Category: Writing

I was talking to a friend recently and she said she was struggling with her creative projects because they weren’t turning out in the exact same way she had pictured them in her head.

“You’re a perfectionist,” I said.

She admitted I was right. She was a perfectionist and it had kept her from sharing her art with the world. “I don’t want to let people see what I’ve created until it’s perfect.”

When I asked “Why?” she said it was because, until it was perfect, she felt like a fraud.

Our conversation got me thinking about this idea of feeling like a fraud. It’s commonly called imposter syndrome, and to one extent or another, I think all creatives struggle with it. I know I do.

I was texting with another friend recently and she said that she had just finished reading my book, A Thousand Ways Home. She said she liked it very much, but that’s not the part of our conversation that stuck with me. What I heard—and what still sticks in my mind—is that she thought my chapters were short (I heard “too short”) and she found a typo (I live in fear of typos).

I’m about to release my fifth book, but I still often fear that I’m going to be found out as a fraud. I’m much more confident about my writing now than I was when I started, but I don’t think that fear of being seen as an imposter ever completely goes away, no matter if you’re a writer, an artist, a musician, or any other type of creative.

Even the best of the best have struggled with it. Maya Angelou, after writing eleven books, still thought, “Uh oh, they’re going to find out now. I’ve run a game on everybody.” If one of the most accomplished writers of all time felt that way, what chance do the rest of us have? A pretty good one, actually, because imposter syndrome isn’t about actual ability. It’s just a sneaky little voice in your head that distorts how you see yourself.

The good news? You can quiet that voice. Let’s talk about how.

What Imposter Syndrome Looks Like for Creatives

Imposter syndrome shows up in different ways. Maybe you convince yourself your latest success was a fluke, or that you’re just lucky. Maybe you compare yourself to other creatives and feel like you don’t measure up. Or maybe you’re scared to put your work out there because you think people will judge you and realize you have no idea what you’re doing.

For creatives, imposter syndrome can be particularly brutal. Your work is personal, it comes from you. So when doubts creep in, they don’t just feel like doubts about your work; they feel like doubts about you as a person. That can make you hesitant to share your work, reluctant to take risks, or even push you to overwork yourself just to prove you belong.

Why It’s a Problem

If imposter syndrome were just a passing worry, it wouldn’t be a big deal. But left unchecked, it can seriously hold you back:

• It can stifle your creativity. If you’re constantly doubting yourself, it’s hard to take creative risks. You might second-guess your ideas or overthink everything you create.
• It can stop you from growing. If you feel like a fraud, you might avoid submitting to galleries, pitching your book, or taking the stage.
• It can burn you out. Feeling like you have to prove yourself all the time leads to overworking and exhaustion.
• It can make you keep your work to yourself. If you’re scared of being “found out,” you might not share your art, music, or writing at all—and that would be a huge loss.

The worst part? Imposter syndrome doesn’t go away just because you achieve more. You might think, “Once I finish my book, I’ll feel legit,” or “Once I get my first big show, I’ll feel like a real artist.” But no, the doubts just move to the next goalpost. That’s why learning to manage imposter syndrome now is so important.

How to Overcome Imposter Syndrome as a Creative

You don’t have to let imposter syndrome run the show. Here are some strategies to quiet that nagging voice and own your creative journey.

1. Recognize It for What It Is

First things first: acknowledge imposter syndrome when it pops up. It’s not truth. It’s just an unhelpful pattern of thinking. Plenty of wildly successful creatives feel the exact same way. Knowing that can take away some of its power.

2. Reframe Your Thoughts

Instead of letting negative thoughts spiral, challenge them. When you think, “I’m not good enough,” ask yourself: Says who? What actual evidence do you have that you’re not talented? Spoiler: there isn’t any.

Instead of saying, “I don’t deserve this opportunity,” tell yourself, “I worked hard for this, and I’m ready.” Shift your perspective from self-doubt to self-acceptance.

3. Stop Comparing Yourself to Others

Comparison is the thief of joy—and in the age of social media, it’s easier than ever to compare yourself to creatives who seem like they have it all together. But remember: you’re seeing their highlight reel, not the behind-the-scenes struggles.

Everyone has doubts. Everyone has bad drafts, abandoned projects, and days when they feel like they have no idea what they’re doing. Focus on your journey, not someone else’s.

4. Keep a “Wins” List

Start keeping track of your creative wins, both big and small. Got a compliment on your artwork? Write it down. Finished a project you’re proud of? Add it to the list. Having a record of positive feedback and achievements helps when self-doubt tries to take over. Remember the praise, not just the criticism.

5. Share Your Work Anyway

One of the best ways to push past imposter syndrome? Put your work out there despite the doubts. Scary? Yes. Necessary? Also yes. The more you share, the easier it gets. And you might be surprised; people will connect with your work in ways you never expected. This may be easier said than done, but it is necessary. The world deserves to see your art, even if you’re not convinced it’s perfect.

