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*****Rita Dragonette’s The Fourteenth
of September is #51 in the
never-ending series called INSIDE THE
EMOTION OF FICTION where the Chris
Rice Cooper Blog (CRC) focuses on one specific excerpt from a fiction
genre and how that fiction writer wrote that specific excerpt. All INSIDE
THE EMOTION OF FICTION links are at the end of this piece.
Name of
fiction work? And were there other names you considered that you would like to
share with us? The
Fourteenth of September. This
was actually a working title, first suggested by my Certificate of Writing
Instructor from the University of Chicago Graham School Gary Wilson as September 14. We quickly
changed it to The Fourteenth of
September to avoid confusion with September 11 and it held through
a lot of other options that were just too silly, ie "Judy's War,"
"All the Way Gone." 
Fiction
genre? Ex science fiction, short story, fantasy novella, romance, drama,
crime, plays, flash fiction, historical, comedy, etc. And how many
pages long? It's historical
fiction, literary. Vietnam is now at the 50-year point that qualifies it
as historical.
Has this
been published? And it is totally fine if the answer is no. If yes,
what publisher and what publication date? The novel was
published on September 18, 2018 (we tried for September 14, but books are only published
on Tuesdays !!) by She Writes Press. (https://shewritespress.com/)
What is the date you began
writing this piece of fiction and the date when you completely finished the
piece of fiction? I formally began
writing the book in January of 2003 and finished the draft accepted by the
publisher in April 2017. The final draft was turned in for publication in
August of 2017. Prior to August of 2016 I was not working on it full time.
Where did
you do most of your writing for this fiction work? And please describe in
detail. And can you please include a photo? Because I started a business at the same time I started the novel, I was
working out of both my home office and a series of residencies at the Ragdale Foundation
(https://ragdale.org/), an artist's
retreat in Lake Forest, Illinois, where I did most of the writing. At
annual Ragdale residencies I was able to totally focus and get months of work
done in a few weeks. Writers are given a room with both bed and desk in a
communal environment with other artists who all support each other in
maximizing this sanctuary of time. Ragdale is the former summer home of the
turn-of-the-century Chicago architect, Howard van Doren Shaw. The two main
buildings have a b&b feel. The grounds are spectacular--the last piece of
undeveloped prairie in the prairie state. Artists work in their rooms/studios
or anywhere on the grounds and in the public rooms. It's very conducive to
creativity and process.
Once I folded my last business (August
2016 when the manuscript was essentially finished) I kept my former office (Below) (a condo next to the one I live in) in an historic building in downtown
Chicago.
I bought it once I expanded beyond my tiny home office in the original
condo, where I worked as a part-time consultant after selling my public
relations agency. I wanted a big space that I could mess up and then just
close the door, separate from my living space so I would mentally transition to
a formal writing mind-set without distraction, that was comfortable (huge desk,
ergonomic chair, lots of shelf and storage space), and inspiring (it's filled
with art and "music"--ie a wall of album covers). It's also full of
light with large windows and a floor to ceiling bookcase. It's everything I
wanted in a comfortable, creative space. It makes me feel like a writer.
What were
your writing habits while writing this work- did you drink something as you
wrote, listen to music, write in pen and paper, directly on laptop; specific
time of day?
I started my career in journalism/public relations and was
trained to write as if in a newsroom, meaning you can't think if you aren't
typing. I work off a personal computer with a big screen and separate keyboard.
I've found this is most comfortable. It also addresses issues I have with my
neck after sitting for a long time and with my handwriting (nerve damage after
a car accident has made my handwriting illegible, even to myself). 
My eternal goal
is to come to my writing each morning for a minimum of three hours after
coffee, papers, exercise, around 9-10 am. I've yet to be that disciplined
and often am pushing myself later in the day to just sit in the chair and DO
IT. When I do, things happen and I get lost for hours. It's usually my neck
that tells me I'm done. My New Year's resolution each year is to do the morning
three hours.
I'm fueled by
coffee, diet coke and, if it's in the evening and I'm coaxing myself into a
writing session, wine.
