Hooked

Les Edgerton knows what he’s talking about. His eBook, Hooked, lays down the law about how to begin your novel—and how, most likely, your beginning could be much, much better. Making things worse, he doesn’t just expect you to take his word for it. He gives plenty of examples that buttress his point, like Island of the Sequined Love Nun by Christopher Moore, a book now on my to-read list. Look, here’s the deal: I know my writing has been changed for the better as a result of having read Hooked. I now approach everything differently.

Having said all that, it’s not that Edgerton’s research is the last word on how you should write your novel. After all, that’s up to you, and he doesn’t pretend it should be anything otherwise. What he offers is a kind of road map on story—a little like Bickham did—except with far more emphasis on the opening bits, which are, at least in the sense of one’s writing being a commercial endeavor, the most important.

At first the terms are a bit overwhelming (especially when Edgerton talks about the ten core components of an opening scene, blasting you upside the head with shoptalk terms you’ve probably never dreamt of), but as one reads on it becomes clearer. In fact, I highlighted the crap out of my Kindle edition because Edgerton constantly drops in these little nuggets of truth and profundity that sit up and beg for it. Examples? Sure:

“The first time a scene ends in success, the story is over.”

I’m like, WHAT?!

“A protagonist should not gain anything easily.”

Okay, yeah. I knew that. No really. I did.

“Summary doesn’t convince anyone of anything. Write that down.”

Hey Les, look: I wrote it down. And now I have a bunch of fluffy crap I need to go and delete elsewhere. Thanks a lot.

In fact, Edgerton’s book is so chock-full of great resources, you should stop what you’re doing right now and download it. Seriously. If you fancy yourself a writer, if you’re an indie author, if you’re published and agented and signed and successful, you should read it. It can only help you, and Edgerton points out other excellent resources too, like Bickham’s Scene and Structure, and like another I haven’t quite gotten to yet, On Writing Well by William Zinsser (I’ll just take Les’s word for it that it’s going to be outstanding when I finally do get round to it).

I’m not joking, this book will change your professional life as a writer. What I found most alarming as I read through Hooked is that I’d been trading mostly on instinct and raw talent. The emotional quotient to that, at least as an author, is pretty much just stark terror. I was ignorant of the structure, the rules, the order of Story. And I called myself an author?! Now that my mind has been peeled open a bit, I’m soaking this stuff up like crazy. I really can’t recommend it highly enough. Go get yours now.

Scene & Structure, by Jack M. Bickham

I found out about this book in the process of reading another eTome; Hooked, by Les Edgerton. Edgerton’s is an instruction manual for the modern author that induces a lot of #facepalm action, to say the least, and Bickham’s Scene & Structure is the same (More on Hooked in another post). In other words, if you’re an author or writer, or even an aspiring wannabe with good intentions and several partial chapter ones lying around, these books ought to be on your reference shelf. Period.

I edit manuscripts. I’m quite good at it, but this book has been a godsend, allowing me to refine my craft. Mostly what I’ve done in the past has been to follow my gut and play devil’s advocate, asking questions the author hasn’t thought of. I drop comments like this into the middle of everything: “If Jack is so smart, how come I figured Jill out three chapters ago? ARGH.” I also have an eye for spelling and grammar, which has served me well. But Scene & Structure goes well beyond all that, and it’s going to help me provide much more value for money to my clientele, as well as an increase in my rates.

On with it, then. Bickham starts small and simple by giving us the big picture. He outlines the structure of modern fiction, tells us how to begin a story and what’s essential—and furthermore, what needs to get deleted from or changed in our manuscripts (which in most cases will be a quite a lot).

What really hooked me, though, was his detailed analysis of the scene.

Scenes are where the action is. We see the characters on the stage of the mind’s eye, which isn’t a stage—it feels real. Edgerton calls it the “fictive dream,” which is apt. That’s why it’s so electric when it’s written well—and so awful when it’s total crap. Bickham’s book will illustrate for you quite profoundly if your work is in one camp or the other, because if you don’t have a story question that the protag has to answer, if you don’t have a scene question he’s also trying to answer, if you don’t have a scene goal he’s trying to attain, and if the scene doesn’t end in some kind of disaster—a setback—for the hero, you’ve got milquetoast on your hard drive. And miles of rewriting before you’re home.

