Open Letter to readers re: bonebag

The image came to me more than fifteen years ago: A boy living in a forest in a ramshackle cottage. His only companions? His strange and unloving parents. He has never seen another human being. 

Without too much thought, I knew this was a loosely disguised analog of my own childhood. I also knew it was a starting point for a much larger story, one that went far beyond the details of my life. I understood, too, it was a story beyond my own ability to tell. If the narrative were to reach its potential, I needed a partner. I thought of my son.

From his earliest toddler years well into his adulthood, there are pictures of Eli, his chin tilted down, his concentration steady, his eyes focused on the book in his hand.  But he was not only a reader. I knew he also had the chops to be a writer. Because of my own upbringing, I have few of the skills that typical American fathers pass on to their sons. I cannot throw a ball, or catch a fish, or build a doghouse. I have never held a golf club.  But I did know a little about writing. This was my chance.

He said yes. That was the easy part. Neither of us knew really what we were getting into. I had never written with another person. I have a hard enough time controlling my own bad habits. We had a starting point, but that was all. No process. No roadmap. Only an unwavering trust in the other’s imagination, intuition, sensibilities, and good will. We began by alternating chapters, laying out together what we thought might happen next. That worked for a while. But about half way through it devolved into a kind of organized chaos, made more chaotic still by our living in separate states. 

Early days, On a research trip to The Big Apple

You might think that two people writing one book would make the work go faster. Uh . . . no.

Still. word by word, the narrative grew. And grew. And grew. There is no GPS for writers. How could there be? They are navigating an unexplored landscape. So many wrong turns. So many dead ends. So many back- to-the-beginnings. But as lost as we sometimes were. we fought hard to keep our metaphorical  fingers on our protagonist’s pulse,  knowing, to borrow a trope from the great Vivian Gornick, that plot is only the situation. The real story is the character’s response to it. 

Miraculously, throughout the year-and-a-half that it took us to come up with a finished draft we had no disagreements. When I read the book now, I am still not sure who wrote what. Was that me? Or Eli? Perhaps that’s because I learned as much from my son as he might have learned from me. More even. More about writing. More about myself. More about him. 

Writing with my son was a tremendous gift. The result of that gift is BONEBAG,  our gift to you. It is an adventure about family, friendship, connection, trust, and wonder. High adventures in themselves and the very foundations on which the book was written.

All good things,

David