Live Bold. Be Brave.
Lessons from Murray Hall
Many years ago, I read about a person named Murray Hall who had died in New York City in 1901. I was writing a graduate school paper on Walt Whitman — specifically regarding the gayness of some of his poetry — when I stumbled upon Hall. And thus began a 20-year year journey to tell his story.
I wrote the first paragraphs and showed them to my friend Scott who urged me to continue. I flew to New York City and went to the public library to look up newspaper articles on microfiche about Murray. I can still feel myself in that library, turning that microfiche dial. There were several articles, as Hall was a fairly well known politician, and what emerged after his death caused quite a scandal.
I kept writing, even though I had no idea what I was doing. I would envision Murray walking down the street and decide I needed to know more. I bought, borrowed, and devoured dozens of books about 19th century Scotland, where Murray Hall was born, and 19th century New York City, where he lived most of his life. Gotham by Edwin G. Burroughs and Mike Wallace — it won a well-deserved Pulitzer — was invaluable. These books gave me some idea of the color surrounding Murray’s life, and the rest, I imagined.
I started the novel while I was teaching as a lecturer for the English departments of Cuesta College and Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, running back and forth between campuses. I had a baby and then another. I would write, research, revise, become overwhelmed and disheartened, shelve the novel, revisit it, fall back in love, and resume. At one point I stopped writing it and wrote a contemporary novel just to teach myself how to write a novel. I sent that novel to agents when it was finished. One NY-based agent said, I’m not sure about this book — working on anything else? I told him about Murray, and he said to send it to him when I finished the manuscript.
Another five years went by. I finished Murray, fished out the agent’s email address, and sent him 25 pages. Send the rest snail mail, he said, old school. I did. We signed a contract and he began shopping the novel around to editors at all the major publishing houses. That was February 2020.
A month later, all the schools were closed and a global pandemic was in full swing.
Rejections rolled in, and a few months later, the agent and I parted ways amicably. I shelved Murray again, and three years rolled by…
During that time, I turned 50, left teaching, bought a motorcycle, signed up for art classes, and started doing audio journalism for our local public radio station, KCBX — things I’d wanted to do for a long time but had postponed. I signed up for psychedelic therapy, healed some childhood wounds, sold the motorcycle, and pulled Murray off the shelf.
One recent weekend, semi-sick with Covid and thus housebound, I self-published Murray on Amazon. It took me hours and hours to format the book and design a cover, but I did not allow myself to start reading it again. It’s been over three years since I read it, and I’m a different person now. I would not write the same book today. But I wrote it — and à la Seth Godin, I shipped it (Godin is a creativity guru and blogger and the author of The Practice: Shipping Creative Work, which I just finished.) It was a labor of love and now it’s out in the world and now there’s room on the shelf for me to shelve something else.
This is what I wrote on Amazon as a description of the book:
Murray Hall lived in New York City during the second half of the 19th century. An immigrant from Scotland, he was known as a cigar-smoking, whiskey-drinking, poker-playing bon vivant. A Tammany Hall politician, Murray ran an employment agency and worked as a bondsman. He was arrested more than once and thrown into The Tombs — the famous New York City prison — and bailed out by his friends. He was married twice — his first wife mysteriously disappeared. His second wife had a daughter whom Murray adopted and doted upon. He loved being a father. He loved reading too and knew his favorite booksellers well, and they knew him, or at least knew his literary taste: Walt Whitman’s poetry, Havelock Ellis’s psychology books, Agnew’s Principles and Practice of Surgery.
The death of Murray Hall on January 16, 1901, shocked many people, including his closest friends.
Murray, it turned out, had not been born a man.
Sometimes it takes a long time. To learn, to grow, to write, to revise, to gain confidence, to reach out, to endure rejection, to lick wounds and grow bolder, and finally, to ship. If you’re an artist — if you’re someone making or writing or singing or composing or producing things, ship your wares out into the world — and don’t let perfectionism stop you. Just put your creations out there. And then make more art.