Contrast that with sequel, which is really the antidote to scene, and you’ve got something with a pattern, a pace, an ebb and flow. Scenes drive the story forward. They contain problems and cause-and-effect stimuli. They’ve got guns and daggers and car chases. They goad us into turning the page. But sequel allows the characters to take a step back and internalize. Sequels read slower, so they’re usually more effective when they’re shorter. In a sequel, we get to see more of what the protag (or the villain) is thinking, what makes her tick; we get the backstory. We understand more of the why behind a character’s actions, and the author gets to set up the next scene for us. But in order to do this well, Brave Author needs to write effectively for Dear Reader. As “they” say, if you’re gonna break the rules, first you gotta learn ‘em. I would add that one ought to add a dash of reverence as well, because the greats are great for a reason.

The biggest danger to the indie author, who nine times out of ten is ignorant and uneducated about these things, is that most of us can “feel” our way through what makes a story compelling. But just because we can write by gut feeling doesn’t mean we should. It’s dangerous to guess your way through the disarming of a bomb. Maybe it will be the red wire that needs to be cut, but maybe it won’t. This plays into Booker’s SevenBasic Plots, too, because all of us have a hard wired intuition about story. We may not be aware of the precise nomenclature or structure of what makes a story work, but we know when it rocks and when it’s a dud. Bickham demystifies all that and reveals to the reader (the aspiring author) whether or not he’s been trading on hard-won skill and understanding or just raw talent. Ouch.

I cannot stress to you enough how important this book is. If you’re trying to make a hobby out of writing, it’s a stimulating read. If you’re at all serious about making a career as a published author, this book is required reading. As for me, I’m going to incorporate these lessons into my writing and editing. I’ll soon finish Edgerton’s book, too, and post up my thoughts on that. These two books are changing everything about my writing—and that’s a good thing.

The Dangerous Expert

You know what I’m talking about already, don’t you: that guy. The guy who watches a documentary on Afghanistan and suddenly becomes a foreign policy expert. The housewife who hears from a friend of a neighbor that so-and-so only won X Factor because so-and-so is related to the ex-lover of one of the judges’ former roommates, and don’t you think they ought to sue. It’s called armchair quarterbacking, and it’s epidemic.

It even works on Amazon.

Not to pick on my personal gravy train, but I think there is a point where readers' remarks officially get out of hand. Aided and abetted by technology, the Dangerous Expert is out there…somewhere anonymous, usually…with corrective measures just a notch or two beyond pithy.

Certain people among us, usually those personality types who take it upon themselves to police the entire world, have been reading blogs and books on writing and have become expert literary critics. Well, I say. Their mission is nothing shy of forcing all writers into the same perfect box. That’ll be lovely, won’t it. And there shall be no room therein for criticism of any kind, because all books will be automatically excellent. By their definition, of course.

There shall be no personification. The moon cannot have its own agenda.

There shall be no short sentences. Fragments. Know what that is? Bad style. Not debatable. Green squiggly lines underneath. Crap, in other words, and the Self-Appointed Expert shan’t deign to read it.

There shall be no love at first sight. Such things are not realistic, and as such, they get the double strikethrough treatment, as they deserve.

There shall be no freedom of expression. All new authors are to study, refer to, and conform to the styles that have been laid out by “established authors,” i.e. those who are real professionals and have contracts with one of the Big Six. Any style that differs is invalid.

The indie houses are to be discouraged, punished, demoralized, scolded, talked down to, and ridiculed at every possible opportunity, usually with comments such as, “Get an editor you fool,” or “I can’t believe it’s not butter.” Okay, scratch that second one. It IS BUTTER. And that’s why you HATE IT. 