What is the
summary of your fiction work? On September 14, 1969, Private First
Class Judy Talton celebrates her nineteenth birthday by secretly joining the
campus anti-Vietnam War movement. In doing so, she jeopardizes both the army
scholarship that will secure her future and her relationship with her military
family. But Judy’s doubts have escalated with the travesties of the war. Who is
she if she stays in the army? What is she if she leaves?
When the first date pulled in the Draft
Lottery turns up as her birthday, she realizes that if she were a man, she’d
have been Number One—off to Vietnam with an under-fire life expectancy of six
seconds. The stakes become clear, propelling her toward a life-altering choice
as fateful as that of any draftee.
The
Fourteenth of September portrays a
pivotal time at the peak of the Vietnam War through the rare perspective of a
young woman, tracing her path of self-discovery and a “Coming of Conscience.”
Judy’s story speaks to the poignant clash of young adulthood, early feminism,
and war, offering an ageless inquiry into the domestic politics of protest when
the world stops making sense.
Please
include excerpt and include page numbers as reference. The excerpt can be
as short or as long as you prefer. Excerpt is included as attachment
below. Page numbers are 242-246.
They had decided
they would all watch the lottery drawing at David’s dorm, since that’s where
most of them lived. However, after
his outburst about women, Vida suggested the girls stay together, and they all
agreed, except Marsha. Howie wanted her to be with him. So Judy, Vida, RoMo,
Sheila, and a few other women took places early, along the wall in the back of
the north TV room. Judy watched David and the others take over the front row as
the rest of the ecumenical crowd gathered, letterman jackets and army-surplus
fatigues. Greeks and freaks together, everyone in jeans. Denim and the war, she
thought, the great levelers. As the room began to fill, the guys practically
walked over the women, pressing them toward the last-row seats, then taking
over the standing room.
“What about space in the back?” an
irritated voice called out.
“That’s girls,” someone said.
Judy felt a wave of shame and grabbed
Vida, pulling her by the sleeve.
A blonde she didn’t even know looked
up as they left. Judy jerked her head, motioning her to follow as a look of
recognition and guilt came over her.
“I didn’t think,” the blonde said, once they
were out of the TV room.
“It’s all right,” Judy said, “me
neither.”
“Wait up,” Marsha called. “I told
Howie I couldn’t take up a seat. He’s sitting with David. I think he’ll be
fine.”
They joined a crowd of women in exile
in the adjacent student lounge. They waited.
“Ron’s been a mess,” one girl said,
furiously twisting her ring. “He looks at me, and it’s like he wants me to say
something, but I don’t know what.”
“Al, too,” another said. “And no matter what I
say, it’s not what he wants to hear. He can get real mad.” She bowed her head.
“It scares me.”
“I’m going to leave,” Marsha said. “I can’t
take this.”
“Stay,” Judy said, holding her by the
arm. Marsha sat down as Judy continued in a whisper, “Later won’t be any
better.”
“What if—” Marsha began.
“No, don’t,” Judy said, “not yet.”
They waited in silence, prayer, and
concentration. Hair was twisted, lips bitten; fingernails wouldn’t make it
through the night. They smoked, even if they didn’t. They played with their
pieces of paper that had birth dates of brothers and cousins and boyfriends at
other schools. Even RoMo knew that
Wizard’s birthday was January 30.
“I want to scream,” Marsha said, grabbing her hair with her hands and
holding her head between her knees. The smell of fear, something like sulfur,
thickened the air.
Sounds filtered through from the TV
room like little pockets of pressure, exploding as they called each number.
Sometimes hoots of relief. Sometimes the hiss of a loud, disbelieving expulsion
of air. Snap, crackle, pop, dud, silence. They couldn’t figure the code for the
noises. No one came out.
At one point, Judy could no longer
sit still. She went to stand just outside the TV room. The guys had turned off
the lights, and she could see the strobe effect over them as the images changed
on the television screen. A flicker, and she saw baby faces so tender she
wanted to fold them in her arms and take them home to be safe. Another flicker,
and she saw hollow eyes prematurely aged with fear. She shrunk down, lost her balance, and backed off.