6. Find Your Creative Community

Surround yourself with other creatives who get it. Talking to people who understand the struggle can be incredibly validating. A good creative community can lift you up, remind you of your strengths, and help you keep going when doubts creep in.

7. Focus on Progress, Not Perfection

Perfectionism feeds imposter syndrome. Instead of aiming for “perfect,” aim for done. Growth comes from creating consistently, not from waiting until everything is flawless (because spoiler: it never will be). Remember: Progress matters more than perfection. Done is better than perfect.

8. Give Yourself Permission to be a Work in Progress

Newsflash: You don’t have to be an expert at everything. You don’t have to have all the answers. Every great artist, writer, or musician was once a beginner. The fact that you’re still learning means you’re doing it right.

9. Teach or Mentor Someone Else

Nothing will convince you that you do know what you’re doing quite like helping someone else. Mentoring another creative, offering feedback, or teaching a skill will remind you of how much knowledge and experience you actually have. In fact, that’s why I’m sharing this post.

10. Take a Break When You Need One

Creativity isn’t an endless fountain—sometimes, you need to step away and recharge. If imposter syndrome is making you spiral, take a break. Do something that refills your cup. Creativity thrives when you give yourself space to breathe.

Confidence Is Built, Not Given

Here’s the truth: no one wakes up one day suddenly feeling 100% confident in their creative work. Confidence is built over time, through action. The more you show up, create, and push past self-doubt, the stronger your confidence grows.

Instead of waiting to feel like you belong, act like you already do. Keep making. Keep sharing. Keep learning. Eventually, imposter syndrome won’t disappear completely, but it will get a whole lot quieter.

So go ahead; write that book, paint that canvas, compose that song. The world needs your creativity. And no, you’re not a fraud. You’re an artist.

In 2024, as I was writing my most recent novel, A Thousand Ways Home, a story came to me that I couldn’t shake. I tried to put it out of my mind because I was already working on another story, but the new story kept creeping in. I published A Thousand Ways Home in July 2024 and immediately started work on this new story, which I called The Walls Come Tumbling Down.

It’s not all that unusual for a writer to think about their next book before finishing their current one, but in my experience, this was different. The Walls Come Tumbling Down came to me fully formed. I was ready to start writing as soon as A Thousand Ways Home was published. The story was insistent. It wouldn’t be pushed to the back of my mind. It wanted to be told.

As I started writing, the new story flowed out of me. I don’t want to sound too woo-woo about this, but I felt like I was telling a story that was being fed to me from somewhere else. I’ve never experienced that feeling before, and although it felt a little strange, I have to admit that I liked how easy it was to commit the story to paper. Every book is a challenge. Some take more effort than others. But The Walls Come Tumbling Down seemed to take the least effort of any book I’ve written. Even so, I think it might be the favorite story I’ve told to date. I truly enjoyed writing this book.

The story being told in The Walls Come Tumbling Down involves a professional race car driver who is involved in a nasty accident while trying to qualify for the Indianapolis 500. He suffers severe head trauma which results in him remembering things that never happened, at least not in his life. He remembers being a construction worker in 1980s Chicago, a soldier in World War II, a butler in late 1800s England, and a cowboy in what would eventually become Colorado. When the memories start to take over his present life, they threaten his career and his relationship with his girlfriend.

Writing this story was a very satisfying experience. I’m looking forward to completing the book and sharing it with everyone in March. I’ll keep you posted on my progress.

For the third year in a row, I read more nonfiction books than fiction. As a fiction writer, that causes me a little bit of angina. I love fiction and I want to read more. But there are also so many interesting things in the world to read about. What’s a reader to do?

It has become a quasi-tradition each year when I list the ten best books I read to also include a book or two that disappointed me. There are four books that come to mind for me this year—two fiction and two non-fiction—that I want to mention as disappointments. But keep in mind, that doesn’t mean they were all equally bad.

The first is Eat Only When You’re Hungry by Lindsay Hunter. It’s a work of fiction, and it was really bad. Lindsay Hunter is a respected writer who I read previously, and  liked. I read her book of short stories, Don’t Kiss Me, several years ago, and remember enjoying it. I wanted to read more from her. But when I picked up Eat Only When You’re Hungry, I was disappointed.

I will say that I have a bit of a history of reading a book, thinking it stinks, and coming back years later to find that I like it. I did that with Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. I thought it was horrible when I first read it in my mid-20s. By my mid-30s, it had become one of my favorite books. Perhaps the same thing will happen with Eat Only When You’re Hungry, but I wouldn’t bet on it.

The other work of fiction that disappointed me was All the Demons are Here by Jack Tapper. Tapper, of CNN fame, previously wrote two books that I really liked—The Hellfire Club and The Devil May Dance. All the Demons are Here did not live up to his two previous attempts at fiction. It wasn’t horrible, certainly not as bad as Hunter’s Eat Only When You’re Hungry, but it was still a disappointment.

