to nothing more than the photo of a protest sign and the name of a female author. I tried to engage with a few to tell them the book wasn’t anti-vet, and one did respond, thanking me. But I had to pull back on my audience target, realizing I was pouring kerosene on a wound that was still open.

—Vets are still profoundly hurt about how the war was conducted and how they were treated. Callers-in on radio shows spoke primarily about that. They were anxious to share. I was willing to listen. My attempts to donate some proceeds to The Wall or Vietnam Vet organizations were mysteriously rebuffed. One sympathetic man finally told me it was too much of a reach. The Vietnam Vets were focused on supporting vets of subsequent wars, so they wouldn’t be treated poorly like they had been. When I brought book copies as giveaways to my high school reunion, I had to start by saying the book was anti-war for that war at that time—not anti-vet.

When my publicist emailed with a link to a review of The Fourteenth of September in The Veteran I held my breath. To her, this had been an obvious media target, but I knew better. Now, I’m more proud of this than any other I’ve received:

Few books have taken the time—and space—to examine so thoroughly the collegiate antiwar movement in small-town America. The story held my interest and reminded me of what was going on in Pullman, Washington, around the same time. The tone rang true in every line.

I was interested in the impact that the draft lottery and its rippling effects had on a generation heavily influenced by the chance uncertainty the lottery had on hundreds of thousands of young people. I had barely paid attention to the lottery because I was one of the young men drafted before it was instituted.

This novel opened my eyes to issues that my thick skin and my age had protected me from. We are admonished to read this book and weep, and I actually did shed a tear or two of sympathy.

If you’re like me, after you read this well-written novel, it will be difficult to put it out of your mind.

We Can Still Be Surprised by the Past

In one of my book-launch salons, I met Pam Tarr, daughter of General Curtis Tarr, who was the much-maligned “inventor” of the modern draft lottery. I didn’t know her history but had been warned she’d attend and I should be prepared for tough questioning. That didn’t happen. She was open and sympathetic to the story of characters protesting what had been her father’s program. Later, she told me about how the objective had been laudable—to come up with a uniform, fair program versus the uneven and “bribable” local draft boards than in place. Her father and her family had been vilified and taunted. She told a story of how President Nixon had urged her to be brave. Her best friends were the daughters of Ehrlichman and Haldeman. It had been a hard adolescence and she felt it hadn’t been fair to her family. And, of course, she was right. War does so much unseen damage to so many unappreciated victims. Many of the overlooked are women and girls. I’m hoping she and I will be willing to work together on this story at some point.

Historical Fiction Is a Pathway to Understanding

I’ve always felt that we learn our history through facts and nonfiction, but we understand our history through narrative—where we can actually feel ourselves in the shoes of a character we can relate to and wonder what we would have done. Then, we can begin to know what it was like to weigh the stakes and dangers against the valor and objective, and consider what it was like to live in another time: to make a fateful decision in the narrow vision of a single person’s experience of the past without benefit of the panoramic reevaluation of the present.

Historical fiction typically takes place at least fifty years in the past. The Vietnam War, as a subject, is now just squeezing into that category by its chin hairs. It’s complicated. Living people bring the lens of their authentic, yet specific involvement to the story. Some feel that unless they had their own experience of Vietnam this story wouldn’t be relevant. This story is only for a Boomer audience of a specific age, in this micro-targeted world. Right? 

And yet, we openly welcome stories of topics of which we have no living experience—the French Resistance, German prison camps, home-front US—in stories like The Lilac Girls, All the Light We Cannot See, The Beantown Girls, The Lost Girls of Paris. Members of book clubs press novels on me about other wars they see as parallel and relevant. People send books, poems: Pandora’s box has been opened. Vietnam is as relevant as today, as nostalgic and fascinating as the yesterday of World War II and all the history that’s gone before. The stories the War has to tell are compelling, gut-wrenching, instructive, revelatory, and

. . . entertaining. The Fourteenth of September, for example, is full of the sex, drugs, and rock and roll of the time. It’s impossible to write about 1969-1970 without being a bit uncomfortable, yes, but also with singing and celebrating.

It’s time to open ourselves to the narrative. Over the next few months, as we commemorate the pivotal events of fifty years ago, this blog will utilize The Fourteenth of September as a lens to allow you to experience this chaotic and prescient time from the perspective of the nineteen-year-old you once have been, will be or still are. And, to consider what you would have done then, and may yet need to do, again in the near future.

