It's hard.

Note: Austin Kleon of Steal Like an Artist and Show Your Work recommends being as transparent as possible during the writing process: what you're doing; where you're going; what you're reading; how you're feeling. This is the first in a series of posts to share where I'm at and what I'm feeling.

It has been almost a century since the Babbs Switch fire killed 36 mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, and schoolchildren. Although much has changed over a century, basic human experiences have not. The cold sting of a December night. The pride in organizing a community. The joy and anticipation of a child at Christmas. 

Pain, sorrow, trauma, and grief.

As I develop this book, I ponder what these people felt. How did they reconcile what happened? How did they wake up every morning and face the day? When they were asked how they were coping, what did they say? All I can do is think of the traumas I've experienced and extrapolate from there.

On October 5, 2019, my brother took the lives of his two children, their mother, and himself, in our parents' front yard. In the coming days, I shielded my parents from media coverage, planned a funeral, and washed sidewalk chalk off my parents' driveway for the last time. I eulogized a five-year-old, walked past the embalmed bodies of my niece and nephew, and pulled it together to give a eulogy for the brother I knew rather than the brother he was on the last day of his life. In the weeks and months thereafter, I replayed my brother's life in my head, wondering what I could have done to prevent it. But mental illness and toxic conspiracy theories by definition defy logic.

My phone's lock screen.

My personal mantra became "Is, not if." This is what happened. This is my life. No amount of ifs​ will ever change it, so why torture yourself?

I wonder how many ifs were considered in the aftermath of the Babbs Switch tragedy, and I wonder how those affected responded when asked how they were doing. I know I always answer:

It's hard.

I don't know how many times I've uttered those two words in the last two years, but I don't know how else to respond. And, despite almost a century of dialectical evolution and expanding dictionaries, I imagine it's what the survivors of the Babbs Switch fire said, too. Unfortunately, some things—like the ability to describe the indescribable—don't change.

My goal with this book is to tell the stories of people who can no longer tell their own. That will take more than the just-the-facts-ma'am style of writing I learned as a journalist and legal writer. It will take time, and it will take work. In a word, it will be hard. But it can't be harder than what the Babbs Switch survivors endured, and it can't be harder than the last two years. 

Hard isn't always bad though. I'm reading and learning from some of the best writers in the country, and I learn more about Oklahoma history every day. Thanks for following along.

A first-time author's toolbox