Telling Lies for Fun & Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers

lie* FffiHIN Author and Contributing Editor to Writer's Digest

TELLING LIES FOR FUN 8 PROFIT A Manual for Fiction Writers by Lawrence Block Introduction by Brian Garfield "In this book Lawrence Block does a better job of articulating the principles and methods of creative writing than I've seen in any how-to book since Lajos Egri's The Art of Dramatic Writing." — F r o m the Introduction by Brian Garfield Characters refusing to talk? Plot plod ding along? Where do good ideas come from anyway? In this indispens able volume, adapted from his popular columns in Writer's Digest magazine, novelist Lawrence Block takes an in side look at writing as a career and as a craft, offering proven, practical ad vice on handling the pleasures and pitfalls of the writing game. From studying the market, to mastering self-discipline and "creative pro crastination," through coping with rejections, Telling Lies for Fun and Profit is an invaluable, practical source book of information and insight into the craft of successful fiction writing. (continued

on back flap)

(continued

from front

flap)

LAWRENCE BLOCK is the author of over 20 novels, including Ariel, also published by Arbor House, and the forthcoming A Stab in the Dark. He makes his home in New York City. Selected by the Book-of-theMonth Club A Featured Alternate of the Writer's Digest Book Club Jacket design © Antler & Baldwin, Inc. Author photo by George Robert Haas

Arbor House Publishing Company 235 East 45th Street New York, N.Y. 10017 9-81

TELLING UES FOR FUN 0 PROFIT A MANUAL FOR FICTION WRITERS BY LAWRENCE BLOCK INTRODUCTION BY BRIAN GARFIELD

•

• • •

Setting Your Sights (studying the market) The Carrot and the Stick (self-discipline) Novel Approaches (the first novel as a learning experience) Rolling with the Punches (handling rejections) It's a Frame (the story within a story) Creative Pi^rastination (when it's okay to put it off) Tïme Out (what to do when the words won't come) Hum a Few Bars . . . and Fake It (shortcuts to research) The Hot's the Thing (the central importance of plot) The I's Have It (writing in the first person) Documentary Evidence (telling a story in letters) Modifiers for Mood-swing (effective use of adjectives) Writing with Your Eyes Closed (visualizing your scenes) Character Building (creating sympathetic, original characters) and much, much more. Fully Indexed

Martin Cruz Smith, author of Gorky Park, says: "Lawrence Block is a writer's best friend. He is wise, he is funny, and, to tell the truth, he is damn helpful. When best friends and mothers fail, read this book. "

IEIIING LIES FOR FUN ft PROFIT

BY LAWRENCE BLOCK NOVELS:

AFTER THE FIRST DEATH ARIEL CODE OF ARMS (with Harold King) DEADLY HONEYMOON DEATH PULLS A DOUBLECROSS THE GIRL WITH THE LONG GREEN HEART MONA RONALD RABBIT IS A DIRTY OLD MAN THE SPECIALISTS BOOKS ABOUT EVAN TANNER:

THE THIEF WHO COULDN'T SLEEP THE CANCELED CZECH TANNER'S TWELVE SWINGERS TWO FOR TANNER TANNER'S TIGER HERE COMES A HERO ME TANNER, YOU JANE BOOKS ABOUT MATTHEW SCUDDER:

THE SINS OF THE FATHERS TIME TO MURDER A N D CREATE IN THE MIDST OF DEATH A STAB IN THE DARK BOOKS ABOUT BERNIE RHODENBARR:

BURGLARS CAN'T BE CHOOSERS THE BURGLAR IN THE CLOSET THE BURGLAR WHO LIKED TO QUOTE KIPLING THE BURGLAR WHO STUDIED SPINOZA NON-FICTION:

WRITING THE NOVEL: FROM PLOT TO PRINT THE REAL FOOD PLACES (with Cheryl Morrison) TELLING LIES FOR F U N A N D PROFIT

A Manual far Hctina Writers

lies «PBOHf h lawrence Block Introduction by Brian Garfield

ARBOR HOUSE NEW YORK

Copyright © 1981 by Lawrence Block All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. Published in the United States of America by Arbor House Publishing Company and in Canada by Fitzhenry & Whiteside, Ltd. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 81-66965 ISBN: 0-87795-334-1 Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For HAL DRESNER COLLEAGUE, COMPANION, A N D CORSICAN BROTHER

CONIENIS PREFACE

INTRODUCTION PART O N E 1.

T H E L I A R ' S T R A D E : Fiction as a Profession

SETTING YOUR SIGHTS

How to discover your options as a writer. Using your reading prefer ences as a selection mechanism. Deciding what to write via identifi cation with another writer. 2.

STUDYING THE MARKET

The mechanics of market analysis. Reading with a purpose. Defining a category through plot summaries. How to write stories that are the-same-only-different. 3.

DECISIONS, DECISIONS

The question of slanting for an editor's taste. How to maintain in tegrity as a writer without making things hard for yourself. T h e Stepmother—a case study in decision-making. 4.

NOVEL APPROACHES

The disadvantages of short fiction. Why not write a novel? Plots and outlines. The first novel as a learning experience. 9

CONTENTS

NOTHING SHORT OF NOVEL

A further discussion of the book-length work of fiction. The power of writing one page a day. Overcoming fear offailure. More ques tions and answers on the novel. 6.

SUNDAY WRITERS

Writing as an avocation. Is eventual publication essential for suc cess? The special rewards of unpublished fiction. 7.

"DEAR JOY"

Advice to a college writer. What courses to take. The values and limitations of writing classes. Sidelines and extracurricular activities. Becoming a pro. 8.

HOW TO READ LIKE A WRITER

How writing improves one's reading. Mental rewriting as a literary exercise. Improving your writing skills through analytical reading. 9.

ROLLING WITH THE PUNCHES

How to handle rejection. The importance of submitting manuscripts relentlessly. Rejection as a part of the process of writing. What it does and doesn't mean to you. 10.

BIC, S C R I P T O , P A R K E R A N D C R O S S

The uses and abuses of pen names. Six reasons to use a pen Why not to use a pen name. Making your own choice. 11.

WRITING WITH TWO HEADS

name.

Teaming up with a collaborator. Collaboration vs. ghostwriting. "Five times the work for half the money. " The joys of collaboration. How different author teams work together. 12.

IT T A K E S M O R E T H A N T A L E N T

Other requirements for writing success. The importance of luck. The role of the will. The one-book author. Living with financial insecu rity. You have to like the work.

Contents PART T W O

NOSE TO THE GRINDSTONE,

SHOULDER

T O T H E W H E E L : Fiction as a Discipline 13.

WRITER'S HOURS

Do writers work all the time? Writing, research and the guilt trap. Knowing when enough is enough. Starting early. Working regularly. Postponing routine work. 14.

THE CARROT A N D THE STICK

The art of self-discipline. Giving writing top priority. Setting goals for yourself. Staying in the now. Getting the job done. "Listen, it's only a book. " 15.

CREATIVE PROCRASTINATION

Coming to terms with the thief of time. Developing fictional ideas through procrastination. Creative use of the back burner. "And Miles to Go Before I Sleep"—a case study in Creative Procrastina tion. 16.

TIMEOUT

Writer's block and creative sloth. Coping with indolence. What to do when the words won't come. Learning to regard stretches of inac tivity as part of the creative process. 17.

D O IT A N Y W A Y

What to do when the words have to come. Giving yourself sion to write badly. Learning to override your own critical Getting through bad patches. 18.

THS

permis instincts.

104

Writing faster without sacrificing quality. Fast writers vs. slow writ ers. How to find your own natural speed. 19.

WASHING GARBAGE

108

The pleasures and pains of rewriting. How revision can drain a story of its freshness. How to minimize the need for extensive revision. Rewriting as you go along. Doing mental first drafts.

12 20.

CONTENTS ON BEING READ

114

The importance of sharing your work with others. Making use of readers' reactions. Why fellow writers make the best audience. Ways to avoid disappointment. 21.

BURNING THE RAFT AT BOTH ENDS

118

How to keep having something to write about. The relationship of input and output. Remaining open to new experience. Four ways to stay out of ruts. 22.

CREATIVE PLAGIARISM

123

When stealing is legitimate—and when it isn't. Improving on what you read. Working variations on a theme. "The Ehrengraf De fense"—a case study in Creative Plagiarism. 23.

"WHERE D O Y O U G E T Y O U R IDEAS?"

127

How to generate fictional ideas. Putting bits offact together. Getting ideas from writers and publishers. The hazards of other people's ideas. Harnessing the creative power of your own frustrations. PART THREE

OH, WHAT A TANGLED

WEB:

Fiction as a Structure 24.

OPENING REMARKS

137

The importance of strong openings. Getting the story moving. Set ting the tone. Establishing the problem. How to get your story off to a good start. 25.

FIRST THINGS SECOND

141

The trick of not beginning at the beginning. Switching and 2. When not to use this approach. Case studies. 26.

SPRING FORWARD, FALL BACK

Chapters 1

146

Skipping around in time. Taking a stitch in time in transitions. art of starting in the middle. Mini-flashbacks. 21.

DON'T TAKE THE D TRAIN

The

150

How to avoid getting bogged down in detail. The perils of over-ex plaining. Fast cuts—the difference between film and prose.

Contents 28.

T H E I'S H A V E IT

154

Traditional warnings against writing in the first person. The special advantages of first-person narration. Its strengths as an aid in char acterization and identification. Withholding information from the reader. 29.

THE PLOT'S T H E T H I N G

158

The central importance of plot. Distinguishing between plot and idea. "Last Wishes"—a case study in plotting. 30.

N O M O R E MR. NICE G U Y

162

The necessity of strong character motivation. Why it cannot be taken for granted. Motivating your characters through strong plot development. Wilderness—a case study in effective motivation. 31.

THINK YOU'VE G O T PROBLEMS?

167

The problem as the core of a plot. Making things hard for your hero. How to be your own worst enemy. The perils of icebox think ing. When to bring in a bear in a canoe. 32.

