Les Edgerton's Blog, page 17
February 26, 2016
EXCERPT FROM MY MEMOIR...
Hi folks,
I've been editing my memoir preparatory to my agent sending it out and intended to do some cutting, but instead added a bit to it. I've left a lot out but this bit was interesting I thought, so am including it. It's near the end of the saga, right after Mary and I got married and we moved back to New Orleans.
Hope you get a kick out of it.
We moved to New Orleans shortly after we got married. We found a duplex apartment on Burthe near the Camelia Grill and Mary got a job at David DeLong’s salon a block away and I got a job at Busta’s at the Fairmont (Hotel) down in the CBD. I got to ride the streetcar to and from work each day and it was wonderful. We had a weird experience the first weekend we were in town. Just about broke, we decided to drive down to Grand Isle on the Gulf which I was familiar with—my Uncle Buddy before he passed away had a vacation home there and we used to visit all the time. Our plan was to do some crabbing and enjoy the sun and surf. It was a holiday weekend, Labor Day. A block away from our apartment, I discovered I’d left my billfold at home. We were already running late, so I decided not to turn back. That turned out to be a big mistake. On the way down is a town called Golden Meadow. There was a famous bakery there that I wanted to show Mary. When I was a kid, we used to visit it and they were famous all over the world—even shipping their goods to Paris. Golden Meadow also had another claim to fame. They were the site of a well-known speed trap. Since the oil bust a few years back, the town had fallen upon hard times and to make money the police department had set up a speed trap for unsuspecting tourists that had been publicized in New Orleans. A reporter had gone undercover and exposed the scam and we’d just seen the TV report. Just before the bakery, the speed limit was 35 mph which I was careful to observe, remembering the report. We went in. Mary was impressed and we bought some rolls and other things and then came out to our car. We jumped in and again, I was mindful of the speed limit. What I didn’t notice was a new speed limit sign just on the edge of the bakery property. That one lowered the limit to twenty mph. A block away down the road, there was an old clunker parked by the side of the road and an old guy in front of it on the road, waving his arms. Figuring he had car trouble, I pulled over to give him a hand. As soon as I approached him, he pulled out a gun from behind his back and stated he was a cop and had me lie down on the road where he cuffed me. For speeding. Out of nowhere, another car, this time a clearly-marked patrol car, appeared. I was put in the back seat and the uniformed cop told Mary to follow us to the police station. Some shit, huh? When we got there, the police chief who turned out to be the old guy I’d stopped to help, told Mary my fine would be a hundred dollars for both the speeding ticket and the fact that I didn’t have a driver’s license on me and that I wouldn’t be released until it was paid. We didn’t have a credit card and didn’t have enough money on us to pay the fine. We had a book of checks but they were from a Ft.Wayne bank and we hadn’t yet had time to open a New Orleans’ account and he wouldn’t take an out-of-state check. He said Mary would have to find someone to cash a check. Mary’s face was absolutely white. She had no idea where we were and her sense of direction was… how do I say this?... flawed, so I wasn’t sure she could even find her way back if she went very far. I think she was thinking the same thing. She left and I’m sitting there on a chair as the chief began taking info from me. When he got his paperwork done, he told me to stand up and follow him back to the cells. Another cop came out from some room and asked the guy if he was going to shake me down. “Nah,” the guy said. “I don’t think he’s got a hand grenade on him, do you?” If I had, it would have been hard to hide. I was wearing a t-shirt and a pair of cutoffs and flip-flops. He turned to me and said, “You don’t have a hand grenade on you, do you?” He was laughing. “Not this time,” I said. I wasn’t smiling. Neither was he. The guy came unglued and walked over and got me in a hold and the other cop came over and shook me down. “That isn’t funny,” the chief said. “Last week we arrested a guy and he did have a hand grenade on him.” They took me back to a holding cell and I sat there for three hours. Mary finally returned just when I’d about given up hope of ever seeing her again. She had the money and paid my fine and we left. Just turned around and went back home. On the way she told me why it took so long. She’d had to drive around to a bunch of little towns around Golden Meadow to try and find a place to cash a check. Most places were closed because of the holiday and the few she found wouldn’t cash a check from Indiana. Finally, when she’d just about given up, she said a manager at a supermarket had taken pity on her and cashed one for her. She might have been crying at that point, though she never admitted to that. A week later, we had another “adventure.” I snagged a job at Busta’s after going through a couple of interviews with him and submitting my resume. It was a great salon in a great hotel. The salon was just across the hall from the famous Sazerac bar and just down the block-long hall from the famous Blue Room. The rumor at the time was that Frank Sinatra kept a suite there with a year-long lease for $10,000 a night and rarely visited it. There was a front—page news story going on at the time about a murder trial involving furniture magnate Aaron Mintz who had discovered his dead wife one morning along with his mistress. It seemed clear it wasn’t the suicide Mintz claimed since she was found with the gun in her hand… what made suicide clearly not the cause of her death was that the gun was found in her right hand and she was left-handed… and she’d shot through a pillow Mintz’s legal team claimed she’d placed over her own head before pulling the trigger. I guess out of consideration that she wouldn’t wake anyone… Well, after I set up my tools and met some of the staff, a gorgeous young woman with long blonde hair swept into the salon, tossed the receptionist her fur coat and sat down in my chair. “Hi, Les,” she said. It turned out she was my first client. I wondered how she knew my name and that got cleared up quickly. She was Ruth-Ann Munitis, the aforementioned Aaron Mintz’s mistress. Ruth-Ann was also reputed to have been Dutch Morial’s mistress before hooking up with Mintz. She started talking to me like I knew all of these things—which I didn’t and only learned later. She told me she was taking over the salon from Busta and had read my resume and was going to need a salon manager and thought I had the kind of qualifications she would be looking for. In a daze, I excused myself from her and went to the back room where Busta was and told him what she was saying. He clued me in with the short version. That she’d bailed him out a few months ago when he was heavily into debt for cocaine and gambling debts and had become his financial partner. Then, things started going south, he said. She began taking over more and more of the salon and the last straw was when she told him she wanted all the stylists to start wearing tuxedos when we worked. At that point, he tried to pull out of the partnership, but she wasn’t standing for that and had her lawyers trying to take over and he had his lawyers fighting all that. Each night after the salon closed, he would take the appointment book and all the client records home with him so she couldn’t steal those and lock him out. It was just a total clusterfuck. And here I was, first day on the job, and right smack in the middle of it. He advised me to keep on her good side as she might win and I’d need a job. I didn’t know what to do. It ended up, I went back to her and told her I needed time to get up to speed on everything so if she’d be so kind I’d appreciate it if she had someone else cut her hair. That night, I told Mary all that was going on and she was in a daze. New Orleans was turning out to be very different from Ft.Wayne! The upshot was, I kept on working for Busta for another few weeks and Ruth-Ann would waylay me when I left for the day and I kept putting her off for a decision. The decision wasn ‘t hard—I mean this was the mistress of a mob-connected guy and it looked obvious she’d taken part in the murder of her boyfriend’s wife. I could get a glimpse of my future with her and it didn’t look rosy. Finally, I had to quit. I hated to since I really liked Busta and the salon, but then Mintz got acquitted and Ruth Ann got even bolder and it was time to boogie on down the road. Turns out Mintz was mob-connected also, as a few years later he got convicted in a mob scheme to steal from the Las Vegas gambling company Bally’s. From there, I got a job at the Uptown Square salon and that had another twist to it. Then-governor Edward Edwards used to come to New Orleans periodically, and bring his wife. When he came, he’d rent two adjoining suites in a good hotel and he and his wife would bunk in one of them with the other suite reserved for one of his many mistresses. All of that was quite open. In fact, they did a local documentary on Edward’s philandering and interviewed his wife who was blunt about it. Yes, she said, she was very aware that he kept mistresses and she was friends with almost all of them. It’s just the “Louisiana way” she said and it was. Well, I got involved with all that inadvertently. It turns out one of Edwards’ favorite girlfriends was a fellow stylist at Uptown Square. Whenever he and his wife came to town, she was one of the ones he’d call. When that happened, she’d just take the weekend off and the clients on her book would go to the junior stylist. Who was moi. In addition to my own clients, I had to take care of hers as well. I was humping my ass off to take care of a double load. Thanks, Guv…
Stuff like that kept happening and I’m pretty sure Mary was kind of freaked out at the kind of town New Orleans was proving to be. I loved it, but I was an adrenaline junkie. That didn’t describe Mary so much…
I love New Orleans and miss the excitement that was always ongoing!
Hope you enjoy this small excerpt and will want to buy the whole enchilada when it comes out. Right now, the working title is RENTING SPACE IN MY HEAD, but that could change...
Blue skies,Les
I've been editing my memoir preparatory to my agent sending it out and intended to do some cutting, but instead added a bit to it. I've left a lot out but this bit was interesting I thought, so am including it. It's near the end of the saga, right after Mary and I got married and we moved back to New Orleans.
Hope you get a kick out of it.
