John Clayton's Blog

If you're in the wide listening area of Montana Public Radio this Sunday (August 26), you might tune in to "The Write Question," the new literary program airing at 11:45 a.m. each week. This week will feature Cherie Newman's interview with yours truly.

Newman's insightful questions were one of the highlights of my book tour. But they don't show in the finished product, which is edited to broadcast only my voice. As producer/interviewer, Newman's role is much like what I aspired to in researching and writing the biography: know the subject well, ask great questions, and then get out of the way so your subject's voice can shine.

Listeners can decide for themselves whether my voice shines. But if it does, credit is due the person behind the scenes.

I'm always interested in feedback, via info at johnclaytonbooks dot com

In a previous post I mentioned that the traditional biography format covers a person's entire life and thus must end with a death. That's proved a somewhat controversial statement. Can't an author structure a biography to avoid it?

Well, in a word, I say: no. You can -- and probably should -- start a biography with a dramatic episode from the middle of your subject's life. You can foreshadow the death. But I believe the appeal of biography rests in large part on the strict narrative structure it imposes on the writer. We all undertake quests in our lives. Though the impacts of our actions may resonate through epilogues, the drama of any one person's actions must end with his or her death.

I hadn't really thought this through when I started writing The Cowboy Girl. I took on the project in large part because Caroline Lockhart's life struck me as a story that fit the narrative structure I was looking for. Then I ran into a complication: in narrative structure, the story needs to end with resolution -- but a biography requires it end with her death.

What attracted me to Lockhart was the way she always wanted to be a cowboy. From childhood fibs about being born on a Kansas ranch, to her move to Buffalo Bill's hometown in Wyoming, to her bestselling Western novels, she (like many to follow) was in love with a semi-mythical Old West.

But Lockhart took the quest to extremes: She bought and ran a newspaper so as to preserve (and even fabricate) her town's Old West character, and when the political struggles surrounding that battle wore her down, she quit so as to homestead a ranch. She wanted an incredibly remote place where she could create and control her very own Old West that could not fall victim to Progress.

So how did I solve my own complication? (Warning: the following structural discussion may put some non-writers to sleep.) I had a scene that depicted Lockhart's resolution of her quest. I put it at the end of the final chapter. The first half of the epilogue then discussed her death. Then here's where a faithfulness to timelines actually came to my rescue: One of my best sources for Lockhart's later years was an oral history from a man who had worked for her. But an oral history is, after all, an event of its own. He was talking to the historians in 1990. With some research I was able to build that into a scene to go at the end of the epilogue, concluding with his view of how she had achieved her goals.

I'm always interested in feedback, via info at johnclaytonbooks dot com

I am pleased to be included in the inaugural edition of a new book, The Writer's Handbook 2007: A Practical Anthology of Best Advice for Your Craft and Career. The anthology is a new annual collection of articles to refresh and upgrade any writer's skills, with advice on craft and career development. It offers an eclectic mix of expert how-tos, short pieces on creativity, marketing, and professional issues, and other insights on being a successful writer today.

My contribution is the essay "The Origin of Names," which is one of my favorite amusing views of small-town life. What's it doing in a book of writing advice? Editor Philip Martin said, "This anthology is very eclectic, touching on aspects of craft and career, sometimes in practical how-to articles, but sometimes in pieces just trying to get writers to think more about their work. I liked how, in this piece, you address in a fun way that question of identifying yourself as a writer, that it's a real occupation. While a major theme of my anthology is serious -- writing to change the world -- I also think that innate seriousness of writers is essentially funny, too, so I've found a few of humorous pieces as a counterpoint."

The Writer's Handbook is a handsome, well-produced volume with a variety of interesting perspectives. But the real thrill for me is that its concluding "Literary Insights" section sandwiches my work between that of much-heralded authors Barry Lopez and Katha Pollitt. I had read Pollitt's "Thank You for Hating My Book" when it first came out in the New York Times, and of course Barry Lopez is something of a dean of environmental literature. And mixed in with them: John the Writer! How cool!