JUDGING DISTANCES

171

How to draw the reader in close. Some reasons to keep him at arm's length. First names vs. last names. Using a Watson. Regulat ing distance through dialogue. 33.

IT'S A F R A M E

175

The frame device as a distancing mechanism. Adding dimension to a story through a frame. The story within a story. 34.

DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE

180

Telling a story in letters or diary entries. Early examples mentary fiction. The possibilities of verisimilitude. 35.

SURPRISE!

of docu

185

The value of surprise endings. Why some work while others don't. Withholding information from the reader. Surprises that fall flat. Surprise endings that give a story a whole new perspective.

CONTENTS

PART F O U R

ONE D A M N E D WORD AFTER

ANOTHER:

Fiction as a Craft 36.

NEVER APOLOGIZE, NEVER EXPLAIN

193

The perils of explaining too much. The author as stage director. How to get out of the way. When to keep the reader in the dark. The reader's role in fiction. 37.

HE SAID SHE SAID

197

Letting dialogue stand alone. Adding verbs for accent value. Alter natives to said. Special options in first-person narration. The rules and when to break them. 38.

VERBS F O R VIM A N D VIGOR

201

Strengthening your prose with stronger verbs. Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves—a case study in imaginative verb use. T h e Sour Lemon Score—a case study in vivid action verbs. 39.

MODIFIERS FOR MOOD-SWING

206

Minimizing modifiers to create lean prose. Adding them to sharpen the focus. Factual vs. judgmental modifiers. Avoiding empty adjec tives. M o b y Dick—a case study in the use of adjectives. 40.

W R I T I N G WITH Y O U R EYES CLOSED

211

How to enhance your scenes by visualizing them. Some exercises to develop visualization techniques. Suspending your own disbelief. 41.

H U M A F E W BARS . . . A N D F A K E IT

215

Shortcuts to time-consuming research. Faking locations. Feigning expertise. How not to overdo it. The importance of details. 42.

CHARACTER BUILDING

218

Creating plausible, sympathetic, and original characters. Character vs. character tags. Drawing upon one's own self. Matthew Scudder—a case study in characterization. 43.

CASTING

222

Creating memorable minor characters and bit players. Highlighting character vs. caricature. Casting as an aid to plot development.

Contents 44.

NAME CALLING

226

How to pick apt and memorable names for your characters. Avoid ing confusion. Keeping a notebook. Watching out for cuteness. Shortcuts in research. 45.

REPEAT PERFORMANCES A N D RETURN

MENTS

ENGAGE

231

Special problems in creating and developing a series character. Writing a series one book at a time. How to keep from going stale. Letting a character grow and evolve. 46.

WE CAN ALWAYS C H A N G E THE TITLE

239

What makes a good title? Coming up with memorable titles. Titles that fit their stories. Using your imagination. How titles get changed. PART FIVE

I S N ' T T H A T T H E T R U T H : Fiction as

Spiritual Exercise 47.

A WRITER'S PRAYER

INDEX

252

245 247

PREFACE IN THE summer of '75 I hit the road. I gave u p m y N e w York apartment, sold or gave away most of the possessions of a lifetime, packed the remain der into the back of a diseased station wagon, and set out for Los Angeles. It took me about eight months to get there. I followed the coast d o w n to Florida, then drifted west. I would linger in a spot for a couple of days or weeks, then pull u p stakes on a whim. Once I checked out of a motel a n d drove five miles down the road because the television set at the first place wouldn't pick u p a football game I wanted to watch. During this time I continued writing. I had, after all, done virtually noth ing else since college. I wrote the first draft of a novel which ultimately be came Ariel I wrote several books that withered a n d died after fifty or sixty pages; when I think of them now I imagine t h e m as mummified fruit on a tainted tree. I wrote short stories, too, something I h a d n ' t done in years. A n d I wrote an article which I called "Where D o You Get Y o u r Ideas?" I did a mental first draft in the car heading west from Wilmington, N o r t h Carolina, typed it the following morning in a motel room, a n d mailed it the next afternoon from a branch post office in Greenville, South Carolina. And had not the slightest idea what I was getting into. Half a year later I was living at the Magic Hotel in Hollywood. O n e d a y I remembered that article I'd sent to Writer's Digest. I'd never heard from them. I wrote, asking wha hoppen, and got a p h o n e call in reply from WD's editor John Brady. He'd been attempting to buy the piece for m o n t h s but some secretary had garbled m y address a n d the correspondence h a d gone 17

PREFACE

awry. W e discussed a couple of changes he wanted m e to make. I mentioned I'd be driving east sometime in August, and he invited m e to say hello if I got within hailing distance of Cincinnati. By August I decided Writer's Digest needed a fiction column. I m a d e a point of stopping in Cincinnati on m y way back to N e w York, and after a hearty lunch continued east with an assignment to write a column every other m o n t h on the techniques of fiction. After I'd done five or six columns there was some editorial reshuffling a n d my column went monthly. I've been at it ever since. Looking back, I found myself wondering what ever prompted m e to write tha.t piece on the genesis of fictional ideas in the first place. I can think of a couple of factors. I'd been deprived entirely of the company of other writers for a few months at that point, and I guess I was feeling the isolation; it must have concentrated my mind u p o n the nature of my work and its underlying processes. F o r another thing, I was writing short stories again after a long layoff, and m y mind was serving u p plot ideas one after the other. I found the process interesting enough to write about. I certainly never suspected that a few pages on the development of ideas would eventually transform m e into someone who spent a significant amount of his time writing about writing. But that is what has happened, and it has h a d interesting effects above and beyond my monthly check and the ego gratification of a regular column. It's a commonplace in the profession that writers work twenty-four hours a day. (See Chapter 13, "Writer's Hours.) I don't know about that, but I do know that m y column keeps m e working far more t h a n the time I devote to its actual composition. Everything I read is potentially grist for this particu lar mill. Does a particular author foreshadow a coming plot development in an interesting way? H m m m . Should I consider a column on foreshadowing as a literary device? W h a t other examples come to mind? Examples, say, of ineffective foreshadowing as well? Similarly, I've become more interested t h a n ever in what other writers have to say about writing, whether they're discussing their writing methods, offering tips, or commenting u p o n the nature of the profession. I'm forever clipping things—and, more often than not, losing the clips. Once or twice a year WD's capable Rose Adkins writes me a plaintive note asking for a list of m y prospective column topics for the next however m a n y months. Once or twice a year I try to m a k e her understand that I could more easily supply m a p s of the far side of the moon. More often t h a n not, I complete each column convinced I'll have to give u p the j o b , that I'll never again be able to come u p with a viable theme for a column. Somehow

Preface

within the next thirty days a topic suggests itself and I find a way to a p proach it. I've learned to take it on faith that this will happen. Even more than writing in general a monthly column is a two-way street. From the column's inception I have received letters in a steady stream—let ters offering suggestions, letters seeking advice, letters thanking m e or call ing me to task for something I did or didn't say. Both the volume a n d the fervor of this correspondence continually impress m e with just how impor tant all of this business of stringing words together is to all of us w h o d o it. Whatever our degree of commercial or artistic success, whether we be fresh as paint or older than rust, writing appears to be an imperative. Letters from readers often furnish m e with ideas for future columns. Equally important, the feedback they constitute keeps m e in touch with m y audience and with my material. I read every letter I get, a n d I reply to most of them. I almost always reply to those accompanied by a stamped self-ad dressed envelope. A word to the wise . . . This present volume had its origin in correspondence. Any n u m b e r of readers have written suggesting that m y columns might be collected a n d published in book form. While I have to admit that the very same idea did occur to me all by itself, the letters helped assure m e that a market for such a book existed. It has been an interesting experience editing four years' worth of columns for book publication. I have done relatively little editing, largely confining myself to changing "column" to "chapter" now a n d then, a n d deleting oc casional duplications from one column to the next. I have, too, been able to correct mistakes, both grammatical a n d factual, although I don't d o u b t for a moment that I have unwittingly left numerous examples of both sort uncor rected. Sometimes, rereading this material, I've been struck by a tendency to say the same thing over and over. At other times it seems to m e that I give con flicting advice from one m o n t h to the next. Ultimately I've decided not to apologize for either the redundancy or the contradictions. They strike m e as inescapable in material written at various times a n d from various perspec tives. Several persons deserve my thanks in this venture. T h e Writer's Digest, especially J o h n Brady, Rose -Adkins, Bill publisher Dick Rosenthal, have been unfailingly helpful since the column's inception. Book publication might not but for the encouragement and enthusiasm of D o n Fine of

good people at Brohaugh, a n d a n d supportive have h a p p e n e d Arbor House; I

PREFACE

know n o one in the industry who cares more about fiction, or publishes it with greater conviction a n d respect. Jared Kieling, m y editor at Arbor House, is responsible for the book's scheme of organization. It was he who was able to see that the columns grouped themselves naturally into four general areas—fiction as a pro fession, as a discipline, as a structure, and as a craft. I embraced this plan wholeheartedly, finding it potentially more useful to the reader t h a n the two organizational modes which h a d occurred to me—viz., chronologically and alphabetically. W h e n I write a column, it's impossible for me to know if anyone will find it useful. T h e nuts-and-bolts columns of Part Four seem to me to offer the most real help to a writer, a n d yet it is almost invariably the more general inspirational columns which draw the heaviest reader mail. Of course what's helpful and what prompts one to respond m a y not be the same thing. In any event, it's similarly impossible for m e to know how valuable read ers will find this book. I know that it's been enormously valuable to me to write it, column by column, a n d I have all of you who read it to thank for the opportunity. N e w York City March 9, 1981

