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Writer’s Notebook Poetry Where Nonfiction Fails
Not long ago, I flew to Chicago with a list of phone numbers, an interview itinerary with several social workers, ER doctors, and victims of gun violence, and a book project that was already unraveling, although I didn’t know that yet.
[Matt Donovan, photo by Brandan Sodor]
More than a year into writing a journalistic exploration of guns in America, I had an agent, deadlines, punchy chapter subtitles, and a two-sentence handwritten mantra pinned above my desk:
Figure it out. Get to work.
Given the structure and premise of my planned book, “getting to work” often meant jetting off to different locations to ask a single pre-determined question about guns. A few weeks prior to arriving in Chicago, I’d traveled to Cody, Wyoming, to speak with teachers, parents, and the town’s sheriff about a new proposal to arm public school staff. Soon, I’d be spending the entire day with a ballistic detective in Cleveland. And my misg