In short, what mankind has unleashed upon the earth is nothing new under the sun. They used to be called busybodies. Gossips. Ne’er-do-wells. Their rallying cry was their narrow vendetta, and it still is. Today their fuel is an ill-advised doctrine of the Correction of the Wrong, of which I am apparently one. Because I write in fragments. And because my characters don’t need all of Books Two and Three to fall in love because they’re conflicted or confused or one of them happens to be a werewolf. And because celestial bodies, in my world, are anthropomorphic and have their own agenda. It’s clearly ridiculous, but you know what? I liked it when I wrote it, and I still like it now. I think it’s frickin’ cool. And so do thousands of other people, who are buying the crap out of the crap I write. The world is made of magic and fairy dust and sentence fragments and that’s why I love it. And that’s why my evil agenda cannot be stopped. Cue evil laugh here.

Convenience Store Rage: A Fantasia

With a name like Gideon Ernest (the surname need not be mentioned here), he would either turn out to be a wimp or a ladies’ man. There could be no middle ground; that much we know and we’re sure of. That he was small of stature placed him firmly, by the hand of the all-powerful author, in the camp of the former, where all the kids prefer to stay inside on hot summer days, in the air conditioning. It’s safer. The big bad world outside occasionally jumps up to bite you, unlike the softly upholstered innards of the prototypical suburban house.

But appearances can be deceiving. Good authors know this; that’s why we put characters like Gideon Ernest into the word processor and hit frappe.

Gideon Ernest, for instance, may have looked like a dweeb, he may have tipped the scales at just over a hundred and twenty pounds wearing his birth control glasses and his trademark white button-down shirt and black polyester trousers…but he was a killer.

They say clothes make the man. But a real man makes his clothes do whatever the hell he tells them to do, even if it means broadcasting a certain image that doesn’t quite line up with the truth. In Gideon Ernest’s case, he had a reason for looking like a total nerd. And for working at the local Seven Eleven hawking Slurpees from noon to night. It is a reason no one will see coming.

Appearances can be deceiving. We’ve said that before. But that was precisely why he had been written into life: to confuse the crap out of the reader for as long as possible.

Because that’s what good writing means.

Take this, for instance: Gideon Ernest walks to work on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and sometimes Sundays. Why? Because he’s selling you something. You the reader may think he’s selling you pseudo-cute nerdiness and the occasional chilled beverage or Slim Jim. You may even snap into all that. But what he’s really selling as he walks innocently into the Seven Eleven for the millionth time is the idea that he’s just your average innocent pantywaist. Mister milquetoast is selling you the idea that his shirttails are connected to his white cotton sock tops by way of elasticated stocking garters that keep everything just so. It’s a uniform he wears. It’s always the same, day in and day out. Why? So that authors can deceive readers so thoroughly that eventually the readers are so taken with the ruse that they actually want to be deceived.

The change occurs. It begins skillfully, so that the reader does not perceive its germination. A customer, one of the regulars, is at the Slurpee kiosk, self-servicing sloppily, getting some Coca-Cola flavored slush all over the machine, and it drips onto the floor. This sort of thing has happened millions of times before. This selfsame customer has also, many a time, strolled right up to the register and then held up the line by ordering a different brand of cigarettes, preferably ones that Gideon Ernest has to search for, each and every time. But today, the customer suddenly remembers that he wanted to buy five different kinds of Lottery tickets, insisting on paying in cash—using all his loose change. Most of it is nickels and pennies.

And when that happens…

BANG!

Gideon Ernest turns out to be Billy Badass. He appears to be a freak of modern science. His white button-down shirt begins to rip asunder, revealing mountainous slabs of tanned and bulging muscle. His polyester trousers were designed to have “a little give” in the seat and thighs, and God knows as Gideon Ernest his body never availed itself of such a textilic engineering marvel, but as Billy Badass the fabric begins to show signs of strain. Indeed, as the metamorphosis progresses, the trousers inexplicably shed their lower extremities, now appearing to be a sort of beachcomber gentleman’s capri, complete with jagged hems just at the top of his now bulging and shapely calves.

His glasses remove themselves from his face as his rapidly growing—and tanning—body rips his white shirt into miniscule shreds that fall away and disappear without a trace. The glasses, having barely escaped their own kind of doom, now transform into a shiny black male robot hawk. The hawk cock swoops around the room shrieking its fury at the various convenience store patrons, wide-eyed customers holding Twinkies, bad coffee, useless newspapers, and the odd half case of piss water domestic beer. The mechanized black bird returns to its master’s now prodigiously wide shoulders, spreads its wings, lowers its head, and shrieks once more.