INTRODUCTION LAWRENCE BLOCK is a writer's writer. F r o m his early crime fiction (The Girl With the Long Green Heart) to his gritty Paul K a v a n a g h suspense thrillers (The Triumph of Evil, Such Men Are Dangerous) to his comedy-crime novels featuring the cheerful but sometimes hapless Bernie R h o d e n b a r r (Burglars Can't Be Choosers, etc.) his stories consistently have displayed that illusion of polished seamless effortlessness which characterizes the best craftsmen in the writing game. That Larry Block is a good writer is not surprising; he started with plenty of talent and he has had plenty of practice. Like m a n y of us h e served a n underpaid but invaluable apprenticeship in pseudonymous paperbacks— the kind of apprenticeship the lack of which is sorely evident in the work of many younger writers, mostly through n o fault of their own; that paperback market no longer exists. It makes me worry about the next generation of popular writers: where will they get their on-the-job training? I don't know the answer to that one; but I d o know that they can be helped along by a book like this one. Larry is not only a good writer; he's also an analytical one. He understands a n d can describe what he's doing a n d why he's doing it. He understands not only that there are rules for good writing but that there are reasons for the existence of those rules; a n d he un derstands the reasons as well. In this book I think he does a better j o b of ar ticulating the principles and methods of creative writing than I've seen in any how-to book since Lajos Egri's The Art of Dramatic Writing (a book to which Block's should make a useful companion, since they cover quite dif ferent ground and do not overlap very much). 21

INTRODUCTION

I'm pleased in this Introduction to have the chance to acknowledge both a friendship of nearly two decades' duration and my continuing admiration for Larry Block's talent and skill, both as a writer and as an explicator of writing. M a n y artists m a k e lousy teachers; Larry Block is one of the exceptions— he likes to teach and he does it well. At the same time he is an invaluable guide for the beginning writer (or even the established one—reading this book I've come across ideas that were new to me, and most useful) because he is that relatively rare writer, the pro who is not a hack. Writing, to him, isn't merely an occupation; it's a craft, an art and a pleasure. H e has often written genre books (detective stories, spy thrillers) but none of them is rou tine or formulaic, and his richly varied body of work also includes such "mainstream" novels as A Week As Andrea Benstock, such comedies as Ronald Rabbit Is a Dirty Old Man and such unusual anti-genre yarns as Ariel, in which Block's ingenious imagination turns some of the occult-hor ror-fantasy genre's most cherished cliches inside out. He points out that when he writes a book he is trying to write a book that he would want to read if someone else h a d written it. That isn't the objective of a hack; that's the objective of a pro. One of the values of this book is its having been written in installments as monthly columns. Reading the book, one becomes aware that one is follow ing the writer through developmental changes in his own working life. Each column attacks a target that has sprung u p just that very moment in his cur rent work-in-progress. This immediacy creates a freshness and spontaneity; in attacking each target-of-the-month Block is dealing with a current prob lem of immediate importance to him and I think this makes it possible for him to bring his best aim to bear on it, since he has an immediate stake in it. T h e book virtually lets us watch over the writer's shoulder as he performs the tasks of his craft. It is probably true that talent can't be learned. But if it exists in its raw state it can be developed; it can be polished; it can be helped along a great deal by the guidance of a good teacher who has been there and paid his dues and knows not only his craft but how to articulate the methodology of that craft. Lawrence Block is such a teacher. I commend this book to you. —Brian Garfield

PART ONE

Ihe liar's ïrade: Fiction as a Profession

CHAPTER •

Setting Your Sights A COUPLE of months ago I returned to Antioch College to teach a n intensive week-long seminar on fictional technique. One of the first things I remem bered as I crossed the campus was a cartoon which h a d been displayed on the English Department bulletin board during m y first year as an Antioch student. The cartoon showed a sullen eight-year-old boy facing a n earnest principal. "It's not enough to be a genius, Arnold," the m a n was saying. "You have to be a genius at something." I recall identifying very strongly with Arnold. I h a d known early on that I wanted to be a writer. But it seemed that it wasn't enough merely to be a writer. You had to sit down and write something. Some people receive the whole package as a gift. N o t only are they en dowed with writing talent but they seem to have been b o r n knowing what they are destined to write about. Equipped at the onset with stories to tell and the skills required to tell them, they have only to get on with the task. Some people, in short, have it easy. Some of us don't. W e know that we want to write without knowing what we want to write. How are we to decide what to write? By chance, I suspect, more often t h a n not. Yet there seem to be some steps one can take in order to find oneself as a writer. Let's have a look at them. 1. DISCOVERING THE OPTIONS. W h e n I was fifteen or sixteen years old and secure in the knowledge that I'd been born to be a writer, it didn't even occur to me to wonder what sort of thing I would write. I was at the time 25

26 TELLING LIES FOR FUN AND PROFIT furiously busy reading m y way through Great Twentieth Century Novels, Steinbeck a n d Hemingway a n d Wolfe a n d D o s Passos a n d Fitzgerald a n d all their friends a n d relations, a n d it was ever so clear to m e that I would in due course produce a Great Novel of m y own. I'd go to college first, naturally, where I might get a somewhat clearer idea of what constituted a Great Novel. T h e n I'd emerge from college into the Real World. There I would Live. (I wasn't quite sure what Capital-L Living entailed, but I figured there would be a touch of squalor in there somewhere, along with generous dollops of booze a n d sex.) All of this Living would ulti mately constitute t h e Meaningful Experiences which I would eventually distill into a n y n u m b e r of great books. N o w there's nothing necessarily wrong with this approach. A n y n u m b e r of important novels are produced in this approximate fashion, a n d the method has the added advantage that, should you write nothing at all, you'll at least have treated yourself to plenty of booze a n d sex along the way. In m y own case, m y self-image as a writer was stronger t h a n m y selfimage as a potential great novelist. I began reading books about writers a n d their work. I became a sporadic student of Writer's Digest. I loved the suc cess stories a n d identified with their subjects. A n d , reading the market re ports, I became aware that there was a whole world of professional writing that lay outside the more exclusive world of significant literature. I came to realize that, whatever m y ultimate goals, m y immediate aim was to write something—anything!—and get paid for it a n d see it in print. I began reading a great m a n y different kinds of books a n d magazines, trying to find something I figured I could write. I didn't care whether it was significant or artistic or even interesting. I just wanted to find something I could do. 2.

Y o u HAVE TO BE ABLE TO READ IT. W h e n I was starting out, con

fession magazines were generally acknowledged to constitute the best a n d most receptive market for new writers. They paid fairly well, too. I think I understood what a confession story was, the basic structure of its plot, a n d what m a d e one story good a n d another unacceptable. During the year I spent working for a literary agent, the two confessions I pulled out of the slush pile both sold on their first submission, a n d the author of one of them came to be a leader in the field. O n several occasions, I bought or borrowed confession magazines a n d decided to read m y w a y through them. I never m a d e it. I could not read o n e of the d a m n e d things all t h e way through without skimming. I couldn't con centrate on what I was reading. A n d I couldn't shake the conviction that t h e entire magazine, from front to back, was nothing but mind-rotting garbage.

Setting Your Sights

Nor, consequently, could I produce a confession story. T h e ideas m y m i n d came u p with were either numbingly trite or at odds with the requirements of the market. I never did turn any of these ideas into stories, never wrote a confession until one bizarre weekend when I wrote three of t h e m to order for a publisher with a couple of holes to fill a n d a deadline fast approaching. Those stories were awful. I wrote them because I'd taken the assignment, and the publisher printed them because h e h a d to, a n d that was the hardest money I ever made. I know other writers with similar experience in other fields. T h e moral is simple enough. If you can't stand to read a particular type of story, you're wasting your time trying to write it. 3.

IDENTIFYING WITH THE WRITER. A S a lifelong compulsive reader,

I had little trouble finding categories of stories I could read with enjoy ment. What I learned then, a n d have confirmed on m a n y occasions since, is that just because I can read a particular story doesn't perforce m e a n I c a n write it. For example, there was a time when I read a great deal of science fiction. I liked most S-F stories, a n d I liked the good ones a lot. Furthermore, I used to hang out with several established science-fiction writers. I found t h e m a congenial lot, a n d I liked the way they grabbed hold of ideas a n d turned them into stories. But I couldn't write science fiction. N o matter h o w m u c h of the stuff I read, my mind did not produce workable S-F ideas. I could read those stories with a fan's enjoyment, but I could not get the sort of handle on those stories that left m e thinking, "I could have written that. I could have come up with that idea, a n d I could have developed it the way he did. I could have been the writer of that story." One of the things that makes a story work is that you identify with t h e characters. Well, one of the things that makes a story writable, if you will, is when you read it a n d identify not only with the characters b u t with the writer. I remember the first time that happened. It was the summer after m y freshman year at Antioch. I picked u p a paperback anthology of short stories entitled The Jungle Kids. T h e author was Evan Hunter, w h o h a d re cently made a n a m e for himself with The Blackboard Jungle. I read the dozen or so stories in the book, all of them dealing with juvenile delin quents, virtually all of them originally published in Manhunt, a n d I experi enced a shock of recognition. I identified, not so m u c h with the characters in the stories, but with Evan Hunter himself. I can still remember how excited I was when I got to the e n d of the book.

TELLING LIES FOR FUN AND PROFIT

Here was someone writing a n d publishing well-written stories that I could respect and enjoy—and I could see myself doing what he h a d done. I felt it was something I could do a n d I saw it as eminently worth doing. H a d I known then what I know now, I would have immediately gone to a back-magazine store and purchased every available copy of Manhunt. This never occurred to me. I did check one newstand, and when they proved to be out of the magazine I forgot all about it. I went on to write a couple of stories about juvenile delinquents, but they were lousy and I didn't try submitting them anywhere. Some months later, I wrote a story about a young criminal. It h a d nothing in c o m m o n with the H u n t e r stories, and I h a d indeed forgotten about them when I wrote it. A couple of months after that, I read the listing for Manhunt in a copy of Writer's Digest, remembered the magazine as having published Hunter's stories, a n d sent them mine. It came back with a note from the edi tor criticizing the ending. At that point I finally took the trouble to locate a copy of Manhunt, read it from cover to cover, and rewrote my story with a new ending. It was not, however, a very good ending, and it came back by return mail. I kept reading Manhunt, however, a n d a m o n t h later I saw how to make the story work, a n d rewrote it once again, and they bought it, and I decided crime fiction was m y metier. I can't say I've never regretted the decision, but I do seem to have stuck with it over the years. Now, as then, I'm sustained by the hope that, if I just keep at it long enough, sooner or later I'll get it right. T h a t shock of recognition, that identification with the writer, is difficult to describe but impossible to ignore. A similar epiphany preceded the writing of m y first novel. At that point I'd been writing and publishing crime stories for a year and felt it was time to write a detective novel. I'd read hundreds of them, liked them very much, a n d h a d m a d e a couple of attempts at writing one of my own. F o r one reason or another, however, I couldn't get a handle on a novel. During this time I h a d read perhaps a dozen lesbian novels. The sensitive novel of female hom*osexuality was a popular category in the fifties and I suspect I read the books more for information and titillation than anything else. I didn't know any lesbians then, and all I knew about the subject was what I read in these d u m b books. But I did find the books compulsively readable, a n d one day I finished one and realized that I could have written it. Or one quite like it. Possibly, by Georgia, one a shade better than what I'd read.

