Musings Of A New Southern Man

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...