Musings Of A New Southern Man

... or at least the best of those I read: 3. Where Men Win Glory, by Jon Krakauer. Pat Tillman was an American icon, but not by his own choosing. He was a man who gave up an NFL career so he could serve his country in the aftermath of 9/11. He became an Army Ranger, fought in Afghanistan, was held up as an emblem of what an American could surrender in order to battle for his country, and was killed by friendly fire. Krakauer's reporting skills are at their best here. We get a moving portrait of a complex man and the hell that being in battle can be. This was the only nonfiction book I read this year, and it was worth every second. 2. Gone Girl, by Gillian Flynn. Amy's introduction to us as a woman falling head over heels for this guy Nick at the start of the book is one of the best set-ups for a novel I have seen in years. She is breathlessly in love, swept away, in awe. But slowly, petal by petal, we see this flower of love begin to fall apart. Amy disappea...

I had to compile a list of the authors whose works I read recently, and I came to an odd realization. I am a reader of male authors, almost exclusively. The one exception in the list is Gillian Flynn and her brilliant "Gone Girl," which by the way is being made into a movie with David Fincher as director. (The buzz is that Ben Affleck and Rosamund Pike will play Nick and Amy. Feedback on those choices?) My other reading choices in the past several months? In order, they are: "Live Wire" by Harlan Coben; "The Cold Moon" by Jeffery Deaver; "One Shot" by Lee Child; "Where Men Win Glory" by Jon Krakauer; "The Highway" by C.J. Box; "The Jefferson Key" by Steve Berry; "And The Mountains Echoed" by Khaled Hosseini; and (still in the process of reading) "Hotel at the Corner of Bitter and Sweet" by Jamie Ford. Next on my list? Probably "Live by Night" by Dennis Kehane, although "Life After...

I have nothing against Steve Berry. My writer friends who have met him at conferences say he is a genuinely nice guy. I admire the work he does through his foundation in advancing the study of history, and the man writes well. The problem is that I don't like what he writes. His specialty is the action thriller, and he masters the genre. He is the king of the short declarative sentence. He keeps his storytelling at a rapid-fire pace. But why don't I like his work? His plots are intricate, and they are nicely formulated. He has a knack for taking historical fact and weaving it into his brand of fiction. What I don't like is that I don't give a hoot about his characters. Cotton Malone is his protagonist. He is a man of action. He has POTUS on speed dial (which is a characteristic of more than a few action thriller main characters). He has a love of his life. I don't care about her, either. Her name is Cassiopeia Vitt. (I can't help but think of Katarina Witt w...

I am sitting in my home office and writing today. I am taking a trip back in time as I do it. Well, maybe only a small trip. I am dressed in pajamas, slippers and bathrobe. I dress this way for a good reason. I am absolutely comfortable as I write. That, to me, is a huge part of the experience. This used to be my "writing uniform" for almost every writing session, but that was back when I had swing shift hours. I would get up in the morning, read the newspaper, drink a couple of cups of coffee and adjourn to the home office. My uniform was pajamas, slippers and (in the colder months) bathrobe. I could write for hours dressed this way. My new schedule is basically 9-to-5, Monday through Friday. I can't settle into that old routine with those hours. But today is Sunday, and I am calling my own shots. Here is my guideline: Make yourself physically comfortable, but make yourself uncomfortable in what you are writing. My pajamas uniform meets the first criterion, my story ...

I had a great day writing earlier this week. Most writers judge success by how many words they add to a novel on a given day. I reversed that. I was happy that I subtracted more than 10,000 words. It had to be done. My novel took new directions after I attended Donald Maass' writing workshop (referred to as BONI) in September. I got great feedback on my work. I was told I write beautifully. I am great at using certain phrases and descriptions. But I also heard words authors don't like when they believe they have a completed novel. Cold. Predictable. You are capable of much better work. I don't have such a big ego that these criticisms sent me into a tirade. Exactly the opposite. The people who reviewed my work -- Maass, Lorin Oberweger, Jason Sitzes and Brenda Windberg -- are pros in the business. I listened, I internalized what they said and wrote, and I went home and started plotting ways to make my novel better. Part of that is addition. There are swat...