We moved to New Orleans shortly after we got married. We found a duplex apartment on Burthe near the Camelia Grill and Mary got a job at David DeLong’s salon a block away and I got a job at Busta’s at the Fairmont (Hotel) down in the CBD. I got to ride the streetcar to and from work each day and it was wonderful. We had a weird experience the first weekend we were in town. Just about broke, we decided to drive down to Grand Isle on the Gulf which I was familiar with—my Uncle Buddy before he passed away had a vacation home there and we used to visit all the time. Our plan was to do some crabbing and enjoy the sun and surf. It was a holiday weekend, Labor Day. A block away from our apartment, I discovered I’d left my billfold at home. We were already running late, so I decided not to turn back. That turned out to be a big mistake. On the way down is a town called Golden Meadow. There was a famous bakery there that I wanted to show Mary. When I was a kid, we used to visit it and they were famous all over the world—even shipping their goods to Paris. Golden Meadow also had another claim to fame. They were the site of a well-known speed trap. Since the oil bust a few years back, the town had fallen upon hard times and to make money the police department had set up a speed trap for unsuspecting tourists that had been publicized in New Orleans. A reporter had gone undercover and exposed the scam and we’d just seen the TV report. Just before the bakery, the speed limit was 35 mph which I was careful to observe, remembering the report. We went in. Mary was impressed and we bought some rolls and other things and then came out to our car. We jumped in and again, I was mindful of the speed limit. What I didn’t notice was a new speed limit sign just on the edge of the bakery property. That one lowered the limit to twenty mph. A block away down the road, there was an old clunker parked by the side of the road and an old guy in front of it on the road, waving his arms. Figuring he had car trouble, I pulled over to give him a hand. As soon as I approached him, he pulled out a gun from behind his back and stated he was a cop and had me lie down on the road where he cuffed me. For speeding. Out of nowhere, another car, this time a clearly-marked patrol car, appeared. I was put in the back seat and the uniformed cop told Mary to follow us to the police station. Some shit, huh? When we got there, the police chief who turned out to be the old guy I’d stopped to help, told Mary my fine would be a hundred dollars for both the speeding ticket and the fact that I didn’t have a driver’s license on me and that I wouldn’t be released until it was paid. We didn’t have a credit card and didn’t have enough money on us to pay the fine. We had a book of checks but they were from a Ft.Wayne bank and we hadn’t yet had time to open a New Orleans’ account and he wouldn’t take an out-of-state check. He said Mary would have to find someone to cash a check. Mary’s face was absolutely white. She had no idea where we were and her sense of direction was… how do I say this?... flawed, so I wasn’t sure she could even find her way back if she went very far. I think she was thinking the same thing. She left and I’m sitting there on a chair as the chief began taking info from me. When he got his paperwork done, he told me to stand up and follow him back to the cells. Another cop came out from some room and asked the guy if he was going to shake me down. “Nah,” the guy said. “I don’t think he’s got a hand grenade on him, do you?” If I had, it would have been hard to hide. I was wearing a t-shirt and a pair of cutoffs and flip-flops. He turned to me and said, “You don’t have a hand grenade on you, do you?” He was laughing. “Not this time,” I said. I wasn’t smiling. Neither was he. The guy came unglued and walked over and got me in a hold and the other cop came over and shook me down. “That isn’t funny,” the chief said. “Last week we arrested a guy and he did have a hand grenade on him.” They took me back to a holding cell and I sat there for three hours. Mary finally returned just when I’d about given up hope of ever seeing her again. She had the money and paid my fine and we left. Just turned around and went back home. On the way she told me why it took so long. She’d had to drive around to a bunch of little towns around Golden Meadow to try and find a place to cash a check. Most places were closed because of the holiday and the few she found wouldn’t cash a check from Indiana. Finally, when she’d just about given up, she said a manager at a supermarket had taken pity on her and cashed one for her. She might have been crying at that point, though she never admitted to that. A week later, we had another “adventure.” I snagged a job at Busta’s after going through a couple of interviews with him and submitting my resume. It was a great salon in a great hotel. The salon was just across the hall from the famous Sazerac bar and just down the block-long hall from the famous Blue Room. The rumor at the time was that Frank Sinatra kept a suite there with a year-long lease for $10,000 a night and rarely visited it. There was a front—page news story going on at the time about a murder trial involving furniture magnate Aaron Mintz who had discovered his dead wife one morning along with his mistress. It seemed clear it wasn’t the suicide Mintz claimed since she was found with the gun in her hand… what made suicide clearly not the cause of her death was that the gun was found in her right hand and she was left-handed… and she’d shot through a pillow Mintz’s legal team claimed she’d placed over her own head before pulling the trigger. I guess out of consideration that she wouldn’t wake anyone… Well, after I set up my tools and met some of the staff, a gorgeous young woman with long blonde hair swept into the salon, tossed the receptionist her fur coat and sat down in my chair. “Hi, Les,” she said. It turned out she was my first client. I wondered how she knew my name and that got cleared up quickly. She was Ruth-Ann Munitis, the aforementioned Aaron Mintz’s mistress. Ruth-Ann was also reputed to have been Dutch Morial’s mistress before hooking up with Mintz. She started talking to me like I knew all of these things—which I didn’t and only learned later. She told me she was taking over the salon from Busta and had read my resume and was going to need a salon manager and thought I had the kind of qualifications she would be looking for. In a daze, I excused myself from her and went to the back room where Busta was and told him what she was saying. He clued me in with the short version. That she’d bailed him out a few months ago when he was heavily into debt for cocaine and gambling debts and had become his financial partner. Then, things started going south, he said. She began taking over more and more of the salon and the last straw was when she told him she wanted all the stylists to start wearing tuxedos when we worked. At that point, he tried to pull out of the partnership, but she wasn’t standing for that and had her lawyers trying to take over and he had his lawyers fighting all that. Each night after the salon closed, he would take the appointment book and all the client records home with him so she couldn’t steal those and lock him out. It was just a total clusterfuck. And here I was, first day on the job, and right smack in the middle of it. He advised me to keep on her good side as she might win and I’d need a job. I didn’t know what to do. It ended up, I went back to her and told her I needed time to get up to speed on everything so if she’d be so kind I’d appreciate it if she had someone else cut her hair. That night, I told Mary all that was going on and she was in a daze. New Orleans was turning out to be very different from Ft.Wayne! The upshot was, I kept on working for Busta for another few weeks and Ruth-Ann would waylay me when I left for the day and I kept putting her off for a decision. The decision wasn ‘t hard—I mean this was the mistress of a mob-connected guy and it looked obvious she’d taken part in the murder of her boyfriend’s wife. I could get a glimpse of my future with her and it didn’t look rosy. Finally, I had to quit. I hated to since I really liked Busta and the salon, but then Mintz got acquitted and Ruth Ann got even bolder and it was time to boogie on down the road. Turns out Mintz was mob-connected also, as a few years later he got convicted in a mob scheme to steal from the Las Vegas gambling company Bally’s. From there, I got a job at the Uptown Square salon and that had another twist to it. Then-governor Edward Edwards used to come to New Orleans periodically, and bring his wife. When he came, he’d rent two adjoining suites in a good hotel and he and his wife would bunk in one of them with the other suite reserved for one of his many mistresses. All of that was quite open. In fact, they did a local documentary on Edward’s philandering and interviewed his wife who was blunt about it. Yes, she said, she was very aware that he kept mistresses and she was friends with almost all of them. It’s just the “Louisiana way” she said and it was. Well, I got involved with all that inadvertently. It turns out one of Edwards’ favorite girlfriends was a fellow stylist at Uptown Square. Whenever he and his wife came to town, she was one of the ones he’d call. When that happened, she’d just take the weekend off and the clients on her book would go to the junior stylist. Who was moi. In addition to my own clients, I had to take care of hers as well. I was humping my ass off to take care of a double load. Thanks, Guv…
Stuff like that kept happening and I’m pretty sure Mary was kind of freaked out at the kind of town New Orleans was proving to be. I loved it, but I was an adrenaline junkie. That didn’t describe Mary so much…
I love New Orleans and miss the excitement that was always ongoing!
Hope you enjoy this small excerpt and will want to buy the whole enchilada when it comes out. Right now, the working title is RENTING SPACE IN MY HEAD, but that could change...
Blue skies,Les
February 4, 2016
Joe Lansdale on the Sundance channel with Hap and Leonard.
Hi folks,
Joe Lansdale just sent me this link with a preview of the upcoming Sundance channel series based on his characters Hap and Leonard. Looks like an absolute winner! And, barring unforseen circumstances, Joe's planning on attending this year's WRW in May in San Antonio and I can't wait!
Check it out at https://www.yahoo.com/tv/hap-and-leonard-a-behind-the-scenes-preview-of-152547816.html
Blue skies,
Les
Joe Lansdale just sent me this link with a preview of the upcoming Sundance channel series based on his characters Hap and Leonard. Looks like an absolute winner! And, barring unforseen circumstances, Joe's planning on attending this year's WRW in May in San Antonio and I can't wait!
Check it out at https://www.yahoo.com/tv/hap-and-leonard-a-behind-the-scenes-preview-of-152547816.html
Blue skies,
Les
February 1, 2016
Martin Stanley Review of THE RAPIST
A new review of "The Rapist" by English author, Martin Stanley
"Original and brave. And recommended for those with a strong stomach and an open mind."http://thegamblersnovel.com/2016/01/31/potted-reviews/
"Original and brave. And recommended for those with a strong stomach and an open mind."http://thegamblersnovel.com/2016/01/31/potted-reviews/
January 29, 2016
KEYNOTE SPEECH AT OWFI
Hi folks,
Last year, I was privileged to be asked by then-president Dawn Allen to be the keynote speaker at the Oklahoma Writers Federation Inc. annual convention in Oklahoma City and this is the speech I gave. Hope you enjoy it.
Oklahoma Writers Federation Inc. Keynote address--2015The Building Blocks of StoryHi! My name is Les and I’m an alco—oops! Wrong meeting! My name is Les Edgerton and I’m a writer. I’m really happy to be here and to impart to all of you all of the secrets you’ll ever need to becoming a bestselling author, one whose books all get made into movies, where you’re asked to do cameos in the blockbuster flicks they make of your work, and literally roll around in filthy lucre. Your books will all get rave reviews in the NY Times. You’ll dine always at Spago’s and Elaine’s and never again dream of going through the drive-thru at MacDonald’s. You’ll have to block the phone numbers of all those New York publishers who are driving you crazy calling and wanting to publish your novels. Of course, I’ve not done any of those things personally, but don’t worry. I have the secrets and when you leave here, you’ll have all the tools necessary to achieve fame and fortune in the writing world.
Guaranteed.
Once you leave here, you’ll never again need to read a craft book, attend a conference like this, join a writer’s group, or read another novel to see how he or she does it. You’re going to get all the secrets right here! All you have to worry about is which island you’re going to buy to retire to…
That’s the good news. And now, for some not-so-good news… What we like to call “the truth…” See? You should have just drunk the Kool-Aid and gone to the bar…
First, you need to know that not everything in writing can be taught. For instance, do you really think that anyone could study with William Faulkner for five years and then emerge writing as well as he could? Perhaps, but most likely not. There are some writers who can do things that no one else in the world ever can.