Suddenly, Fish was running to her. He
picked her up and spun her around, as if it were VE Day on the Champs-Élysées,
then planted big kisses, wet as hell, all over her face. “I’m 327!” He fell to
his knees with a beatific look on his face and a huge smile. “I love you! You
know how much I love you?” He stretched his long arms wide. “I love you this
much.”
Judy laughed nervously as he turned
to RoMo and called out, stretching his arms even wider.
“I love you this much,” he repeated,
“on the map!”
She was confused. If Fish was 327,
they must be almost done. Could it mean that everyone she knew had a high number?
Could they possibly be that lucky?
Achilles walked out somberly, and she
held her breath.
“Ninety-six,” he said.
“That’s almost a hundred, Achilles.
You’ll be safe.”
“Yeah, great.” He walked past her
toward the elevators. “I’d rather it was just nine. At least I’d know. Now I’m
in no-man’s-land.” He stepped into the elevator, and she heard his voice die as
the doors closed. “Fucking no-man’s-land.”
She heard Marsha shriek and turned to
watch Howie come out, skinny and smiling.
“Take me to McDonald’s,” he said,
then engulfed her in a bear hug. “Three forty-three,” he yelled with a clenched
fist in the air and his old guitar-playing grin on his face.
David walked out slowly but
deliberately, his gaze fixed at a spot on the floor, about three feet ahead of
him. Judy could feel her fear rising, her heartbeat so intense it seemed to be
coming out of the top of her head. She wasn’t breathing. She would not cry. She
could not cry. She touched his arm and he stopped his march.
“Two thirty.”
She burst into tears and moved to hug
him, but he pulled back.
“But David, that’s nearly halfway.
You’ll be safe.”
“Yeah, lucky me,” he said and headed
to the elevator.
“Don’t follow me,” he called back at
her.
“But . . .”
“Don’t.”
Judy turned in circles as others
walked out of the room, not sure what had just happened with David. She
strained her neck looking for Wil, Wizard, Meldrich.
“We have a Number One!” she heard
someone say, followed by a chorus of disembodied voices.
“Number One. September fourteenth.”
Judy sat down in the middle of the
floor, jelly legs giving up. “My birthday, too,” she said out loud to people
who weren’t listening.
The post-lottery pandemonium went on
above and around her. Someone just walked over my grave, she thought, and then
had the sensation of dropping, like a heavy stone, accelerating. She tried to
steady herself with her hands on the floor. In my family I was supposed to be a
boy, she thought. It was to be a boy first and only then a girl.
“September fourteenth is my birthday, too,” she said out loud again
to stop her fall.
Judy felt she should find the Number One and
tell him that were it not for a flip of the chromosome coin—one extra more or
less—she would be in his place, random, just like the lottery. She really could
understand.
She tried to picture herself in a
uniform, a helmet, but the closest she could get was to see her little brother,
the same hair, blue eyes, and freckles. She tried to envision him older, so she
would know what a male version of herself would look like. She couldn’t make it
work. All she could conjure up was the image of a small man in fatigues with
the familiar face of a seven-year-old. This face and figure froze in her mind
as she felt the digit 1 burning into
her forehead like a private scarlet letter. This had to mean something.
She wandered
outside. It was December. The cold hurt. She took her hands out of her pockets
and forced them down at her sides as the icy air coated them, penetrating in
daggers of pain to the bone. It was the least she could do.
Can you give
the reader just enough information
for them to understand what is going on in the excerpt? It's December
first, 1969, about an hour before the drawing of the first Vietnam Draft
Lottery, which will determine the order of draftees going to Vietnam. The
previous night the group of friends featured in the book have had a fight about
if women can possibly understand what the men are going through.
Why is this
excerpt so emotional for you? And can you describe your own emotional
experience of writing this specific excerpt? The point of the book
is about women in war. Their experiences aren't the same as men, but they can
be equally important, critical, horrible, and patriotic. Virtually no one has
fictionalized the subject of the women in the Vietnam anti-war movement. It was
a time, on campus, when women were working side by side as hard as the men to
organize, support, etc. and yet, at any moment they could be marginalized with
a cruel comment: "Why do you care, your life isn't on the
line?" "You're a girl, you don't/can't possibly
understand?"
