The First Write-Through Completed

On the rainy afternoon of November 26, 2016, I typed the words “The End.”

Anyone who is a writer knows that this signals an accomplishment, a completion of sorts. I finished what I call “the first write-through” of Scandalous and Remarkable, the fictional biography of my paternal great-grandmother Leta Marie Scott, who was born in 1894, the youngest of six children of David Scott and Julia Snyder, and died in 1984, two days shy of her 90^th birthday.

In between, she grew up, lived through two World Wars (and several others), the Great Depression, the introduction of electricity, indoor plumbing, home telephones, the automobile, the radio, the television, motion pictures, record albums, 8-Track tapes, cassette tapes, the washing machine, the dishwasher and even the computer. She had two children, seven grandchildren and twelve great grandchildren. She lived through eight husbands and countless other short- and long-term relationships. She held jobs and spent time as a homemaker. Sometimes she was poor and sometimes she was comfortable. She could sew.

The idea of writing about her life sparked in me after she had passed away. I recall I was at a party with friends in New York City where I was going to graduate school (in theater). Shortly before that, my grandfather/Leta’s son-in-law shared with me that she was much-married and “didn’t really know she had a daughter” for part of her life. He handed me some newspaper clips and told me a couple of stories about her, including the first time he met her. At this party, I was talking with my friend Esther and another fellow. In the midst of the conversation, I told them that I had just learned that my great-grandmother was married seven times. The other fellow chose to continue with whatever he was talking about, and Esther stopped him. “What? Jerry, did you just say that your great-grandmother was married seven times?” She wanted to know more.

And so did I. While I knew my great-grandmother for twenty years, I knew nothing about her, not even that her last husband died the day before I was born. I remembered visiting her in her duplex apartment in East Toledo, that she had parakeets, that she gave us candy on occasion, that at some point she moved into a care facility, and that she converted to Catholicism. But her life before me had never come up, nor had any curiosity about her last name, which was different than anyone else’s in the family. But with the advent of this new information, the spark of some kind of creative work began to germinate. And I began to gather some information in bits and pieces. Finally, in September of 2010, I started writing. Over the subsequent two years, I have been simultaneously researching her life (and our family) and writing the story of it.

Over the ensuing years, I have spent countless hours at Oakland’s Family History Center, in the Toledo Public Library, in Ohio’s Lucas County Court House, on Wikipedia and a dozen other Internet sites, and countless hours speaking to family members on the telephone. My intention is to be as authentic to my great-grandmother’s life as I possibly can, as well as historically accurate. I have recorded my findings, organized my thoughts, speculated ideas and written actual pieces of the book as blog entries. This entry is #363, each one at least one page long.

And now here it is—the first write-through of the book. Eleven chapters (one for each husband, her childhood, her independent years and her senior years), and 397 pages (single-spaced, double-sided).

Now comes the rewriting. I believe that the best writing comes from contemplation, energy, the writer experiencing the story and re-writing. That is the craft. So I will begin.

Dear readers, thank you for journeying with me thus far. Over the next months, blog entries will diminish. I will endeavor to write one per month, but it all depends on how the rewrites go, as well as the status of the novel itself.

Onward!