Here’s a true story that illustrates why this is. Barry Bonds was interviewed one time, and his answer to a reporter’s question showed clearly how some things can never be taught.The article:ON AUG. 18, 2001, after it became a foregone conclusion that Bonds would make a run at McGwire's single-season home run record, he hit a pitch from Jason Marquis -- 94 mph, chest-high, on the fists -- for his 54th homer. It wasn't his most memorable homer, but the physics of it were astounding. About two weeks later, I interviewed him for a story in The Magazine. I asked him to take me through that 2-2 pitch: what he was thinking, what he was looking for, how he refined his swing to be short and quick enough to get the barrel to it. He refused. He wasn't nasty; he just felt it was a senseless exercise."I just have it," he said. "I can't explain it. You either have it or you don't, and I do. People always think there's an answer to everything, but there isn't. How can you do that? I don't know. I just can. When people see something they've never seen before, the first thing they say is, 'How did you do that?' The next thing is, 'Can you teach me?' The answer is no because you don't have it."That quote, and the laugh that followed, is the essence of Bonds. His career was played to the backdrop of four words: You can't do this. Equal parts arrogance and truth, it became an unspoken mantra. It's the same mentality he used to separate himself from the game's pedestrian details. He routinely refused to show up for team photos during his years with the Giants. He stretched with his own stretching coach in the clubhouse rather than with his teammates on the field. He was notoriously stingy in providing assistance to teammates, acting as if their mundane talents were contagious. His knowledge would remain the property of the one person who could use it best: Bonds himself.His grandiosity knew few bounds. He arrived at his first spring training with the Giants with a chauffeur. Replete with black suit and tie, Dennis drove Bonds to and from the ballpark for six weeks in February and March of 1993. It was Barry being Barry, but within the clubhouse it was seen as a brazen act of hubris.And the crazy thing was: He knew better. It wasn't an inability to read the room or a mistaken belief that teammates would understand how a man of his stature might need to display the gilded trappings of his success. It was a calculated effort to separate himself from the rank and file. You either have it or you don't, and I do.(End of article)
The same concept applies to the truly great writers. What they do can’t be taught. That doesn’t mean you can’t be as great or even greater than those folks were—it just means you can’t do what they did. You may end up doing something even greater but it won’t be what they did—it’ll be something your own peculiar genius allowed you to do. This is not bad news—this is reality. This is so crucial to learn. If you want to write like a Faulkner or a Hemingway, you probably won’t be able to achieve the particular mastery they had. Does that mean you’re doomed to mediocrity? Of course not! Bonds couldn’t pitch like Roger Clemens no matter how good a baseball player he was. Even though he was a good base stealer, he couldn’t steal bases the way Ricky Henderson could. And, even though he ended up being the home run champion of all time, he didn’t operate in a vacuum. There were hundreds of other major leaguers playing at the same time he was and they were all successful. Just being on a major league roster is the equivalent of being a bestselling author in the world of literature. Raymond Carver couldn’t write what Flannery O’Connor wrote and if she’d been alive, during his career, she probably couldn’t write what he did. But, guess what? They’re both great short story writers. When Hemingway wrote, there were many, many other writers who were successful as well. The same with every other famous or great writer. I just want to create a realistic picture for you as writers. Many things about writing can be taught. Many other things cannot be taught. It’s important to learn what you’re capable of learning and what can’t realistically be taught to you. Or anyone. I want to talk today about how to become the best writer you can be and hopefully show you some ways to shorten the time between when you first begin to write and when you’ve arrived as a good writer yourself.
First, if you’re writing a novel, it’s very important to understand the building blocks of story. There are two building blocks:1. Scene2. Sequel The scene is a sequence of actions. This happened, which led to this happening, which led to this… and so on. In a contemporary novel, the first action that needs to appear in the narrative is the inciting incident. This is very important. In older times, we could begin more leisurely. We could begin with backstory or extensive setup. No longer. A novel is about one thing only—trouble. And, trouble in a novel is about an individual with a compelling story problem. It’s not about a bad situation—it’s about a bona fide, precise problem that can be clearly identified. And, it’s that problem that is going to occupy every page of the novel until the end. Once the problem is resolved, the story’s over. And, in novel terms, the story problem has two components. One, it’s a surface problem, and two, it’s a story-worthy problem. Both are mirror images of each other. I won’t go into the difference and the sameness here—if you’re interested, it’s in my book Hooked. In a movie, about all that are possible are scenes—units of action. However, in a novel, you’ve got an additional building block that makes a novel a far better form than a movie. In a novel, you also have the building block of sequel. Sequel is the aftermath of scene. It’s a moment of reflection, where the character makes sense of the action. It’s where we get to see his or her inner thoughts and emotions. It’s where flashbacks are allowed, where necessary backstory can emerge. It’s where the next plan of action is planned by the protagonist. Both are necessary in a good novel. If one is weak, the novel as a whole will suffer. It’s your job as the writer to make sure both work equally well. If the action scenes are weak or boring, it doesn’t matter how well-written the sequel is. If the action is strong but the sequel is weak, it becomes what my wife Mary calls a mindless chasey-fighty story or worse. The best way to make a novel work is to alternate the two elements. A bit of action, then a bit of sequel. That can vary, of course. You can have two, three, four scenes in a row, and then a sequel. The opposite rarely works however, where you have sequel, sequel, sequel, action. That usually leads to a interior monolog novel that only close relatives will read. The best way to construct a novel is to alternate the two elements, and maybe occasionally, having scene follow scene. Toward the conclusion of the novel, it’s best to have multiple scenes. It’s a pacing technique that helps create a page-turner. By that time, the reader should be well aware of the character’s feeling and thought processes and sequel can be shortened quite a bit. We kind of know how the character’s mind operates by then. There isn’t a formula to use in mixing scene and sequel, but a good estimate would be about 60% scene and 40% sequel. That isn’t hard and fast, however. Very good novels have been written with an 80%-20% ratio. The opposite usually won’t work. To have a novel weighted more toward sequel would almost always result in a mostly boring book. A great book to explain all this in more detail is Jack Bickham’s Scene and Sequel. Now. Here’s something you won’t hear much about, but which is one of the reasons a lot of stories writers attempt don’t work. It’s because of that advice to “get it down as quickly as you can and then rewrite it.” The problem with this is that very often the writer begins with a poorly-defined idea of the story they want to write. Too often, they begin what Blake Snyder called “The smell of the rain on the road at dawn.” As he says: “I can be driving down the street and see a guy with a t-shirt and think ‘That’s a story!!’ Is it? Doubtful. It may be the start of an idea, but for now it’s that thing all creative people get—if they’re lucky—the beginning of art, but in and of itself, only interesting to you.” Far too often, this is how many writers begin to write a novel. With nothing more than this. They feel that if they can just get a lot of stuff down, then later on they can go back and begin cutting away the dead wood and somehow sculpt what they have into a story. Almost always, this is a strategy doomed to failure. This is akin to a housewife dreaming of her dream house one night and then waking up and getting together a crew to build it. If the housewife is a billionaire and can keep tearing down the old mistakes and improving it, bit by bit, perhaps she can eventually build that house. Even then, it probably won’t resemble the house she dreamed of. But, yet, this is what many writers do. They’ve also bought into that chestnut that “ideas are cheap.” Actually, ideas are cheap—however, solid story ideas that a novel can be created from are very dear and rare. That myth that any writer worth their salt has dozens and dozens if not thousands of ideas laying around in the ol’ brain pan and the only real problem is that they won’t live long enough to get ‘em all written. The truth is, most of those millions of ideas are nothing more than the “smell of the rain on the road in the morning.” It takes far more than that to create a viable novel. The truth is, good story ideas aren’t that easy to come by. Ideas—or fragments of ideas—are everywhere—but actual story ideas aren’t as common as folks would have you believe. My own novel writing process begins with a story idea. But… and here’s a big BUT… that idea has to percolate in my brain and imagination from anywhere from five to ten years on average before it’s ready to be written. That doesn’t mean when I finish a novel, I have to start from scratch and wait five or ten years to write the next one. At any given time, I have about ten story ideas I’ve been thinking about for many years until it’s matured enough to begin writing it. I daresay most of you have the same experience. Those are the stories you should be writing—not those “the smell of the rain” sudden inspirations that come to you. Those are the sparks that light the novel ideas but they haven’t yet achieved the level of story yet. Let them percolate in your brain awhile. A longwhile. Eventually, most of them will wither away and die… and they should. The ones that remain—that you can’t shake—those are the worthwhile ideas and have a chance to become a novel. The main point I want to make here is to be sure your novel idea is really a story before you begin the arduous task of creating it on paper. Most successful novelists do this and even so, with the best-laid plans, will end up not finishing the novel. Very often, that novel idea you had just doesn’t work. This is when you have to be ruthless and… KILL IT. While, yes, it’s possible to eventually wrestle a novel to the floor and create something publishable, you have to know when a particular work just isn’t going to become viable, not without a huge sacrifice of time and blood and sweat and tears. More time, more blood and more sweat and tears than it’s going to be worth. This isn’t something you’ll hear very often. Most of the advice is that one should never quit. All kinds of examples are trotted out where a writer spent ten years on a book (or more!) and the result was a masterpiece. What they usually don’t tell you is that for every writer who succeeds like this, there are a thousand who eventually gave up entirely. Or, that if the masterpiece writer had abandoned the work earlier, they might have written five other books during that time that were just as good or possibly even better. This kind of thing comes about as a result of a culture that says quitting anything is always a bad thing. Just remember that this isn’t Little League where your dad is screaming at you to: “Never quit, Johnny! Only losers quit!” And you go on, day after miserable day, trying to do the impossible, and in the end, succeed only in prolonging the inevitable truth that: You suck at baseball and aren’t ever going to get any better, at least in a reasonable amount of time, by, say the age of fifty-five. Here’s the good news. We’re all grown up now and don’t have to listen to the adults in our house screaming at us to Never Quit! It’s perfectly okay to quit under the right circumstances. Remember, you’re not quitting writing—you’re quitting a novel that is unlikely to work. And, you’ll know if it’s a novel that you should persevere with or not. Just listen to the sane voice in your head. This doesn’t mean that you should give up on every project that proves difficult. Most novels don’t come easily. But, there’s a difference between a difficult task and an impossible one. Make sure you know the difference. Most successful novelists I know end up finishing about one out of every three novels that they begin. And, that’s after they’ve