A nonfiction book that disappointed me was In My Time of Dying by Sebastian Junger. Junger is a terrific writer who is best known for his book The Perfect Storm. That book is exciting and really grips the reader, making it hard to put the book down. Just the opposite is the case with In My Time of Dying. In the book, Junger recounts a brush with death he personally experienced. I’m sure it was a scary situation for him and his family, coming that close to death. But the book doesn’t make us feel the same thing. While reading it, I felt like what Junger was experiencing was at arm’s length and didn’t really invest me in the outcome. Junger tells an interesting story, but not a great one.

Finally, I was disappointed in Wright Thompson book The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi. It pains me to say that because Thompson is one of my favorite writers, and I don’t remember ever being disappointed by anything he’s written, whether in a book or magazine article. It also pains me because I’ve written about the barn (where Emmitt Till was killed), so I was familiar with the story before reading Thompson’s book.

Unlike the other books that disappointed me this year, Thompson’s The Barn is actually very good. It’s meticulously researched and well-written. But for me, it gets bogged down in the weeds too much. There’s too much minutiae and deeply researched, but unimportant, facts. A third of the book could have been eliminated and it would have been a better story. Because it was a Wright Thompson book, my expectations were sky high. Sadly, it didn’t quite reach my lofty expectations.

Okay, enough about disappointments. Let’s get to the good stuff.

This year, my top ten list is split evenly between fiction and nonfiction books. Some of the nonfiction books I read were for research for my own books of fiction. I gleaned some good information from many of these books, but there were only a few that I also really enjoyed.

Here are the ten best books I read in 2024:

10. The Big Book of Reincarnation by Roy Stammen – I have a novel coming out in a couple of months that involves reincarnation, so I’ve been reading a lot about it. Several of the books contained good information, but only Stammen’s told a story interesting enough to make me look forward to reading it. In The Big Book of Reincarnation, Stammen travels with Dr. Ian Stevenson from the University of Virginia, trekking across India investigating people (mostly children) with memories of a past life. Incredibly, during their investigation, they are able to confirm the memories these children are having, and they are able to reunite families, even after death. If you’re not interested in reincarnation, this may not be the book for you. But if you’re a believer, I think you would find it very interesting.

9. And Then She Vanished by Nick Jones – This work of fiction kind of surprised me. I’m always up for a time travel story, but before picking up this book, I didn’t know much about it, so my expectations weren’t too high. Boy, did Jones novel deliver. Jones writes a unique take on time travel, including some of the challenges time travelers would face, which readers rarely think about. In the story, Joseph is at the fair with his little sister when she suddenly disappears. He has no idea what happened to her, and the pain of his loss haunts him for years. As an adult, Joseph learns that he can travel through time, and he uses the opportunity to go back to the day he lost his sister, to save her from whatever fate befell her. But what he encounters in his attempt is more difficult than he anticipated. For the last few years, each of my top ten list has included a time travel novel. This year, that novel is And Then She Vanished.

8. Spaceman of Bohemia by Jaraslav Kalfar – Reading the Spaceman of Bohemia was a strange experience. I don’t mean that the story the novel tells is strange, although it certainly is, but the experience of reading it was strange. Let me explain. When Spaceman from Bohemia is good, it’s really good. There were several times I was lost in the story. But when it got slow, it got really slow, causing me to lose interest. The book was interesting enough that they made a movie out of it. Spaceman starring Adam Sandler came out on Netflix in 2024. On the other hand, the movie got a 50% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, so maybe it wasn’t all that interesting (I haven’t seen it). The plot of the book involves an astronaut who left a troubled marriage behind to go on a long space flight. Six months into his mission he begins to question his marriage, when he discovers a mysterious space creature on his ship who can read his thoughts and talk to him about his relationship with his wife. If you’re into absurdist science fiction (I’m usually not), you may enjoy Spaceman from Bohemia.

7. Pronto/Riding the Rap/Raylan by Elmore Leonard – Elmore Leonard was such a terrific writer. He wrote a ton of books, including a few different series. His Raylan Givens series–which these three books come from–was turned into the FX TV series, Justified, then rebooted as Justified: City Primeval. The old Justified series was really good. I’m not so sure about the new series. There has only been one season, so I’m withholding judgement. The three books—Pronto, Riding the Rap, and Raylan—are all typical Elmore Leonard reads. They’re gritty, sexually-charged, exciting, and violent. And they all have Leonard’s trademark punchy dialogue. I’m not sure I could pick a favorite out of the three. They’re all good, and all quintessential Leonard.