It reminded me of when my mother, who was
overseas for three years during WWII, would be cut off if she talked about her
war experiences (which were considerable--Patton's Army, liberating a POW camp
in Germany) by being told "You were just a nurse."
The intention of the entire book is to
present a female dilemma that is as close as possible to the decision the men
had to make at the time. (ie if drafted to decide to go to Vietnam or
Canada). To equalize the playing field, if you will. This scene
shows how the women were treated that critical evening of the draft lottery and
how they (in those early feminist times) felt and reacted to being shoved off
to the side and told they "didn't get it," when, of course they
did. This scene also explains why the book is called The Fourteenth of September.
Were there
any deletions from this excerpt that you can share with us? And can you please
include a photo of your marked up rough drafts of this excerpt. Per our
conversations, I was drowning in drafts for many years and didn't save the
early work.
Other works
you have published?
I was in public relations for most of my career. My writing
was not under my byline and was primarily business oriented.
There are articles I've written as part of
the book launch in the Media Tab of my website www.ritadragonette.com
I'm also working on
three other books which are described in my bio.
Anything you
would like to add?
Yes, your title is "Inside the Emotion of
Fiction." Though highly fictionalized, my
novel is based on personal experiences I had during the same time frame as my
main character and some of the other characters have back stories based upon
real people. Turning actual events into fiction--particularly if you're
involved as well--is probably one of the most difficult emotional tasks of a
writer. Though essentially most work has the writer in it in some fashion and
first novels are typically heavily biographical, it's still
traumatic.
The very urge
that compels you to tell the story is born of some type of pain. You worry
about how characters still living might react, how people will assume you are
the main character and try to figure how what is true, and you start pretty
locked up in a real story. I hated the thought of writing the scenes with the
mother, for example. I spent years trying to break out of "reality,"
and running into roadblocks because, as we know, reality doesn't progress in a
clear narrative arc. It was at a residency at Ragdale about ten years ago that
I finally let reality go. It was liberating, and at that point it also became
an actual fiction novel.
I still cry over
certain scenes, remembering the germ of emotion that led me to them, like the
excerpt I've included here. At the same time, I sob hardest over the death of a
character who was made up full cloth.
rmdragonette@gmail.com
INSIDE THE EMOTION OF
FICTION links
001 11 15 2018 Nathaniel
Kaine’s
Thriller Novel
John
Hunter – The Veteran
002 11 18 2018 Ed
Protzzel’s
Futuristic/Mystery/Thriller
The
Antiquities Dealer
003 11 23 2018 Janice
Seagraves’s
Science
Fiction Romance
Exodus
Arcon
004 11 29 2018
Christian Fennell’s
Literary
Fiction Novel
The Fiddler
in the Night
005 12 02 2018 Jessica
Mathews’s
Adult
Paranormal Romance
Death
Adjacent
006 12 04 2018 Robin Jansen’s
Literary
Fiction Novel
Ruby the
Indomitable
007 12 12 2018 Adair Valerez’s
Literary
Fiction Novel
Scrim
008 12 17 218