I'm always interested in feedback, below or via info at johnclaytonbooks dot com

First-person writers make a distinction between "autobiography" (which covers a person's entire life) and "memoir" (which covers a particular dramatic episode). I'd like to make a similar distinction for third-person. Traditional biography covers a person's entire life and thus ends with a death. But an increasingly popular format these days is more akin to a "biographical episode."

That format's appeal is now obvious to me. It better fits with the strict definition of narrative that makes for powerful storytelling. You still focus on a person -- but you have far more structural freedom to choose a complication and resolution. The research is also far easier. If I write another biography-style book, it will probably be in this format.

But having completed one, I do want to add a few words in defense of the "traditional biography" format. First, it has a long history and great popularity with audiences. As all of us get older, especially, I think we enjoy contemplating how other people have lived their lives in their entirety, not merely at key junctures. (In a sense, the complication for any biography is: You are born and have to figure out how to lead your life. The ultimate resolution comes only when you die and no longer face that challenge.)

Second, the additional research required can help you develop new insights into motivations. Third, it's better suited to the non-celebrity. Take a dramatic, pivotal episode with far-reaching implications in the life of somebody that nobody has ever heard of. Might be a great book, but would it sell? How do you get someone to pick it off a bookstore shelf? On the other hand, a full-blown biography of that individual, while still not a bestseller, at least would be a recognized contribution to culture and academia. It might even raise its subject's profile enough that a subsequent author could profitably focus on the dramatic episode.

Indeed, I worry that in today's book marketplace the bio-episode format (like the memoir format) seems to be increasingly dominated by famous people. Floods of books provide great detail on particular junctures in the lives of Darwin, Lincoln, and Churchill. It's as if the market is dictating an ever-narrowing cast of characters through which our society must view its history. And one reason I wrote The Cowboy Girl is that -- for the American West at least -- that trend is damaging us.

For 20 years historians have been pointing out that our view of Western history is illogically white-male-centric. Plenty of women, Hispanics, Chinese, Native Americans, and others lived on the frontier, but we know the history only through Lewis & Clark, Custer, and Buffalo Bill.

In response to the critique, some writers have tried to elevate minority characters in those sagas, such as Sacagewea -- but these minor players can never act like the full heroes of the old-fashioned history. You can show a heroic moment for Sacajewea, but it's always going to be overshadowed by the scale and drama of the men leading her expedition. If we're to accurately depict the genuine panoply of heroes of that time, we need not new perspectives on the old characters, but previously overlooked stories that allow new heroes.

By the way, I use "heroes" here not in the sense of "admirable people" but in the looser sense of larger-than-life characters taking bold actions. You can like Custer or hate him, but he's the lens for a great deal of Western historical discussion. In my most ambitious moments, I'd like to see Lockhart serve a similar role. Some people like her and some hate her, but she confronted the barriers of gender, landscape, and progress in big bold ways. And in order to fully depict the larger-than-life-ness of her character, I needed to write the full-blown biography.

I'm always interested in feedback, via the comments below or info at johnclaytonbooks dot com

I was pleased to discover that my house ranks an 89 on this walkability index. That's one point shy of a "walker's paradise" -- but surely I could gain that additional point if the algorithm would recognize that the nearest park to my house is not the state park 10 miles away. (There's a few tiny city parks within a quarter-mile, and much Forest Service land within 2-3 miles.)

A Walker's Paradise, the website says, is where "Most errands can be accomplished on foot and many people get by without owning a car." I'm sure the website organizers imagined that most such paradises would be urban locations (and right downtown at that) -- not a Montana town of 2,200 people.

But it's exactly what I realized -- and what I was looking for -- when I moved here lo those many years ago. Though I own a car, I usually prefer to walk or bike. (In fact some weeks the only time I get in the car is to drive to a parklike place... Hmmm...) And the classic American small town is as pedestrian-friendly as the classic American big city.

It may not remain that way for long, and it may not be that important to everybody, but it's a happy reminder of why I'm here.

Thanks to Lance Mannion for the link.

I'm always interested in feedback, via info at johnclaytonbooks dot com