Billy is now fully manifest, an awesome replica of the perfect Tom Selleck moustache now perched upon his upper lip. Billy Badass then reaches beneath the counter for what one can only assume will be the sawed-off 12-gauge. But ah, dear reader, thou dost assume too much. The author is still ahead of you by a mile, and this will be a cliché of an entirely different sort. From under the mild and unassuming Seven Eleven counter, Billy Badass, purveyor of fine low-cost dessert wines and certain smutty periodical publications, produces a gleaming custom made masterpiece of weaponry.

At least five feet long, as much for the visual effect as anything when this story goes to print as a graphic novel, his weapon is a Gatling gun with five barrels, already rotating with electric whir, ready to fire, fed with belted ammo. Only the ammo, naturally, isn’t ammo. No, to satisfy certain requirements for irony, the belts that feed this monster are linked to the change drawer in the cash register.

Billy Badass, who is now incidentally glistening with sweat and covered with grime from the pyrotechnic explosions that just went off in the cigarette case overhead, stands under a shower of sparks and winking fluorescent lights as he lowers the pentapotent muzzle of the weapon into the face of the regular customer.

Again, the reader expects Billy Badass to speak his lines a certain way by now, now that the author has established certain cliché criteria. But that’s where dear reader is wrong again.

You see, Billy Badass isn’t a man at all, and the robot cock isn’t what, certainly by now, you’ve assumed, is a sidekick. No, in fact, the ungainly eyeglasses-cum-transforming bird is the master, and Gideon Ernest-cum-Billy Badass is his wee little pet. Therefore, when he speaks, the language is garbled and unintelligible by all but the most rabid fan of Battlestar Galactica.

Yes: Billy Badass is a Cylon drone.

And all of it conspires to produce the Everest of accomplishment for any author: the moment when the reader says, “Whoa. Didn’t see that one coming.”

And then Billy, formerly Gideon Ernest of the Seven Eleven and now robo-puppet of the Cylon master race, speaks, his finger on the trigger of his Gatling money gun, his handy autotranslator dipping into the dank commonness of the English language of the Earthlings: His voice gnarled and metallic, his says with extreme prejudice, “Keep the change!”

We hear the ratatattat, we see the offending customer blasted by spare quarters and pennies, jerked up and back off his feet into the Hostess pies display case, everybody else dives to one side, Billy is standing there like Rambo blasting everything with his five foot long gun, holding it with one arm, screaming in rage. The robo hawk takes flight just as the ceiling gives way under a massive fireball caused by a supersonic dime slicing through an exposed gas main, and the whole place goes up in flames.

The robo hawk flies away to its mountain lair.

A new plan will soon be hatched.

And Book II will be out soon. This is how it’s done.

On the Rebuttal

I’ve written rebuttals before. Mostly they’re about revenge, to most people, and they used to be about that for me, but I have since grown up. Much like Les Edgerton, who seems, though I don’t know him apart from his digital persona, like a grownup as well. I prefer grownups, for the record. I tend to distance myself from people with childish attributes unless they’re actual children.

Thank God, then, for maturity, which is one of the things this has been all about. If you’re grabbing for clues, let me toss you one: I’m talking about my original piece on writing in the present tense, Center Code, and the subsequent rebuttal piece that Les so graciously allowed me to publish last week. This is the followup to all of that cerebral verbosity.

So feel free to tune out if you’re a casual observer.

I just want to address a few things about what Les said in regard to my original post. The examples of prose that he demolished were entirely my own. In fairness to me, they were not written with any degree of consideration beyond rough illustration. They weren’t taken from any other work. They were custom-belched for that blog; save the last example, which was taken from K: phantasmagoria, my upcoming novel. The criticism he gave me on that was admittedly painful for a moment, but it made sense: I can do better.

That’s the primary perspective I want to share about this whole thing; that criticism is a tool to be used, not a weapon wielded toward destruction. Ideally. How it turns out is entirely up to You The Writer. You decide how to look at it. I’m choosing to use it as an opportunity, personally.