Kit Frazier’s
Mystery Novel
Dead Copy
009 12 21 2019 Robert Craven’s
Noir/Spy Novel
The Road
of a Thousand Tigers
010 01 13 2019 Kristine Goodfellow’s
Contemporary
Romantic Fiction
The Other
Twin
011 01 17 2019 Nancy J Cohen’s
Cozy Mystery
Trimmed To
Death
012 01 20 2019 Charles Salzberg’s
Crime Novel
Second
Story Man
013 01 23 2019 Alexis Fancher’s
Flash Fiction
His Full
Attention
014 01 27 2019 Brian L Tucker’s
Young Adult/Historical
POKEWEED: AN ILLUSTRATED NOVELLA
015 01 31 2019 Robin Tidwell’s
Dystopian
Reduced
016 02 07 2019 J.D. Trafford’s
Legal
Fiction/Mystery
Little Boy
Lost
017 02 08 2019 Paula Shene’s
Young Adult
ScieFi/Fantasy/Romance/Adventure
My Quest
Begins
018 02 13 2019 Talia Carner’s
Mainstream
Fiction/ Suspense/ Historical
Hotel
Moscow
019 02 15 2019 Rick Robinson’s
Multidimensional
Fiction
Alligator
Alley
020 02 21 2019 LaVerne Thompson’s
Urban Fantasy
The Soul
Collectors
021 02 27 2019 Marlon L Fick’s
Post-Colonialist
Novel
The
Nowhere Man
022 03 02 2019 Carol Johnson’s
Mainstream
Novel
Silk And
Ashes
023 03 06 2019 Samuel Snoek-Brown’s
Short Story
Collection
There Is
No Other Way to Worship Them
024 03 08 2019 Marlin Barton’s
Short Story
Collection
Pasture
Art
025 03 18 2019 Laura Hunter’s
Historical
Fiction
Beloved
Mother
026 03 21 2019 Maggie Rivers’s
Romance
Magical
Mistletoe
027 03 25 2019 Faith
Gibson’s
Paranormal
Romance
Rafael
028 03 27 2019 Valerie Nieman’s
Tall Tale
To The
Bones
029 04 04 2019 Betty Bolte’s
Paranormal
Romance
Veiled
Visions of Love
030 04 05 2019 Marianne
Maili’s
Tragicomedy
Lucy, go
see
031 04 10 2019 Gregory Erich Phillips’s
Mainstream
Fiction
The Exile
032 04 15 2019 Jason Ament’s
Speculative
Fiction
Rabid Dogs
033 04 24 2019 Stephen P. Keirnan’s
Historical
Novel
The
Baker’s Secret
034 05 01 2019 George Kramer’s
Fantasy
Arcadis:
Prophecy Book
035 05 05 2019 Erika Sams’s
Adventure/Fantasy/Romance
Rose of Dance
036 05 07 2019 Mark Wisniewski’s
Literary
Fiction
Watch Me
Go
037 05 08 2019 Marci Baun’s
Science
Fiction/Horror
The
Whispering House
038 05 10 2019 Suzanne M. Wolfe’s
Historical
Fiction
Murder By
Any Name
039 05 12 2019 Edward DeVito’s
Historical/Fantasy
The
Woodstock Paradox
040 05 14 2019 Gytha Lodge’s
Literary/Crime
She Lies
In Wait
041 05 16 2019 Kari Bovee’s
Historical
Fiction/Mystery
Peccadillo
At The Palace: An Annie Oakley Mystery
042 05 20 2019 Annie Seaton’s
Time Travel
Romance
Follow Me
043 05 22 2019 Paula Rose Michelson’s
Inspirational
Christian Romance
Rosa &
Miguel – Love’s Legacy: Prequel to The Naomi
Chronicles
044 05 24 2019 Gracie C McKeever’s
BDMS/Interracial
Romance
On The
Edge
045 06 03 2019 Micheal Maxwell’s
Mystery
The Soul
of Cole
046 06 04 2019 Jeanne Mackin’s
Historical
The Last
Collection: A Novel of Elsa Schiaparelli
and
Coco
Chanel
047 06 07 2019 Philip Shirley’s
Suspense/Thriller
The
Graceland Conspiracy
048 06 08 2019 Bonnie Kistler’s
Domestic
Suspense
The House
on Fire
049 06 13 2019 Barbara Taylor Sissel’s
Domestic
Suspense/Family Drama
Tell No
One
050 06 18 2019 Charles Salzberg’s
Short Story/
Crime Fiction
“No Good Deed” from Down to the River
051 06 19 2019 Rita Dragonette’s
Historical
Fiction
The Fourteenth of
September
http://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2019/06/51-inside-emotion-of-fictions.html
http://chrisricecooper.blogspot.com/2019/06/51-inside-emotion-of-fictions.html
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