The Hyphenates of Jackson County

Kimmel Harding Nelson: Days 1-3

| Ted Wheeler

I recently was granted an artist’s residency at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts in Nebraska City, from March 15-26, and I’ll be blogging about my experiences there over the next couple weeks.  It’s a little awkward to be doing this in the past tense, I’d originally planned on doing a daily journal while I was there, but it seemed like a bad idea to announce on the Internet that I was away from home. It was hard enough to leave Nicole and Maddie home alone during the start of the spring gang wars.

Anyway, here’s the first installment:

Nicole and Maddie drove me down on Monday morning and dropped me off at the center. We met the residency directors, Pat and Denise (her last day, sadly) and were given a tour of the facilities. The center was built in 1969 by the Nelson family as a luxury retirement residence for them and a few of their friends, and then was turned into the KHNCFTA in 1999 after Mrs. Nelson died. So there was a main apartment, which is now office space and an art gallery, and two attached apartments that each house two residents. There’s also a caretaker’s apartment in the basement for a fifth resident. The three garages have been converted into studio space, and there’s a great courtyard in the center of the complex. It’s really wonderful. Almost everything here appears to be original, the wallpaper, the fixtures, the appliances. My roommate (photographer Matthew Jensen) tells me that this style is all the rage now in New York.

The swanky wallpaper in my bathroom.

It was very hard when Nicole and Maddie drove away, but I’ve been able to talk to them throughout each day. Maddie’s phone skills are improving dramatically and she’s learning so many new words now. Like, “Salt and pecker.” It’s hard to miss that. I had to focus myself and make the most of my time. Even on the first afternoon I was able to write for a few hours, which really set a nice tone for the two-weeks.

Still, a lot of the first few days were spent just kind of figuring out what to do while I’m here. Of course I’d made plans beforehand, and I stuck to them mostly, but it was almost off-putting to have so much time. There was time to sleep in, time to stay up late and work, time to nap, time to eat when it was necessary. It allowed me to get wrapped up in the novel completely. I think generally I do kind of live through whatever I’m working on, half asleep to the world. I carry it with me, thinking about it throughout the day, whether I’m walking into the courthouse, going through security, or taking care of Maddie in the morning. It’s a preoccupation that allows me to work every day—because at least half of my mind is on the project at all times in order to stay within it. But the process of engagement was so much more complete at KHN. There was no metal detector alarm to break me out, no NW Radial traffic to vie for my preoccupation space. For the most part, during the first few days, I wasn’t working a ton more hours than I usually would during the course of a day—jumping from 2-3 to 4-6, maybe more than that. Anyway, the big difference was having time to think about things.

On Day 2, the writing wasn’t happening, so I took a two hour walk over to the Arbor Day Lodge and back. It wasn’t like I had a big breakthrough or anything, but such trips helped clear an awful lot of mental space. I came back and had lunch, laid down for an hour, read for an hour, and then was able to be very productive for three hours. Usually, I’d have the three hours to be productive in, and if it didn’t happen, the day was a waste.That wasn’t the case at KHN. It was about finding the right time of day to work in, the right mental space, the right location—and actually having the freedom to occupy that space and produce. This was the main benefit of the residency. I wrote about twenty new pages in the first three days, which is a little more than a good week’s worth—and a banner week at that.

My office at KHN.

I think the writing is solid, there’s some nice description, a few images that have really announced themselves, more than a few leaders emerging that will help determine the plot. This was Part II of Hyphenates I was working on, and I chose to go in without any kind of guiding outline, basically just knowing a specific place I need it to end—the day after the municipal election in 1918—with seven pages of notes to guide me. There seemed to be a lack of conflict for a while, but it started to emerge during this time. I wrote about half of Part II and also had the second half plotted, which is kind of a week’s worth of work in itself.

Coming Up: Days 4-6

Weeks of Feb 22 – Mar 17, 2010

| Ted Wheeler

Did I mention we went to New York last month?

Dispatch from The Hyphenates of Jackson County

“The sidewalk was cluttered with her belongings, her furniture and clothes, a Victrola phonograph cabinet and a stack of records, a crate of wine bottles, a small painted portrait of a girl who could have been Evie standing on the plush cushion of a high-backed chair. There were several lounging chairs the men brought out too, upholstered with threadbare green fabric, small pillows to match. They were cheap pieces, second hand, perhaps, but nicer than what most people had on the Ward. And maybe her furniture didn’t look so shabby in a dark room, Jacob thought, out of the sun. It was very bright suddenly, the air warming on what was becoming a cloudless August sky. Jacob could feel the heat of it on his skin, through his shirt.”