Now, on to my defense. This is a sticky wicket, because I have a considered reason for wanting to write in present tense that I can’t reveal. K: phantasmagoria pivots on it in a major way. It’s an experiment that I want to keep pure because I want to get raw and unfiltered reactions to it upon release. So I have to be careful what I say here and trust that Dear Reader has the desire to hang in there with me. But trust me, I’m not just doing it to appear different.

No, part of me is doing it because I just want to (figuratively) raise the middle finger to the rules-makers. I feel I know enough of the rules to make my own now. That could be dangerously hubristic, I know, and I see the contradiction inherent, trust me. But I’m one to do what I want to do, and just because, once my mind is set, and it is in this case. I think I have good reasons too, but I can’t share them all, as I said.

I don't know if I've yet said this in regard to present tense vs. past tense writing, but for me, there's a believeability issue in stories written with past tense narrative and present tense dialogue. Les asserts that we all assume that the story has already happened. Two things with this: One, I think his assumption about that assumption is kinda fallacious and uses the broad brush. Two, if the story has already happened, am I reasonably expected to believe that the storyteller was able to remember all the dialogue that happened from then to now verbatim? I think if we're going to go down that road then we ought to carry the train of thought all the way through to its logical conclusion, and to me, it makes more sense arguing in favor of present tense and Center Code. Logically, writing an entire book in past tense is like writing a novel that is in its entirety a flashback.

On that point: I didn’t get the memo on flashbacks. I mean I was suspicious of them in general, but I didn’t know that the rules provide that the first sentence only is written in past perfect and the rest in plain vanilla past. Anyway, I don’t really like that solution. It feels like a Band-Aid. It could be because I’ve read mostly non-fiction for entertainment. It could also be that my tastes in fiction run toward Arthur Conan Doyle and H.P. Lovecraft and Jane Austen and Rudyard Kipling and Bram Stoker. And don't confuse my love of these past tense books for a love of the past tense.

But all this in turn could explain my penchant for semicolons. I like ‘em. I think they have a defined and unique purpose that imputes a certain meaning to the phrase they modify. I don’t think em dashes are a good replacement for them. Em dashes, as far as I've ever heard, are to be used more often to set off parenthetical phrases. But I like my dictionaries aged to one hundred years or more, so I may be behind the times myself. The point: I’m on board the flashback-hating bandwagon. I think they’re way overused these days, and show either lack of forethought on the part of the writer or plain laziness and/or ignorance. I’m plenty ignorant all on my own as well, and don’t think I don’t know it. But I firmly believe flashbacks need a damn good reason to be considered, let alone used.

Here’s the deal: what I’m getting at with my Center Code theory is that I want to try to make a book feel more like a movie, like something that’s playing out on the screen. I want it to feel like it’s happening now, like it’s unfolding right in front of me, like I’m part of it, like it's bespoke and custom-made and intense and real. I don’t feel like that when I read mass market fiction these days. Maybe I’m not reading the right books. Maybe I’ve got a lot left to learn (bingo!). But dammit, this is something I want to try, and try my own way. Let the readers decide. Let the reviews come rolling in. Let the winds of publicity howl. Let the pot be stirred, and let it be known that I’m the one stirring it; it won’t bother me. And let the masses buy the book, he he he. I shan’t discourage such things. And while we're on the topic of stirring, thanks again to Les Edgerton for a stirring discussion. Here's to more.

The Great Heroic Writer

I recently vacationed at the Oregon coast. One of the adult evening discussions briefly centered on the act of writing. I have a dear friend who fancies herself a writer but hates the act of writing. Believe it or not, I understand that completely. Sometimes creativity is hampered by the act of creating.

I had another brief discussion last week, this one online and with someone else; someone who believes they have a great idea for a novel—though it would be their first—and they wanted to run the idea by me. Mainly, though, they were asking me a direct question about how to get started. I told this person, “the great mysterious secret of how a writer starts a book is simply this: Just start.”