Studying the Market

In the name of research, I promptly read every other lesbian novel I could lay my hands on. Then one morning the plot came to me, a n d I outlined it, and a few weeks later I sat down a n d wrote the thing start to finish in two weeks flat, finishing four days before m y twentieth birthday. (This seemed highly significant at the time. I've n o idea why.) It sold to Fawcett, the first publisher to see it, and I was a published novelist just like that. Deciding what you're going to write is a major step on the road to discov ering yourself as a writer. Once you've found your particular field of en deavor, there are some more steps you can take that will m a k e it a little simpler for you to get into that chosen field. We'll get to them in the next chapter.

CHAPTER

2 Market

IN THE preceding chapter we had a look at the process of determining what kind of story to write, what area of the market to aim at. Let's assume n o w that you've zeroed in on a category of fiction that seems suited to you. Y o u enjoy reading it; moreover, you can visualize yourself writing it. F o r one reason or another you've decided you want to become a writer of confes sions, or science fiction, or gothic novels, or mystery stories. Now what? The next step, it might appear, is to sit down to the typewriter a n d get on with it—and it's possible that you're ready to go a h e a d a n d d o just that. Perhaps, now that you've chosen a fiction category, your unconscious has obligingly coughed u p enough fully developed story ideas to keep your type writer humming for months. If so, more power to y o u — a n d why aren't you busy writing instead of reading this book? For many of us, however, there's an interim step between deciding what sort of thing to write and setting out to write it. It consists of subjecting one's

TELLING LIES FOR FUN AND PROFIT

chosen field to a detailed analysis. T h e analytical process is such that the writer winds u p with both an ingrained gut-level understanding of what constitutes a successful story in the field a n d a mind trained to produce and develop the ideas for such successful stories. I can't think of a better n a m e for this process than market analysis, yet something in m e recoils at the term. It's too clinical, for one thing, and it seems to imply that writing can be approached scientifically, that the prob lem of selling to Mind-Boggier Science-Fiction Stories lends itself to a case study a la Harvard Business School. Besides, the process I'm talking about constitutes less a study of the mar kets t h a n of the individual stories themselves. O u r object is to learn what makes a story work, not what makes a particular editor buy it. Okay—whatever

you call it, I want to do it. What do I do first?

G o o d question. W h a t you do is you read. Last chapter we established that the category of story you elect to write h a d better be one you enjoy reading. N o w that you've picked a category, you're going to have to do some really intensive reading. In my own case, I pretty m u c h backed into writing for the crime-fiction magazines. But once I h a d m a d e that first sale to Manhunt, I proceeded to study that magazine and all the others in the field more intently than I ever studied anything before or since. I bought Manhunt a n d Hitchco*ck and Ellery Queen a n d Trapped and Guilty a n d a few other magazines whenever they appeared on the stands. In addition, I m a d e regular visits to back-mag azine shops, where I picked u p every back issue of those publications that I could find. I carried lists in m y wallet to avoid buying the same issue twice. A n d I carted them all h o m e a n d arranged t h e m in orderly fashion on my shelves, a n d then I read every last one of them from cover to cover. I still remember quite a few of those stories that I read twenty years or so ago. Some of them were very good. Others were not very good at all. But by reading hundreds and hundreds of those stories over the months, the good and the bad a n d the indifferent, I learned what constituted a successful crime story in a way I could not have learned otherwise. Understand, please, that I did not learn any formulae. I don't know that such a thing exists. W h a t I did learn, in a m a n n e r I cannot entirely explain, is a sense of the possible variations that could be worked upon the crime story, a sense of what worked a n d what didn't. Of course I didn't just read a n d read and read for months on end.

Studying the Market

Throughout this period I occasionally came u p with a n idea a n d took the time to hammer out a story. N o r did this habit of reading voraciously in m y chosen field come to a halt once I was regularly turning out a n d selling stories of my own. I still read a great deal of suspense fiction, short stories and novels. I do so because I enjoy m u c h of what I read, but I also d o so because I regard it as part of my work as a writer. That's it, then, this market-analysis

business? You just read a lot?

Sometimes it's enough. But there's something else you can d o that m a y increase the effectivness of your reading. It's simple enough. You outline what you've read. I don't mean that you take apart a story as if it were an exercise in literary criticism. You can do so, of course, and you might or might not find the pro cess rewarding. But this method of outlining has nothing to d o with criti cism, with how you feel about the story, with whether the story works or doesn't work. Having read the story, you simply write d o w n a s u m m a r y of the plot, relating in a few sentences just what happens in the story. For example: Two brothers are on their way to commit a big-time robbery when they run low on gas in the middle of nowhere. The service-station operator keeps telling them their car needs additional work and they sense they're being conned, yet they don't want to take chances. They let the man make more repairs than they have cash to pay for, finally robbing the station at the end because there's no other way out. Or: Narrator and his wife come home from vacation to find their house torn in side-out by burglars. Narrator goes off to work with his partner, complaining about what happened, the damage the burglars had done, the mess they made, etc. Turns out the two men are professional burglars on their way to knock off a warehouse themselves. This method of outlining, of writing out plot summaries of what you have read, serves to pare away the writer's facility with prose a n d dialogue a n d characterization and reduce each story to its basic plot. In this fashion you can see after the fact just what it was that you've read. I don't know that there's any specific value in studying these plot summaries after you've written them, as a paleontologist studies dinosaur bones, but I d o think that the simple act of stripping the stories to the bones will give you a n intuitive understanding of what holds them together that you could not readily o b tain just by reading them.

TELLING LIES FOR FUN AND PROFIT

Outlines are an even more effective tool in learning how longer fiction works. W h e n you take an outline you have read a n d reduce it to a chapterby-chapter summary of its plot, you are in effect reversing the process the author followed in writing the book in the first place. Although they're often easier to write, novels are generally more difficult to grasp than short stories. So m u c h more happens in t h e m that it's harder to see their structure. Stripped down to outline form, the novel is like a forest in winter; with their branches bare, the individual trees become visible where once the eyes saw only a mass of green leaves. If you plan to prepare an outline for a novel of your own some day, there's yet another advantage in outlining. Quite simply, you learn in this fashion what outlines look like. In order to feel comfortable in any form of writing, I have to know what it looks like on paper. Before I could write a screenplay, for example, it was not enough for m e to go to the movies and see how films worked on the screen. I h a d to get a sense of how they worked on the page— because I was going to be writing a screenplay, not a film. W h e n an outline, too, becomes something you can look at in typescript instead of merely sensing it as the invisible skeleton of a b o u n d book, it becomes a good deal easier to outline your own as-yet unwritten novel. Question—with all this reading and analyzing and outlining, all this me chanical crap, aren't we stifling creativity? I have a feeling VU be trying to du plicate what's been written rather than writing my own stories. That's not how it works. If anything, a bone-deep knowledge of your field helps you avoid unwittingly writing those stories that have been written al ready. W h a t every editor wants—and every reader, for that matter—can be summed u p in four paradoxical words: the same only different. Your story must be the same as innumerable other stories so that it may provide a simi lar kind of satisfaction to the reader. Yet it must simultaneously differ suffi ciently from all of those other stories so that the reader will not feel it's something he's read over a n d over in the past. W e achieve this same-only-different quality not by borrowing bits a n d pieces from a variety of other stories, not by synthesizing and amalgamating what we've read, but by so imbuing ourselves in our chosen field that the requirements of the field soak into our subconsious minds. I don't believe anyone knows enough about the mind to say just how story ideas are produced. It m a y not be necessary to know this, any more than you have to understand electricity to turn the light on. I do know that a basic

Decisions, Decisions

understanding of how a particular kind of story works, acquired by the pro cess described above, seems to m a k e things a good deal easier for the mind. I don't know about you, but my mind needs all the help it can get.

CHAPTER

Decisions, Decisions COUPLE OF months ago I was chatting with a fellow at some sort of sympo sium on suspense fiction. He was writing his first novel, or getting ready to write his first novel, or thinking about getting ready, or whatever, a n d he had a lot of questions. And, since he'd artfully positioned himself between me and the cheese and crackers, I had little choice but to answer him. Did editors, he wanted to know, prefer novels in the first or third person? Did editors prefer books where a murder occurs right away? Did editors pre fer books with an urban or a rural setting? Did editors prefer multiple view point or single viewpoint? Did editors prefer— "Look," I said, "that's not how I write. I don't try to imagine just what sort of book some editor is going to fall in love with a n d then set out to pro duce it. For one thing, editors are individuals. They don't share a single set of preferences. For another, what any editor prefers most is a book that turns him on, and that he has reason to believe people will buy, a n d his judgment ultimately hasn't got too much to do with questions of first or third person, single or multiple viewpoint, or u r b a n or rural setting. "Anyway," I went on, "I myself a m pretty m u c h of an intuitive writer. I try to write the sort of book I would want to read if I hadn't h a p p e n e d to have written it myself. The more I write to please myself, the more likeli hood there is that I'll please other people in the process. But when I deliber ately set out to please other readers, I usually turn out an inferior book. So I'd advise you to write the book your own way. Give it your best shot a n d then when you've finished worry about finding somebody w h o likes it enough to publish it."