Personal Rejection Notes, Requests for More, and Other Nice Versions of No Thanks

American Short Fiction for “The Current State of the Universe”; Salt Hill and The Missouri Review for “The Housekeeper”; Hunger Mountain for “These Things That Save Us”; Identity Theory for “You Know That I Loved You”; Makeout Creek for “Lycaon” and “From Indiana.”

Just Finished

Point Omega by Don DeLillo. Mostly it’s enjoyable for its language, with some nice plot here and there too. I didn’t really go for much of the eschatological theory, although that might be how it’s supposed to be taken.

Now Reading

The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris. I thought this started off horribly slow and redundant, but have been getting into after the first hundred pages.

Up Next

31 Bond Street by Ellen Horan

Weeks of Dec 26/09 – Jan 26/10

| Ted Wheeler

Novel Work

I’ve finally decided to split The Open City into two novels, rather than continue working on it as one project with two distinct threads. Part of the concern was that the single book would be very long, around 700 pages or so. It just didn’t seem feasible to get something like that published, seeing that it would be my first novel. And it would probably take another two years to just get it roughed in. The other things that worried me were more novelistic in nature. The two threads certainly play off each other—and the two novels will still be related—but I’d structured them to alternate in parts rather than chapters. That is, there would be a seismic shift every 100 pages or so, rather than smaller shifts every 20 pages. (Most of the hybrid-historical-novel models I’m using are structured more on the alternating chapters style, such as Aleksander Hemon’s The Lazarus Project and Jonathan Safran Foer’s Everything Is Illuminated. Junot Diaz’ The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao gives more space to the individual threads instead of alternating, but his threads were separated by only a generation and collide in the end in a way mine wouldn’t.) These seemed too jarring. Just as the story is getting roaring it would jump into another thread. One that’s starting from scratch, essentially. I didn’t really anticipate the historical thread being this interesting or engrossing, which is part of the problem and part of the exciting part. It’s something I feel much more compelled to write, something I feel needs to be done.

Nicole and Maddie flying outside the courthouse.

In any event, I’ve finished a first draft of Part I of what is now titled The Hyphenates of Jackson County, which should be about one/third of the book. The writing of this has gone so smoothly so far. Maybe it’s writing historical fiction, in that I have many sources, photos, and books to draw on when I’m feeling stuck. Or maybe it’s that I’ve been working near-daily as a novelist for almost two years now and am actually getting better at it. Plus a little bit of the family life settling down a bit more, becoming more comfortable as a father, having real office space without radon gas to contend with, and having a nice chunk of property that demands constant physical activity. Let’s say all of the above. But whatever the cause of this good streak, it’s been very much enjoyed. Now it’s just a matter of finishing. And making it great. The rest should take care of itself.

Dispatch from The Hyphenates of Jackson County

“There was something about Jacob that triggered Mrs. Eigler’s mothering instinct. The way he stared blankly into the street when they chatted in the evenings, as if someplace else; how he merely smiled in silence when at a loss for words, his mind grinding. Women often fell towards mothering Jacob. From the way his hair flopped over his forehead to the cowlick spiking up in back, Jacob unaware until a woman was there to tamp it down for him; and in how he dressed, not quite sloppily, but merely hinting at neatness with an informal comportment.”

Personal Rejection Notes, Requests for More, and Other Nice Versions of No Thanks

Crazyhorse for “How to Die Young in a Nebraska Winter”; Lake Effect and StoryQuarterly for “The Housekeeper”; Michigan Quarterly Review, Indiana Review, and One Story for “These Things That Save Us”; Barnstorm for “From Indiana.”

Just Finished

Kapitoil by Teddy Wayne. This novel is nearly very good. It’s a book driven almost entirely by the voice of its narrator, which is something I don’t usually enjoy that much beyond the first few pages. Yet, protagonist Karim Issar is very compelling. A programmer from Qatar who strikes it rich in Manhattan while doing some pre-Y2K debugging, Karim is the kind of uninitiated character who so effectively provides context to the culture he’s being introduced to. The main problem I have with Kapitoil is that the secondary characters are flat and ineffective as foils. They can’t challenge Karim, which leaves the main character two-dimensional in important ways as well. It looks like much of Wayne’s background is in doing short, satirical pieces for magazines, so maybe this is telling in that the novel shines when it is merely a matter of voice and gags, but falters on the level of extended plot. This one is really worth picking up, however. Highly recommended.

Should I run for office? Do I look like a county chair?

Now Reading

American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser.

The Underworld Sewer by Josie Washburn.

The Book of Genesis illustrated by R. Crumb.

Up Next

The Unnamed by Joshua Ferris.

And big props to my friend and colleague Nabina Das, who has been named an Associate Fellow for the City as Studio 2010 initiative in Delhi. Awesome work!