It was the spring of 1987. Having resigned from the classroom after twenty-five years, I wanted to devote my time to writing about three trips to the former USSR. It would center around my being a US–USSR exchange teacher of English in a Soviet school. I was determined to let Americans know about the Russian students, teachers, directors, and friends I’d met; they had become special in my life and I wanted to show why.

As writers we make decisions, lots of decisions. Some of us feel comfortable writing whatever comes to us until we’ve completed a first draft. Others design outlines. Some combine outlines with drafts and then focus on places that need more attention. And still others compose and revise at the same time, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph.

I have been intrigued as a writer about how my process has changed. When I started to write this book more than thirty years ago, I split time transcribing clandestine cassette tapes and reading my notes, then beginning to write. I did not pay as much attention to the writing as to what I wanted to say. I chose Encounters with Soviet People as my title. It reflected my desire to write a book about the Russians, about my observations and understandings about the people I met and their culture; I would take a back seat. Then I tried another title, A Sense of Belonging: An American Teacher in Soviet Schools, which centered around my teaching English to Soviet students where I had spent most of my time. Writing that manuscript died, however, when Mikhail Gorbachev resigned on Christmas day in 1991.

Fast forward to 2016 and the Russian interference with US elections. I had since returned to the former Soviet Union from 1987–1994: two trips to Russia, two to Kazakhstan, and one to the new Russia. I resurrected my manuscript, but only one-third of it had been printed out; the information on my floppy disks had faded. But I was no longer the young yet unseasoned teacher-writer eager to thrust himself into the fray surrounding Gorbachev’s policies of glasnost and perestroika. I wanted to give accounts about the Russians I met, to promote empathy and understanding about them.

I reread the remnants of what I had written, but the writing was cumbersome, longwinded, and highly descriptive. I needed to begin again. I combed my files, letters, papers, memorabilia, and photographs, searching to recover memories of that remarkable time. When I began the new manuscript, I found myself composing and revising my thoughts; I was not willing to just “let it flow.” I am not sure where this choice came from. Perhaps it was my desire to slow down and take time to uncover new memories of that special time; hanging in with a sentence or a paragraph, I might glean deeper meanings. And maybe it was my two-fingers typing that was holding me from getting ahead of my thoughts.

I searched for a poignant title, one that would speak to what I wanted to say. I tried, Russians as People: Voices from the Last Days of the Soviet Union. Later, An American Teacher’s Odyssey in Gorbachev’s Russia. I was still convinced that it had to be a book about the Russians. I did not want it to be a memoir, which for me at the time seemed to be books mostly about people who experienced trauma, often in their childhood.

I kept writing and rewriting, composing and revising. My writing would tell me where to go. And ideas would arrive, sometimes when awakening in the early morning they would set me on a new path. I drafted and redrafted and redrafted … countless times searching for a meaningful account of my being inside Russian culture.

But the book was not coming together. My working titles were not pointing me in the right direction. I searched for more creative ones. A Teacher in the Rye: An American in Gorbachev’s Russia, which was based on a US reporter’s quote about me when I was teaching in Leningrad. With this title, I was beginning to write about myself in my encounters. Then I tried to be clever, with the title Teaching Reincarnation in Kazakhstan. That did not bode well, as it would only focus on what happened in my last school. Later I came up with the more inclusive, Inside the Matryoshka: Seeking the Russians. The matryoshka, Russian nesting dolls, set me on the path to incorporate this metaphor both for knowing the Russians and for knowing myself.

The writing progressed. Still, something was missing. I thought back to when I had first arrived in the Soviet Union in October 1985 with a tour group. We were to be guided by Intourist, the official Soviet travel agency, placed on a bus to behold what our guide directed us to. Except I intended to see what I would not be invited to see. I wanted to find “real Russians.” Twenty minutes off the plane in Leningrad, a young, attractive Russian mother with wild curls and two small children stepped in front of me. I met my first Russian before I encountered my Intourist guide!

When deep into redrafting, I had an epiphany: From my first moments in the Soviet Union I had been seeking to see behind what I came to understand was a “red veil,” my concept of the face of Communism that the Soviet Union projected onto its citizens, foreign visitors, and to the world at large. Intourist placed tour groups in international hotels, where Soviets were not allowed; conveyed the groups to historic sites throughout cities in special busses; provided private tours, e.g., to monasteries; and made sure that they went to beryozka shops to spend dollars. And red was omnipresent, everywhere, everywhere!

I devised a new title, Behind the Red Veil: An American inside Gorbachev’s Russia. It set me on the path to the book I completed. The red veil metaphor provides a theme that reappears throughout. Along with it, the matryoshka metaphor that enabled me to probe into inner layers of Russian life and thought––and into inner layers of my own matryoshka. The book has become the narrative of this American’s search to know himself as he sought to know the lives of Russians in the last days of Soviet society.

I began the search for a title early on when writing about my unique ventures in the former Soviet Union more than thirty years ago. Each time I tried a different title, the writing would take a different turn. When I returned to the book five years ago and reexamined what I had written, I knew a new title was in order. Experimenting with different ones, for me at least, opened new pathways to reframe what I wanted to say. My finding the right title led to the completed manuscript. When readers sense that the title and the writing match, they are more likely to stay with your book.