The Art of Researching and Writing Historical Nonfiction
David Baron on getting through the "it's never going to work" phase
“You have to love the process. If you don’t you will be miserable the whole time.” —David Baron
Preview: Emerging Form Episode 148 with David Baron
“I tell myself it’s never going to work,” says David Baron, talking about that stage in writing a book when the research is done and the words just are not coming easily. “I tell myself I’ve been through this before, and it doesn’t help.” And yet the words do come. In this episode of Emerging Form, we talk with the acclaimed historic nonfiction writer about his newest book, The Martians: The True Story of an Alien Craze that Captured Turn-of-the-Century America, the joys of research, how to fill in gaps where facts can’t be found, why reading Truman Capote was essential to his creative process in becoming “more literary,” finding primary sources, and how imagination is both an essential tool and at the same time, something very dangerous.
David Baron is an award-winning journalist, broadcaster, and author of The Beast in the Garden, American Eclipse and his latest book The Martians: The True Story of an Alien Craze that Captured Turn-of-the-Century America. A former science correspondent for NPR, he has also written for the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Scientific American, and other publications. David recently served as the Baruch S. Blumberg NASA/Library of Congress Chair in Astrobiology, Exploration, and Scientific Innovation. He lives in Boulder, Colorado.
What We’re Reading and Listening to:
Rosemerry:
I am grateful for every scrap of beauty, especially this five minutes listening to VOCES 8 sing “Give Me Your Stars,” a poem by Sara Teasdale and music by Lucy Walker. Peace grows. Peace grows.
It thrills me when someone who loves a poem takes you by the hand and walks you through that poem line by line, image by image, sound by sound, and helps you fall in love with that poem, too. A couple weeks ago New York Times critic A.O. Scott did this with Robert Frosts’s poem “For Once, Then, Something.” And it’s contagious … after reading his discussion of the poem and reflections, mythology, biography and literary devices, I now deeply love this poem, too. Maybe you will as well.
Christie:
Bring the House Down by Charlotte Runcie is a story told through the eyes of Sophie, a newspaper art critic who is attending the Edinburgh Fringe Festival with her colleague, Alex. Alex is a theater critic who, after writing a scathing, one-star review of a one-woman show, meets the show’s creator, Hayley, and sleeps with her. Hayley turns her rage public, and it does not go well for Alex. These characters are all well-drawn, but they’re also pretty unlikeable. Sophie’s misplaced sympathy for Alex and her internalized misogyny are wearing, but it definitely got better toward the end. What made the novel worthwhile to me was its exploration of the ethics and responsibilities of reviewers: what do they owe the artists they critique? The story examines the imbalance of power between critic and creator and questions about who gets to determine the value of art. The novel also looks at cancel culture and what to do about shitty men, without offering easy answers.
I just read Culpability by Bruce Holsinger. Thanks to Katie Hobson and her Three Great Books newsletter for this recommendation. The novel explores issues of culpability and moral responsibility in the age of AI through a family drama that takes place mostly over the course of a week-long family vacation on the Chesapeake Bay. The story centers on a fatal car accident involving a minivan driven by AI, and characters include an AI bot, a lawyer, a philosopher/AI expert, a rich tech bro, a star lacrosse player headed to college on a D1 scholarship, and a daughter whose best friend is a bot. The issues the novel examines are interesting and important, and the story does a pretty good job of getting into them, though the writing was often a little too on the nose for my taste. Even so, I enjoyed the ethical quandries and story.
Choosing Your Battles
You can’t unpick the mariposa lily,
you can’t uncatch marlin from the sea,
you can’t unsay words you didn’t mean,
you can tell your fears to me.
You can’t refeather the macaw in black,
you can’t put meteors into reverse.
A broken heart can’t be returned,
but you can apologize first.
You can’t unburn a charred marshmallow,
you can’t change a marmot into a snake.
You can’t uncry or unscream or unhit
but you can learn from your mistakes.
And you can be renewed by a mountain,
you can replant the seeds of marigolds,
you can unlearn what you thought you knew
and make gratitude your goal.
You can’t uneat a mushroom,
and you can’t reschedule the moon.
But you can unneed what you thought you must have
and you can unshould yourself, too.
Where a mustache has rubbed, you can’t unchafe,
Are Martians unreal? I’m not sure.
But the reins were never really in your hands,
though you truly believed they were.
The magnolia blossom will never refold
into a tiny bud.
But you, if you choose, can revive and rebuild,
and repeace and rehope and relove.
—Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer
*
I know, weird, a rhyming poem! But two things led to me sharing this one today—first, it appears to be the only poem I have ever written that includes Martians (albeit briefly). Second, it’s my brother’s birthday, and he has long complained that my poems don’t rhyme … well, this one does. I wrote it years ago for a book for kids. Happy Birthday, baby brother!
Writing Invitations
Write a poem that goes back and forth between what you can and can’t do.
Bonus: Play with rhyme.
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Two Questions:
(share your answers with us here on Substack or in our FB group)
What author has most profoundly influenced your own writing style?
What is your favorite recent rabbit hole?
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