6. Under The Banner of Heaven by Jon Krakauer – I have to make a confession about this book. When I bought it, I thought I was buying another book. Krakauer also wrote a book called Into Thin Air about the death of mountain climbers on Mount Everest. I got the titles mixed up and bought Under the Banner of Heaven by mistake. Thankfully, it turned into a happy mistake. Instead of reading about mountain climbing, I read about the rather dark history of the Mormon church. Krakauer is a terrific nonfiction author who really digs into a story and gets people who would prefer to remain quiet instead talk to him, spilling the inside information on scandals and controversies. That’s exactly what he did in this case, getting people who are currently inside the church, as well as those that were once inside and are now excommunicated, to talk about the history and the sins of the church and church members. The book is interesting and tells a tale of enlightened piousness, murder, and deceit. I still want to read Into Thin Air, but I’m glad I stumbled onto Under the Banner of Heaven.

5. The Good Life by Robert Waldinger & Marc Schulz– Waldinger is a professor at Harvard and he and Schultz are in charge of The Good Life study that has been going on for decades and through generations. The purpose of the study is to determine what makes a happy, fulfilling, good life. I don’t mean for this to be a spoiler, but you may be surprised to learn that things like money, power, prestige, and position don’t lead to a fulfilling life. So, what does? In a word: relationships. The most obvious relationship that leads to a happy life is a marriage. Married people are generally happier than single people. People who have a close relationship with their kids are happier than those that don’t. And people who surround themselves with friends and loved ones are happier than those that don’t have friends or who live far from their friends. All of this remains true, regardless of how much money the person makes, how much power or prestige they have, or what position or status they hold. It’s relationships that make all the difference. I found The Good Life fascinating, learning about the people involved in the studies, the lives they’ve lived, the relationships they’ve had, the relationships they’ve lost, and how it has impacted their happiness. If you want to read about what really leads to people living a goof life, I highly recommend The Good Life.

4. The Great State of West Florida by Kent Wascom – If you know much about Florida, you know that the panhandle—that stretch of land that juts out to the west at the top of the state, is unlike the rest of Florida. In fact, it has more in common with Alabama. But years ago, Alabama conceded the panhandle to Florida, believing that the land was worthless. Residents of the panhandle carry a chip on their shoulders, feeling rejected by Alabama, but not really a part of Florida. As a result, many years ago, a group of secessionists tried to start their own State of West Florida. Although the attempt failed, the spirit remains. Fast forward to 2026 and the Wolcott’s, a family of rowdy outlaws and dreamers, is once again leading the charge to liberate West Florida and create their own kingdom. The Great State of West Florida tells an entertaining story that takes place in a world that is barely different from our own, but grows more realistic every day.

3. How to Not Die Alone by Logan Ury – I’ve been reluctantly single for most of the past twelve years. During that time, I have experimented with several online dating sites, and I don’t have much good to say about any of them. I was commiserating with my friend Diana last winter when she recommended Logan Ury’s book, How to Not Die Alone. My expectations were low, but I was pleasantly surprised. How to Not Die Alone is part online dating guide and part relationship advice. Although Ury is thirty years younger than me, the vast majority of her advice applies to a 20-something as much as it does to someone my age. The one thing that has really stuck with me about the book is the fact that, while most of us think we know what we are looking for, very few of us actually know. Her advice: be open-minded. She uses her own experience as an example. She was certain that she was looking for a physically fit, tall, handsome man with thick dark hair and a brooding personality. She found guys that met that criteria, but they all treated her poorly and really weren’t that into her. So, who did she find happiness with? A shorter guy with thinning red hair and an average body. But she and her new love had a lot in common and he treated her well. They’ve been together for several years now. Thanks for the recommendation, Diana!

2. Shoulder Season by Christina Clancy – I went to a book fair in my little Wisconsin town this past year and I ended up in a seminar with Wisconsin author Christina Clancy. Prior to the book fair, I was not familiar with Clancy, who formerly taught at Beloit College. But I was impressed with the talk she gave, and we spoke briefly about her books, Shoulder Season and The Second Home. Because Shoulder Season takes place in Wisconsin, at the former Playboy resort in Lake Geneva, I decided to give it a read. The book tells the story of Sherri, a Lake Geneva local who is hired at the Playboy Resort and falls into the glitz, glamour, and party lifestyle of the resort employees. The book follows Sherri as she goes from a backwards, innocent yokel to a mature, worldly woman scarred by her experience, but wiser for it. I thoroughly enjoyed Shoulder Season, and I’m looking forward to reading The Second Home, as well as her forthcoming novel, The Snowbirds.

1. Tailspin by John Armbruster – I’m a sucker for a good World War II story, and Tailspin is an exceptional World War II story. The book tells the true story of tail gunner Gene Moran, who’s plane was shot out from under him. He fell out of the plane and through the sky without a parachute…and he survived. Moran was captured by German troops, his body battered and broken. He endured eighteen months in a prisoner of war camp, including surviving a 600-mile death march across central Europe. After the war, he returned home to Soldiers Grove, Wisconsin and, as best he could, tried to live a normal life. He married, had nine kids, and he never spoke about his experiences from the war. That is until a local history teacher, John Armbruster, hears the amazing story of Gene falling out of a plane with no parachute. John is amazed, and convinces Gene to talk about his experience. They begin meeting once a week to talk.  At first, the going is slow. Gene is reluctant to revisit the pain he has kept hidden for nearly seventy years. At the same time, John’s wife is diagnosed with brain cancer. As John is telling Gene’s story of pain and survival, his own story of illness and loss is unfolding. Reading Gene’s painful story while John is living his own made for an emotional but wonderful read. Tailspin is the best book I read in 2024.

