\u201cThe sense of history, and especially southern history, was always present with me,\u201d said the Gainesville, GA native of his upbringing. \u201cMy parents never censored my reading. They let me read whatever I wanted to. We watched documentaries, we watched historical films, especially war films\u2014my dad liked those. I do not remember a time when the past was not a fascination and had things to teach me. I don\u2019t know if that makes it natural that I sort of gravitated that way.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n This fascination with history\u2014though not the catalyst for his interest in writing, which he attributes to the southern voice of Asheville author Thomas Wolfe\u2014has undoubtedly influenced Dr. McConnell\u2019s work. This influence can be seen in his 2018 debut novel The Wooden King<\/em>, where a Czechoslovakian historian is forced to make difficult decisions to protect his family during Nazi occupation in 1939. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Inspiration for The Wooden King<\/em> came from his travels to the Czech Republic where he taught Czech students and lived in a flat with its own strong ties to the past. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThese were the houses they lived in during the war\u2014these were the windows they looked out of and saw the Germans as they came through,\u201d he said. \u201cAgain, history; tangible history.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n It was through this flat that he was able to meet locals who gave important first-hand accounts of the war, which later inspired his novel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Of one of these conversations in particular, Dr. McConnell shared, with a smile, that \u201che got out these two little glasses, and he poured this Czech herbal liqueur in there, and he said \u2018this will loosen our tongues\u2019. And it did. And he had such wonderful stories to tell. I thought: I\u2019ve got to do something with this. How can I tell this to my American peers?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Dr. McConnell spent the next twelve years working on his novel, which went on to win the Gold Medal for Best Wartime Fiction published in North America by the Independent Publishers Association in 2018. During that time, when he wasn\u2019t working on his novel, he continued to teach in the English department at USC Upstate, where he just completed his 23rd<\/sup> year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n “For a kid from a little school, who thought he might want to be a writer and then this happened\u2026the encouragement\u2014that\u2019s what it comes down to.”<\/p>Thomas McConnell<\/cite><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n At Upstate, Dr. McConnell teaches creative writing and literature courses, where his own experience as a writer is invaluable to students. In his various creative writing courses, where students have opportunities to share and critique one another\u2019s work, he offers advice to students through the words of Gustave Flaubert: \u201cTalent is the long patience.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou\u2019re not gonna do your best work, and get the best words in the best order down on the page if you\u2019re not patient with yourself,\u201d he elaborated, later adding that this long game is important too, for writers trying to publish their own first novel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBe prepared to spend years on the project. Sweat and re-write. When Steinbeck was writing Grapes of Wrath,<\/em> he said it was like breaking down the engine of a Duesenberg and grinding the gears.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Dr. McConnell also offers advice to writers experiencing the dreaded writer\u2019s block. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s not any advice that\u2019s original with me, but it\u2019s monologue\u2026I think it\u2019s the kind of thing I wish I\u2019d heard earlier,\u201d he said, reflecting on how writing at times felt overwhelming. \u201cIf I had just come up with a character\u2014come up with a voice\u2014and sort of pushed them around on the page, it would have been so much easier.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n As for his overall role in mentoring young writers, Dr. McConnell knows first-hand the impact that a teacher can have\u2014sharing that a notable professor at the University of the South in Sewanee, TN, gave him a push when he was in his sophomore year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI wrote this thing about Alfred the Great, and turned it in, and he goes into class the next time\u2026and he starts reading a piece to the class\u2014and it\u2019s mine. For a kid from a little school, who thought he might want to be a writer and then this happened\u2026the encouragement\u2014that\u2019s what it comes down to.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Lauren Reitz Dr. Thomas McConnell talks upbringing, The Wooden King, and advice for aspiring writers For Dr. Thomas McConnell, growing up in the South meant growing up with a reverence for the past\u2014thanks, in part to living near his grandparents who had lived through the Spanish Flu, the Great Depression, and WWII. \u201cThe sense…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uscupstate.edu\/llc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uscupstate.edu\/llc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uscupstate.edu\/llc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uscupstate.edu\/llc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uscupstate.edu\/llc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=117"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uscupstate.edu\/llc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":120,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uscupstate.edu\/llc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/117\/revisions\/120"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uscupstate.edu\/llc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=117"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uscupstate.edu\/llc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=117"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uscupstate.edu\/llc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=117"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Thomas](\"http:\/\/blogs.uscupstate.edu\/llc\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/09\/thomas-mcconnell.png\")
<\/code>For Dr. Thomas McConnell, growing up in the South meant growing up with a reverence for the past\u2014thanks, in part to living near his grandparents who had lived through the Spanish Flu, the Great Depression, and WWII. <\/p>\n\n\n\n