Silver Bullets

So, just exactly right below this post, Rilla talked about some of the anxieties involved in writing an historical novel. She's writing about flappers, and she feels she doesn't know quite enough about them.

I can relate. My book is a western. I mean, okay, granted, it's a supernatural western, and it could probably be classified as satire, but it's a western.

If I could go back in time and tell sixteen year-old me that I was now writing a western, I can only imagine what my younger self would say to me. It wouldn't be pretty. I never cared for westerns. They always seemed deadly dull to me, and the allure of the frontier never really clicked for me. Westerns are what my father loved. Fathers and sons. Complicated. Now, of course, I'm quite fond of some of them.

I think aging has made the difference. I saw the video for Purple Rain the other day, and I realized that the first time I heard that song was as long ago as the dawn of rock and roll was when I was a child. The realization that the events of my childhood are as far away as WWII was for my grandfather the day I was born is sobering. That used to seem like an ocean of time.

As I get older, the past begins to seem less far away to me. It is not that many human lifetimes to reach back to Ancient Rome. It's 2 or 3 to the Wild West era.

The progress of North American growth is a little fearsome.

I digress.

The 1800's in North America seem entirely within my grasp now. I know that things were immeasurably different. Mostly in ways that were uglier. I'm not too worried about historical accuracy. For one thing, I'm writing about the old west as myth. For another, I have a plethora of research materials on hand to guide me.

I don't think it's enough for me to just say, there's magic here and so I don't need to worry. I think that I want to stay as true to the real world as I can muster. However, art must prevail. I love Deadwood. This book is, I can't even pretend otherwise, my love letter to that show, and to Carnivale, and John From Cincinatti, three brilliant shows that all died too soon. This means I will take the same kind of liberties that they did. Can you imagine Deadwood without that operatic swearing? I can't, and so, though I know it to be historically inaccurate, I too will embrace the potty mouth.

I have no intention of letting the real world, or historical fact, get in the way of a story. All fiction is nothing more than the most glorious kind of white lie.

So, in the end, Ril, I guess I'd advise you tell the story you want to tell, and facts be damned. Find ways to take your distance from the truth. Mythologize. Lie beautifully.