34 TELLING LIES FOR FUN AND PROFIT I wheeled about and m a d e my way to the refreshment table at this point lest I find myself in the middle of Polonius's little spiel to Laertes, advising the poor m a n neither to borrow nor to lend. I hadn't actually said "To thine own self be true," but that was certainly the thrust of my comments. Afterward, through the medium of what one might call sober reflection, I wondered if I hadn't overstated the case. I hadn't said anything I didn't be lieve, but perhaps I had glossed over the fact that writing for certain markets demands a familiarity with the requirements of those markets. This is especially true for the neophyte writer who is aiming at one of the more accessible markets—gothics, let us say, or light romances, or con fession stories. I devoted considerable space in Writing the Novel: From Plot to Print to a discussion of how to analyze the requirements of a particular fic tional genre and how to write one's own story within such a framework. Wasn't I being inconsistent, saying this in print and then loftily advising this chap to go follow his own star? Years ago, when I worked for a literary agent, I had dealings with a would-be writer who was possessed of enormous energy, a serviceable way with prose and dialogue, and the survival instincts of a lemming. All he os tensibly wanted was to see his work in print, yet all he did was sabotage himself at every turn. Advised that confessions constituted a particularly re ceptive market for newcomers, he produced several, but insisted upon writ ing them from a male viewpoint. At the time, a confession magazine might publish one male-viewpoint story an issue, if they happened to run across one they really liked. By writing his confessions from a male point of view, the m a n was deliberately making things harder for himself. I had occasion to remember all of this just a few days ago when I began work on a new novel. T h e basic plot notion was one that had suggested itself to me some months ago—a girl's mother dies, her father remarries, and the girl becomes convinced that her stepmother is trying to kill her. I hadn't given the idea any conscious thought in months, but evidently my subcon scious had been playing with it while I was at work on something else, and I found bits and pieces of the plot coming to me rapidly. I also found myself with decisions to make. Did I want an urban or a rural setting? Would I write the book in the first or the third person? Single or multiple viewpoint? I don't always have to m a k e decisions of this sort. Quite a few of the novels I've written over the years have recounted the continuing adventures of series characters, and in such a case a lot of these questions are predeter mined. W h e n I write a mystery about burglar Bernie Rhodenbarr, for ex ample, I know I'm going to use the first person. I know, too, who the charac-

Decisions, Decisions

ter is and how he operates, where he lives, who his friends are, a n d so on. A series involves turning out books that are "the same only different," a n d while that requirement presents problems of its own, it does eliminate cer tain decisions. A year ago I spent a week in Savannah, where I scouted locations with the intention of using the city in a novel sooner or later. W h e n I first got the idea for The Stepmother, I felt it would fit quite neatly into that charming Geor gia seaport. Two factors changed my mind. First off, I recognized that there were al ready elements of plot and character in The Stepmother that were evocative of Ariel, a recent novel of mine. Ariel was set in an old house in Charleston, and while Charleston and Savannah are by n o means indistinguishable one from the other, they do have points of similarity. This might not have kept me from setting the book in Savannah if I h a d been convinced it would work best there, but it did predispose me to look for another setting. As I thought further about the book, a second reason for getting away from Savannah came to mind. I decided I wanted to m a k e the girl a N e w Yorker out of her element. I saw her as a child who has grown u p in G r e e n wich Village, not so much precocious as sophisticated. Suppose the family moved to the country? Someplace fairly isolated, say. Delaware County, Schoharie County, one of those forgotten areas of upstate N e w York a few hours from the city and hence out of commuting range. With the choice of location, more of the plot immediately began to take form. Why would the family move from the Village out into the middle of nowhere? Maybe the father's a writer who just m a d e a lot of money a n d wants to play landed gentleman for. a change. I began to get a sense of the house and grounds. I decided there would be an old overgrown cemetery on the property, and I saw a few ways this would fit into the plot. At this point I wrote out a few h u n d r e d words of notes, talking to myself at the typewriter, and a couple of days later I started actually writing the book. I wrote half a dozen pages and stopped, because I h a d another deci sion to make. First person or third person? I h a d automatically begun the book in the third person, writing the opening scene, in which the family first visits the country house, from Naomi's point of view. (I h a d by this time selected a name for her.) But was that the best choice? I stayed away from the typewriter for several days weighing the pros a n d cons. First-person narration comes very naturally to me, a n d I found the prospect seductive in this instance. I'm m u c h better able to get inside the

TELLING LIES FOR FUN AND PROFIT

skin of my lead character when I write in the first person. It has always seemed to me the most natural voice for fiction, and I thought it might be particularly useful in The Stepmother for a couple of reasons. For one, I had a very good sense of N a o m i and felt she would be a terrific character. T h e more effectively and compellingly I could present her to the reader, the more gripping and engaging the book would be. For another, I felt it might be difficult to get inside N a o m i as well in the third person. Ariel was written in the third person, but there were two elements present which facilitated m y getting inside the character and making her come alive. I used lengthy extracts from a diary she was keeping, which in effect consti tuted first-person sections within a third-person narrative. I also h a d quite a few scenes in which she conversed intimately with Erskine, a classmate of hers, and the relationship between the two kids was one of the more interest ing elements of the book. I didn't want to have N a o m i keep a diary, partly because I didn't want to write Ariel all over again, partly because I did not envision her as a diarist. N o r did I expect her to develop a close relationship with a classmate at the new school in the country; on the contrary, I saw her as essentially isolated, contemptuous of her new schoolmates and rejected by them in turn. So why not switch to first person? Well, that presented problems of an other sort. For openers, I'd be limited to scenes in which N a o m i was present. T h e reader couldn't be privy to any information that she didn't know. It seemed to me that the sort of suspense novel I was writing worked best if the reader occasionally knew things the lead character did not know. It also seemed to me that the book would be more effective if the reader was never entirely certain whether the peril N a o m i fancied herself to be in was real or imaginary. T h e use of first-person narration didn't automatically rule out this ambivalence, but it m a d e it more difficult to bring it off. One other thing. Suspense would be further heightened, I felt, if the reader didn't know everything that N a o m i knew, a n d if he wasn't aware of everything she did. Perhaps there might be a point where suspicion was raised about Naomi's having been responsible for her own mother's death, say. While it's possible for a narrator to withhold certain information from the reader—I've done that sort of thing in detective stories, certainly—I didn't think it would work well here. So I decided to go with m y original impulse and write the book in the third person. And, in the course of making the decision, I thought u p bits of plot business that would enable N a o m i to reveal herself to the reader through interaction with other characters. I decided there could be an old m a n who walks along that particular road every day, a rustic who's a source

Novel Approaches

of information on the area, and he and N a o m i could develop some sort of friendship. I had already thought she might run off to N e w York a n d be brought back by a private detective, and I now saw how she could have fur ther dealings with the detective. A n occasional letter to her best friend in New York might serve a function similar to that of Ariel's diary. And, in considering and rejecting the first person, I became increasingly aware of the need for writing the book from multiple viewpoint, a n d got a sense of some of the scenes that would have to be written, a n d of some of the characters from whose points of view they would be shown. One consideration, I must admit, was that novels of the sort I was writing are most commonly written in the third person. But I did not regard this fact as evidence of a requirement, or elect to go along with the majority out of a desire to make my publisher happy. Instead, I learned in the course of m a k ing my decision why third-person narration predominates, a n d found that it does so for very sound reasons. I thought it might be interesting to share the factors involved in m a k i n g this sort of literary decision, and to show how the decision-making process itself sparks the invention of plot a n d character elements. I still think Po lonais was quite right, and that " T o thine own self be t r u e " ought to be every writer's first principle, but any n u m b e r of decisions nevertheless need to be made in order to be true to one's own vision, whether they are arrived at intuitively or through the sort of processes I've described. You'll excuse me, won't you? N o w that I've m a d e all these decisions, I've got to sit down and write the d a m n e d thing.

CHAPTER

Novel Approaches W H E N I first got started in this ridiculous profession, I wrote nothing but short stories. For a year after my first sale I h a m m e r e d out crime fiction, a couple of thousand words at a clip. I peddled some of it for a cent a word, some for a cent and a half a word, a n d watched m u c h of it go unsold.

TELLING LIES FOR FUN AND PROFIT

After a year of this, I finally got courageous enough to write a novel. It took me two or three weeks to write it, sold to the first publisher who saw it, and brought me a vast sense of accomplishment and an advance of two thousand dollars. It did not m a k e me rich and famous, but I was a youth of nineteen summers at the time and as callow as they come, and fame and fortune would have spoiled me for sure. I've recounted all this because I think my initial approach was typical for most beginning writers. W e start out writing short stories because it certainly looks like the easiest way to break in. T h e short story is a compact and con trollable form. One can grasp it all at once. It's short—that's how it got its n a m e — a n d it won't take a year and a day to write. A person can do a few dozen of them, learning as he goes along, in less time than it might take him to write a novel. These arguments sound logical enough, but they overlook some basic facts. Foremost of these is that the short story is infinitely more difficult to sell than the novel. T h e market for short fiction was minuscule when I was starting out twenty years ago. Since then it has consistently shrunk to the point of invisibility. Every year there are fewer magazines buying short stories and still more hopeful writers submitting manuscripts to them. T h e economics of the short-story business are discouraging at best. Hitch co*ck and Queen, my markets for short fiction, pay the same nickel a word they doled out twenty years ago. T h e confession mags pay a shade less than they did then, and are less eager to buy than they used to be. A n d each year it seems as though a few more of the top magazines have (a) gone out of business, (b) discontinued fiction, or (c) stopped reading unsolicited manu scripts. I don't m e a n to talk anyone out of writing short stories. I wouldn't go on writing them myself if I didn't find them a great source of satisfaction. It's more my intention to suggest that the novel is a much better place for the beginner to get started. But wait a moment. My vaunted writer's imagination sees a lot of you waving your hands in the air. Ask your questions, then, and perhaps I can answer them. Isn't it harder to write a novel than a short story? N o . Novels aren't harder. W h a t they are is longer. That may be a very obvious answer, but that doesn't make it any less true. It's the sheer length of a novel that the beginning writer is apt to find intimi dating. Matter of fact, you don't have to be a beginner to be intimidated in

