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Notes on Writing a Book

 For a while, in this family, we have been writing about marriage equality.


A dream is to have some kind of young-adult book in the world, but I don't control the market, so I try not to think in those terms. Instead, I try to think about just writing down stories for my own two kids.


It's challenging to write for a middle-school world! Unless you are Michelle Obama or Trevor Noah. If you're MO or TN, the interest is already there--and you just need to recall your memories of childhood.


Each of those memories has a tantalizing, implicit message: All this happened, and I still became Michelle Obama.


Writing for kids, I'm surprised to find myself empathizing with certain intransigent lawmakers. In Massachusetts, before marriage equality became the law of the land, many centrist or faux-centrist lawmakers saw their job security in peril. If I vote to authorize marriage equality, then my conservative constituents may kick me out of my job.


To know this, and nevertheless to vote your conscience....when you yourself aren't gay.....That's impressive.


I'm also moved by certain families in rural pockets of Massachusetts who were living quietly in "gay arrangements." These people put their safety on the line when they shared their life stories with conservative politicians; if you're living under the radar as half of a secret lesbian couple, you give up certain comforts when you stop hiding the "gay" part.


People who told their stories were necessary. They were crucial to American history because--without those stories, it was easy enough for a right-leaning lawmaker, in a rural part of the country, to say: "I don't know any gay people. Gay people are odd, lonely, depressed hedonists who cling to America's two coasts."


The mind can be a lazy thing.


A big help in trying to write down stories for my kids has been Dave Grohl, who has one of the number-one books in America right now. Grohl is not a memoirist by trade, but he just applied songwriting tricks to the task of writing a book. "Don't edit, just record." If you have an idea, get it down; keep the self-censoring voice on mute. Also: "Don't bore us, get to the chorus." Go for the red meat: the confrontations, the awful moments of injustice, the gossip.


That's where we are at, for now.

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