Isaacs credits Writers Group with good feedback
Charles Isaacs’ fourth publication, “Into the Streets: An Antiwar Love Story,” is back on bookshelves with a new title and a little less weight. The revised manuscript is the result of vigorous writing and editing over the course of six years.
Isaacs, a 20-year resident of the Town of Newburgh, recently moved to Scotchtown, but has been an active member of the Cornwall Public Library’s writer’s group for nearly four years.
When he saw an ad for the group, he decided to give it a try and it quickly became the highlight of his week. The other members feel the same, which is why the group continues to meet for virtual sessions via Zoom.
A writer his whole life, Isaacs has approached subjects from political polemics to commercial real estate. He has been a schoolteacher, college professor, social activist, community organizer, real estate consultant, storyteller and journalist.
His undergraduate studies were in mathematics (LIU-Brooklyn), after which he attended the University of Chicago Law School, living on the city’s South Side during the time period of “Into the Streets.” His later graduate work was in the social sciences, earning an M.A. (New School for Social Research) and a Ph.D. (The Union Institute & University). His published work encompasses fiction, poetry and award-winning non-fiction.
In 2014, Isaacs released his first publication, “Inside Ocean Hill – Brownsville: A Teacher’s Education.” He explained back in the 1960s, while living in Brooklyn, there was a movement in New York City for community control of the schools, especially for people in communities of color, through the election of governing boards to run the schools. An experimental district was set up in the Ocean Hill – Brownsville section of Brooklyn and the teacher’s union went on strike once the governing board started to exercise power. Never happy with the historical records on the event, Isaacs decided to write his own book in response.
From there, Isaacs decided to try his hand at fiction and released “Riot: A 1960s Love Story” in 2015 and “Avenging Angel: Love and Death in Old Brooklyn” four years later.
Prior to publishing “Avenging Angel,” Isaacs spent seven months writing what would later become “Into the Streets.” Set in Chicago during 1968-69, the book is about two antiwar activists who fall in love and have to deal with a hostile mayor, building up to the protests around the Democratic National Convention which took place that summer.
“It just came to me one day,” Isaacs said. “The original idea was to create a fictional character and write about the big antiwar events that took place in the 60s as experienced through the lens of this fictional character. Most of these are things I participated in. I never expected it would turn into a love story.”
Thinking it would span a 30-year period, the book, which features a lot of Isaacs’ personality and opinions in the characters, takes place during a single year. The text ended up being over 700 pages long and after attempting to find an agent, ended up self-publishing it under a different title.
“That was a disaster, so I set it aside and started writing ‘Avenging Angel.’ By the time I finished that, I knew much more about how the business works and concluded that the original book was too long for today’s market. I decided to shorten it, tighten it up, and retitle it to see if I could get it published again. It took seven months to write the original draft and two years to shorten it to a manageable length. I took out 200 pages of manuscript. That’s much harder than writing. And it worked. It’s a better book and I have enough on the cutting room floor to write another one.”
Isaacs credits the Cornwall Library writer’s group with helping him cut the book. Limited in the amount of time he had to share with the group, he would condense each chapter to about five typed pages. Feedback from the group also helped with the editing process.
“I killed a lot of the characters, including some who I really liked. That allowed me to take chunks out of it. I just kept going over and over it. I kept plugging away. I had to be very disciplined about it. I tried shortening it before self-publishing, but I was too close to it. We fall in love with our words. The second time around I was able to be more objective.”
The book is available online through sites like Amazon and Barnes & Noble, or wherever else books might be sold. For now, Isaacs is focused on promoting the book, but hopes to write a sequel to “Avenging Angel.”