It’s the same basic problem in both cases, I think. Both of these writers have everything they need in order to begin to produce their art. They have the desire. Talent. Concept. Even a modicum of skill. All they’re lacking is the action of taking the first step in a direction. Quite frankly any direction will do. It takes many years to know that this is true from experience, but the journey is about the journey, not the destination.

If I have any hope for my fellow writers out there, it’s that they eventually, if they’re not now, become dauntless. It’s a difficult thing, to be sure, writing down in words what eventually becomes some kind of story. It doesn’t matter what kind of story it is, fiction or not. That’s not even the hard part. The hard part is opening up the heart, the place of origin for these stories, to the world at large. Every artist faces down the demon of Criticism at some point. It’s mostly an internal battle, that one. But it’s one worth winning.

How to Properly Submit for Publication

Hello, infidel...Allah is calling...

My best answer to the question? Don’t. It’s just that simple, and I’ve said it before: You don’t need a publisher. Not these days. And not, certainly, for what you’ll get out of making a deal with the Devil, which amounts to about 15% on the high end, and that’s if Beelzebub likes you. Or if you drive a harder bargain than Faust. The purpose of a publisher today, ideally, is to influence submitted works so as to hold the industry to a higher standard. If you’re enough of a self-starter, you’ll hold yourself to a high standard all by your lonesome. You have a greater need for a U.S. Marine Drill Instructor editor than you have for any kind of publisher.

But I suppose I ought to answer the question I posed. What’s the best way to submit your work to a publisher? You don’t want to waste your own time, and if you’re counting on being published by the publisher to whom you’re submitting your work, you sure as hell don’t want to waste his time. So: As the acquisitions guy for a small and innovative publisher, I can tell you I don’t want to have to sit down and attempt to chew my way through a submission (elementary grammar and spelling completely aside) that has been written by someone who hasn’t yet made profound discoveries about himself personally and applied it to his writing. But on with the Obvious Rules.

Obvious Rule #1: Submit according to guidelines. If you can’t be bothered to read half a Web page on how the publisher wants to receive your work for consideration, then why should a publisher be bothered to do anything with your submission but pitch it into the circular file? Usually, publishers ask for Times New Roman 12pt font, double line spacing, and that the work be sent as .doc or .docx files—you know, impossible draconian stuff—but not always. Look at it like a job interview: if you’re incapable of meeting the minimum stated requirements, why even try? Move on to something for which you are qualified.

Obvious Rule #2: Submit edited work, not a rough draft. Okay. Submissions can also be like a first date. You want to show up finely groomed, with a high polish and a pleasant aroma. It boggles the mind that so many authors submit work that lives in a cardboard box and smells like pee. Crude, but the comparison is apt. If you have a good story idea and you know it, but you’re having trouble with spelling and sentence structure because of public school, don’t submit your work until it’s showered and properly dressed.

On a personal note, anything with unicorns or wizards is a non-starter. I’m just sayin’.

Obvious Rule #3: If you find Obvious Rules #’s 1 and 2 too difficult, you’re not a writer and you should make yourself useful in some other industry. If, however, you’re a little hurt but mostly challenged to prove me wrong by fulfilling to the best of your ability Obvious Rules #’s 1 and 2, then congrats. You’re most likely both called and gifted.

Oh, yes. Gifts come from God, just like rights. But just because you might be gifted to be a writer doesn’t also mean it’s your right to be published. And that brings us round to the point: It’s all about perspective. Gifts have a purpose, and that purpose must be fought for in order to come to full bright; in order to fully become what it is. But don’t fight the publisher. This is an internal battle.

Perspective is like a good hard punch in the face. I’ll tell it like this: I recently got a critique of my work that was totally and completely unexpected, like a bolt out of the blue, and it was deliciously blunt. I’ll share more on that in another post, but it’s enough to say that when I received it I realized I’ve been looking for this specific criticism for a couple of years now. I hope you too can experience this…when the time is right for you.

There’s a fine line between faith and presumption, and we cross it at our peril. If we’re gifted for a certain thing in life—and we know it—we must tread carefully away from the sense of entitlement. We’re not owed anything. 

An Hour with Alan Heathcock

I recently attended a reading of Volt, with Alan Heathcock, at the Boise library.