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When Integrity Trumps Consequence

“If we strive to normalize courtesy, integrity and making moral decisions we can inspire others to act in a similar manner. I am committed to making these practices a standard of human experience: encouraging change one by one, creating a better world.”

— Coming of Conscience Scholarship Applicant

Common Sense Gun Control

"Hell, yes, we're going to take your AR-15, your AK-47. We're not going to allow it to be used against our fellow Americans anymore."

— Beto O’Rourke

Audiobook of "The Fourteenth of September" Now Available: Leave the Reading to Us

Now that I have your attention, I will fess up that the novel has been available as an audiobook via Amazon since the book launch back in September of 2018. However, since I didn’t do any specific promotion on the format, it has just been sitting around, quietly, with modest purchases by experienced audiobook fans who knew how to find it. It’s time I gave it some love.

The Casting Cloud

The audiobook deserves its solo spotlight, given all the time and attention that went into producing it, but also because its development challenged me as an author in ways I’d never expected.

Right off the bat, the process of choosing a narrator sounded like great fun, but in practice it was unnerving. I can see why authors so often hate the films that are made of their novels. As a writer, you spend years picturing and “hearing” specific faces and voices in your head, and it’s very hard to envision, if you will, a stand-in. Very. 

Though I was asked many times to narrate the The Fourteenth of September myself, I felt it needed a voice for my nineteen-year-old main character, Judy, that sounded the right age. The casting process for identifying potential narrators was exceptionally efficient. Over sixty professionals sent audition tapes based upon an excerpt I had provided. Just pick one, easy-peasy, right?

Hardly. I did have the foresight to hire an experienced producer to help me with the project—primarily because I was totally focused on the all-consuming production and promotion of the paperback and e-book. We both thought it would be a piece of cake. Not so much.

Thankfully, my producer winnowed the audition tapes down to a dozen for me to review to make it an easy afternoon project. Instead, it was... just... too much. All those voices—all good, all young, all saying the same thing, all sounding so... SIMILAR, but not at all like Judy. I felt instead that I was listening in on a gaggle of her friends at the Tune Room, the site of so much of the story’s action. I finally had to do what I’d been hoping to avoid—listen carefully to each audition over and over, trying to pick the voice I thought I’d want to listen to for hours on tape, but actually found myself looking for reasons to eliminate, so the last person standing (or in this case, talking) would be the obvious choice. It was a bit like shifting through great candidate resumes back in the day but with higher stakes for me and my story. I finally got it down to three, and the producer and I compared our choices and picked a final voice. Whew! I was ready to turn the nuts and bolts over to my producer to get back to the world of words on paper. But no such luck.

Nailing the Voices

Before I could walk away, the producer sent me the recording of the first two chapters, where each of the large cast of characters appeared at least once, to ensure the narrator had the voices correct. I was appalled. None of the voices matched the characters in my head. And all of them—male and female—had two things in common. They were PERKY, and the inflection of every sentence went up at the end. To borrow the vernacular, we SO didn’t talk like that back in 1969. We were happy or sad, sarcastic or whiney, enamored of the curse-word vocabulary we were trying out like truck drivers now that we had left home, but we weren’t full of endless pep every minute. We were never, ever PERKY. And, not being interrogative-loving French, we preferred to swallow the end of our sentences and let the words descend into unintelligible mumblings that our elders would struggle to understand perhaps, but we would never go UP. After all, that implied asking permission, and in Judy’s era we were more likely to be trying to disappear, be sullen, or have POWER. Oh, the Valley Girl of it all. I considered removing the word like from anywhere in my manuscript. It wasn’t there much, but somehow, after listening to the narrator, it sounded as if it were. I can fix this, I thought.

Author as Actor... Not

After years making business presentations, I told the producer I would settle this quickly. I recorded my own voice reading my own first two chapters, filled with my own intended tone and inflection, so easy then for the narrator to imitate, right? I was sure I’d be great. I’d once harbored an inclination toward the stage. The narrator would probably be in awe, and I needed to be prepared to keep her dauber up by reassuring her that she could do it, perhaps not as well, but she’d be fine.