Novel Approaches

this fashion. I'm writing this chapter during a m o m e n t a r y respite from a World War II novel which will ultimately run to five or six h u n d r e d pages. My suspense novels generally stop at two h u n d r e d pages or thereabouts, a n d I had a lot of trouble starting this book because its vastness scared the ad verbs out of me. What's required, I think, is a change in attitude. T o write a novel you have to resign yourself to the fact that you simply can't prime yourself a n d knock it all out in a single session at the typewriter. T h e process of writing the book is going to occupy you for weeks or months—perhaps years. But each day's stint at the typewriter is simply that—one day's work. T h a t ' s true whether you're writing short stories or an epic trilogy. If you're writing three or six or ten pages a day, you'll get a certain a m o u n t of work accomplished in a certain span of time—whatever it is you're working on. I'd love to write a novel But I don't know how to begin. Page one's as good a place as any. I'll tell you a secret—nobody knows how to start a novel. There are n o rules, because each novel is a case u n t o itself. Sometimes an outline helps. I've used outlines frequently a n d have mixed feelings about them. It's comforting, certainly, to know where a book is going, and an outline spells all of that out for you in advance a n d saves you worrying that you'll plot yourself into a corner. On the other hand, an outline can keep a novel from developing organi cally. There's no way an outline can include absolutely everything, a n d the little elements of characterization a n d incident that crop u p while you're writing can change the shape and direction of your novel. If you're tied to a n outline, the book can't grow as it wants to; its final form is as predetermined as a paint-by-number canvas. Of course you can always modify the outline as you feel the need, but that's sometimes easier said t h a n done. Even if you don't use an outline, isn't it necessary to know where the book is going? Not really. I know several writers who have written quite a few books by rolling a sheet of paper into the typewriter just to see what happens. My friend D o n Westlake's a good example. Some years ago he showed m e a first chapter in which a surly guy n a m e d Parker stalks across the George Washington Bridge, snarling at a motorist who offers him a ride. W h e n D o n wrote that chapter, he knew no more about the character or his story t h a n the chapter itself contained. But the book took shape a n d the character came

TELLING LIES FOR FUN AND PROFIT

to life, and Don's since written sixteen books about Parker under his pen n a m e of Richard Stark. T h e advantage of this particular novel approach, the Narrative Push method, is that you're by n o means locked into a formula. I think it was Theodore Sturgeon who argued that if the writer has no idea what's going to happen next, the reader certainly won't know what's going to happen next. For my own part, I've come to prefer to know a little bit more about a book than how I'm going to open it. I've written too m a n y books in recent years that ground to a halt somewhere around page seventy because I couldn't think of anything to have happen on page seventy-one. But I don't have to know everything. I like to know where the book's going and what direction it'll take to get there, but I don't need to have the whole route mapped out for me. Suppose I spend a year writing a novel and it proves unsalable. I can't risk that much time—wouldn't it be safer to stick to short stories? Would it? Let's assume that you could write twelve or twenty short stories in the time it would take you to write a novel. W h a t makes you think you'd have a better chance of selling them? A n d why would a batch of unsalable short stories feel less like a waste of time than an unsalable novel? I think what keeps a lot of us from attempting a novel is simple fear. Fear that we'll give u p and leave the book uncompleted, or the greater fear that we'll complete it and have produced something unpublishable. I don't think these fears are justified even when they prove true. So what if a first novel's unsalable? For heaven's sake, the great majority of them are, and why on earth should they be otherwise? In every other trade I've ever heard of it's taken for granted that one will put in a lot of work before attaining the level of professionalism. W h y should we expect our writing to be instantly publishable? Writing a novel is an extraordinary learning experience. You have room in a novel, room to try things out, to make mistakes, to find your way. The writing of an unpublishable first novel is not a failure. It is an investment. A few years ago I read Justin Scott's first novel in manuscript. It was em barrassingly bad in almost every respect, and hopelessly unpublishable. But it did him some good to write it, and his second novel—also unpublishable, as it happened—was a vast improvement. As I write this, his novel The Turning is Dell's leader for the month, and his forthcoming book The Shipkiller is shaping u p as a strong candidate for bestsellerdom. D o you suppose Justin regrets the time he "wasted" on that first novel?

Novel Approaches

I'd like to write a novel—but I don't have a good enough idea for one. If you're having trouble coming u p with ideas, you're better off with a novel than short stories. Does that seem odd? You might think that a novel, covering so m u c h more ground and so many more pages, would require more in the way of ideas. But it doesn't usually work that way. Short stories absolutely d e m a n d either new ideas or new slants on old ones. Often a short story is little more than an idea polished into a piece of fiction. I like to write short stories—I get more sheer enjoyment out of writing them than novels, if less remuneration. But each one requires a reasonably strong idea, and the idea's used u p in a couple of thousand words. I've writ ten whole novels out of ideas with n o more depth to them t h a n short-story ideas, and I've written other novels without having h a d a strong story idea to begin with. They had plot and characters, to be sure, but those developed as the book went along. Ed Hoch makes a living writing nothing but short stories—he m a y be the only writer of whom that's true—and he manages because he seems to be a never-ending fount of ideas. Getting ideas and turning t h e m into fiction is what gives him satisfaction as a writer. I sometimes envy him, but I know I couldn't possibly come u p with half a dozen viable short-story ideas every month the way he does. So I take the easy way out a n d write novels. H m m m . Time's up, and I see a lot of you have your h a n d s raised. T a k e a deep breath and go on to the next chapter.

CHAPTER

Nothing Short of Novel IN THE foregoing chapter we had a look at the advantages of writing a novel rather than limiting oneself to short stories. W e noted that novels are easier to sell, more profitable for their authors, and constitute a considerable learning experience for the novice writer. N o w let's deal with a few more questions some of you have on the subject. I'm afraid to write a novel because I'm not that smooth a stylist. Don't you have to be a better craftsman to make a novel come off? I don't think so. Sometimes it's just the reverse—a novelist can get away with stylistic crudity that would ruin a shorter piece of fiction. Remember, what a novel gives you more than anything else is room, room for your characters and storyline to carry the day. While a way with words never hurts, it's of less overwhelming importance to the novelist than the ability to grab ahold of the reader a n d m a k e him care what happens next. T h e bestseller list abounds with the work of writers whom no one would call polished stylists. I don't want to n a m e names, but I can think offhand of half a dozen writers whose first chapters are very hard going for me. I'm overly conscious of their style—writing does change one's perceptions as a reader—and I find their dialogue mechanical, their transitions awkward, their descriptions vague. But twenty or thirty pages into their books, I'll stop seeing the trees and begin to perceive the forest—i.e., the story grips me a n d I n o longer notice what's wrong with their writing. In shorter fiction, the storyline wouldn't have a chance to take over. So perhaps you have to be a better craftsman for short stories and a better storyteller for novels, but both are equally important aspects of the writer's art. Obviously, the finest novels are skillfully shaped, just as the finest short 42

Nothing Short of Novel

stories catch u p the reader in their narrative spell. But I certainly wouldn't avoid writing a novel out of lack of confidence in writing skills. All right, next question. Are you trying to raise your h a n d back there? You keep putting it u p and taking it down. That's because I'm uncertain. I have a good idea for a novel but I just can't seem to get started on it. Somehow it seems pointless to begin something that's going to take forever to finish. I know the feeling. I remember the first time I wrote a really long book. When I sat down to begin it I knew I was starting something that h a d to r u n at least five hundred pages in manuscript. I put in a good day's work a n d wound u p knocking out fourteen pages. I got u p from the typewriter a n d said, "Well, just four hundred and eighty-six pages to g o " — a n d went directly into nervous prostration at the very thought. The thing to remember is that a novel's not going to take forever. All the old clichés actually apply-^a journey of a thousand miles begins with a sin gle step, and slow and steady honestly does win the race J Consider this: if you write one page a day, you will produce a substantial novel in a year. N o w writers who turn out a book a year, year in a n d year out, are considered to be quite prolific. A n d don't you figure you could pro duce one measly little page, even on a b a d day? Even on a rotten day? Maybe it's not the length, exactly. But when I write a short story I can hold the whole thing in my head when I sit down at the typewriter. I know exactly where I'm going and it's just a matter of writing it down. I don't have that kind of grasp on a novel Of course not. Nobody does. There are a few approaches you might consider. O n e involves writing pro gressively more detailed versions of your outline until you have essentially fleshed it out into a book, having outlined each scene in each chapter before beginning the actual writing. Writers who use this approach say it makes the writing a breeze. I would think it would transform what's supposed to be a creative act into a fundamentally mechanical process, but that doesn't m e a n it might not work like a charm for you. As an alternative, you might come to realize that the control you seem to have over short stories is largely illusory. W h a t you have is confidence—be cause you think you know everything about the story by the time you set out to write it. But, if you're like me, you keep surprising yourself at the typewriter.

