The purpose and power of key art

The goal of designing a book cover at the beginning of a project is to find the theme, gaze at the totality of what needs to be achieved and why. At the moment I have 5,000 words, about 2/3 of one percent, long way to go, and art is the motor. On a big new project like this one, I'd much rather use days or weeks to see each little piece of my two main characters and the people they have to deal with as troubleshooters. Funny sort of job, shooting trouble in the mid-1970s. Milwaukee was run by the mob. Private hoodlums existed, both black and white, but they couldn't touch a pinball machine or enter a nightclub without supporting organized crime. Quite an era.

New project, new tempo

Spring is calm and simple, do a little each day. Chain saw, weed whacker, strong clippers to cut back razor sharp vines, a spade to toss sand and rock, to dig a trench, plant a seedling...

My new project is a departure of sorts, something to work at leisurely for many months, perhaps several years. The theme is partnership, two men on the wrong side of the law, set in the early 1970s before we had cellphones, before disco, long before anything was fashionable or forbidden or Politically Correct.

Men read daily newspapers and there were two of them, the library had microfilm, and people used payphones in drug stores and coffee shops, at busy intersections, at bus stops. Most still had rotary dials. There was no video, nothing digital, only three TV stations. All three signed off at midnight, a million viewers, respectable citizens, moms and dads and kids all sound asleep.

The Ham and Egger on Water Street was open all night.

Two pages of Flopsie

This is page 1 in a two-part story, first page of The Way Chris Saw It.

40,000 words later, here's the first page of part two: How Peachy Saw It

The Unloved Author

I'm glad that other writers succeed.

On alternate Wednesdays, I entertain the notion of literary success with optimism that someday, somewhere, someone will buy a copy of one of my books. Hasn't happened yet, after 20 years of writing, but it might, I tell myself on alternate Wednesdays after a cheery journey to the general store, an hour or two around the wood stove to chat with neighbors -- farmers and ranchers who speak with a twang, tell stories about hauling hay in an overloaded trailer with no tail lights, getting stopped by the Highway Patrol for a sobriety check. In good weather we throw horseshoes, and there will be guitar and mandolin strumming in the bluegrass tradition, rain or shine. Almost all of them were born and raised in the Ozarks. I'm the new kid, an alien being from another planet, so to speak. It took two years for them to ask and remember my name, although they knew in great detail the genealogy of everyone who helped me clear a building site and construct a hilltop house.

I don't do a great deal at home except sleep. Each morning I dress and brush my teeth, put on something suitable for the weather, and lead the dog downhill to a tin barn, one room of which has been my writing office for three years. There's coffee in the morning and a blank page, another chapter to attack, unless the enormous task of writing a novel was completed, in which case I'm stunned and incapable of anything except to re-read it from page one. In the past three years, I've written seven or eight books, roughly half a million words, but only four had the power to make me weep involuntarily.

I hope that other novelists are free of tears, cheerfully distant from their characters and the fictional adventures that they plot and touchtype with pleasure. I fight for every moment of life on the page, each word a challenge, because I have rules for writing. Never use the same word twice. Never use the same idiomatic expression for two different characters. Eliminate as many commas and articles (a, an, the) as possible. Don't gild the lily. Thus handicapped, it takes me several months to write a novel, working full time 60 hours a week.

I speak of it to honor the creative work that all authors do, whether successfully or not. The business of selling books has no impact on writing as I understand it. The whole of my concentration is in the hearts of my characters, who are as real to me as I am to myself and a dog who lays patiently and listens to keycaps stutter and stop, then blaze at top speed. I look up, having fought my way through a scene that sings, to discover that the sun is setting and it's time to go home. It is my honest wish for all other authors that they, too, have a writing office, cloistered with a coffee pot, snacks, and a dog.

My writing office in Costa Rica was rather grand, an intercom to summon the maid, balmy Pacific breezes, guaranteed ink above the fold and a deadline each Tuesday that drove me insane, writing a serialized novel. My writing office in Hilversum was a garret, entirely bare of furniture, yet the scenario I penned on the floor with a ballpoint became a movie. It doesn't matter precisely what kind of writing temple that one possesses, so long as it's private, shut away from every other human being, as long as possible, to see the story, live the story, hands poised to describe each heartbeat, every blip of hesitation before someone speaks.