winnowed out probably dozens if not hundreds of ideas. Learn to enjoy the killing of such a novel. It’s by killing the losers that you’re letting the healthy ones live. Not enough is said about the value of abandoning crap. If it’s crap—and you should be able to tell the difference—reworking it endlessly ain’t gonna turn it into a bouquet of roses. Learn to be a cold-blooded assassin. Here’s another truism. All novels in the beginning stages of writing them are trying to be crap. At the first moment you put something on paper, it’s trying to be really bad, it’s trying to be boring, to be unstructured, to be pointless, it’s trying to be digressive. You have to prop it up at every stage if it’s going to be any good. You have to be really an assassin, going after the boring parts, and going to the parts that really get to your heart and propping them up even more. If you think you’re going to “fix it later” I think you’re going to eventually discover that doesn’t happen. You have to be ruthless. And, immediately. Anything that has a chance at being good means you’re going to have to be really, really tough. This is why I’m adamantly against the advice to “get it down lickety-split while in the throes of the muse… and then go back later to fix it.” If you’ve tried that and don’t have much in the way of publication to show for it, that’s maybe a clue that it doesn’t work. Every bumper sticker piece of writing advice isn’t good. Failure is a big part of success. (I sound like a Dale Carnegie ad, don’t I!) But, it’s true. We have to fail, over and over and over. It’s by failing that eventually we begin to win. Eventually, if you keep on writing, you’re going to stumble onto something you’re writing that’s so compelling, so good, so memorable and special… that the five or ten projects you began and abandoned just don’t matter. They’re just what you had to go through to get to the good stuff finally. And now, here’s the biggest secret of all. What writing teachers and craft books, mostly never tell you. Most of us begin writing because we know clearly what good writing looks like. We’ve simply read so danged much, we know good writing the instant we encounter it. We want to write because we LOVE good writing. So, we begin writing and for the first few years there’s this gap. What we’re getting down just isn’t that good. It’s trying to be great, but it just isn’t making it. Your writing isn’t all that good, but what’s still the same is that you still know what good writing looks like. And, yours isn’t matching up. Your taste in what’s good writing is killer, but what’s disappointing is that your own effort doesn’t measure up. It’s trying to be good but you can tell it’s crappy. And this is when a lot of writers give up. Try as hard as you can, you just can’t seem to create to the same standard as what you know is good. This is when lots of writers quit. Here’s a secret. Almost all successful writers went through the same thing. Most spent years knowing that what they were creating wasn’t as good as what they knew to be good writing. They knew they were falling short. They knew it didn’t have that special “thing” they wanted it to have. Here’s the thing: EVERYBODY goes through this. EVERYBODY. You have to know that this is totally normal and that we all go through the same thing. You’re not the only person to experience this gap between what you know to be good writing and the crap you’re putting out. The difference is the successful writers plow through this period in their lives. The unsuccessful ones don’t—they quit before they should. The most important thing you can do during this phase of your writing career is simple. DO A LOT OF WRITING. Do a huge volume of work. Write every single day. Set yourself deadlines that you convince yourself you have to stick to. So many words a day or week. So many stories finished by such and such a day. It’s only by going through a volume of work that you’re going to catch up and narrow that gap between that good writing you recognize in others and your own work. If you stay the course it will happen. This is the point at which most writers quit. Don’t let that be you. Trust that you will emerge from this a good writer. In my own case, that took about ten years. I even got stuff published during that time. But, only rarely. I came close to quitting many times. Just thought I’d never arrive at the place where I was consistently good. That’s a crushing thing to feel. And, I know a lot of you feel that way right now. I’ve been there—I know. During this time, I even got books published. My first novel even won an award—it was awarded a Special Citation by the Violet Crown Book Award. But, I wasn’t a good writer yet. That would take another ten years before I could consistently get down on paper the kind of material that matched up to what I knew was good writing. It takes awhile. It’s going to take you each awhile if you aren’t there yet. It’s normal to take awhile and you simply have to fight through it and keep writing. And, when you emerge, you’ll be fierce. You’ll be a warrior! There is a major pitfall most of us fall into. When you first pick up a pen or turn on the computer, there’s a tendency to write outside of our own voices. To sound… like a writer. Or, what we mistakenly think a writer sounds like. We’ll want to sound like Faulkner or Flannery O’Connor or even John Grisham, for example. Whoever. The problem is, there’s already a Faulkner. There’s no room for a Faulkner, Junior. We already have the real deal. We need writers who sound like themselves. Who write in their one-of-a-kind, original-diginal voices. Who are themselves on the page. Once we begin to accept that our own voice has value and is interesting, then we’ve made a quantum leap toward matching up our vision of what is good and your own work.
(If you're interested in finding your own voice a bit quicker, you might glom onto this one.)
Here’s where the crux of the problem lies, I believe. That standard of good writing we’re trying to match is viewed incorrectly by us and it takes time to learn this. We’re only paying attention to the outward voice of the writer. And, this is where we keep falling down. We’re trying to mimic that particular voice. And, that’s the one thing we should be avoiding. It’s like a person who wants to be a TV broadcast journalist and his hero is Walter Cronkite. Cronkite is his standard of excellence. This guy doesn’t realize that we already have a Walter Cronkite and that no one is looking for a Cronkite, Junior. Or, pick a contemporary broadcaster, doesn’t matter who. Virtually no one in the audience wants a clone or twin of that person. But, we know that that person is the standard of excellence. So what happens to all of these bright-eyed wannabe broadcasters? Well, to many of them, the same thing happens to the writer whose idea of a good writer is say William Faulkner. They begin to imitate the “master.” And this is why it often takes years and years before the gap between the standard and our own writing begins to narrow. We’re mostly looking at the outward manifestation of their art. In the case of the broadcaster, they begin to assume the personal tics of Cronkite. The speech patterns he favors. The way he emphasizes certain words and parses his sentences. His steely stare. Maybe even his haircut and suit choice. In the case of the writer who holds Faulkner up as his standard of excellence, he or she might do the same things. They look at the cadence of his sentence, the vocabulary choices Faulkner makes, the syntax of his prose, etc. That person is looking at the superficial aspects of Faulkner but never dig into the real thing that he’s doing. They’re looking at superficial artifacts. We’ve all probably done that. We look at the words on the page and think that if we can just learn to string together similarly-sounding sentences we’ll have arrived. Alas, it does not and cannot work that way. We need to instead be looking at the attitude, the personal stance of the writer to his story, the emotions of the writer toward his or her work. We need to focus on our own emotional stances toward what we want to write. When we learn to do that, we begin to formulate our own voices and when that day arrives, we will have become good writers. Warriors. You just have to keep pushing through all that junk and one day it will happen. Our writing will no longer be crap and we’ll have become… warriors. And this is what I wish for everyone here. I hope this gives you some food for thought and that you find it helpful. Don’t give up too soon.Here are some other things to consider: Have something worth saying. In his book Culture Care, artist Makoto Fujimura tells a story he confesses may be legendary about a Yale student taking Hebrew from the great Old Testament scholar Brevard Childs. The student, discontent with his grades, asked the scholar how he could raise them. Childs’s answer: “Become a deeper person.”Peggy Noonan, writer of seven books on politics, religion, and culture, and weekly columnist forThe Wall Street Journal, at one time the speech writer for the man considered The Great Communicator—Ronald Reagan. In her book Simply Speaking, she says that what moves people in a speech is the logic. The words “Tear down this wall, Mr. Gorbachev” are not all that poetic when taken at face value. But they express something that resonates in the human heart. In the words of Robert Frost, “Something is there that doesn’t love a wall.”
In the same way that logic is what moves people in a speech, logic is what moves people in writing. And to have logic, to move people, we must have something worth saying. In fact, probably about 90% of writing is having something worth saying. And how do we get something worth saying? By expanding the world of ideas to which we expose ourselves and by cultivating a rich inner life. Decrease your vision. That is, “think local.” Start with your family. Doug Bender, the bestselling author of I Am Second: Real Stories. Changing Lives. wrote a book for an audience of one. When Doug’s wife had a miscarriage, it grieved the Bender’s little girl. So Doug wrote a child’s book about death and loss just for her. A seminary professor told his students, “Stop thinking you will go out and save the world, and instead become the best family member you can be, the most grateful child of your parents, the greatest and most dependable encourager in your church, the best contributor to your community.” We influence the world one small corner at a time. Cherish the small.In the days when Abraham’s descendants had been carried off from Israel to Babylon, their prophet, Jeremiah, sent a letter to King Nebuchadnezzar for the surviving leaders in exile. Jeremiah’s counsel: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce…. Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile” (Jere. 29:1–7). Seeking the good of the city where we live is always good counsel. So write for your kids, if you have any. Contribute good columns to the local paper. Donate some book reviews for your favorite local web site. Do readings at the library. And do so simply to give back and because you wish to make your corner of the world a better place. Write what contributes to human flourishing, not what you perceive as the next hot market. Trying to predict what will sell is like leaning on cobwebs. Just about the time you find a post to rest against, it gives way. By the time you finish writing a book to meet demand, the market will have left you in the dust. So write what you love to write and/or what you can write with excellence. Measure success accurately. You will be tempted to measure your own success by a number of externals that have nothing to do with your worth. Tell yourself they are lies.The only human-made structure visible from space was not the Golden Gate Bridge or the Eiffel Tower or even the tallest building in the world, but only the Great Wall of China. Think of all the amazing structures that “failed” to make that list.
But that does not make these structures failures. It just means that when measured by one narrow definition of success, they failed. As writers, any number of false measures can make us feel like losers. Did our last book fail to earn out its advance? Did we do a book tour? Did the work gain rave reviews in Publishers Weekly and Library Journal? These are not accurate measures of whether we can write. Lots of crummy books sell big. Many divergent books make their authors lots of money, but that does not make the books or the authors successes.So measure not by money or fame, but in influence on human flourishing. And of course, that is impossible to measure. Which is precisely my point.To sum up: stay the course. Everybody goes through the period where what they create doesn’t match up with their sense of what’s good writing. You simply have to keep on working and eventually you’ll emerge and it will. This is the point where we lose most writers. Don’t be one of those who quit just before they attain the prize.In closing, let me quote the words of that immortal philosopher, Red Green, who says: Keep your stick on the ice. We’re all in this together and I’m pulling for you.Thank you.