44 TELLING LIES FOR FUN AND PROFIT Characters take on a life of their own and insist upon supplying their own dialogue. Scenes that looked necessary at the onset turn out to be superflu ous, while other scenes take a form other than what you'd originally in tended. As often as not, midway through the story you'll think of a way to improve the basic plot itself. This happens even more markedly in novels, and that's fine. A work of fiction ought to be an organic entity. It's alive, and it grows as it goes. Maybe it would help you if I said something about the novel I'm working on at present, an extremely complicated thriller set during World W a r II. I'm about halfway through the book as I write this, and I've been able to get this far solely by taking it One D a y at a Time. Whenever I project, whenever I start envisioning the novel as a whole, I'm paralyzed with terror. I'm convinced the whole thing is impossible and can't conceivably work out. But as long as I can get u p each morning and con centrate exclusively on what's going to happen during that particular day's stint at the typewriter, I seem to be doing all right—and the book is taking form nicely. One day at a time—that seems to work for me. A n d if you realize that you can only affect what you do now, things become a good deal more manage able. Maybe I haven't started a novel because I'm afraid I wouldn't finish it. Possibly so. A n d maybe you wouldn't finish it. There's no law that says you have to. Please understand that I'm not advocating abandoning a novel halfway through. I've done that far too often myself, and it's not something I've ever managed to feel good about. But you do have every right in the world to give u p on a book if it's just not working, or if you simply discover that writing novels is not for you. As m u c h as we'd all prefer to pretend our calling is a noble one, it's salutary to bear in mind that the last thing this poor old planet needs is another book. T h e only reason to write anything is because it's something you want to do, and if that ceases to be the case you're entirely free to do something else instead. You know, it strikes m e that we m a y all of us be too caught u p in the de sire to finish our work. T h a t has to be our aim, obviously, but it's easy to overemphasize that aspect of writing. I do this myself. I became a writer because I thought I'd enjoy the process of literary creation, and in no time at all this urge transformed itself into an obsession with getting manuscripts finished and seeing them in print. I suspect the business of writing a novel becomes less a source of anxiety

Nothing Short of Novel

and more a source of pleasure if we learn to concern ourselves more with the writing process and less with the presumptive end product. T h e writer w h o does each day's work as it comes along, enjoying it as activity a n d not merely enduring it as a means to an end, is going to have a better time of things. I suspect, too, he'll wind u p producing a better piece of writing for his efforts; his work won't suffer for having been rushed, whipped like a poor horse to the finish line. All that's required here is an attitudinal change. A n d if you m a n a g e it, I hope you'll tell me how—I have a lot of trouble in this area, yearning less to write than to have written. You've got me convinced. I'm going to sit down and write a novel After all, short stuff isn't really significant, is it? It isn't, huh? W h o says? I'll grant that commercial significance singles out the novel, a n d that long novels are automatically considered to be of more importance t h a n short novels, and sell better. And I won't deny that your neighbors will take you more seriously if you tell them you've written a novel. (Of course if that's the main concern, just go and tell them. You don't have to write anything. Just he a little. Don't worry—they won't beg to read the manuscript.) But as far as intrinsic merit is concerned, length is hardly a factor. You've probably heard of the writer who apologized for having written a long letter, explaining that he didn't have the time to m a k e it shorter. A n d you m a y have read Faulkner's comment that every short-story writer is a failed poet, and every novelist a failed short-story writer. Well, now you've got me confused again. Maybe I'll write a novel, maybe I'll stick to short stories. One thing I know, though, and that's that I'm not going to accomplish anything sitting on my duff. I'm going straight to the typewriter. No more putting things off. Congratulations. But I hope you'll take time to read Chapter 15. T h e title's "Creative Procrastination."

CHAPTER

Sunday Writers A COUPLE of weeks ago a friend of mine was nice enough to compliment me on something he'd read in a recent column. While I was basking in the glow, he said, "It must bother you, huh? Sort of like taking money under false pretenses." I asked what he meant. "Well, here you are writing this column," he said, " a n d you know full well that the vast majority of your readers are never going to write anything publishable, and you're in there every m o n t h telling them how to improve their technique. Hell, you're just encouraging 'em in their folly." I was really annoyed with him, not least because he was calling my atten tion to doubts I'd h a d myself. I once turned down an opportunity to teach writing in an adult education program for reasons along the lines of what he'd said. But after m y friend and I h a d gone our separate ways, I gave some further thought to the whole question—and I w o u n d u p grateful to him for raising the point. For one thing, he m a d e me realize the extent to which we're all hung u p on publishing what we write. N o w that may look painfully obvious at first glance, but when you look at the other forms of creative endeavor you can see the difference. Every writer I've ever known has written with the hope of eventual publi cation. Contrast that with all the Sunday painters daubing oil on canvas for their private enjoyment, all the actors whose ambitions have never strayed beyond amateur theatrical presentations, all the folks taking piano lessons without the vaguest dream of a debut at Carnegie Hall. Millions of people snap pictures without hoping to see them published. Millions more make jewelry and throw pots a n d knit shawls, free altogether from the craving to profit from their craft. 46

Sunday Writers

I've known quite a few Sunday painters, including several in m y own family. They're quite accomplished and they get enormous satisfaction from what they do. Some exhibit in local shows, occasionally winning a little rec ognition. But they don't sell paintings, they've never tried to sell paintings, and they don't consider themselves failures. These painters are very fortunate—they don't need to prove themselves in the marketplace in order to get a sense of accomplishment from their work. They can produce a painting and either give it to a friend or hang it on a blank wall. Their artistic struggles may be rewarding or frustrating accord ing to whether they do or do not achieve what they aimed at artistically. But, once a painting's finished, they don't succeed or fail if it does or does not sell. Why aren't there more Sunday writers? W h y don't those of us who write as a hobby find our work satisfying in and of itself? I think there are some good reasons. Foremost, I suppose, is that c o m m u nication is absolutely implicit in writing. If a story is not to be read, why write it down in the first place? A n unpublished piece of fiction is an incom pleted act, like a play staged in an empty theater. We can't effectively hang our manuscripts on the wall. Some of us d o give them to friends—by having our work privately published. But that's expen sive, and in addition there's a certain stigma that often attaches to it. If it's really good, we and our friends wonder, why should we have to pay to have it published? And if it's not of professional caliber, why don't we keep it in the attic? Poets have an edge here. The prospect of making a living from poetry is so remote as to be nonexistent, and that's very liberating. Since every poet's a financial failure, no odium attaches to such failure. Only a minuscule pro portion of skilled poets ever have their works published in book form, a n d they make no more than a pittance from such publication. So the poet w h o circulates his verses privately, or pays to have them printed, is less likely to feel qualms about it than the fiction writer who does the same thing. W h e n all poets are essentially amateurs, one's not ashamed to be less t h a n profes sional. One's friends and neighbors probably don't know the names or work of many widely published poets. They're not forever reading in the gossip columns of staggering sums paid for film rights to a sonnet sequence. Poetry, like virtue, is its own reward. Where's the reward in unpublished fiction? As far as I've been able to determine, it does not lie in the sheer j o y of the act of writing. Because writing's not much fun.

TELLING LIES FOR FUN AND PROFIT

I really wonder why that is. Again, comparison with other art forms is in structive. It's been my observation that painters, both professional and amateur, love to paint. They get genuine enjoyment out of the physical act of smearing paint on canvas. Sometimes they're blocked, sometimes they're frustrated, but when they're painting the very process of creation is a joy to them. Same thing certainly holds true for musicians. They only seem to feel alive when they're performing. T h e jazz musicians I've known spend their afternoons practicing scales and such, work all night performing, then j a m for free at an after-hours joint until dawn, just for the sheer pleasure of it. In sharp contrast, almost every writer I know will go to great lengths to avoid being in the same room with his typewriter. Those of us who are driven to produce great quantities of manuscript don't necessarily get any real pleasure out of the act; it's just that we feel worse when we don't write. It's not the carrot but the stick that gets most of us moving. I don't m e a n to suggest that there's no positive pleasure connected with writing. I enjoy getting ideas, for example—both the initial plot germs and the ideas that develop in the course of extended work on a novel. And I very much enjoy having written; the satisfaction of having completed a taxing piece of work can be monumental. This latter pleasure, come to think of it, is a negative one, isn't it? W h e n I'm delirious with joy over having finished something, my joy stems in large part from the fact that I do not have to work on it any more, that the dratted thing is over and done with. So it's nice being about to write, and it's nice to have written. But is there no way to enjoy writing while it's going on? One thing that impedes enjoyment, I would think, is that writing's hard work. Painters and musicians work hard, too, but there's a difference. You can't really relax and go with the flow while you're writing—at least I can't, and if anyone can show me how, I'll be delighted to learn. Writing demands all of my attention and focuses me entirely in the present. I can't let my mind wander, and if my mind wanders in spite of itself I find I can't write, and when I want to write and can't write I find myself possessed of murder ous rage. W h e n a painting doesn't go well the artist can keep on painting and cover it up. W h e n a musician's not at his best, the notes he plays float off on the air and he can forget about them. W h e n I'm off m y form, the garbage I've written just sits there on the page and thumbs its nose at me. A n d when it gets into print that way, it's there for all the world to see, forever.

Sunday Writers

There are some writers who enjoy writing. Isaac Asimov, for one, seems to enjoy every minute of it, and there may be others similarly blessed. A n d everybody enjoys it now and then, when the words flow effortlessly a n d you feel plugged into the Universal Mind and the stuff on the page is worlds better than what you had in mind when you sat down. T h a t doesn't h a p p e n very often, but I'll tell you it's a kick when it does. Sometimes I think the Sunday writer enjoys a great advantage over those of us who have to do this stuff to put bread on the table. W h a t constantly mitigates his enjoyment is his desire to give u p his amateur standing a n d turn professional. I don't know that every foot soldier carries in his k n a p sack the baton of a marshal of France. I d o know that, when it comes to writing, everybody wants to get into the act, and every Sunday writer thinks his typewriter ought to be able to turn out a bestseller. Maybe it just has to be that way. M a y b e we can't put u p with the h a r d work of writing in the first place unless we're goaded by the urge to publish. I would certainly hope, though, that Sunday writers can avoid equating failure to publish with failure as a writer. If you are gaining satisfaction from writing, if you are exercising and improving your talent, if you are commit ting to paper your special feelings and perceptions, then you can d a m n well call yourself a success. Whether you wind u p in print, whether you ever see money for your efforts, is and ought to be incidental. No, I don't feel guilty for writing m y column each month. It m a y well be that many of my readers will never publish anything, but so what? Perhaps some of you will write a little better for having read one of m y efforts. "You're just encouraging them in their folly. " Am I indeed? That presupposes that writing stories which will not ulti mately be published is folly, and that's an assumption I'm unwilling to grant. And the very word folly calls to mind a line of William Blake's—"If the fool would persist in his folly he would become wise." I don't know that persistence on the part of the Sunday writer leads to wisdom. I don't even know that it will lead to publication. But it can defi nitely lead to satisfaction, and I'd regard that as n o small reward.