I am a veteran journalist and a fledgling author. Both tasks require a mastery of words. Both require creativity and intense devotion to proper grammar, spelling, etc. They differ, however, in how I use that creativity. And that can be the problem. Journalists are the short-order cooks of the writing world. They must tell a good story but get to the point. A reporter might have 20 inches of copy in which to tell that story. The requirements are simple: Write a good lead, establish the focus of the story quickly and follow with supporting facts and quotes. (Notice that I followed proper journalism style and dropped the Oxford comma.) Novelists are chefs who take a long time to prepare a proper menu. Writing a good lead is there, but it wears a disguise. Those of us who attended Don Maass' Breakout Novel Intensive workshop recently spent considerable time on the need to write a scintillating first sentence. You have to hook the reader, agent and editor. But from that point on, ...

Death is not a surprise. We know it is the physical end of our time. We learn of it as little kids, usually while attending the funeral of a grandparent. We know it is there. We spend too much time trying to avoid it. Eventually, we can't. My mother, Virginia, passed away in the early morning hours of Sept. 2. It was a wonderful death. We all say we want to die comfortably in our sleep. This is the way Mom passed on. She was at peace, with her husband of 72 years nearby, and soon there was a woman from hospice, and there was me. Those really were a special several minutes. There was no angst. Little sorrow. There was lots of appreciation for Mom and what she had been to so many people. She was one of those women who sewed a rich quilt of a life. She weaved little threads of existence into a wonderful and large treasure. She had a great life, and she made life better for countless people around her. She was gentle, loving, caring, devoted, funny, available to...

So many people have been grabbed by the shirt collar by movies like "Die Hard." It's non-stop action, and Bruce Willis' character is always ready for the next fight. Such is the thriller genre. I thought my novel fit into that category. The simple truth is, it doesn't. I came to that realization recently thanks to agent Donald Maass. I sent Maass a query, and I billed my novel as a thriller. Well, it has several aspects of a thriller so why not? My problem is that the genre requires much tighter guidelines than I want to follow. It isn't that I am a rebel. I just want to create a character with far more depth than the "Die Hard" profile. Sure, there are plenty of yippee-ki-yay moments, but there's much more. Maass replied that my first chapter didn't hook him and pull him from page to page as a good thriller should. Coming from any other agent, I would take it as good advice and nothing more. Maass is the master teacher among agents,...

Yes, that is a three-month gap since my last blog entry. Funny how time flies when you're tearing apart a novel. And, yes, I do blame James Scott Bell, whose Ten Commandments for Authors put me on my current route. OK, "blame" is inaccurate. "Bless" works better. Bell's exact words that triggered this? They are contained in the Seventh Commandment: "Thou shalt make everything contribute to the story." His statement is simply: "Stay as direct as a laser beam." The problem with my second draft was that it didn't have that laser-like quality. Oh, yes, there is a main storyline, but it is surrounded by lots of little side trips. I had secondary characters who became primary characters far too often. It was like getting on an expressway intending to go from Orlando to Tampa but taking dozens of auxiliary roads during the journey. So, I wrote, and wrote, and wrote. I tore out entire sections. I inserted new ones. What was the result? ...

Yes, I am up in the middle of the night to write and edit again. Nothing new there. It's just that the subject matter of my writing and editing has changed. I must explain. I served as editorial director of woodypaige.com since The Denver Post columnist and ESPN personality launched the website in the fall. Well, the title "editorial director" is a bit misleading. That implies I could actually edit copy that went onto the site. Maybe wire editor is a better title. I also said "was" because Woody decided to pull the plug on the .com venture on May 1 because we couldn't get a national advertiser to help pay the bills. But for all those months, we gave it a heckuva try. Our biggest problem: We just didn't have the right business model. We posted links to 28 to 30 sports-related stories every day. It was designed to entertain that valuable 18-to-34 age demographic, but we never entertained enough of them. That led to lower numbers than advertisers wanted...