Les Edgerton
Last year, I was privileged to be asked by then-president Dawn Allen to be the keynote speaker at the Oklahoma Writers Federation Inc. annual convention in Oklahoma City and this is the speech I gave. Hope you enjoy it.
Oklahoma Writers Federation Inc. Keynote address--2015The Building Blocks of StoryHi! My name is Les and I’m an alco—oops! Wrong meeting! My name is Les Edgerton and I’m a writer. I’m really happy to be here and to impart to all of you all of the secrets you’ll ever need to becoming a bestselling author, one whose books all get made into movies, where you’re asked to do cameos in the blockbuster flicks they make of your work, and literally roll around in filthy lucre. Your books will all get rave reviews in the NY Times. You’ll dine always at Spago’s and Elaine’s and never again dream of going through the drive-thru at MacDonald’s. You’ll have to block the phone numbers of all those New York publishers who are driving you crazy calling and wanting to publish your novels. Of course, I’ve not done any of those things personally, but don’t worry. I have the secrets and when you leave here, you’ll have all the tools necessary to achieve fame and fortune in the writing world.
Guaranteed.
Once you leave here, you’ll never again need to read a craft book, attend a conference like this, join a writer’s group, or read another novel to see how he or she does it. You’re going to get all the secrets right here! All you have to worry about is which island you’re going to buy to retire to…
That’s the good news. And now, for some not-so-good news… What we like to call “the truth…” See? You should have just drunk the Kool-Aid and gone to the bar…
First, you need to know that not everything in writing can be taught. For instance, do you really think that anyone could study with William Faulkner for five years and then emerge writing as well as he could? Perhaps, but most likely not. There are some writers who can do things that no one else in the world ever can.
Here’s a true story that illustrates why this is. Barry Bonds was interviewed one time, and his answer to a reporter’s question showed clearly how some things can never be taught.The article:ON AUG. 18, 2001, after it became a foregone conclusion that Bonds would make a run at McGwire's single-season home run record, he hit a pitch from Jason Marquis -- 94 mph, chest-high, on the fists -- for his 54th homer. It wasn't his most memorable homer, but the physics of it were astounding. About two weeks later, I interviewed him for a story in The Magazine. I asked him to take me through that 2-2 pitch: what he was thinking, what he was looking for, how he refined his swing to be short and quick enough to get the barrel to it. He refused. He wasn't nasty; he just felt it was a senseless exercise."I just have it," he said. "I can't explain it. You either have it or you don't, and I do. People always think there's an answer to everything, but there isn't. How can you do that? I don't know. I just can. When people see something they've never seen before, the first thing they say is, 'How did you do that?' The next thing is, 'Can you teach me?' The answer is no because you don't have it."That quote, and the laugh that followed, is the essence of Bonds. His career was played to the backdrop of four words: You can't do this. Equal parts arrogance and truth, it became an unspoken mantra. It's the same mentality he used to separate himself from the game's pedestrian details. He routinely refused to show up for team photos during his years with the Giants. He stretched with his own stretching coach in the clubhouse rather than with his teammates on the field. He was notoriously stingy in providing assistance to teammates, acting as if their mundane talents were contagious. His knowledge would remain the property of the one person who could use it best: Bonds himself.His grandiosity knew few bounds. He arrived at his first spring training with the Giants with a chauffeur. Replete with black suit and tie, Dennis drove Bonds to and from the ballpark for six weeks in February and March of 1993. It was Barry being Barry, but within the clubhouse it was seen as a brazen act of hubris.And the crazy thing was: He knew better. It wasn't an inability to read the room or a mistaken belief that teammates would understand how a man of his stature might need to display the gilded trappings of his success. It was a calculated effort to separate himself from the rank and file. You either have it or you don't, and I do.(End of article)
The same concept applies to the truly great writers. What they do can’t be taught. That doesn’t mean you can’t be as great or even greater than those folks were—it just means you can’t do what they did. You may end up doing something even greater but it won’t be what they did—it’ll be something your own peculiar genius allowed you to do. This is not bad news—this is reality. This is so crucial to learn. If you want to write like a Faulkner or a Hemingway, you probably won’t be able to achieve the particular mastery they had. Does that mean you’re doomed to mediocrity? Of course not! Bonds couldn’t pitch like Roger Clemens no matter how good a baseball player he was. Even though he was a good base stealer, he couldn’t steal bases the way Ricky Henderson could. And, even though he ended up being the home run champion of all time, he didn’t operate in a vacuum. There were hundreds of other major leaguers playing at the same time he was and they were all successful. Just being on a major league roster is the equivalent of being a bestselling author in the world of literature. Raymond Carver couldn’t write what Flannery O’Connor wrote and if she’d been alive, during his career, she probably couldn’t write what he did. But, guess what? They’re both great short story writers. When Hemingway wrote, there were many, many other writers who were successful as well. The same with every other famous or great writer. I just want to create a realistic picture for you as writers. Many things about writing can be taught. Many other things cannot be taught. It’s important to learn what you’re capable of learning and what can’t realistically be taught to you. Or anyone. I want to talk today about how to become the best writer you can be and hopefully show you some ways to shorten the time between when you first begin to write and when you’ve arrived as a good writer yourself.
First, if you’re writing a novel, it’s very important to understand the building blocks of story. There are two building blocks:1. Scene2. Sequel The scene is a sequence of actions. This happened, which led to this happening, which led to this… and so on. In a contemporary novel, the first action that needs to appear in the narrative is the inciting incident. This is very important. In older times, we could begin more leisurely. We could begin with backstory or extensive setup. No longer. A novel is about one thing only—trouble. And, trouble in a novel is about an individual with a compelling story problem. It’s not about a bad situation—it’s about a bona fide, precise problem that can be clearly identified. And, it’s that problem that is going to occupy every page of the novel until the end. Once the problem is resolved, the story’s over. And, in novel terms, the story problem has two components. One, it’s a surface problem, and two, it’s a story-worthy problem. Both are mirror images of each other. I won’t go into the difference and the sameness here—if you’re interested, it’s in my book Hooked. In a movie, about all that are possible are scenes—units of action. However, in a novel, you’ve got an additional building block that makes a novel a far better form than a movie. In a novel, you also have the building block of sequel. Sequel is the aftermath of scene. It’s a moment of reflection, where the character makes sense of the action. It’s where we get to see his or her inner thoughts and emotions. It’s where flashbacks are allowed, where necessary backstory can emerge. It’s where the next plan of action is planned by the protagonist. Both are necessary in a good novel. If one is weak, the novel as a whole will suffer. It’s your job as the writer to make sure both work equally well. If the action scenes are weak or boring, it doesn’t matter how well-written the sequel is. If the action is strong but the sequel is weak, it becomes what my wife Mary calls a mindless chasey-fighty story or worse. The best way to make a novel work is to alternate the two elements. A bit of action, then a bit of sequel. That can vary, of course. You can have two, three, four scenes in a row, and then a sequel. The opposite rarely works however, where you have sequel, sequel, sequel, action. That usually leads to a interior monolog novel that only close relatives will read. The best way to construct a novel is to alternate the two elements, and maybe occasionally, having scene follow scene. Toward the conclusion of the novel, it’s best to have multiple scenes. It’s a pacing technique that helps create a page-turner. By that time, the reader should be well aware of the character’s feeling and thought processes and sequel can be shortened quite a bit. We kind of know how the character’s mind operates by then. There isn’t a formula to use in mixing scene and sequel, but a good estimate would be about 60% scene and 40% sequel. That isn’t hard and fast, however. Very good novels have been written with an 80%-20% ratio. The opposite usually won’t work. To have a novel weighted more toward sequel would almost always result in a mostly boring book. A great book to explain all this in more detail is Jack Bickham’s Scene and Sequel. Now. Here’s something you won’t hear much about, but which is one of the reasons a lot of stories writers attempt don’t work. It’s because of that advice to “get it down as quickly as you can and then rewrite it.” The problem with this is that very often the writer begins with a poorly-defined idea of the story they want to write. Too often, they begin what Blake Snyder called “The smell of the rain on the road at dawn.” As he says: “I can be driving down the street and see a guy with a t-shirt and think ‘That’s a story!!’ Is it? Doubtful. It may be the start of an idea, but for now it’s that thing all creative people get—if they’re lucky—the beginning of art, but in and of itself, only interesting to you.” Far too often, this is how many writers begin to write a novel. With nothing more than this. They feel that if they can just get a lot of stuff down, then later on they can go back and begin cutting away the dead wood and somehow sculpt what they have into a story. Almost always, this is a strategy doomed to failure. This is akin to a housewife dreaming of her dream house one night and then waking up and getting together a crew to build it. If the housewife is a billionaire and can keep tearing down the old mistakes and improving it, bit by bit, perhaps she can eventually build that house. Even then, it probably won’t resemble the house she dreamed of. But, yet, this is what many writers do. They’ve also bought into that chestnut that “ideas are cheap.” Actually, ideas are cheap—however, solid story ideas that a novel can be created from are very dear and rare. That myth that any writer worth their salt has dozens and dozens if not thousands of ideas laying around in the ol’ brain pan and the only real problem is that they won’t live long enough to get ‘em all written. The truth is, most of those millions of ideas are nothing more than the “smell of the rain on the road in the morning.” It takes far more than that to create a viable novel. The truth is, good story ideas aren’t that easy to come by. Ideas—or fragments of ideas—are everywhere—but actual story ideas aren’t as common as folks would have you believe. My own novel writing process begins with a story idea. But… and here’s a big BUT… that idea has to percolate in my brain and imagination from anywhere from five to ten years on average before it’s ready to be written. That doesn’t mean when I finish a novel, I have to start from scratch and wait five or ten years to write the next one. At any given time, I have about ten story ideas I’ve been thinking about for many years until it’s matured enough to begin writing it. I daresay most of you have the same experience. Those are the stories you