Seeing the cover of a new book for the first time is always exciting. It’s like putting a face to a character. The book has lived on paper as just words for months or years, but once the cover is ready, those words really come to life. It makes the book and the story it tells real.

I’m excited to introduce the cover for A Thousand Ways Home. I wanted a cover that had some history to it, and that gave a dark, foreboding feeling. Much of the story takes place in England during World War II. It was a dark time in history when hope was in short supply. German bombs had decimated much of London, and Londoners were forced to live in a bombed-out war zone, while also carrying on with their daily activities. I think the cover depicts that time perfectly.

A Thousand Ways Home will be available beginning on July 5 at Amazon.com and at your local bookstore.  Without further adieu, here is the cover for A Thousand Ways Home:

 

It’s been a while since I published a book. The Ones That Got Away was published in 2020, then I took a break to do a different kind of writing. I wrote a master’s thesis in political science and did a little nonfiction writing. It kept me busy, but it wasn’t as satisfying for me as writing fiction.

The past year I’ve been working on a historical novel. It takes place in the early and mid- 1900s and involves a guy who spent his youth in an upscale neighborhood of Chicago. His childhood was privileged, but unhappy. He never felt like he belonged, or that the house he lived in was his “home.” So, after graduating from college, he sets out to find the home that has eluded him for his young life.

His journey takes him to Paris and London, where he settles down and establishes a routine. He thinks he’s found the home he’s been searching for, but World War II intervenes, throwing his world into chaos. He has to find a way to pick up the pieces of his broken life, all while avoiding German bombs and callous opportunists trying to take away what little he has left.

The novel is called A Thousand Ways Home and it’s almost ready to be released into the world. The cover for the book is being produced right now, and I have a publication date of July 5. That date is coming up fast and there’s still work to be done. I’ll keep you posted on my progress.

I recently completed the final revisions to my latest book, A Thousand Ways Home. As I was nearing the finish line, I read the entire manuscript out loud. It’s a habit I’ve gotten into, whether I’m writing a blog post, a short story, or a novel.

Reading the manuscript out loud might be my favorite part of the writing process. It allows me to hear the words I’ve chosen and feel the rhythm of the sentences. It isn’t until I speak and hear the words–not just see them–that I know my work is done.

Reading aloud obviously isn’t just for writers. As parents, most of us read to our children when they were young. Reading to kids isn’t just a form of entertainment. When doing it interactively, it can increase a child’s comprehension skills, build trust, and enhance social and emotional skills. According to research conducted by the Brookings Institution, children tend to smile and laugh more when being read to by a parent than they do when listening to an audiobook.

In the days before radio and TV and computers, people routinely read out loud to one another. Sadly, that habit has been lost. I say “sadly” because there were tangible benefits to reading aloud.

According to Alexandra Moe, writing in The Atlantic, reading aloud “can boost the reader’s mood and ability to recall. It can lower parents’ stress and increase their warmth and sensitivity toward their children. To reap the full benefits of reading, we should be doing it out loud, all the time, with everyone we know.”

Reading aloud produces other health benefits. as well  According to Moe, “It can prevent cognitive decline, improve sleep, and lower blood pressure. In one study, book readers outlived their nonreading peers by nearly two years.”

I admit, I love audiobooks and I listen to them often. But audiobooks don’t provide the same benefits both readers and listeners receive from reading aloud. Don’t get me wrong. Audiobooks are great. But the most benefits from reading come from reading aloud.

Finally, reading aloud is also good for your relationship. Anecdotal evidence suggests that couples who read to each other feel more connected to one another and tend to be in a better mood, especially when reading to each other right before bed. This type of out loud bedtime reading tends to strengthen relational bonds through a shared experience, and gives couples a common point of interest that tends to spur deeper conversations.

One final benefit that is more difficult to quantify but is no less real is drifting off to sleep to the sound of your significant other’s voice. What could be more romantic?

Regret

There’s no use in regret. You can’t change anything.
Your mother died unhappy with the way you turned
out. You and your father were not on speaking terms
when he died, and you left your wife for no good
reason. Well, it’s past. You may as well regret missing
out on the conquest of Mexico. That would have been
just your kind of thing back when you were eighteen:
a bunch of murderous Spaniards, out to destroy a
culture and get rich. On the other hand, the Aztecs
were no great shakes either. It’s hard to know whom
to root for in this situation. The Aztecs thought they
had to sacrifice lots of people to keep the sun coming
up every day. And it worked. The sun rose every day.
But it was backbreaking labor, all that sacrificing.
The priests had to call in the royal family to help,
and their neighbors, the gardener, the cooks…. You
can see how this is going to end. You are going to
have your bloody, beating heart ripped out, but you
are going to have to stand in line, in the hot sun, for
hours, waiting your turn.