They say a reading of Ten Commandments can change a guy's life. I am sure that is true. But there are Ten Commandments, and then there are the Ten Commandments for an author. Those "tablets of stone" for writers came recently from James Scott Bell, one of the better writing coaches in the business. Bell's Commandments have forced me to take a long look and a wrecking ball to my second novel. I won't detail which commandments had such a great impact on me, but Bell taught me two lessons in the plainest language yet: refine character, complicate plot. I took those lessons and took a hard look at what I had written. There was only one conclusion to make: I had work to do. So, at 3:42 a.m. Saturday morning, with the music of Bach playing in my headphones, I reentered my novel. I had Bell's commandments playing in the back of my mind as well. This won't be a short exercise. I am taking entire sections I wrote and refining them. I am tossing out sections o...

I finished reading "Gone Girl" this week, and I must say I am better for the experience. Author Gillian Flynn takes readers on a thrill ride, only in a different way than in the standard mystery/thriller/suspense bill of fare. Her style concentrates on two people, Nick Dunne and Amy Elliott Dunne, and she details the smallest inner workings of their lives. Oh, yeah, there is the detail about Amy going missing, you know, the whole "Gone Girl" thing. Flynn takes considerable time to introduce the characters. Make that CONSIDERABLE time. She takes almost 100 pages to set up the timeline of the relationship between these people. That could be tiring trudging for many readers, but Flynn lets us have an enjoyable ride. Her unveiling of these people is done with humor and intricate skill. You read through the thrill of Nick and Amy first meeting, into infatuation, love, questions and ever-widening cracks in their marriage. Then Amy goes missing, and the crime plot be...

There was a mistake I left in my manuscript through numerous edits. It didn't escape one of my middle-of-the-night review sessions. It concerns a secondary character and his recognition of my main character, Daniel Pace. Early in the book, he sees Pace's name on a list and shows no recognition. Much later, near the end of the book, he informs Pace he knew about him for years. No!!!! Inconsistency!!!! But that's what is great about fiction. I took a few minutes to go back to that first incident and rewrite. Secondary character recognizes Pace's name at first glance. End of mistake. I will have more blog entries later, but this is going to be a busy author's day. AIC, for sure. Fire up Pandora for classical Latin guitar and get into that creative groove. Love it.

Welcome back to The Weekend Blogger. Let's contemplate the query letter. There is only one thing that is more important to an author trying to break into the publishing business, and that's the quality of the novel. But before the novel can have an effect, the query letter has to interest an agent enough that he/she will ask for part or all of that novel for review. That makes the query letter a high-stakes game. In a way, it's the author pushing in all of his/her chips. The problem is that some agents get hundreds of query letters a day, all delivered into what is charmingly called the slush pile. That query of mine has to stand out among all those other queries or else it will be treated like slush in your driveway. The agent will sweep it into a pile and never think about it again. End of a chance to be published, at least with that agent as the guide for that project. The perfect query letter has to have one trait: It has to lead to publication. All the nice verbi...

When I launched into this literary world, I couldn't give you a proper definition of "voice" in a novel. I figured it was something akin to the time-honored explanation of "what is pornography?": It is hard to define, but I know it when I see it. That view has changed. Here's the explanation I give today: Voice is your creative side speaking through your characters, setting, pacing, dialogue and detail. Let me accent the part of that definition that needs it. Voice is YOUR creative side. You can't force yourself into creating a character or writing in a genre with which you aren't comfortable. So what if vampires are the big literary hook these days, or zombies? If you don't have Anne Rice's heart and mind and aren't interested in detailing vampires, don't go there. Which brings me to my main character in the novel I just completed. His name is Daniel Pace. Nice, simple name. He has a simple day job, but he has made extraordinary ...

This entry comes with a big tip of the cap to Harlan Coben, who posted on Twitter recently that he reads his manuscript aloud as the final step before submission to the publishing house. Here's a hint: It works. No, make that "it works great!" I did this on the fourth read through my novel. What an eye-opener. I think writers get so locked in on small sections of their manuscripts while doing a normal edit that they forget to look at the entire picture. It's that "can't see the forest for the trees" problem. Reading the novel aloud corrects that. Give yourself an entire day's work time to do it, if you have written a novel of any size. Here's what I found once I read aloud: The pacing wasn't right. I took too long in cutting to the chase (no pun intended). I had some great chapters that exposed my character's voice, and some backstory, that didn't need to be there. There was some good writing. I will admit that. It just didn...