should be writing—not those “the smell of the rain” sudden inspirations that come to you. Those are the sparks that light the novel ideas but they haven’t yet achieved the level of story yet. Let them percolate in your brain awhile. A longwhile. Eventually, most of them will wither away and die… and they should. The ones that remain—that you can’t shake—those are the worthwhile ideas and have a chance to become a novel. The main point I want to make here is to be sure your novel idea is really a story before you begin the arduous task of creating it on paper. Most successful novelists do this and even so, with the best-laid plans, will end up not finishing the novel. Very often, that novel idea you had just doesn’t work. This is when you have to be ruthless and… KILL IT. While, yes, it’s possible to eventually wrestle a novel to the floor and create something publishable, you have to know when a particular work just isn’t going to become viable, not without a huge sacrifice of time and blood and sweat and tears. More time, more blood and more sweat and tears than it’s going to be worth. This isn’t something you’ll hear very often. Most of the advice is that one should never quit. All kinds of examples are trotted out where a writer spent ten years on a book (or more!) and the result was a masterpiece. What they usually don’t tell you is that for every writer who succeeds like this, there are a thousand who eventually gave up entirely. Or, that if the masterpiece writer had abandoned the work earlier, they might have written five other books during that time that were just as good or possibly even better. This kind of thing comes about as a result of a culture that says quitting anything is always a bad thing. Just remember that this isn’t Little League where your dad is screaming at you to: “Never quit, Johnny! Only losers quit!” And you go on, day after miserable day, trying to do the impossible, and in the end, succeed only in prolonging the inevitable truth that: You suck at baseball and aren’t ever going to get any better, at least in a reasonable amount of time, by, say the age of fifty-five. Here’s the good news. We’re all grown up now and don’t have to listen to the adults in our house screaming at us to Never Quit! It’s perfectly okay to quit under the right circumstances. Remember, you’re not quitting writing—you’re quitting a novel that is unlikely to work. And, you’ll know if it’s a novel that you should persevere with or not. Just listen to the sane voice in your head. This doesn’t mean that you should give up on every project that proves difficult. Most novels don’t come easily. But, there’s a difference between a difficult task and an impossible one. Make sure you know the difference. Most successful novelists I know end up finishing about one out of every three novels that they begin. And, that’s after they’ve winnowed out probably dozens if not hundreds of ideas. Learn to enjoy the killing of such a novel. It’s by killing the losers that you’re letting the healthy ones live. Not enough is said about the value of abandoning crap. If it’s crap—and you should be able to tell the difference—reworking it endlessly ain’t gonna turn it into a bouquet of roses. Learn to be a cold-blooded assassin. Here’s another truism. All novels in the beginning stages of writing them are trying to be crap. At the first moment you put something on paper, it’s trying to be really bad, it’s trying to be boring, to be unstructured, to be pointless, it’s trying to be digressive. You have to prop it up at every stage if it’s going to be any good. You have to be really an assassin, going after the boring parts, and going to the parts that really get to your heart and propping them up even more. If you think you’re going to “fix it later” I think you’re going to eventually discover that doesn’t happen. You have to be ruthless. And, immediately. Anything that has a chance at being good means you’re going to have to be really, really tough. This is why I’m adamantly against the advice to “get it down lickety-split while in the throes of the muse… and then go back later to fix it.” If you’ve tried that and don’t have much in the way of publication to show for it, that’s maybe a clue that it doesn’t work. Every bumper sticker piece of writing advice isn’t good. Failure is a big part of success. (I sound like a Dale Carnegie ad, don’t I!) But, it’s true. We have to fail, over and over and over. It’s by failing that eventually we begin to win. Eventually, if you keep on writing, you’re going to stumble onto something you’re writing that’s so compelling, so good, so memorable and special… that the five or ten projects you began and abandoned just don’t matter. They’re just what you had to go through to get to the good stuff finally. And now, here’s the biggest secret of all. What writing teachers and craft books, mostly never tell you. Most of us begin writing because we know clearly what good writing looks like. We’ve simply read so danged much, we know good writing the instant we encounter it. We want to write because we LOVE good writing. So, we begin writing and for the first few years there’s this gap. What we’re getting down just isn’t that good. It’s trying to be great, but it just isn’t making it. Your writing isn’t all that good, but what’s still the same is that you still know what good writing looks like. And, yours isn’t matching up. Your taste in what’s good writing is killer, but what’s disappointing is that your own effort doesn’t measure up. It’s trying to be good but you can tell it’s crappy. And this is when a lot of writers give up. Try as hard as you can, you just can’t seem to create to the same standard as what you know is good. This is when lots of writers quit. Here’s a secret. Almost all successful writers went through the same thing. Most spent years knowing that what they were creating wasn’t as good as what they knew to be good writing. They knew they were falling short. They knew it didn’t have that special “thing” they wanted it to have. Here’s the thing: EVERYBODY goes through this. EVERYBODY. You have to know that this is totally normal and that we all go through the same thing. You’re not the only person to experience this gap between what you know to be good writing and the crap you’re putting out. The difference is the successful writers plow through this period in their lives. The unsuccessful ones don’t—they quit before they should. The most important thing you can do during this phase of your writing career is simple. DO A LOT OF WRITING. Do a huge volume of work. Write every single day. Set yourself deadlines that you convince yourself you have to stick to. So many words a day or week. So many stories finished by such and such a day. It’s only by going through a volume of work that you’re going to catch up and narrow that gap between that good writing you recognize in others and your own work. If you stay the course it will happen. This is the point at which most writers quit. Don’t let that be you. Trust that you will emerge from this a good writer. In my own case, that took about ten years. I even got stuff published during that time. But, only rarely. I came close to quitting many times. Just thought I’d never arrive at the place where I was consistently good. That’s a crushing thing to feel. And, I know a lot of you feel that way right now. I’ve been there—I know. During this time, I even got books published. My first novel even won an award—it was awarded a Special Citation by the Violet Crown Book Award. But, I wasn’t a good writer yet. That would take another ten years before I could consistently get down on paper the kind of material that matched up to what I knew was good writing. It takes awhile. It’s going to take you each awhile if you aren’t there yet. It’s normal to take awhile and you simply have to fight through it and keep writing. And, when you emerge, you’ll be fierce. You’ll be a warrior! There is a major pitfall most of us fall into. When you first pick up a pen or turn on the computer, there’s a tendency to write outside of our own voices. To sound… like a writer. Or, what we mistakenly think a writer sounds like. We’ll want to sound like Faulkner or Flannery O’Connor or even John Grisham, for example. Whoever. The problem is, there’s already a Faulkner. There’s no room for a Faulkner, Junior. We already have the real deal. We need writers who sound like themselves. Who write in their one-of-a-kind, original-diginal voices. Who are themselves on the page. Once we begin to accept that our own voice has value and is interesting, then we’ve made a quantum leap toward matching up our vision of what is good and your own work.
(If you're interested in finding your own voice a bit quicker, you might glom onto this one.)
Here’s where the crux of the problem lies, I believe. That standard of good writing we’re trying to match is viewed incorrectly by us and it takes time to learn this. We’re only paying attention to the outward voice of the writer. And, this is where we keep falling down. We’re trying to mimic that particular voice. And, that’s the one thing we should be avoiding. It’s like a person who wants to be a TV broadcast journalist and his hero is Walter Cronkite. Cronkite is his standard of excellence. This guy doesn’t realize that we already have a Walter Cronkite and that no one is looking for a Cronkite, Junior. Or, pick a contemporary broadcaster, doesn’t matter who. Virtually no one in the audience wants a clone or twin of that person. But, we know that that person is the standard of excellence. So what happens to all of these bright-eyed wannabe broadcasters? Well, to many of them, the same thing happens to the writer whose idea of a good writer is say William Faulkner. They begin to imitate the “master.” And this is why it often takes years and years before the gap between the standard and our own writing begins to narrow. We’re mostly looking at the outward manifestation of their art. In the case of the broadcaster, they begin to assume the personal tics of Cronkite. The speech patterns he favors. The way he emphasizes certain words and parses his sentences. His steely stare. Maybe even his haircut and suit choice. In the case of the writer who holds Faulkner up as his standard of excellence, he or she might do the same things. They look at the cadence of his sentence, the vocabulary choices Faulkner makes, the syntax of his prose, etc. That person is looking at the superficial aspects of Faulkner but never dig into the real thing that he’s doing. They’re looking at superficial artifacts. We’ve all probably done that. We look at the words on the page and think that if we can just learn to string together similarly-sounding sentences we’ll have arrived. Alas, it does not and cannot work that way. We need to instead be looking at the attitude, the personal stance of the writer to his story, the emotions of the writer toward his or her work. We need to focus on our own emotional stances toward what we want to write. When we learn to do that, we begin to formulate our own voices and when that day arrives, we will have become good writers. Warriors. You just have to keep pushing through all that junk and one day it will happen. Our writing will no longer be crap and we’ll have become… warriors. And this is what I wish for everyone here. I hope this gives you some food for thought and that you find it helpful. Don’t give up too soon.Here are some other things to consider: Have something worth saying. In his book Culture Care, artist Makoto Fujimura tells a story he confesses may be legendary about a Yale student taking Hebrew from the great Old Testament scholar Brevard Childs. The student, discontent with his grades, asked the scholar how he could raise them. Childs’s answer: “Become a deeper person.”Peggy Noonan, writer of seven books on politics, religion, and culture, and weekly columnist forThe Wall Street Journal, at one time the speech writer for the man considered The Great Communicator—Ronald Reagan. In her book Simply Speaking, she says that what moves people in a speech is the logic. The words “Tear down this wall, Mr. Gorbachev” are not all that poetic when taken at face value. But they express something that resonates in the human heart. In the words of Robert Frost, “Something is there that doesn’t love a wall.”