Untroubled

One wearies of matters of substance, those weighty matters that one feels should be resolved, the dilemma of life on earth, the existence of extra-terrestrial life, the existence of God. Instead I recommend those moments that, seemingly without reason, stay with you for a lifetime: that red-haired girl on the shore brushing her teeth as we sailed away; the glimpse of a face; a bare shoulder turning in a doorway; moments like music, beauty and truth untroubled by meaning.

Wind in the Trees

You could live on the go like the wind with what seems like a purpose or at least a direction, but no home, reckless, pushy, with an attention deficit disorder, no more than a name, really. People will say, “That guy, you know . . . .” But if you stand still long enough you will be given an identity. You could live like the trees, parochial, rooted and restless, prone to hysteria. You could write letters to the editor. Living in the woods you get a lot of ideas about what God is up to, and what is going on in Washington. You’d have a family. Parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles all close around you until, if you are lucky, they recede, one by one, into the peripheral haze of memory. Finally, some space, a clearing, a place to fall.

Lucky

All my life I’ve been lucky. Not that I made money,
or had a beautiful house or cars. But lucky to have
had good friends, a wife who loves me, and a good
son. Lucky that war and famine or disease did not
come to my doorstep. Lucky that all the wrong
turns I made, even if they did turn out well, at least
were not complete disasters. I still have some of my
original teeth. All that could change, I know, in the
wink of an eye. And what an eye it is, bright blue
contrasting with her dark skin and black hair. And
oh, what long eyelashes! She turns and with a slight
smile gives me a long slow wink, a wink that says,
“Come on over here, you lucky boy.”

My Ancestral Home

We came to a beautiful little farm. From photos
I’d seen I knew this was the place. The house
and barn were painted in the traditional Falu
red, trimmed with white. It was nearly mid-
summer, the trees and grass, lush green, when
we arrived the family was gathered at a table
on the lawn for coffee and fresh strawberries.
Introductions were made all around, Grandpa
Sven, Lars-Olaf and Marie, Eric and Gudren,
Cousin Inge and her two children… It made me
think of a Carl Larsson painting. But, of course,
it was all modern, the Swedes are very up-to-
date, Lars-Olaf was an engineer for Volvo, and
they all spoke perfect English, except for
Grandpa, and there was a great deal of laughter
over my attempts at Swedish. We stayed for a
long time laughing and talking. It was late in
the day, but the sun was still high. I felt a won-
derful kinship. It seemed to me that I had
known these people all my life, they even
looked like family back in the States. But as it
turned out, we had come to the wrong farm.
Lars-Olaf said, “I think I know your people, they
live about three miles from here. If you like I
could give them a call.” I said that no, it wasn’t
necessary, this was close enough.

The Afterlife

Older people are exiting this life as if it were a movie… “I didn’t get it,”
they are saying.
He says, “It didn’t seem to have any plot.”
“No.” she says, “it seemed like things just kept coming at me. Most of the
time I was confused… and there was way too much sex and violence.”
“Violence anyway,” he says.
“It was not much for character development either; most of the time
people were either shouting or mumbling. Then just when someone started
to make sense and I got interested, they died. Then a whole lot of new
characters came along and I couldn’t tell who was who.”
“The whole thing lacked subtlety.”
“Some of the scenery was nice.”
“Yes.”
They walk on in silence for a while. It is a summer night and they walk
slowly, stopping now and then, as if they had no particular place to go.
They walk past a streetlamp where some insects are hurling themselves at
the light, and then on down the block, fading into the darkness.
She says, “I was never happy with the way I looked.”
“The lighting was bad and I was no good at dialogue,” he says.
“I would have liked to have been a little taller,” she says.

According to an article in The Atlantic magazine, the concept of the “great American novel” was dreamed up in 1868 by a little known writer named John William DeForest. The United States had just emerged from the Civil War, and DeForest recognized that the end of the war had ushered in a fundamentally different nation than had existed just a few years earlier.

DeForest defined “the great American novel” as a work of fiction that undertook the “task of painting the American soul.” When he came up with the idea, he confessed that such a novel had not yet been written.

The Atlantic recently put together a list of the greatest American novels of the past century. The list is not ranked, but is instead listed chronologically.

Of the 136 novels on the list, 45 were debut novels. 9 went on to win the Pulitzer Prize, and 3 are intended for children. Twelve were published before the advent of the mass market paperback, and 25 were published after the introduction of the Kindle. At least 60 of the book on the list have been banned by schools or libraries at one time or another. Several authors have 2 books on the list, but only one, Toni Morrison, has 3.