Again, a surprise. I virtually slapped myself in the face. First of all, it was exhausting. Forget the character voices: I could hardly manage to keep the energy of my voice up let alone on inflection pitch for twenty pages in one sitting. And I... there is no more politic word to use... sucked. As the narrator might put it, “I am SO not an actress, ya know?” I couldn’t listen to myself, and above all, I DIDN’T SOUND LIKE JUDY. It was so hard to wrap my head around that. A few decades on or not, I deep down inside guess I thought the words in my mind would come out the way I heard them, sounding like Judy, and Wizard, and Vida, and David, and all my other characters. It wasn’t age, it was... like listening to your voice on the telephone. It wasn’t me and it wasn’t Judy. Instead I sounded vaguely like a more nasal version of my sister and the guys sounded like cheery kids, not the voices I needed to communicate the sarcastic bravado in the face of fear that ruled the story’s Draft Lottery time frame.

I feared what the narrator would think when she listened to my version; suddenly I felt that I was the one auditioning. “You call this acting?” I could hear her complain. “Don’t give it to her,” I said to my producer in a middle-of-the-night, follow-up email. Too late. “It did confuse her,” the producer admitted. “I think her narration is fine,” she added after a long, diplomatic pause, asking how I wanted to proceed. Someone needed to listen to the narration chapter by chapter as it was recorded, to be sure it was accurate, words weren’t dropped, etc. “It was critical,” she said.

I humbly told the producer to take me out of the loop and just run with the project. Like Puff, this little dragon sadly slipped into her cave, realizing that there was a reason I had chosen the boardroom over the stage in my earlier career.

In the end, I came to see why movie directors ban authors from the set. We are pathetic, not capable of suspending our belief. We are in love with the vision we put in words, yes, but also the one in the netherworld between the words we write with our inside voice and how they are delivered out to the world. Mere mortal actors/narrators who cannot hear inside our minds will never rise to this impossible-to-articulate ideal. And in fact, once I was out of it, things proceeded just fine; as pointed out by my producer, the narrator may not be “me,” but she is Judy. And isn’t that the point? I was a bit taken aback—after all, there would be no Judy without me—but of course she was correct.

Listen to an excerpt from the audiobook.

A message from Marissa DuBois, audiobook narrator.

At this point audible Judy is doing pretty well. See listener reviews on Audible and Goodreads, and listen to the excerpt. And also hear the narrator, Marissa DuBois, talk about her excitement for the project in this interview. Then, check out the audiobook yourself, which is available on Amazon on the same page as the other formats for The Fourteenth of September. One tip, be sure to turn up the speed when you listen, Judy has a lot to say... she needs to talk fast.

Audio Is Cooler Than You Think

My first audiobook was my own novel and that helped me catch the bug for my long, fair-weather walks along Lake Michigan and car rides. The more you use it, the more you think about where to use it. My trainer listens to audiobooks while she cleans her apartment, an idea I can absolutely get my head around. I’ve begun to inventory life activities that don’t require paying attention.

Above all, to my friends and family who tell me they support my story but just aren’t “readers,” or who only read nonfiction: Please try The Fourteenth of September on audiobook, and Judy’s voice will make it all go down in an exciting way. Let me know what you think... and about new creative ways to listen. I personally, for example, think my brother should read it during those endless hours of home repair and tinkering in the garage. I mean, he’s already on engineering-genius autopilot—he can listen to a story at the same time, right?

Time flies when someone’s telling you a story.  For me, the audiobook experience is like Mrs. Sellen, my first-grade teacher, reading us Dr. Seuss’s The 500 Hats of Bartholomew Cubbins. Its like a personal movie. They talk and you imagine. You know, just like a book. Hands free. Enjoy!

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LATEST UPDATES & NEWS

When Integrity Trumps Consequences

“At a candlelight vigil after the 2016 Election, in a world absolutely intent on being divided, there we were, together. Since then, when people disagree with me politically, I have learned more from listening to them that I ever would shouting over them. I've changed my major to education and found that my students respond to positivity, encouragement, and understanding with passion and excitement.”

— Coming of Conscience Scholarship Applicant

Common Sense Gun Control

What do we stand for and how far are we willing to go to ensure our safety?

— A Coming of Conscience Moment for the Country

ULC Chicago Authors Book Feast

I'm honored to have been selected as a Featured Author at the ‘Book Feast’ on Oct 22, 2019.

Book Cover of the Month Finalist

The Fourteenth of September was voted as a finalist for the AllAuthors August ‘Book Cover of the Month’ competition. Still hoping for a win in round three.

SWP 2019 Indie Publisher of the Year

She Writes Press was awarded Indie Publisher of the Year by the IBPGG as part of the Next Generation Indie Book Awards.

