A journalist writing a novel

What's the biggest different between writing journalism and writing fiction?

Since the publication of Kill the Quarterback, I have been asked that question more than once.

For an old line journalist like me (when I started in the business, they still used typewriters and pastepots), writing a novel had one big advantage:

You could make things up.

I suppose I had always wanted to do that but, like every other good journalist, I had suppressed the urge -- suppressed it to the point of never thinking about it. My mind was imbued with accuracy, verification, getting the facts, finding out what really happened, points of view, getting direct quotations right, getting paraphrasing even more right.

That's what make journalism hard work. That's what gives it value.

But in writing a novel, I didn't have to worry about that so much. I had to be more-or-less accurate within setting and time period, but I could make sources sound like they should sound. I could make the "facts" what they needed to be to fit the story. I could even twist things around a bit and make people act out of character if I wanted to.

The other side of that coin, however, is the dilemma of every novelist:

You have to make things up.

As a journalist, if you are good enough, you don't have to worry much about how the story will come out. Get enough facts, information, quotations, et al, and the story will speak for itself. It ends where it ends. You don't have to go beyond that.

But as a novelist, you have to make things turn out a certain way. You have to resolve the major conflicts and story lines. You have to make it all fit with no gaps that even unclever readers will discover and inevitably point out. The reader, having suspended disbelief and invested some time, needs to be reasonably satisfied.

That's what makes fiction work. That's what gives it value.

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The novel is Kill the Quarterback. Don't be shy. Buy a copy for yourself and a dozen more for your friends (here at Amazon). It's not about football.

William Tecumseh Sherman: Marching through the American mind

The Union Army, under the command of William Tecumseh Sherman, decamped from a devastated and burning Atlanta on November 16, 1864 and marched across the expanse of Georgia until it reached Savannah. The purpose, according to its commander, was to bring the horrors of war into the farms, fields, parlors and living rooms of the South in a way that would teach Southerners the futility of continuing the fight for their independence.

The march through Georgia took almost exactly a month. A week before Christmas, Sherman wired President Abraham Lincoln from Savannah, offering him the city as a "Christmas present."

Sherman succeeded far beyond anything that he had in mind at the beginning of his journey.

As Ed Caudill and Paul Ashdown (two of my good friends and colleagues at the University of Tennessee) write in their Sherman's March in Myth and Memory:

The myth of the March and the man gained momentum for the rest of his life. Old soldiers told tales and reminisced, while Sherman lectured and wrote his memoirs. By the time of his death in 1891, the March was a term that meant one march, embodied in one man in American history. Ironically, the "Old South" and "the March" had become intimately linked as thesis and antithesis -- agrarian and industrial, tradition and modernism, spiritual and material. . . .

The memory endured in the South and became a nationsl one, encapsulated in a few seconds from a film now three-quarters of a century old, Gone With the Wind: "And the wind swept through Georgia: Sherman!" in giant letters as the screen goes up in flames.

Caudill and Ashdown's book is the third of three than examine the myths that grew out of prominent Civil War figures. The two earlier books looked at John Singleton Mosby, the Gray Ghost, and Nathan Bedford Forrest. Mosby's accomplishments during the war were relatively minor, but Mosby was literate and wise in the ways in which an image could be formed, and he also had the good fortune to live well into the 20th century. Forrest, more impressive in his military accomplishments than Mosby, was not so fortunate in any respect and is now a historical oddity that fires controversy even at the mention of his name.

Sherman is a towering figure of the war, a man who is mentioned along with Grant, Lincoln and Lee. He lived longer than Forrest and wrote his memoirs, but he never appeared to have much concern for his image -- at least, not as much as Mosby showed. Sherman seemed content to leave his image in the hands of others, especially journalists whom he professed to hate.

I talked with Paul Ashdown about the role journalists played in creating the myths of these men, and asked him if anything about the three-book study surprised him. (Click on the arrow below to being the audio: 3:34):




What happened on the march through Georgia is just one of the mysteries of myth that surround William Tecumseh Sherman. The book by Caudill and Ashdown reveals him to be a fascinating and complex character far beyond the hero or villain that emerged from the road across Georgia.

Each of the books in this series is a shrewd exploration of the way in which memory and myth work in the American culture. They are highly recommended.

See the previous Writing Wright reviews:

• Saint or sinner: Nathan Bedford Forrest considered
• Civil War images: authors explore the Mosby myth

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A larger version of the pen and ink drawing of Sherman (above) can be found at First Inning Artworks.

World Series begins tonight

• The World Series begins tonight. Let's hope for the best.

The World Series:

• two vaunted teams with rich baseball histories,
  
  
• a couple of well-known and wiley managers,
  
  
• big stars on both sides set to make each inning a drama-filled delight,
  
  
• a bit of controversy or personal animus thrown in just to spice things up.

Well, maybe next year.

The Tampa Bay Rays host the Philadelphia Phillies in the first game of the World Series tonight in what could very well be an excellent seven-game set of baseball dramas.

That's the hope.

The Phillies have Ryan Howard, a young slugger who hasn't done much yet in the postseason. They also boast of several other better-than-average players who have had good years.

The Rays have David Price, a huge left-handed pitcher on the mound tonight, to match fastballs and wits with these guys. The Rays have a pretty good manager and a team of young potentials who put together an amazing year after a truly awful year in 2007.

But the Tampa Bay Rays and the Philadelphia Phillies?

Neither team has a history worthy of baseball's last act of the year.

The Tampa Bay Rays were once known as the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. But that was a long time ago -- like, last year. So much for tradition.

The Philadelphia Phillies have been around for quite a while, but who knew? For a good part of their history, they were the second team in Philadelphia, always second fiddle to Connie Mack's Philadelphia Athletics. The Phillies have never shown up much in post-season play, and you don't need one hand full of fingers to count their World Series appearances, much less championships.

I was in Philadelphia several years ago when the Phillies were playing in the old Veterans Stadium. It wasn't a great trip. It included an encounter with an usher who thought he was Idi Amin and who looked like he would eat me if I didn't follow his unreasonable commands.

The game was less than compelling so I wandered around the interior of the stadium and came upon a plaque that named the All-Time Phillies team, or something of that nature.

This should be good, I told myself, and it was.

Mike Schmidt, of course, was listed as the third baseman, and Robin Roberts headed the Phillies pitching history. Both legit stars, Hall of Famers.

But at shortstop, there was Larry Bowa. Larry Bowa? The Phillies have been around for a century or so, and the best they could do at that position was Larry Bowa? To me, that spoke volumes about the Phillies.

But, I should stop my unfair riffs against the Phillies and enjoy the games, right? Right.

So who will win? (Now starts the riff against sports journalists.)

I think one of the silliest things in sports journalism is for writers to make predictions. They don't know what's going to happen. Neither do I. Neither do the players.

That, as they say, is why they play the games.