The Story

As the writer, John Passfield, is driving home from a December book-discussion meeting and thinking about the Christmas topics that were discussed – in particular, Dickens, who wrote a novella which transformed the world’s conception of Christmas – he suddenly finds himself sitting in a sleigh pulled by Rudolph and eight tiny reindeer. What an excellent opportunity to ask Santa about a seventy year old mystery – the mystery of the missing cowboy shirt.

The Making of The Cowboy Shirt

This journal records the author’s reflections on the process of the crafting of the novel as it evolved through the stages of planning, writing, editing and polishing. It constitutes an effort to be as conscious as possible of the process whereby the single idea that suggested the topic of the novel was expanded into a complex work of art. Topics range from the nuts and bolts of novel-building to the nature of the novel as an art-form.

Planning The Cowboy Shirt

During the writing of the novel, the author kept a hand-written notebook which records the day-by-day development of the novel as it found its shape and style. The notebook – now in print form – reveals how a vast cluster of thoughts was sifted, selected, structured and polished into novel-form.

The Project

Together, this novel, journal and notebook comprise the thirtieth installment in an on-going novel-writing project in which the author is exploring the concept of form and meaning in the novel, and of the novel as a form of expression in the 21st Century. All of the published journals and notebooks are available for free download.