Ask the Author: Patrick Gregory
Answered Questions (3)
Patrick Gregory
This book – and the idea for it – actually stems from a family archive and was passed down through the family of my co-author, Elizabeth Nurser over the last century. Elizabeth is the niece of the young man we have written about, Arthur Clifford Kimber. (And in a further twist Elizabeth is also my mother-in-law!)
The archive in question is made up of letters, photographs and sketches sent home to America by Kimber in 1917 and 1918 from France and is noteworthy because of its size and completeness as well as the insight it gives to the American war effort in WWI. We’re unaware of any comparable archive in existence.
Kimber carried the first official U.S. Government to go to the Western Front after the United States entered WWI and he wrote and sent home very detailed letters from the day he left California in the spring of 1917 until the night before his death in autumn/fall of 1918, a few weeks before the end of the war.
He wrote the letters at a rate of two or three per week every week over an 18-month period and he had arranged with his mother and brothers that anything he sent home would be typed up by them. They did indeed type them up and we’re glad to record that all 160 letters he wrote arrived and have been preserved.
The archive in question is made up of letters, photographs and sketches sent home to America by Kimber in 1917 and 1918 from France and is noteworthy because of its size and completeness as well as the insight it gives to the American war effort in WWI. We’re unaware of any comparable archive in existence.
Kimber carried the first official U.S. Government to go to the Western Front after the United States entered WWI and he wrote and sent home very detailed letters from the day he left California in the spring of 1917 until the night before his death in autumn/fall of 1918, a few weeks before the end of the war.
He wrote the letters at a rate of two or three per week every week over an 18-month period and he had arranged with his mother and brothers that anything he sent home would be typed up by them. They did indeed type them up and we’re glad to record that all 160 letters he wrote arrived and have been preserved.
Patrick Gregory
The best thing about being a writer is the same thing that appealed to me anytime I was making a history or politics documentary for radio. You’re in control of whatever world it is you’re trying to create. You’ve got yourself and your ideas – you don’t have to coordinate a whole retinue of others. You need a few simple tools. Maybe you’ve got a laptop, or maybe even just a pen and paper – in radio production-land a microphone and a little digital recorder. Then you’re away. Ideas can come out of your head and onto the page, or you can create a bit of audio. It’s freedom and it’s creativity. Anything you like, you keep. Anything you don’t like, delete. In the end you have what you want.
Patrick Gregory
Write something – anything – rather than leaving a blank page. Get something down on (electronic) paper, even if you end up changing it all the following day.
Even if you go to what you’ve written then and despair at its paucity, at least you have the kernel of an idea with which to work, or maybe a few facts or the odd nice description or phrase. You have somewhere from where you can pick up the following day; and you’re less cross with yourself when you go to bed!
Also, sitting at your desk, there are often a lot of distractions going on around you: TV, radio, internet, emails etc. It can sometimes help to get away from your desk and to go out to a neutral venue – a café perhaps – with ordinary writing material and a pen. Get some ideas down on paper, even if they’re in note form or in a list or some bullet points. Better out of your head and onto a page. You can’t forget them then!
Even if you go to what you’ve written then and despair at its paucity, at least you have the kernel of an idea with which to work, or maybe a few facts or the odd nice description or phrase. You have somewhere from where you can pick up the following day; and you’re less cross with yourself when you go to bed!
Also, sitting at your desk, there are often a lot of distractions going on around you: TV, radio, internet, emails etc. It can sometimes help to get away from your desk and to go out to a neutral venue – a café perhaps – with ordinary writing material and a pen. Get some ideas down on paper, even if they’re in note form or in a list or some bullet points. Better out of your head and onto a page. You can’t forget them then!
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