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It’s Official! My Novel is to be Published September 18

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Though it’s been in the works since April, I’m very excited to be able to officially announce that my debut novel, The Fourteenth of September, will be published by She Writes Press on September 18, 2018—the closest date possible to the actual title of the book.  Sometimes the stars align!*********

For those of you who haven’t heard the story by now, it’s about a female recruit, in college on a military scholarship during the Vietnam War, who begins to have doubts. She goes underground into the counterculture, and risks family and future, as she’s forced to make a choice as fateful as that of any Lottery draftee. The story is ever so loosely based on a character-defining personal experience of my own that happened during that critical time frame between the first Draft Lottery and Kent State, one that I’ve always felt defined our generation and cried out to be examined from a woman’s point of view.

Early on, as I worked on the novel, there were a lot of obstacles—mostly questions about the relevance of the Vietnam conflict to Millennials, to anyone. Fortunately, the recent Ken Burns documentary Vietnam has returned the subject to the zeitgeist with a vengeance. Unfortunately, current events have underscored that the past is our best teacher, but we really do have to listen. Bottom line, the timing of release of this novel has worked out for the best.
 

Judy Blue Eyes or Lovely Rita?

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All that said, this is a small, personal story of a young woman’s Coming of Conscience, at a time that is one of the most exciting and devastating times in her life, and the history of the country. There’s much more about it on my web site www.ritadragonette.com, including new chapters and the play list of songs that pepper the narrative, as they did the times. It’s not all tough stuff, there’s nostalgia and humor, and if you’ve ever been nineteen, you’ll empathize with my main character—Judy Blue Eyes (I just couldn’t use Lovely Rita, though I was tempted). And, now that I’m on the subject, I must admit I did shamelessly steal aspects of real people I knew then—a gesture, a way of speaking, a suggestion, even a claim to have written the phrase Let It Be before the Beatles. They may recognize themselves, but it’s all done with affection, if also irony.
 

She Writes … So I can

I’m very excited about She Writes Press an award-winning, independent publishing company that supports SheWrites.com, the largest global community of women writers, but appeals to ALL readers. I’m psyched about their mission, their distribution, and their philosophy of partnership with their writers.
 

Early Accolades

I’m also very excited about the support I’ve received so far, including a wonderful cover blurb from the insanely successful, best-selling author Jacquelyn Mitchard.

Jacquelyn Mitchard

“It’s been said that in the anti-war movement of the 1970s, the men stormed the barricades and the women made the coffee. Rita Dragonette has written a strong-hearted and authentic novel about a naive young girl and her struggle to reconcile the dissonance between the world she sees and the world she was raised to believe in. Judy is truly a quiet hero; you won’t forget her.”

–– Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of The Deep End of the Ocean and Two if By Sea
www.jacquelynmitchard.com

I’ll keep you informed, through this blog, about progress on the publication, marketing, and availability of my novel. 

I appreciate the support I’ve received from so many of you over the very long gestation of this novel and look forward to celebrating publication. For now, please put The Fourteenth of September on your reading list or book club schedule for September. I’m up for events of all kinds. I’ve been waiting over forty years to talk about this story. I’ll be anxious to share.

How I'm feeling about Publication

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Take the Plunge! Join Me on My First Novel’s Wild Ride

As Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway would put it, at long last, I’ve finally taken the plunge. I’ve burst out of the business world and into a full-time creative career.

I anticipate a wild ride, and I’d love your company.

After my toiling away on my first novel for twelve years, my editor has, as she puts it, “taken away my paintbrush.” I’m ready to go public and find an audience for The Fourteenth of September, a Coming of Conscience novel that follows a young woman in the time of the Vietnam War who must make a choice as fateful as that of any draftee. Think—if Tim O’Brien in the “On the Rainy River” section of The Things They Carried had been a woman—that’s the emotional intensity I’m going for. Like most debut novels, it’s based on personal experience. I’ll be sharing more on my story, what I mean by a Coming of Conscience novel, and on the plunge into the creative life in posts to come.

For now, I’ll simply say this:

There have been challenging obstacles in the novel’s development, from objections to the subject matter (“Vietnam? Not relevant!”) and its female point of view (“that era belongs to men”) to struggles to get out of my business head and into the mind of a writer (“don’t say ‘positioning statement,’ say ‘why you write.’”) There’s no question the ride will continue to be bumpy and, I trust, fascinating.

