![]() But over time I’ve come to realize that compelling stories are ones with an emotional core, and that I need to tap that. I initially resisted because I thought the more interesting subjects were my crazy father, his hippie friends, and my mixed-race brother who grew up off the grid in the backwoods of Appalachia. With “Brother Love,” The Common asked me to prune some passages about minor (but I thought colorful) characters and haunts, and to write more of my own thoughts, emotions, and reactions into the essay. The two responses I generally get from editors on my non-fiction pieces are that we need fewer words, and we’d like more of you in the story, please. My first drafts are generally longer than what any journal or magazine would want to publish, so my task is often to cut 2,000 or more words. When revising a piece like “Brother Love,” what steps do you take to transform your first draft into a finished project? How do you decide what’s important to keep? Those became the touchstones for the essay. Or the joy on his other dad’s face, when he danced to a brace of Indian drummers on Shawn’s wedding day. The look of grief on my brother’s face at 17, when he was a pallbearer at our dad’s funeral. The way it made me feel both special and grown up when my father took me to jazz club with him, when I was 14. The moment when he first handed this scrawny baby to me. Like the moment when my father told my sisters and me that we had a nine-month-old brother. Or maybe squinting at a landscape to make an impressionist painting and trying to capture the most vivid things in the frame. For me, it was a little like reviewing the tape of a home movie and picking the most emotionally laden scenes in a story that traverses 40 years. I didn’t write an outline or give much thought to structure. How did you navigate weaving the personal with the historical? How did you determine which moments in your life to highlight in your narrative? Your essay “ Brother Love” reads not only as a heartfelt meditation on how familial ties can be rekindled, but also as an intricate, personal account of your family history over time. She is currently working on a graphic novel about race and suburban motherhood. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Root, and USA Today. Tanya Coke is a civil rights lawyer and writer. Read Coke’s Issue 19 essay, “Brother Love.” The series is part of The Common’s 10th anniversary celebration. This interview is the seventh in a new series, Writers on Writing, which focuses on craft and process.
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