In the same way that logic is what moves people in a speech, logic is what moves people in writing. And to have logic, to move people, we must have something worth saying. In fact, probably about 90% of writing is having something worth saying. And how do we get something worth saying? By expanding the world of ideas to which we expose ourselves and by cultivating a rich inner life. Decrease your vision. That is, “think local.” Start with your family. Doug Bender, the bestselling author of I Am Second: Real Stories. Changing Lives. wrote a book for an audience of one. When Doug’s wife had a miscarriage, it grieved the Bender’s little girl. So Doug wrote a child’s book about death and loss just for her. A seminary professor told his students, “Stop thinking you will go out and save the world, and instead become the best family member you can be, the most grateful child of your parents, the greatest and most dependable encourager in your church, the best contributor to your community.” We influence the world one small corner at a time. Cherish the small.In the days when Abraham’s descendants had been carried off from Israel to Babylon, their prophet, Jeremiah, sent a letter to King Nebuchadnezzar for the surviving leaders in exile. Jeremiah’s counsel: “Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce…. Seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile” (Jere. 29:1–7). Seeking the good of the city where we live is always good counsel. So write for your kids, if you have any. Contribute good columns to the local paper. Donate some book reviews for your favorite local web site. Do readings at the library. And do so simply to give back and because you wish to make your corner of the world a better place. Write what contributes to human flourishing, not what you perceive as the next hot market. Trying to predict what will sell is like leaning on cobwebs. Just about the time you find a post to rest against, it gives way. By the time you finish writing a book to meet demand, the market will have left you in the dust. So write what you love to write and/or what you can write with excellence. Measure success accurately. You will be tempted to measure your own success by a number of externals that have nothing to do with your worth. Tell yourself they are lies.The only human-made structure visible from space was not the Golden Gate Bridge or the Eiffel Tower or even the tallest building in the world, but only the Great Wall of China. Think of all the amazing structures that “failed” to make that list.
But that does not make these structures failures. It just means that when measured by one narrow definition of success, they failed. As writers, any number of false measures can make us feel like losers. Did our last book fail to earn out its advance? Did we do a book tour? Did the work gain rave reviews in Publishers Weekly and Library Journal? These are not accurate measures of whether we can write. Lots of crummy books sell big. Many divergent books make their authors lots of money, but that does not make the books or the authors successes.So measure not by money or fame, but in influence on human flourishing. And of course, that is impossible to measure. Which is precisely my point.To sum up: stay the course. Everybody goes through the period where what they create doesn’t match up with their sense of what’s good writing. You simply have to keep on working and eventually you’ll emerge and it will. This is the point where we lose most writers. Don’t be one of those who quit just before they attain the prize.In closing, let me quote the words of that immortal philosopher, Red Green, who says: Keep your stick on the ice. We’re all in this together and I’m pulling for you.Thank you.
Les Edgerton
January 9, 2016
AUDITOR POSITIONS ARE OPEN
Hi folks,
Well, our latest bootcamp class session has ended and in about a week (Jan. 17) a new, ten-week session will be beginning. I’ve heard from several people who are interested in joining us, but alas, we only had two openings for writers this time and both were filled from the auditors who were on board last session. This is the first place we always go to when we need new class members.
Our auditor program has been a resounding success for the several years we’ve had it. Basically, auditors have access to everything we do in class at all times. They see how we operate, how we present our work, how it’s critiqued, and are privy to all the many conversations about craft the members have. It’s exactly like sitting in class with the only proviso that they can’t participate actively. Many auditors have told me that they learned more by sitting on the sidelines observing that they did in their university classes on writing. We are a serious group, with but one goal—that every member become published and published well. Our track record in that regard is excellent. And, we expect that goal to continue next session. As many as six writers will have finished the novels they’ve been working on in class and I believe all of them will find a legitimate publisher. A few nearing the completion of their novels have already secured good agents and are just putting the final polish on their manuscripts.
Which means that we will probably have several openings in the following session. Not that many—most who finish their novels opt to remain in class as they work on their next work. People who are already in class always have first dibs on being in the next session. When we do have openings, we’ll solicit from the ranks of the current auditors. If openings are not filled thusly, we then open it up to anyone who applies. This rarely happens.
Some of the class members meet up in Scottsdale, AZ a couple of years ago. L-R, Joe Beaumont, Maegan Beaumont, moi, Linda Thompson, Suzana Orozco and Kristen Boe (Pen name, Janey Mack).The purpose of this post is to let people know that we are always open to auditors. There are no limits on the number of auditors who can join us, simply because we don’t have to take any time for their work. It’s that simple. That’s also the reason we maintain class size at 10-12 people each session. That’s the number of participants that we can serve properly and fairly and thoroughly. Any more than that, we would run into a time problem. Both myself and all the class members take significant time to read and comment on the submissions each week, and if we added more to class, we’d have to spend less time on everyone else’s work and we’re just not going to do that.
The way class works, the class is divided into two groups. Holly Love, our class administrator and member herself, assigns each group to a color. Six in each group. Each writer is required to read and make detailed comments on the other five members in his/her group and return those for the class as a whole to view. That doesn’t mean that they can’t read and comment on any writers outside their group—they certainly can and do—but these are their required reads. A few years ago, each class member had to read and comment on everyone else’s work in class, but it got to be too much for more than a few, so we’ve divided the class in two now. I’m the only one who reads and comments on everyone’s work.
What’s different about our class is that we don’t care about placating people’s feelings. We’re not mean-spirited, but our standards are based on helping our fellow writers create a publishable novel. We’re not there to make people feel good or to lavish praise on each other. If praise is warranted, they’ll receive it, but our biggest focus is on what isn’t working and how to fix it.
This is the reason I formed this group several years ago. I’d taught in various universities and other venues, both online and on site, including the UCLA Writer’s Program, the University of Toledo, Phoenix College (the “real” college, not that internet pretend school you see on billboards), St. Francis University, Trine University, the New York Writer’s Workshop, Writer’s Digest Online Classes, Vermont College, and other venues. The reason I quit and opened up this class was that every one of those venues required their teachers to practice the “sandwich” method of teaching. Put simply, you were to provide a bit of praise (the bread), a piece of criticism (the meat), and then another bit of praise (more bread, ala the sandwich method. I simply couldn’t do it any longer. The truth is, often there is nothing to praise and I had to make up something. Mostly to salve their feelings. And, to make sure they had a pleasant experience and would return to take another class.
I just couldn’t do it any longer. I kept seeing students who were no closer to being published than when they began and they kept clinging on to the bits of praise handed out with their sandwich as some kind of justification that they were “writing.” Well, many were writing… just not writing well.
It was then I realized that praising someone for bullshit wasn’t a kindness at all. If they didn’t know their writing wasn’t working, they’d never do anything to get better. And, by and large, many didn’t. Many were perfectly happy, sitting in a warm, fuzzy club that kept feeding them these sandwiches. Kind of like more than one local writer’s club. Most people didn’t want to tell others the truth, which often was… “Your writing flat-out sucks.” When you tell someone that, they have two choices. 1. Disagree, often violently. 2. Agree, and do something about it. I only wanted to spend time with that second group. When I first began the classes, I fully expected a huge turnover each new session. We had a class structure and philosophy that didn’t deliver sandwiches to the others. If a writer’s work sucked, we told them that. With no mincing of words. But… and here’s the big “but”—we didn’t just say it sucked; we told them why and we also told them how they could improve it. Don’t misunderstand—we don’t promote “formulas” or anything like that in class. We tell them why it wasn’t working and suggested how they could make it more publishable.
What happened was that I got a huge surprise. People didn’t quit. They forged on and enrolled in a second class. And third… and… Their books began getting published. It turns out people aren’t as thin-skinned as too often thought. It turns out there are a lot of people who actually want someone to tell them why they’re not getting published and offer them tools to actually find a publisher and see their work in print. Some do… quit, that is… but not nearly as many as I figured we’d get. Some truly tough writers, who didn’t believe that genius was the only requirement to see their books end up on bookstore shelves. Who knew that hard work, patience and attitude were just as important and maybe even more so.
Those early folks (some of who are still with us, four years later), created a name for our class. It has become “Les Edgerton’s Bootcamp for Writers.” And, it is a bootcamp. We don’t tolerate sissies or quitters or know-it-alls or needy folks. Just don’t have time for that kind of person. We welcome men and women who are willing to do the hard, hard work of becoming publishable writers.
Anyway, sorry to go on like this, but I’m extremely proud of the writers in our classes. And, I’d like to invite you to join us as an auditor. I wish I could allow everyone who wants to become a working member, but I can’t. But, I think I can safely promise you that you’ll be courtside to a class where you’ll learn an awful lot about how to write a publishablebook. And, safely. The class won’t even know you’re there. And, then, if you like what you see every day, when one of those rare openings occur, you’ll have the first shot at filling it.
Class membership is $400. To be an auditor is only $50.00.
If you’re interested and would like to know more about it or to just sign up, just email me at butchedgerton@comcast.net.
Thanks for taking the time to read and consider this. I’m wishing you nothing but profitable writing this coming year. Like that brilliant philosopher, Red Green, says: “I’m pulling for ya. We’re all in this together.”
Blue skies,Les
Diana Beebe and I meet up in Dallas at the DFW convention. Diana recently won a major writing contest and her work is being looked at by several prominent agents and publishers. She's a member of our class.December 9, 2015
IS THIS CENSORSHIP? YOU DECIDE.
Hi folks,
I had an exchange with a gentleman today that I thought some might enjoy seeing and even weighing in with your own opinions on the subject. It’s from a guy named Aaron (won’t give his last name or other identifying info). We linked up on LinkedIn.
I’d be very interested in your own thoughts on this if you can spare a couple of moments. Thanks!
>> Hello Les,
>> Thank you for connecting with me on LinkedIn!
>>
>> I create ratings for books based on the level of violence, language,
>> and sexual content.
>> What do you think of this idea?
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Aaron
>> HI Aaron,
>> To be honest, on the surface I have mixed feelings. As long as it
>> doesn't constitute any form of censorship or political correctness,
>> it's fine with me. If it does touch on either of these things, then
>> it's not...
>>
>> Blue skies,
>> Les
>>
> Thanks Les,
> I've been thinking about that as well.
> A few people have mentioned that ratings can be a form of censorship
> especially when people have to pay for the ratings as opposed to being
> independent.
> I.e. The MPAA forces all movie producers to be rated by them, which
> can produce some undesirable consequences.
