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 misguided agenda for Chicago? To ask about a trauma surgeon’s claim that we could change public opinion about guns by barraging the public, in the wake of a mass shooting, with graphic photographs that capture the way a bullet ravages the human body.