As 2017 comes to a close, I offer up some thoughts on my journey as an author this year:
This time last year, I was working on the bibliography for Rebel Bulldog. So, I knew that it was going to be published. It was a good deal more work than I thought it would be, but it was great to be back in those sources and thinking about this manuscript on the verge of being a book. By the summer, I was looking at page proofs---and wonderfully surprised to discover that (thanks to my editor and the the Indiana Historical Society Press) this book was going to be lavishly illustrated with pictures from the Civil War era. By the fall, I was looking over concept designs for the cover, giving my approval, and waiting....not just for publication (which came at the dawn of December) but also for the chance to talk about the book: First, at the IHS's annual author's fair (also in early December), but increasingly (thanks to the awesome public relations director at the press) with media outlets ranging from newspapers to television to radio---some done, some published, and some more planned for 2018. For a book that started life as a "how-to" demonstration for my students in the Honors Civil War course back in 2012, this has been an incredible journey!
And all of that, really, would have been enough for me as a writer. But there was more! This time last year, I had another manuscript under review at a press. I had spent the better part of three years researching, writing about, and yes, visiting Disney parks to craft a manuscript on how the House of Mouse uses history to craft culture. And I thought I'd found my press. I had an editor who was excited about the project and it had been sent out for peer review. And then reality stepped in: Just a few weeks into the new year, and right as I'd just launched a new honors course on Disney and American culture and was preparing to take a long weekend in Orlando, I received one of the most gut wrenching emails I've ever found in my inbox. The editor, who just a few weeks before had been so excited, wrote that the peer reviewers had not shared her enthusiasm for the manuscript, arguing that it was "not critical" of Disney (both the man and company) enough to warrant publication. She was bowing to her reviewers, wishing me well and acknowledging that the changes they would want would create a fundamentally different book--one she was sure I would not want to write. To say that I was at a loss, would be an understatement! I literally read that email before heading off to teach my Disney class.
But that class was also wonderfully cathartic. My students were excited about the material. I felt confident that I had something. And so, I decided to contact Theme Park Press. True, this wouldn't be an academic press (which is where I'd always published before), but it was a press that specialized in Disney. I sent the press information and I waited. Perhaps it was fate, Providence, or just plain old Disney magic, but while standing in line at Epcot my phone "dinged". There in my inbox was an email from the editor asking for the full manuscript and sure that the project I called Dis-History was going to find a market! A few edits here, a few suggestions there, and before I knew it I was looking at page proofs. And one night, as summer started to give way to fall, just by chance I saw the book listed on Amazon! To be able to share my insights with students has been great, to truly reach an audience that would likely have never picked up a book published by an academic press, even more so!
And somewhere in the midst of all this, I came back to this blog. As I noted on my return to writing (after nearly 2 years of letting it lay dormant), there were selfish (or to put a better spin on it), public relation reasons for once again writing. But there was more to it than just promoting (now) 2 books: I'd experienced not writers block, but a degree of writers burn out. I'd been working on 2 different projects while writing this blog, and then I'd launched another blog for work (that required me to come up with content as well), and on top of that, some of the things I'd written about on this blog had been, for lack of a better term, distressing. I didn't want to write about those things anymore, and believed that if I didn't write at all, I wouldn't have to. But now I had things to write about, and blogging has a purpose again.
Those things are all good things when it comes to the life of a writer. Seeing your work published is always great. And along the way, finding new things to write about has been a process that has picked up as well. For the first time in years (literally) I didn't have anything to write about! But 2017 wasn't done with me yet. This spring, while visiting Washington, D.C. I stumbled upon the idea of doing something about Dwight Eisenhower. Likely that will be focused on Ike's reaction (both as Supreme Allied Commander and as president) to the Holocaust. But it might also include Ike and Cuba. I don't know, and that is just as exciting as being in the midst of a manuscript. Plus, you never know, I may make a return to some other Hoosier topic or even (and my kids would endorse this) revisiting some aspect of Disney! And so, as we prepare to meet 2018, I'm as excited as a writer can be.
As always, thanks for reading,
Jason S. Lantzer
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