I have again been less than prompt in blogging for the very reason I am writing this entry. (Well, there is that two-other-jobs thing.) I am involved in the third revision of my novel. Each revision has discovered flaws that earlier had been acceptable work. Of course, as a copy editor I see the value in revising copy. It makes the content stronger. Most of the work I do involves the nip-and-tuck of extraneous sections. I allow violations of the "show, don't tell" mandate for authors. I don't amp up my main character's emotions in the right places. I don't make him keep to a straight path when he encounters certain situations. I tighten up the conflict between MC and chief protagonist. Snip, snip, all gone. Spackle and sand, and scenes are suddenly stronger. The key element in all this is the opening chapter. Almost every agent wants to see at least the first chapter of your novel. That makes sense because a reader standing in an airport bookstore will m...

Like any author who had the chance to sit in on one of his study sessions, I am a great fan of Donald Maass. He is the New York City agent who wrote "Writing the Breakout Novel" and "The Breakout Novelist," and his lessons are priceless. If you are a note taker, prepare to fill page after page with bits of wisdom. Which suggestion is best? There are several, but for me it is Maass' directive to think big. Think big in characters, big in scope, big in execution of the story line. If I want to boil it down to a cliche for being successful, it would go like this: Go big or go home. Just look at characters who seize our imaginations. Think of Hannibal Lecter. Think of James Bond. Think of Jack Reacher. Think of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan and Jeffery Deaver's twin protagonists, Lincoln Rhyme and Kathryn Dance. Each is bigger than life in heroism, intellect or vicious intent. They are memorable. That's the key. I tweak Maass' advice somewhat when it ...

There is no greater basic lesson in writing than A.I.C. I believe the axiom is credited to Nora Roberts, the prolific romance writer, who said the most basic lesson for any writer is Ass In the Chair. You have to sit down, crank up the computer and do what you love to do, i.e. create. It must be a daily habit. All the other lessons revolve around this one. There are different answers to what qualifies as proper A.I.C. Some novelists sit and create for hours. I know Joe Lansdale spends just a couple of hours a day, and maybe three, and turns out maybe three pages. But those three pages are created, tuned and revised during that session. String together enough of those sessions and you have a novel, or a great short story, or a novella, and your revisions are already done. What works? To each his own. My own A.I.C. has been challenged at times. Two jobs takes a lot of time and energy, but I am getting better at forcing A.I.C. moments into my day. There are moments just ...

First, an apology. I was away for a few days to follow my beloved Oregon Ducks as they played in the Fiesta Bowl. They won big, so I am a happy man. But with that break in my background, it's back to the literary part of my life: It seems rather incongruous to say that a great way to write good fiction is to be true to yourself. Fiction and reality in close proximity? As far as making believable stories, I think it is one of the lessons I learned early in this venture. Let me illustrate with another author's story. John Hart, my favorite author, wrote two novels before he finally wrote a work that was published. I never got details, but I believe those first novels had heavy doses of military action. The common thread for those works? They didn't see the light of day either through self-publishing or a publishing house. Why didn't they work? John's background includes, among many things, his work as a lawyer. It doesn't include military service. His first wo...

Joe Lansdale is an interesting read, and a more interesting person with whom to share a conversation. He is east Texas personified: blunt talking, a bit of bluster, good insights, wise in several areas. We don't see eye to eye on certain things, but I always respect Joe when he says something. I never respected him more than we chatted after one of his teaching sessions at the Pikes Peak Writers Conference last year. I asked Joe whether he read while he was writing novels, or did he put other authors aside so his own style wouldn't be tainted by someone else's voice? That was my mindset. I didn't want someone else's muse getting in the way of my creations. Joe was east Texas blunt in his reply: You are cheating yourself. The best way to become a great writer is to read great writing. Surround yourself with the works of those who deserve to be read. And I listened. I became a reading fool, polishing off a novel in one to two weeks (which is understandable wit...