Here is the list compiled by The Atlantic of the greatest American novels of the past 100 years (books I’ve read are bolded):

• 1925    The Great Gatsby — F. Scott Fitzgerald
• 1925    An American Tragedy — Theodore Drieser
• 1925    The Making of Americans — Gertrude Stein
• 1927    Death Comes for the Archbishop — Willa Cather
• 1929    A Farewell to Arms — Ernest Hemingway
• 1929    Passing — Nella Larsen
• 1929    The Sound and the Fury — William Faulkner
• 1936    Absalom! Absalom! — William Faulkner
• 1936    Nightwood — Djuna Barnes
• 1937    East Goes West — Younghill Kang
• 1937    Their Eyes Were Watching God — Zora Neale Hurston
• 1938    U.S.A. — John Dos Passos
• 1939    Ask the Dust — John Fante
• 1939    The Big Sleep — Raymond Chandler
• 1939    The Day of the Locust — Nathaniel West
• 1939    The Grapes of Wrath — John Steinbeck
• 1940    Native Son — Richard Wright
• 1940    The Heart is a Lonely Hunter — Carson McCullers
• 1942    A Time to be Born — Dawn Powell
• 1946    All the King’s Men — Robert Penn Warren
• 1946    The Street — Ann Petrey
• 1947    In A Lonely Place — Dorothy Hughes
• 1947    The Mountain Lion — Jean Stafford
• 1951    The Catcher in the Rye — J.D. Sallinger
• 1952    Charlotte’s Web — E.B. White
• 1952    The Invisible Man — Ralph Ellison
• 1953    Fahrenheit 451 — Ray Bradbury
• 1953    Maud Martha — Gwendolyn Brooks
• 1953    The Adventures of Augie March — Saul Bellow
• 1955    Lolita — Vladimir Nabokov
• 1956    Giovanni’s Room — James Baldwin
• 1956    Peyton Place — Grace Metalious
• 1957    Deep Water — Patricia Highsmith
• 1957    No No Boy — John Okada
• 1957    On the Road — Jack Kerouac
• 1959    The Haunting of Hill House — Shirley Jackson
• 1961    Catch-22 — Joseph Heller
• 1962    A Wrinkle in Time — Madeline L’engle
• 1962    Another Country — James Baldwin
• 1962    One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest — Ken Kesey
• 1962    Pale Fire — Vladimir Nabokov
• 1962    The Zebra-Stripped Hearse — Ross MacDonald
• 1963    The Bell Jar — Sylvia Plath
• 1963    The Group — Mary McCarthy
• 1966    The Crying of Lot 49 — Thomas Pynchon
• 1967    The Sport and the Pastime — James Salter
• 1968    Couples — John Updike
• 1968    Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? — Philip K. Dick
• 1969    Divorcing — Susan Taubes
• 1969    Portnoy’s Complaint — Philip Roth
• 1969    Slaughterhouse-Five — Kurt Vonnegut
• 1970    Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret — Judy Blume
• 1970    Desperate Characters — Paula Fox
• 1970    Play It as It Lays — Joan Didion
• 1972    Log of the SS Mrs. Unguentine — Stanley Crawford
• 1972    Mumbo Jumbo — Ishmael Reed
• 1973    Sula — Toni Morrison
• 1973    The Revolt of the Cockroach People — Oscar Zeta Acosta
• 1974    Oreo — Fran Ross
• 1974    The Dispossessed — Ursula K. Le Guin
• 1974    Winter in the Blood — James Welch
• 1975    Corregidora — Gayl Jones
• 1976    Speedboat — Renata Adler
• 1977    Ceremony — Leslie Marmon Silko
• 1977    Song of Solomon — Toni Morrison
• 1978    A Contract with God — Will Eisner
• 1978    Dancer from the Dance — Andrew Holleran
• 1978    The Stand — Stephen King
• 1979    Kindred — Octavia E. Butler
• 1979    The Dog of the South — Charles Portis
• 1980    Housekeeping — Marilyn Robinson
• 1980    The Salt Eaters — Toni Cade Bambara
• 1981    Little, Big: Or, The Fairies’ Parliament — John Crowley
• 1982    Oxherding Tale — Charles Johnson
• 1984    Machine Dreams — Jayne Anne Phillips
• 1985    Blood Meridian — Cormac McCarthy
• 1986    The Summons to Memphis — Peter Taylor
• 1986    Watchmen — Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons
• 1987    Beloved — Toni Morrison
• 1987    Dawn — Octavia E. Butler
• 1989    Geek Love — Katherine Dunn
• 1989    Tripmaster Monkey — Maxine Hong Kingston
• 1990    Dogeaters — Jessica Hagedorn
• 1991    American Psycho — Brett Easton Ellis
• 1991    How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents — Julia Alvarez
• 1991    Mating — Norman Rush
• 1992    Bastard Out of Carolina — Dorothy Allison
• 1992    The Secret History — Donna Tartt
• 1993    So Far From God — Ana Castillo
• 1993    Stone Butch Blues — Leslie Feinberg
• 1993    The Shipping News — Annie Proulx
• 1995    Native Speaker — Chang-Rae Lee
• 1995    Sabbath’s Theater — Philip Roth
• 1995    Under the Feet of Jesus — Helena Maria Viramontes
• 1996    Infinite Jest — David Foster Wallace
• 1997    I Love Dick — Chris Kraus
• 1997    Underworld — Don Delillo
• 1999    The Intuitionist — Colson Whitehead
• 2000    Blonde — Joyce Carol Oates
• 2000    House of Leaves — Mark Z. Danielewski
• 2000    The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay — Michael Chabon
• 2000    The Last Samurai — Helen DeWitt
• 2000    The Quick and the Dead — Joy Williams
• 2001    Erasure — Percival Everett
• 2001    I, the Devine — Rabih Alammedine
• 2001    The Corrections — Jonathan Frantzen
• 2002    Caramelo — Sandra Cisneros
• 2002    Perma Red — Debra Magpie Earling
• 2002    The Russian Debutane’s Handbook — Gary Shteyngart
• 2003    The Namesake — Jhumpa Lahiri
• 2005    Veronica — Mary Gaitskill
• 2007    The Brief Wondorous Life of Oscar Wao — Junot Diaz
• 2010    A Visit from the Goon Squad — Jennifer Egan
• 2010    I Hotel — Karen Tei Yamashita
• 2011    Open City — Teju Cole
• 2011    Salvage the Bones — Jesmyn Ward
• 2012    The Round House — Louise Erdrich
• 2013    Americanah — Chimimanda Ngozi Adichie
• 2013    Nevada — Imogene Binnie
• 2014    A Brief History of Seven Killings — Marlon James
• 2014    Family Life — Akhil Sharma
• 2015    Fates and Furies — Lauren Groff
• 2015    The Fifth Season — N.K. Jemisin
• 2015    The Sellout — Paul Beatty
• 2015    The Sympathizer — Viet Thanh Nguyen
• 2017    Amiable with Big Teeth — Claude McKay
• 2017    Lincoln in the Bardo — George Saunders
• 2018    Sabrina — Nick Drnaso
• 2018    Severance — Ling Ma
• 2018    There There — Tommy Orange
• 2019    Lost Children Archive — Valerie Luiselli
• 2019    Nothing to See Here — Kevin Wilson
• 2019    The Old Drift — Namwali Serpell
• 2021    No One is Talking About This — Patricia Lockwood
• 2021    The Love Songs of W.E.B. Dubois — Honoree’ Fanonne Jeffers
• 2023    Biography of X — Catherine Lacey

