Dawn Field, PhD
Dr. Dawn Field
July 20, 1969 – May 2, 2020
Dr. Dawn Field
from her bio on BookBaby
“The sky is crying
Can you see the tears
roll down the street?”
by Elmore James
I don't know how to begin this, except to say that for a person I never met face to face, nor even spoke to on the phone, Dawn Field was someone I loved. For her fierce insistence that writing is important, that my writing might could be as well. And every single word counted to her. From the first email I received in reply to a blind query I had sent her, she saw value in corresponding with somebody she would never meet. I suspect she was fine with that kind of Internet distance if not anonymity.
I teased that her email address, fiedawn@gmail.com translated to “Fie on the Dawn!” being a very Shakespearean expression, and she said it hadn’t occurred to her–which I seriously doubt; not much got by her. Great name for a website–maybe all I can make of her now.
Stevie Ray’s recording of Elmore James’s “The Sky Is Crying” keeps playing in my head.
We hardly ever discussed trolls on the Internet, though it seemed to be at the back of some of her earliest comments. And she was dubious of my claim at being a feminist–which spoke volumes about her views. My own sister, being an early women in a scientific field, had introduced me to the stolid ways of resentful senior (all male) scientists, and though Dawn never delved too deeply into her own experience, no doubt there were stories she could tell.
BookBaby is the blog site she often published on–and was where I first read an article of hers, a good one that gave pause. The short bio at the bottom of her piece said she was interested in helping authors develop their work. So I posed a question: how does one go about dividing a too-long novel into smaller chunks? Holy batshit, Robin! Lookit–she answered.
Typical of her responses, she never answered me directly, instead leaping into a discussion about ‘BIG’ and did I know what it was, could I write it? I sent her a first chapter of Kill Devil and she ripped it to shreds, ‘red praising’ as she called it, starting with the name: “You need to develop something regarding this place if it’s the name of your book; make it your story! And you can’t start a book about the weather, even if Charlie Brown’s dog did.” I’m paraphrasing. Or going off the reservation, as she might say.
She was a scientist with a literary bent–and I quickly learned that any author I had read, she had as well, and a few more. With a PhD in Molecular Evolution. Where I’d been slurping lots of coffee in the morning to wake up, she’d been a way busier woman. When I mentioned Gormenghast, she said it was a favorite trilogy. No one I knew other than Harry Bryant had read it, being too dense and brooding. From that I knew she was a serious fantasy reader–see, she gave me these clues.
Over the four or so years we communicated, we argued over everything because she was a demanding soul, not one to hide herself or spare my feelings. She hated misogynists like Molly the Rottweiler hated any kind of abuse. And I must have sent her into rages over how ignorant I was about fiction. While she studied to understand details and nuance, I skated blithely over top of subjects. Intuition, baby!
She hated my sense of humor, yet her own was pretty sharp. Nights when she’d begin an email chain at midnight and continue a dialogue for the next few hours before I finally had to go to bed during a workweek, those long sessions drove me to take up the novel I swore I’d never touch again.
If I ever considered not rewriting Kill Devil, now I have no choice.
Dawn worried about her son, then in high school. She and her husband had separated. On their own, or at least she was, and her son was living with her. Though she never told me his name–Ryan–even after I’d bled over my own son, talking about the poetry. I yelled at her to take care of herself for him. If you can’t take care of your son, what else is more important? I couldn’t find words strong enough to describe to her the pain a person feels losing close family. We had those conversations, too.
One day out of the blue, Dawn began sharing a first draft of a fantasy novel she typed on her cell phone one page or two at a time and sent by email. At first I wondered if it was someone else’s story–she liked to send stuff blind and get a reaction–was she being coy? I knew enough by this time not to ask–or tease her.
The story’s opening is in Victorian England, which she captures beautifully, a scene by a dock as vivid as Dickens. The draft fragments were full of misspellings and grammar mistakes because she was creating it on the fly. I’d get one version of a scene, then a corrected or expanded one in a day or two. This went on for weeks, a couple months; I’d think she’d dropped off, and there’d be another several scenes. Typed on her friggin cell phone! She explained it aided her writing. I’d get a blast of images, comment on them and get back her cryptic yet on-target responses. Did she ever pull the story together past the first drafts she sent me? Don’t know. A singular image of her young heroine flying at night over Lake Maggiore stays with me. She was sharing this wonderful fantasy, and she was thanking me for reading it? Thanking me? If she’d ever asked for my help to finish, I’d have leapt at the chance.
It always seemed there were only the two of us in a close correspondence and it was flattering–as much as I assumed she carried on multiple such correspondences. Her grace was in being able to touch people. I wonder who she was to those closest to her–nah, if this was how she treated someone she never met, I do.
This gets to the core of something that’s held me rapt since a teenager–I am drawn to certain people–and I expect others are as well–to a degree akin to intimacy—in simply how well they can communicate. Did Dawn really believe my writing was that good, or was I her foil for testing ideas? Either way, I didn’t mind, because she valued something in our correspondence, and I knew full well what I was taking away from it.
The last email I got from her was just this past April, and as usual it was short and to the point–would I send her my novel’s draft? No explanation why, only would I send it? Yes, of course, but what format? I never heard back.
Except that she was in the UVA hospital, I don’t know how she died and probably never will. Though it doesn’t matter for all that she gave me.
I’m getting too old for this sadness. I still need to talk to her. I just sketched out the climax scene in the third book and I need to tell her about it!
God help the living; the dead have already gotten past him (or her, if Dawn’s still listening).
Dawn Field’s Obituary
And the blog when I learned of her death:
Use Expressive Words To Build Your Story World
By Dawn Field May 16, 2020
Here’s an email exchange from last November… she called these Dialogues, a device she was developing to help writers with their structure.
There’s an irony in the dates of our exchange. While at ArchEx, an architectural conference in Richmond, I received an email telling me my services were no longer required at the firm which had bought us out; I was being retired by email.