In some form or another, there is one question I’ve been asked at every reading of Photo by Broom. “What inspired you to undertake such a massive project?” It’s a simple question, and one, we’d think, that most writers should be able to answer without hesitation. So here’s my answer, succinct, and without hesitation. I was never inspired to write Photo by Broom. And to answer three other common questions just as succinctly, no, it’s not about my family, yes, it’s entirely fiction (though many of the experiences that the characters endure are based on actual events, both in history and in my life), and no, I’m not Scots-Irish.
At the point where I deny being Scots-Irish, I usually tell this story. Eons ago, 1956 to be more precise) I turned 13 and became a bar mitzvah. While often interpreted as good deed, what mitzvah really means is commandment. So, when a Jewish child goes through the right of passage at 13, he is bar mitzvah or she is bat or bas mitzvah, the son or daughter of a commandment. I have to admit, in my case anyway, my right of passage was not what you would call transformative. I went from being a gawky, immature twelve-year-old tween (I don’t think the word had been invented yet) to a gawky, immature thirteen-year-old dork. I didn’t swear. I didn’t like to get into fights. I didn’t smoke or sneak alcohol (except for once when Jerry Blatt and I found his dad’s liquor cabinet unlocked and helped ourselves to Sunday morning cocktails. All I can say about that morning is that it’s a good thing that neither Jerry nor I were driving yet. I digress, but only to serve the points, first that everything in the book was nearly pure or only slightly adulterated fiction and based on no one that I’ve ever known. And second, that on November 10, 1956, the date of my bar mitzvah, the day that I was first called up to the Torah as an adult in the eyes of Judaism, I must have mysteriously woken up Irish that day and wasn’t aware of it. I say that because when kindly ole Rabbi Sachs called me up, he announced me first by my Hebrew name, “Ya’amode, (Stand up) Khunan Tovel ben Rev Mier, and then by my Irish name, Hal Horowitz, the son of Mr. and Mrs. Mac Horowitz. I rose and stepped to the lectern amid an underpinning titter of laughter ranging from giggles and twitters to my own father’s hardy guffaw. In one brief tick of a second hand on an otherwise obscure Saturday morning, Rabbi Sacks redefined me.)
Then I return to the subject at hand: inspiration. Inspiration specifically for my novel. As I said, there was none. What there was, was drive. I was driven to write this story, and to complete it under a moving-target deadline, my late wife’s passing. In our first year together we agreed that Barb would support us while I focused on getting my work either published or produced. The deal was “one year” of writing with the reward for failure being the return to my real job (which is what happened).
Barb had been very ill for a long time. She also read everything I wrote. And there was never a question in her mind about me getting my work published. It was only a matter of time. Unfortunately, in 2023 and 2024 it became clear that time was running out and I became determined to finish a publishable work that she would enjoy in whatever time she had left. I finished the first draft in February 2023, and although far from what the book was destined to become after several other drafts, Barb read Photo by Broom and loved it. She was certain it was a story worthy of publication. In January 2024, Barb passed away. In March of that year, I published Photo by Broom.
That unknown deadline provided the impetus for its completion. Hardly inspiration.
The follow-up questions to that answer are usually along the lines of, “Why Scots-Irish? Have you ever been Scotland or Ireland? Why not a Jewish family?
No, I had not yet been to either. So why Scots-Irish? Specifically, because they were not Jewish. For some reason I decided I wanted my next work to be about three people that shared the same name (Thomas I, Thomas II, Thomas III) without confusing the reader. Ashkenazi Jews (those whose lives in the last few centuries were centered in areas of Eastern Europe) simply do not name their children after living people. They honor the memories of the dead. Photo by Broom is about living people who were engaged with their families, fathers and sons, grandparents and grandchildren, all while still walking around and breathing. The other thing I wanted to avoid was caricaturizing or stereotyping my characters. Too often cultures are identified by the ethnic names of the people who move around in them. Broom was intended to be a meaningful story, not a cartoon of itself. Somehow Photo by Goldberg or Photo by Bellini just didn’t quite cut it for me.
Another critical factor was getting the book written within my self-imposed deadline of someday-soon. My solution to that was to write the book as a trilogy, one for each Thomas, of novellas. I decided to create the middle Thomas’ (Tommy’s) story first. Tommy Broom was just five years old when he stepped off the train in Chicago with his father, Thomas, to start their new lives. A trilogy of novellas.
I’d like to point out here that Photo by Broom was not the book’s original title. That was a bit more prophetic, Forward Tho’ I Cannot See. That was an inspired title, taken from Robert Burns’ poem, Ode to a Mouse, the same poem from which Steinbeck took Of Mice and Men. A quick anecdote about the title. I was in love with it, but my editor was adamantly against it. He said no one would remember a title like Forward Tho’ I Cannot See. I challenged him and I lost. I had three beta readers and my daughter who edited two versions of the book, and none of them, not even my daughter, could remember its title. How, my editor asked me, can someone recommend a book, no matter how good it is, if they cannot recall its title. So out with the old title and in with the new.
I say Forward Tho’ I Cannot See would have been a more prophetic title because I could not foresee that my characters would have more words to say than I intended to put in their mouths, more spontaneous actions, actions of which I thought they were not capable. What happened next was a phenomenon that I believe many writers experience. My characters started talking to me. It was benign at first. They wanted more words to say or more actions to perform. Then they wanted their thoughts and feelings to manifest themselves in ways I hadn’t intended. They wanted to be noticed, heard, seen, recognized. They wanted their histories revealed so readers would understand them better. And they wanted to survive. And the more they wanted that, the more they argued with me to get it.
Books I and III never got written. Book II just kept growing and falling into place as I fought with my characters and ordered them to behave themselves and listen to me. Words flowed. Chapters became longer. Backstories were created. Characters grew and changed. And so did the book.
That was not inspiration. It was pure drive, push, impetus, commitment, maybe, but not
Inspiration.
And yet…
And yet, Photo by Broom has been on the market for two years. A smashing success? Not yet, but ready for its big break. (If only its sales were as strong as its reviews.)
Barb encouraged me to rewrite it, to give the characters a bit more dimension, to clarify a bit of this, a bit of that. And so, I did. I was determined to complete my manuscript in less time than I’d written the first draft. But it wasn’t inspiration that I felt. It was drive. On the other hand, isn’t that was drive is? Internal inspiration?