Second Thoughts
(Re)writing on…
Earlier this week I sent my editor, Mike, and the rest of the Big Roundtable crew a new draft of the Crimea section of ‘The Empire Strikes Back’. I tried to make the case for abandoning a device — italicizing historical sections — that we’d agreed upon earlier. In the post below and those to follow, you can see our exchange and Mike’s edits on my latest text.
From Noah Sneider to Mike Hoyt
Saturday, Jun 21, 2014 at 12:02 p.m. EST / 8:02 p.m MSK
hi mike, michael, et al…
apologies for the delayed reply… have written (&rewritten) quite a lot since we last exchanged messages. also been mulling the relationship b/w the history & contemporary sections. to be honest, i’m less and less enamored with the ‘history in italics’ solution.
for starters, it feels a bit lazy, like i couldn’t be bothered to do the hard(er) work of identifying the links between the temporally disparate events. and if i won’t do that, how can i expect the reader to?
second, it makes it structurally tricky to address how the history is being used today, which, as mike wisely pointed out, I largely did not do in the early drafts. many times, the best example of a “contemporary usage” happened 2-5-50 years ago. does that belong in itals w/ the 500 year-old history? or somehow in the contemporary rounds? and either way, we will have a problem when the history catches up with the present: when do we stop using itals? when does history stop being history and start being now?… and if part of the point of this piece is to say that there isn’t actually that much space between deep history and what’s happening now, then perhaps artificially dividing them is sending mixed messages… see what i mean?
also, there is the risk that readers just skip the italics and read the fun stuff once they figure out it means they’re in for a historical digression (as a smart writer friend nicely dubbed it the other day, “the spinach”).
with that said, i’m very much on board w/ the tripartite structure we talked through. namely, a journey through time and space that follows me from crimea to moscow to eastern ukraine.
so, i’ve gone back through ‘Crimea’ and tried to weave the history/contemporary rounds together. i fear that i’ll get some angry messages from historians for polishing some of the nuance out of certain moments, but so it goes — i’m not writing an academic history here (have to keep reminding myself of that). anyhow, i think this way is working, and is more engaging to read. but if the transitions feel forced/awkward to you, then please don’t hesitate to tell me.
the file was getting pretty incomprehensible with all the CAPS and deletions and movements and highlights, so i started a fresh draft, which i’ve attached here. it has pretty much all of ‘Crimea’ (running near 7,000 words with a round or two to go — hope you mean it when you say ‘long-form’), and an expanded intro section w/ more context & scene setting. in general, i tried to work in more roadsigns (locations and times) and sense of place.
hope all is well otherwise — i’ve been enjoying reading “consider the can” bit by bit…
yours,
noah