>
> Would you mind describing what you would consider to be censorship?
>
> Thank you for your time,
> Aaron
>
> Hi Aaron,
> First, I want to commend you for beginning a true dialog and not an
> argument! That's very promising... and civilized! Mucho respect.
>
> It's interesting that you mentioned movies. What I see there are
> these circumstances--since so much money is involved, studios bend
> over backwards to change their films often to fit into the more
> commercial parameters. There are those who view books and movies
> only as entertainments, but just as legitimately, there are artists
> who view them as beyond entertainment and at least somewhat
> messages, etc. When an artist is compelled by a studio or a
> publisher to alter their content, then it seems clear that
> censorship has reared its head. Make sense? That's mostly what I
> fear from a rating system. That publishers begin to pay heed to it
> and then compel their authors to change their product. Like a lot of
> concepts, there is often a good thought at the heart or beginning of
> it, and then it gets corrupted to appease either a monetary
> consideration or a "reputation" consideration. I think that's what
> makes me at least a bit leery. Fair?
>
> I am absolutely against any form of censorship and violently against
> the principle of political correctness that I personally feel is
> eroding our personal freedoms rapidly.
>
> Thanks so much for the opportunity to offer my opinion.
>
> Blue skies,
> Les
>
Hey Les,
Thank you for that level of detail!
Your definition of censorship seems to be a bit different from the one
I've been using, so it's great to see how you're looking at this.
To me, censorship is legally punishing or prohibiting free speech...
or exerting such social pressure on people who express uncomfortable
opinions that they do not feel free or are not free to express their
views. I've been rather troubled by the suppression of free speech in
our country. Some opinions are celebrated, while the opposite opinions
are now socially and sometimes even legally punished.
That is different from people choosing not to watch a movie or read a
book because they don't like the content.
It is also different from publishers and studios choosing not to
publish a film or book because they know people won't buy it. Most
publishers are corporations, not charities. So we can't expect them to
publish something people won't buy.
Is that the opposite of your position, or does it somewhat make sense?
Thanks for your time,
Aaron
Hi Aaron,Good points! The key to me in your argument below is the part that states: exerting such social pressure on people who express uncomfortable opinions that they do not feel free or are not free to express their views.
This is the central problem, I feel. It's not the "legally punishing or prohibiting free speech" part that bothers me nearly as much as the social pressure. We're seeing this everywhere these days--from the so-called "safe spaces" college ninnies yap about and serve more to suppress other's opinions than anything else. One of my books recently underwent this kind of "censorship." A reviewer wrote a positive review of my novel "The Bitch" and when she went to publish it in a number of newspapers, they would publish the review, but demanded to block out the word "bitch" not only in the title but in any occurrence within the review. Not what you'd legally or technically call "censorship" perhaps but it had the same, chilling effect. What's really funny, is that the title has absolutely nothing to do with a pejorative term against females (nor was it a term for a female dog), but, rather, it's a common term used by both criminals and district attorneys to denote the "three strikes and you're out, ha-BITCH-ual criminal statute" ergo, "the bitch." This is just one of those insidious and seemingly righteous forms of covert censorship. As is the atmosphere today on many college campuses where you are bombarded on all sides by liberal thought and if you express a conservative idea, you are routinely hooted down and worse. The same thing is operating in publishing circles. My own opinion is a pox on both houses. If I don't like what you write or what you say I have a choice--don't listen or don't buy your work. If it comes with a label supplied, I maintain that already is influencing your decision to buy or not buy it and based on an arbitrary scheme of reasoning, by definition slanted.
Blue skies,Les
That’s our conversation. Any and all opinions welcome!
Blue skies,
Les
November 21, 2015
I HAVE TO CANCEL MY PARTICIPATION IN THE CHICAGO NOIR@BAR
Hi folks,
This is just to let anyone who was planning to see me tonight at the Chicago Noir @ The Bar tonight that I can't make it because of the weather! It's really nasty out there.
Sorry! I was really looking forward to this.
Blue skies,
Les
This is just to let anyone who was planning to see me tonight at the Chicago Noir @ The Bar tonight that I can't make it because of the weather! It's really nasty out there.
Sorry! I was really looking forward to this.
Blue skies,
Les
October 31, 2015
HALLOWEEN!
Hi folks,
Well, here it is... Halloween again. I've got my treats all lined up for the little tykes. Shots of expresso and a brand-spanking new cocker spaniel puppy for each of 'em! It's what I always give and the odd thing is I never seem to get the same kids back each year. It's always a new bunch. Go figure...
And, I can't wait until my favorite trick or treaters show up. I LOVE these costumes! It really captures the spirit of the holiday in a way that overused witches and zombies can't. Last year I gave this zany pair a puppy and shot of expresso and they came back through for seconds! My kind of partiers!
Blue skies,
Les
Well, here it is... Halloween again. I've got my treats all lined up for the little tykes. Shots of expresso and a brand-spanking new cocker spaniel puppy for each of 'em! It's what I always give and the odd thing is I never seem to get the same kids back each year. It's always a new bunch. Go figure...
And, I can't wait until my favorite trick or treaters show up. I LOVE these costumes! It really captures the spirit of the holiday in a way that overused witches and zombies can't. Last year I gave this zany pair a puppy and shot of expresso and they came back through for seconds! My kind of partiers!
Blue skies,
Les
October 24, 2015
CHICAGO NOIR AT THE BAR!
Hi folks,
I'm absolutely stoked that I've been invited to participate in a Noir@theBar event in Chicago, on Saturday, November 21, with three of my truly favorite crime/noir writers. If you're in town then, I'd love to see you. It's gonna get nasty up in there!
It's such an honor to share the stage with these guys! I absolutely cannot wait!
Blue skies,
Les
I'm absolutely stoked that I've been invited to participate in a Noir@theBar event in Chicago, on Saturday, November 21, with three of my truly favorite crime/noir writers. If you're in town then, I'd love to see you. It's gonna get nasty up in there!
It's such an honor to share the stage with these guys! I absolutely cannot wait!Blue skies,
Les
October 21, 2015
A PROUD DAD
Hi folks,
First, thanks to a lot of people's generosity and warm, giving natures, Craig McNeely emailed me to say that he and his family will be able to get a place to live by tomorrow! He asked me to thank all of the folks we may have reached. I know that like me, you're glad that his two little girls, his wife, and himself are going to be able to get off the streets! This is where social media shows its soul.
Now, I have to brag on my son Mike a bit. Mike's kind of a Renaissance Man in that he's talented on many levels. When he was in grade school, he and his friends made a spoof movie on Saving Private Ryan, he retitled Saving Ryan's Privates, where he followed his friend Ryan around school with a movie camera, and every time he came close to a girl Mike and his buddy tackled him in a heroic effort to save their friend's "privates." In high school, he was a star pitcher who played on several outstanding travel teams all over the country and his h.s. team won the large school state title twice.
On the mound for Snider H.S.
On his uncle's Harley...
And, as an 8th grade basketball player.
Nowadays, Mike is the top salesman at the Rogers & Hollands' Jewelry Store in Ft. Wayne, and recently was awarded their top employee of the year from all 80 of their stores.
In his spare time, Mike has always drawn really abstract forms and posted them on Instagram. Just recently, his work was discovered by a major art dealer who is going to present them in an exhibition and for sale. Won't name the gallery just yet until it's cleared to do so, but the owner is a well-regarded name in art circles. Anyway, I thought I'd post the images Mike sent to her which are being prepared for exhibition and sale. I think Mike got his art ability from me since I have none left, whereas his mother still has a lot. That only makes sense, right?
Anyway, here's Mike's drawings:
He has literally dozens and dozens and dozens of these as well as "regular" artwork. I'm really proud of him and this may mean the dawn of a new career for him. Hope you enjoy the look at his weird mind... That, I know he got from dad...
Not to mention his sister, Sienna is an extremely good artist as well. His other sister, Britney, is the outlier as she's a computer guru... We can't point to any parent for where she got those skills... not from me, anyway! But, we do know she got her brains from her mother since I still have all of mine...
In case you can't tell, I'm so damned proud of all of my kids!
Blue skies,
Les
First, thanks to a lot of people's generosity and warm, giving natures, Craig McNeely emailed me to say that he and his family will be able to get a place to live by tomorrow! He asked me to thank all of the folks we may have reached. I know that like me, you're glad that his two little girls, his wife, and himself are going to be able to get off the streets! This is where social media shows its soul.
Now, I have to brag on my son Mike a bit. Mike's kind of a Renaissance Man in that he's talented on many levels. When he was in grade school, he and his friends made a spoof movie on Saving Private Ryan, he retitled Saving Ryan's Privates, where he followed his friend Ryan around school with a movie camera, and every time he came close to a girl Mike and his buddy tackled him in a heroic effort to save their friend's "privates." In high school, he was a star pitcher who played on several outstanding travel teams all over the country and his h.s. team won the large school state title twice.
On the mound for Snider H.S.
On his uncle's Harley... 
And, as an 8th grade basketball player.Nowadays, Mike is the top salesman at the Rogers & Hollands' Jewelry Store in Ft. Wayne, and recently was awarded their top employee of the year from all 80 of their stores.
In his spare time, Mike has always drawn really abstract forms and posted them on Instagram. Just recently, his work was discovered by a major art dealer who is going to present them in an exhibition and for sale. Won't name the gallery just yet until it's cleared to do so, but the owner is a well-regarded name in art circles. Anyway, I thought I'd post the images Mike sent to her which are being prepared for exhibition and sale. I think Mike got his art ability from me since I have none left, whereas his mother still has a lot. That only makes sense, right?
Anyway, here's Mike's drawings:
He has literally dozens and dozens and dozens of these as well as "regular" artwork. I'm really proud of him and this may mean the dawn of a new career for him. Hope you enjoy the look at his weird mind... That, I know he got from dad...Not to mention his sister, Sienna is an extremely good artist as well. His other sister, Britney, is the outlier as she's a computer guru... We can't point to any parent for where she got those skills... not from me, anyway! But, we do know she got her brains from her mother since I still have all of mine...
In case you can't tell, I'm so damned proud of all of my kids!
Blue skies,
Les