Well. Nice work if you can get it, writing. I've thrown myself at it like a criminal would. Sold my car. Went without dentistry or medical care. Haven't had a decent meal in years, living on cold cuts and tinned mackerel and coffee. That's how much writing means to me. I trust that other authors never have to sacrifice friends and family, that they win readers easily and happily and effortlessly, glad to be part of a vigorous tradition. Truth be told, I have a friend who encourages me. One reader, a truly fine author, whose work sparkles and amazes.

If my experience as a novelist matters -- a hellish 20 years of obscurity -- I certify that all it took to sustain me was one person who said Yes! Absolutely! Write more!

No more

I have decided to cease promoting my books.

A confession

I'm an emotional novelist, with little notion of what will happen in advance of the stories I tell. All I know is characters and a little oomph of a situation, a few scenes, a place to begin. It came clear as glass by re-reading O. Henry, whose plots are worked out in reverse, a tidy ending in mind which all else must chug along to achieve as a chortle. Despicable John Irving and John Steinbeck did it too. I don't.

For example, in A Portrait of Valor all I knew was that Chris and Peachy must meet. His war buddies would stand by him. She would cleave to him and fight at his side. What began as passionate sexual chemistry would evolve into lasting love.

In The Tar Pit, all I knew was that Nick would be in the wrong place at the wrong time, falsely accused of killing a movie studio big wig. I didn't know who the real culprit was until the 5th or 6th chapter. My plots evolve by discovery, one clue at a time.

In Charity, I wanted to send them on an escapade, pay the price of charity, period.

My current project was a 2 cent idea, to show the same series of events from his POV and hers, without knowing anything about Finding Flopsie or who Flopsie was. Once begun, my stories tell themselves. One step into the unknown forces another, until the expanding edifice of necessity impels dramatic outcomes, because it must be so.

As an emotional author, every word matters, every moment of fictional life, even the bit players like taxi drivers and hotel clerks. My principal players grow into roles that they themselves shape and often regret. They make foolish mistakes. They gamble and they love life as voyagers who kick down obstacles and break their bones if necessary to win, lose, or draw. Most of life is a draw, nothing gained or lost. We always get what we pay for. So Chris remains Chris, and Peachy remains Peachy, bonded as they began many hundreds of thousands of words ago, a chemistry I honor with every hour and in every syllable. Spinning tales is fairly easy for me, it's the writing that vacuums my heart and all the literary skill I can muster, exhausts me, begs to be edited and tweaked and re-read many times to find and fix a single word. Every word matters.

By comparison to writing, the flow of life on the page, story is pff.

The experience of writing Flopsie

Aside from dietary hardship, dreaming nightly of a medium rare ribeye and a double Dewar's, subsisting instead on cheap cold cuts and canned mackerel, the work of Finding Flopsie proceeds apace.

Conceived as two stories told from two wildly different POVs (his and hers) there was macguffin hooey to keep them incommunicado, which is damn near impossible in modern life. I solved it by throwing Peachy's iPhone in a swimming pool, inability to remember her husband's mobile number after years of using an icon shortcut, and a network firewall that scrambles text messages sent from her sister's Android device. All completely silly, right? -- but if you get past the technofrauds for story's sake, it becomes a rather wonderful tale of two lovers separated and frantic with worry.

Of course, there must be action, people must be killed, all hope lost, saved more than once by impossibly good fortune, and in the end to risk life itself for love and honor, price no object, the same story told twice as a man would live it and then as a woman might. The project is nearing completion, maybe two more weeks.

Each day I try to write a chapter. Wednesday is a day off, although I like work days best. The most difficult part of beginning a new novel is beginning, thinking oneself obviously incompetent to do such a thing ever again. With the first line, there will be a second, and then (as of today) 59,000 words in highly polished form with about another 20 thousand to go, milking high drama and action as slowly as I can from a shrinking herd of characters. Stories force endings. The trick is to get there in loops and spirals of ever-increasing suspense and force. Wish me luck on that.