My Great Re-Education: I Wrote a Draft & It Wasn't Inclusive

Why is it taking me nearly a decade (more by the time I finish) to write my novel?

At first, it was because I needed time, experience, practice at writing. I earned my MFA to learn craft, meet mentors, crank out a rough first draft, which I submitted as my thesis. On graduation day, one of my favorite mentors Irish writer Mike McCormack said to me, “You have a much bigger story on your hands.” He didn’t explain further. We both knew what he meant.

But I buried that truth, fascinated by the idea of getting on some best 30 under 30 list. Then aiming for the best 35 under 35 lists. Still, with no published novel, I’m looking forward to that 40 under 40…

So, why is this taking so long?

The first novel I ever wrote is about loggers and miners in 1860s Lake Tahoe. I wanted to write a book about the trees and what happened to the forests I spent my whole childhood loving, exploring, and (turns out) misunderstanding. I still intend to write that novel.

Me at 2 years old, fixing my pants.

But to write about the trees and land or any physical place, especially historically and especially in America, one must also understand and include the people who lived there first. In my story’s case, the first residents of the Lake Tahoe basin from time immemorial are the Washiw people. Their nation lived mostly unmolested by Euro-American squatters until the mid-1800s. The height of their population ranged in the 3,000s and their landscape is rough, mountainous, with brutally long and deep winters, and an idyllic alpine gem centering their universe. Lake Tahoe was not, initially, a prime destination for landless, farm-seeking frontiersmen and women or homesteaders. It was a pass-through, an inconvenient hurdle on their way to California.

Around 1857, everything changed when silver & gold were uncovered near present-day Virginia City, which led immediately to 30+ years of aggressive denuding forests, damming rivers, fencing meadows, and yet another forced removal of people from their ancestral lands. Not to mention the attempted cultural genocide of their entire way of life.

It is important to note here that the Washiw people are one of the few Indigenous nations in America still living on some of their ancestral land and that their culture endures despite attempted genocide.

When I re-read the first novel I ever wrote, I find it ripe with sloppy sentences, weak craft, forced plot points, and a non-ending… That’s fine. I was 23 years old when I started writing that, 26 when I finished. Back then, I was just starting my 10,000 hours toward proficiency.

I also knew little about Tahoe’s full history, despite having grown up there. I knew almost nothing about the Washiw or Paiute people, or the previous 400 years of Indigenous genocide upon which the Union was founded.

Me at 30 years old, skiing at Tahoe XC.

My first novel is deeply Euro-American focused, written from the first-person perspective of a mythical “essential white American man” who roams a land void of other societies and democracies and experiences the wild west as a place of dangerous hope and promise for his personal Manifest Destiny.

My first novel was not inclusive, not in the least.

This reflects my education about U.S. history. My absent-minded exclusion of non-white people further erased their story while foolishly romanticising illegal colonization. I’d made it exciting with lawless gunfights, a murder to solve, and silver treasure at the end. I’d written yet another John Wayne, John McLain, valiant-white-male-hero-wins-the-west story. These are the stories I grew up on. Of course this would be the first novel I’d write.

When Mike McCormack told me, “You have a much bigger story on your hands,” he meant I had more research to do. He meant that a story about trees is not a story about loggers. It’s a story about the people and landscapes who were there first, those who are most familiar, familial, with the place we call Tahoe.

My book, it’s taken me years to realize, is about Tahoe before colonization, before the silver rush, before white people mucked it all up (yes, we really, really did). More specifically, it’s about the moment when all of that changed.

Which means I’m embarking on a journey that forces this question: How can I, a white woman of Euro-American ancestry, write an honest history of Lake Tahoe? To do that, I must fully re-educate myself about nearly everything I’ve ever known about my hometown, my privilege, even my language.

Oofda.

This is why it’s taken me so long to write one historical novel.

My intention with this newsletter is to help explore my feelings, share my research, and re-educate myself publically. My re-education will take a lifetime, it’s ongoing, which I’ll share with you (ideally) in these twice-a-month newsletters.

If this sounds interesting, let me know you’re out there: hit the like button or leave a comment.

I think this will be exciting. So far it has been terribly, exhaustingly enlightening. I hope you’ll join me.