Back in 2020, I stopped writing fiction. At the time, I was working on two different novels. One was tentatively titled Second Chances, and the other, Leaving Home. I had recently ended a relationship, and I needed to take a break. I wasn’t in the right head space to concentrate on the two novels.

As time went on, I got busy doing other things. I contracted to build a new house, and I eventually moved into that house. A while later, I started working on finishing a master’s degree, which took up a lot of time (I wrote about it here). A little over a year later, I sold that house and moved back to Wisconsin (which I wrote about here).

One thing after another kept me away from writing fiction. I continued to write  weekly (usually) blog posts (like this one), but I just couldn’t find the time, energy, or interest to write fiction. Even so, it bothered me that I wasn’t writing. For the past several years, I have felt the almost constant need to work on a short story, novella, or novel, and when I don’t, I feel uneasy. It’s a weird phenomenon feeling compelled to do something, while simultaneously not feeling like doing it.

Of course, just because I wasn’t writing, that didn’t mean I wasn’t still coming up with new ideas for books. I currently have 20-25 book ideas in various stages of production, but when I’m not writing, the ideas just stack up. And the more they stack up, the worse I feel.

Thankfully, three or four months ago I started writing fiction again. Best of all, the words have been coming fast and easy. I started working on Leaving Home again (I’m not sure if that title is going to last) and I’m pleased to announce that I completed the first draft of the novel last week.

Leaving Home is the story of Brian Ross, an American who moves to Paris in the 1920s. He’s disillusioned with his life and his relationship with his father, and he wants to get as far away from his home in Chicago as possible. In Paris he meets a young woman, they fall in love, and he moves to London to be with her. They marry, have a child, and live a wonderful life. Of course, it wouldn’t be much of a story if they simply lived happily ever after. War breaks out and their lives are torn apart in ways they could have never imagined.

I still have a lot of work to do. Revisions will take a month or two, but I’m getting close. I’m not planning on publishing the book until this summer, so I have time. But the sooner I can finish the book, the sooner I can start working on the next one.

I’m excited to continue work on Leaving Home and all the other books to come. But most of all, I’m excited to be writing fiction again.