The Theory of Evolution
by
J B Kohl
I grew up in a town of 2100 (yes, you read that right—two thousand one hundred) people in the Platte River Valley of eastern Nebraska. The nice thing about living in a small town is that everyone knows your family. The terrible thing about living in a small town is that everyone knows your family.
If you’re out past curfew, your parents find out. If you give Mr. Treptow, who likes to drive his tractor at 15 mph in the middle of Highway 6, a well-deserved middle finger salute when you finally get a chance to pass him, your parents find out and ground you from the harvest dance. If you accidentally fart in Phys Ed after eating too many bran muffins, an editorial on The Etiquette of Flatus appears in the weekly paper. Everybody knows everything about everyone. No secrets. None. Nada. Zilch.
Sure, a small town is great. And I have lots of good memories of the Norman Rockwell-esque summertime baseball games, pep-rally bonfires, homecoming parades, Christmas carols on snowy evenings, combines in the fields at harvest time, and Thanksgiving football games in the backyard.
But an inevitable side effect of small town life is the compulsion to walk the straight and narrow—be good, don’t say anything to embarrass your family, don’t belch in public, and always always stand up straight. Nebraska people are hard-working, honest, and loyal. And I’ve worked hard to remain a true Nebraskan even now, 1200 miles away in eastern Virginia. For example, I still don’t belch in public. And I rarely eat bran muffins--unless I’m alone. Naturally, my early writing reveals my whole-hearted desire to walk that straight and narrow path, afraid to disappoint my fellow statesmen, my parents, or my in-laws with tales of murder and mayhem and random violence.
I used to wonder what would happen if I used profanity in my work. Would my parents die of shame? Would my in-laws sue for custody of their grandchildren? Would a sign appear on the outskirts of my hometown “JB KOHL GO AWAY. AND SHAME ON YOU.”? I was paralyzed by the thought.
My first novel consisted of a mystery surrounding a burglary rather than a murder. It was awful—devoid of the grit that makes life real. It was so bad I don’t even know where the manuscript is now. Maybe I saved it and it’s someplace upstairs in a dusty corner of my attic, being eaten by spiders—a justifiable death for such poor work. Or maybe I burned it and threw it away. Doesn’t matter now. It was nothing more than a byproduct of the straight, unbendable road I was on, where skies are blue and yards are green and the guy always gets the girl in the end. It was time to shake things up a little bit—either take a curve at breakneck speed and see what happened or, better yet, get off the road altogether.
My next work involved murder—lots of it. It wasn’t my best work and wasn’t really worth submitting anywhere, but by the time I’d written the last page, I’d proven to myself that I could literarily pick up a knife and hack someone to bits without bursting into flame. I could write pages filled with four letter words and sexual innuendo without remorse. I could write something the way it was meant to be written.
Liberty, thy name is prose.
But here’s the thing . . . I was writing like that because I figured I’d never let anyone read it. It was my dirty little secret, something I didn’t discuss in polite company. Oh, of course I admitted to writing, but I never admitted what I was writing.
Eventually, however, writing in a vacuum wasn’t enough. I craved feedback. I needed someone other than my husband to look at my work. And so it was that with a raw manuscript, teeming with broken Midwestern ideals, I decided to test the waters. I sent some of the chapters to my parents. They are both great writers and I knew they wouldn’t do something as condescending as patting me on the head and saying, “Good job, honey. Now go back to practicing medicine. And don’t stay up too late.” But would they be embarrassed about what I’d written. Would they be disgusted at the thoughts running around in their daughter’s brain? Would they shuffle their feet and try to find a polite way to show their disapproval? It wasn’t so much the style of my writing I feared to have criticized; it was the content.
To soften the blow, I instructed them to imagine that it wasn't their daughter who wrote the sex scenes, it was an old yellow-toothed cigarette hag. They laughed and said they’d try.
Well, they loved it. They laughed at the right spots. They felt suspense at the right spots. And the work held their interest. They didn’t ooze enthusiasm, but they did give praise—and that was something. The feeling was incredible. I had single-handedly manipulated the emotions of my fellow humans—through the power of my writing. If I could get that kind of response from my own parents, could world domination be far behind? Clearly, it could not.
I showed my in-laws and a few select friends. And, although my mother-in-law could only admit to her fellow church-goers that “my daughter-in-law doesn’t exactly write children’s books” I wasn’t disowned. I still received Christmas cards. I was still remembered on my birthday. I was still loved.
I was officially out of the closet.
These days I don’t give much thought to who approves or disapproves of the content of my work. I write for my audience. When I read a book I want to be entertained. And so it is that when I write, I try to entertain those who will read the words I lay down. I don’t know if there’s a way to teach that sort of thing. Is it just life experience that leads a writer to this state of mind or is there a way to get a writer to understand it at a young age?
I wish I knew.
Last week I spoke to a group of young writers at a high school. They were filled with questions regarding their work—how do I publish, what if no one likes what I write, how does a writer avoid writer’s block, etc. But the girl who stood out the most was a high school senior who wasn’t allowed to read certain books or watch certain movies, the titles of which are unimportant.
This made me think of my childhood and my hometown and my parents and even my school. Not once, in my wholesome Midwestern upbringing was I told I couldn’t read a certain book or listen to a certain song. In fact, I can’t remember a time I couldn’t read. I can’t remember a time when my parents weren’t reading, when they didn’t encourage me to read anything and everything I could get my hands on. I thought about my high school teachers and the novels they had us read, everything from Five Smooth Stones to The Stand to Creek Mary’s Blood and too many others to recall now—books filled with all the stuff that makes a story compelling, that keeps the audience entertained, that makes the reader care enough to turn the page.
And so the latest mutation on my evolutionary journey took place last week, thanks to the smothered upbringing of one overly-protected adolescent. I may have led a quiet Midwestern childhood, surrounded by Midwestern ideals, but I was always allowed to venture out of that circle, to see what lay beyond, and to explore the depths of my own talent.
So to Mom and Dad I say thanks. I owe everything to you, from my rose-colored glasses to the courage to take them off.
By the way, it might interest you to know that I recently received my mother-in-law’s Christmas list. Item #3 on the list is as follows: Any book by J.B. Kohl.
Heh. Heh. Heh.
Bio:JB Kohl is the pen name for writer Jennifer Busskohl, who lives and writes in Virginia. In addition to writing fiction, she works as a freelance medical and technical writer and editor.
, was project editor for the 2010 re-issue of the first volume in the 
series and his debut collection 'With Deepest Sympathy' was recently published by Obverse Books. He is currently working on a horror anthology for Obverse and the complete collected works of 
.