It may seem to most of you that I’m quite cultured and jet-set, experienced to the point of boredom with all the finer aspects of the literary culture, but that ain’t necessarily so. This event was the first of its kind that I have ever experienced, and it was enjoyably unique. I’ve played trumpet recitals and been a drummer (on more than one occasion), but this was completely different.

Though it wasn’t quite the same as the poetry reading scene from So I Married an Axe Murderer, it was satisfyingly highbrow. Mr. Heathcock’s reading was a little like the above scene, but also a lot like listening to an old-time Midwestern preacher wax eloquent for a while on some illustrative anecdote. It’s really indescribable, how Heathcock sounds when he reads, but it’s good. More of a performance than a reading, per se. He’s from Chicago, after all, a place from which both sides of my family hail, and for at least a few generations, and Chicago ain’t for sissy la la types.

On to the material: Mr. Heathcock is one of us: he has struggled under the whip of the muse. She can be a harsh mistress, and Alan fully understands this, having written two attempted novels only to watch them fall “like a house of cards” toward the final stages. Therefore his methods have changed over the years, and he has been known to sit for hours before the keyboard imagining the details of the world he’s committing to paper, before a single keystroke is exercised. He calls this “imaginative preparation.”

Maybe that’s why, according to him, it took 12 years to write his latest short story, Volt. What little I was able to co-imagine at the reading certainly seems to be high grade, and worth the wait. Alan says that he’s “never not a writer.” I can relate to that. It is a conscious act for me to walk away from my storytelling; I get brainwaves at all hours about that one last niggling thing that needs my attention in the story I’m crafting, and it will send me no matter what to my notebook so that I can write it down. But why do we writers work so hard all the time? It can be summed up in another Heathcock nugget: “I think writing is an act of hope.” So that’s why.

I can’t recommend more heartily the work and the man, who, though we met only briefly, certainly seems to be one of the good guys, a quality individual who is a genuine part of the community of writers, of people here in Boise. As Vincent Zandri has said, “Boise is the new Paris.” That very well may just be so, but time will tell. With the talent cropping up around here, I think our chances are good.

On Writing, by Stephen King

Coming up with recommendations for writers is a sticky business. For me, that is. I can’t avoid my own eclectic tastes spilling over into my work, and for some reason I feel as if I should temper my output toward what’s more generally acceptable. But after a moment’s thought, I’ve decided that’s complete crap and I’m going to move on with what I think is best. After all, this is my blog and you’re reading it because you want to know what’s going on inside my head. Anyway, if you find out please let me know.

This week I have no decision to make, though. I’ve been so compelled by one book that I absolutely cannot wait any longer to recommend it to you. Next week I’ll give you something crazy, but for now…I may have touched on this book briefly here or there in previous posts. I’m talking about Stephen King’s On Writing.

Forgive me, but I think so highly of this book that I can honestly say that it is a monument to the craft of writing. A book for writers by one of the masters of the trade, On Writing stands, in my opinion, as one of the last words on how to go about it. Writing, that is. It’s honestly that good.

Here’s the caveat: you maybe won’t like all of it. King gives a bit of an autobiography toward the front of it that I personally found a little irritating. I was in a mooditude when I picked it up and wanted nothing more than for him to get to the #$@!^& point. But I pressed on, and when he served up the main courses my mind gorged itself without shame. If it could be compared to a five star dinner, I was at table with a bedsheet tucked into my collar and a shovel in my hand, bits of food and gravy peppered across my face.

Take, for instance, this little gem: passive voice. I didn’t really know what it was, though I had a sneaking suspicion that it was bad because all things wishy-washy and noncommittal are rubbish. Sure enough, it’s bad. Very bad. What’s worse, I was a prime offender. Blast. Ignorance may be bliss, but it’s a harsh mistress when it finally climbs off you and leaves you cold and exposed in the light of truth.

I cannot say this enough: if you are a writer, this book is required reading. No exceptions. Your local public library owns a copy. All your excuses are gone. Go forth, read and learn, and watch your writing transform under your very hands from blah to extraordinary. You didn’t know you had it in you. But you do.