I plan to use this space to share ideas I’m considering, hurdles I’m facing, insights I’m realizing, books I’ve been reading, and what I’m learning from other writers I admire. I hope you’ll follow me as I progress to publication and well beyond this first step.

And, I do consider this first novel an initial step. It’s the time of year for resolutions, so be my witness as I plant a stake in the ground and declare out loud that I’m planning to be a career writer, not a one-hit wonder (or single-try stumble, as the case may be).

After thirty years of telling other people’s stories, I’m champing at the bit to tell my own.

My formal writing will always be an intimate story that takes place on a large canvas—war or generational change. In this and all my writing I’m a pattern identifier and a dot connector, and feel strongly that nothing is irrelevant for any reader—age and gender restrictions be dammed! 

Less “officially,” I plan to comment broadly.

I am, above all, a questioner. 

For instance, why do we say Vietnam is old news and yet regularly race to the cinema for the latest WWII movie? But I’m getting ahead of myself here.

With this new plunge into blogging, I promise to be honest (or to admit it if I’m not), provocative (or it’s not worth your time), original (I trust), succinct and humorous when I can.

I’m full of ideas, and firmly “in the zone,” as we say about the month-long afterglow of a writer’s residency, but I want it to continue. Sharing and hearing back from you will help me tremendously as I determine what type of blog content sustains both you and me. 

So bottom line, as we say in the business world, I realize that I’ve taken the plunge, but really I’m asking you to take one, too. 

Please join me.  Take a chance.  Everything is Interesting.  Nothing is irrelevant.

What a lark, as Mrs. Dalloway would say, indeed.

Why I Write

Photograph by Karen Thompson

Throughout my career I’ve written for the trend, for the times, for the zeitgeist. I spent years in the public relations/marketing profession, where being current was currency, and built a reputation as someone known for “getting it.” So I was surprised when I encountered push back over the years as I wrote my first novel, set during the Vietnam War, as to why anyone would be interested in the subject matter. It’s over. It’s been done. Why should I care? I wasn’t around then. It’s irrelevant to me, to today.

Such comments always made me respond with a crack referencing the latest hit movie set during World War II, about a war that took place before most of us were “around,” and yet endlessly of interest, of relevance.

This millennial resistance to all but the immediate present has caused me to think a great deal about the notion of relevance. The concept seems obvious as I work on a second novel about the experiences of two women in Germany during the Great War, and how what they went through trickled down to profoundly harm their children, and children’s children. These influences may have begun yesterday but highly impact today and, as more children are born, without question, tomorrow. In fact, the point of the novel is to wonder how very long, into how many generations, the impact of war can last.

I think of relevance as I work on a memoir in essays about my own life that highly resists staying in the present, or even in my own past—it circles back, farther and farther, into the influences of those that influenced me.

My own present has many dimensions that began long ago. It’s hard not to feel it when my physical therapist helps me stretch out the impact of the gymnastics incident that threw out my back when I was sixteen; the car accident at thirty that messed up my neck, gave me a lifetime of migraines and threw me permanently out of alignment; and the mugging at forty-something that saved my purse but frayed my rotator cuff. Our bodies are like old cars, I believe, the injuries of our past dinging us with every morning wake up.

So too, are our minds and our memories. What else explains the need for so many therapists who help us deal with patterns, fears and behaviors that belonged to generations long ago and have been passed down, unwittingly, to influence and inhibit how we deal with achievement, relationships and what we in turn pass on ourselves?

With every throb of the little finger of my right hand that reacts when my back goes out or pang of head pain that comes with the low barometric pressure of summer storms, I go back to the source, and am reminded where this all started. 

I’ve always told my clients, in my most recent profession as a career consultant, to stop and reevaluate as they progressed. You’ve worked for twenty years, I’d say, thirty. What is the combined value of that experience, expertise and point of view? That’s what you are now. It’s what makes you unique and is the foundation of the legacy you leave for others. 

And so it is with history. We are informed way beyond the shortsightedness of the present.

Viet Thanh Nguyen was nominated for the National Book Award for Nothing Ever Dies: Vietnam and the Memory of War.  President Obama quoted William Faulkner about how “the past isn’t dead. It isn’t even past.” The past, immediate or far, what happened to others, the country, the family, is all there when you crook your little finger. It’s what made it happen. It’s why it still happens. 

Physical, mental, familial, historical. We are the ancestry.com of our times and to continue to move forward there’s an imperative to connect the dots, to identify the patterns, to factor in everything, to acknowledge.

Nothing is irrelevant.

This is why I write.