What do Truman Capote and the Iditarod Sled Dog Race have in common?

On the eve of March every year thoughts of the Iditarod keep coming to mind. It always starts on the first Saturday of that month. Today being a thaw sort of day, I recalled the hasty retreat I beat out of the cabin where I wrote Last Great Race, and tore across the melting snow with all my stuff in a sled and five dogs pulling, hoping to beat breakup on the Susitna River. I had to cross it and if the river ice broke it meant about a 50-mile trek to the highway instead of seven.  In that sled was precious cargo – what I thought was the completed manuscript which I had slaved over for the previous three months in a 10 by 14 cabin high above the river.

The dogs and I managed to beat the ice by a couple of days and I pronounced to all who would listen that the  book was done, the first book about the Iditarod.  I gave it a few weeks to get it out of my mind and then settled in to see what I had done. I usually write through something all the way to the end before I go back and read it. That way I get my ideas down without stopping that flow to correct a spelling mistake and look up some random fact. I sat back and read through the manuscript and when I was finished it had reduced me almost to tears it was so bad. Even to an egotistical, idealistic, overconfident potential author, it was just simply bad. It put me into a depression until the following weekend when another adventure beckoned.

At the time I was staying with a friend and occasionally his girl friend joined us. None of us had much money, but we were taking care of a dog lot and there were a number of races in the area that offered small purses as prize money.  Several weekends we loaded up the dogs and went out to win drinking money. The dogs were pretty good and we won a few races. They were usually held near a bar and seldom did we head home with any of our winnings left. Such a vivid memory from that time was the three of us in the cab of a pickup rolling down the road to a sled dog race and singing loudly Donna Summer's "On the Radio."

Those jaunts tended to lift my spirits but that awful book lurked in the back of my mind. I knew I couldn't send it to a publisher in its present condition and I didn't have time to do a complete rewrite. Nor did I have a clear idea what was missing, what made it so bad.

That was when I recalled Truman Capote's writing advice. I had seen him on the Dick  Cavett Show some years earlier. Just for background, Cavett was the last intellectual night time talk show host. He could keep up with the amazing guests he entertained and could let them speak as well. This one night he was asking Capote about his writing process, and Capote said a couple of things that have stuck with me through the years. Cavett asked him why writers seemed so childish sometimes and Capote reminded him of childhood when you woke up every day and something new was going to happen. He went on to say as most people mature they lose that sense of wonder, but writers and creative people in general still have that. I have used that as an excuse for some of my adventures over the years.

But the statement Capote made that applies here was he thought in order to be a good writer you had to be gay. Now, that knocked me over and I recall having a very negative reaction to it. However, over time, I came to understand what he was saying and in that realized I could still write without changing my sexual preference. The way I interpreted what he said was that it takes the sensitivity of the feminine or gay personality to understand the world closely enough to write about it intimately. Right or wrong, I could live with that interpretation.

Then as I thought about it, I realized what was wrong with my book. All of the people in it  were stick figures, marionettes that I was manipulating clumsily through their own actions. Even though this was nonfiction, I had to apply fiction writing techniques. What I had to do was love those people, love them enough to understand and give them humanity, at the same time exposing my own love for them, that almost gay love that Capote talked about. I determined to take the three strongest chapters and rewrite until I had filled those stick figures into whole human beings.

I managed to get that done before I had to go back to the boats for the summer and with those chapters in hand I had something I could send to publishers. I would rewrite the rest of the book when someone bought it.

That happened eleven publishers later. When I set out to rewrite the rest of the book I discovered I had rewritten the three best chapters for a reason. The rest of them were even worse. I had to go back almost to the beginning realizing I only had a skeleton. I also had to interview several of the people again, this time not focusing on the race, but focusing on the person gently digging for those details of personality and reactions to experiences on the trail that would bring them to life on paper. With some I think I succeeded; with others, not so much, but I did get the tale rounded out with real people for the most part and not just stick figures.

The result, anyway, was good enough for the publisher and I was on my way to being a published author with no small influence from Truman Capote of all people.

Best hug ever

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