CHAPTER

"Dear Joy" Dear Joy, By now I suppose you're pretty well settled in at college. W h e n I talked to your dad recently he did some pardonable boasting about your scholarship, and I'd like to offer my congratulations. He also said you were thinking about becoming a writer. On that score I don't know whether congratulations or condolences are in order. As an al ternative, let me furnish you with a little unsolicited advice. T h e first point that comes to mind is the question of what a future writer ought to study in college. W h e n I went to school I automatically majored in English Literature; since I intended to write the stuff, it seemed fitting and proper to find out first what other people had done in that area. I don't suppose this did me any discernible harm, but neither a m I sure it did me m u c h good. I don't think there's any question that writers ought to be readers, and I've never known a professional writer who wasn't a vir tually compulsive reader, but studying literature and reading are not the same thing. As in most academic disciplines, the student of literature under goes a course of study which most prepares him to become a teacher of liter ature. This is not a bad thing to be, nor are teaching and writing mutually exclusive; a lot of writers who don't m a k e the grade, or are emotionally unsuited to life as a free-lancer, find teaching a comfortable occupation. T h e only reason not to major in English is that it might keep you from studying something else that you're more interested in. The most important single thing you can do at college is pursue your own interests, whatever they might turn out to be and however remotely they might appear to relate to a career in writing. I don't honestly think it makes a bit of difference what you study—just so long as it's what you want to study. Humanities or hard sciences, history or botany or philosophy or calculus, whatever excites you 50

"Dear Joy"

intellectually at the time is the most useful thing for you as a student and, ultimately, as a writer. As a corollary to the principle of following your own interests, you would do well to find out who the most provocative professors are at your school. Then contrive to take at least one course from each of them, whatever the hell they're teaching. T h e specific facts learned in a classroom, the content of the required reading, rarely lingers in the m i n d too long after graduation. But the stimulation of intellectual interchange with an exciting a n d excep tional mind is something which will be with you forever. Nobody can teach you to write, not on a college campus or anywhere else. But this doesn't mean that writing courses are a waste of time. On the contrary, they're a source of time—and this m a y very well be their most important function. They provide you with time a n d academic credit for your own experimentation at the typewriter. You might be doing this writing anyway, stealing the time from other courses. W h e n you take a writ ing course you're expected to devote a certain a m o u n t of time to writing, and that's often useful, just as the need to produce assignments on d e m a n d is an inordinately valuable discipline. Most writing courses involve the submission of manuscripts which are read aloud to the class, by the instructor or the individual authors, after which they are subjected to group criticism. I hope someone improves on this format soon. Prose is not written to be read aloud, a n d the effect of a short story so presented has little to do with its effect in print. Even with these limitations, writing courses can be very valuable for you, less for the criticism you'll receive from others t h a n for the opportunity you'll have to observe what doesn't work in other people's writing. This is an important point. T h e best and easiest way to learn writing by reading consists of exposing yourself to large doses of inferior amateur work. It's easier to spot a flaw than comprehend the reasons an unblemished piece is flawless. Nothing helped my own writing like a few m o n t h s of work read ing unsolicited manuscripts at a literary agency. Every day I worked m y way through mountains of swill; at night I sat at h o m e writing, a n d I knew what mistakes to avoid in my own work. Try to read your classmates' efforts in manuscript. Seeing beats hearing when it comes to teaching yourself how prose a n d dialogue work on the page. And take criticisms of your own work, from fellow students or in structors, with a generous splash of soy sauce. Shrugging off their sass will prepare you for the task of ignoring the carping of editors a n d publishers in years to come. Whether you take m a n y writing courses or not, I hope you'll d o as m u c h

52 TELLING LIES FOR FUN AND PROFIT writing as possible during your college years. As far as what you ought to write, well, that depends on you. Prospective writers, in and out of school, approach the profession from different circ*mstances and with different goals. Some have a particular perspective which they want to be able to render in fiction. Others want first and foremost to establish themselves as writers; just what they wind u p writing is a secondary consideration. If you're of the first sort, the best advice I can give you is to avoid listening to any advice, mine included. You already know, on some intuitive level, what it is that you want to do. G o ahead and do it, at your own pace and in your own way. Take all the time you need for your writing and let its form and content be whatever proves most suitable and natural to you. As far as commercial considerations are concerned, don't be concerned with them. It is exceedingly rare that anything produced by a college writer has any objective value, either commercially or artistically. While you may prove a happy exception, it's not terribly likely that anything you turn out in the next four years will m a k e you rich a n d famous. This is a very good thing for you. It means you ought to consider yourself completely free from com mercial requirements, at least for the time being. But maybe your m a i n interest lies in satisfying commercial requirements. M a y b e you want chiefly to become a writer, a professional wordsmith. This needn't m e a n that what you write will be of less artistic value. It's more a question of where you're coming from as a writer. W h e n I was your age—and you can't imagine how I hate the sound of that phrase—all I wanted to do was get published. I wanted to see my n a m e in print and on checks. I already knew that a writer was the only thing worth being and I was impatient to go ahead and officially become one. If you find yourself similarly obsessed, perhaps some advice might not be amiss. First of all, write as m u c h as possible. T h e more active you are the quicker you'll get into the habit of developing ideas and encouraging them to hatch into stories. Study the markets. I think it's possible to become market-oriented with out cheapening yourself as a writer. I don't think you should try to teach yourself to write confessions or juveniles or whatever because you know there's a market for them. Instead, read a lot of different kinds of magazines until you find some that contain the kind of stories that you think you might enjoy producing, and might be proud of at the same time. You'll never do good work in a field you can't enjoy as a reader and respect as a writer. Act like a pro. Learn the proper format for your manuscripts and use it when you type them. Submit things. Send out the pieces you write, send

"Dear Joy"

them out over and over again. I literally papered a wall with rejection slips my first two years in college, and if nothing else it established my own selfimage as a writer, albeit not a terribly successful one. I suppose it also helped me get used to rejection. And then one wonderful day an editor asked m e to revise a story, and he subsequently bought it, and all that acting as if paid off. All of a sudden I was a professional writer. Most campuses offer a variety of literary and journalistic activities—the college newspaper, the literary magazine, that sort of thing. Students with an interest in writing commonly get involved in these areas. They can be very rewarding, but only if you're interested in them for their own sake. I'd rec ommend that you choose your extracurricular activities the same way you choose your courses, for their intrinsic interest to you. The time I put in editing the college paper was valuable to m e in several ways. It helped me learn to write to space requirements, taught m e to work against the pressure of a deadline, and assured me that I did not want to spend my life on a newspaper. But the most important extracurricular activ ity for me was hanging out. T h e college I attended, like the one you've cho sen, was a small innovative liberal-arts college with a bizarre assortment of students and a comfortingly eccentric faculty. T h e personal growth a n d ex pansion I achieved through contact with all of these m a d m e n a n d crazy ladies was far more useful to me over the years t h a n anything I ever ac quired in a classroom. And that's been the experience of every writer I've known—and most non-writers too, as far as that goes. It may occur to you that, while writing is certainly what you want to d o eventually, it would be nice to be able to m a k e a living after you graduate. You may think, and may be advised, that you ought to m a k e specific prepa rations for a career so that you can support yourself while you're getting es tablished as a writer. Don't waste your time. You may indeed wind u p holding any n u m b e r of jobs after college, but they'll take care of themselves when the time comes. Planning now for a non-writing career when you actually want to become a writer is no more than preparing for failure. Spend the present growing, a n d learning, and writing, and enjoying yourself. A n d let tomorrow take care of tomorrow. Have fun, Joy. I don't expect you to believe this, but there will come a time when these four years will be the good old days. Meanwhile, enjoy yourself—and thanks for providing m e with this month's column. Love, Larry

CHAPTER

How to Read Like a Writer WHILE LEADING a writing seminar at Antioch College, I h a d a chance to renew m y friendship with Nolan Miller, in whose writing workshop I m a d e some of m y first attempts at fiction right around the time Teddy Roosevelt led the lads u p San J u a n Hill. W e talked of students, then and now. "They all want to be told whether they have talent," N o l a n said. "Talent's no guarantee of success, of course. T h e most talented writer in the world won't get anyplace if he lacks the dis cipline to exploit his talent. But they always want to know if they have it or not, and I never tell a student he lacks talent." "Why's that?" I wondered. "Because I simply can't tell. I m a y be able to detect talent on occasion but I can never be certain of its absence. I can't know that a m a n or w o m a n lacks the capacity to grow, to develop, to improve. Besides," he added, "I don't think it does them any h a r m to try their h a n d at writing. If nothing else, it makes them m u c h better readers." Years ago I heard the perhaps apocryphal story of the great violinist. I've recounted his approach in Chapter 12, "It Takes More T h a n Talent." Nolan's is gentler, a n d I very m u c h prefer it. But do we actually become better readers by virtue of our efforts at writ ing? T h a t would certainly seem to be a logical assumption. Personal knowl edge of how a thing is done ought to give one a finer appreciation of that same thing when it is done by someone else. I a m well aware, certainly, that my musician friend hears music very differently than I do, that my mother has a fuller experience in an art gallery as a result of the years she's spent painting. This principle applies outside of the arts as well. There's a reason beyond 54

How to Read Like a Writer

their celebrity value for employing retired athletes as sports announcers. Having played the game, they know it better than you or I. When it comes to reading, I'd have to say that most of us are pretty good at it to begin with. The one common denominator I've observed a m o n g writ ers of my acquaintance is a longstanding appetite for the printed word. Most of us have been well-nigh compulsive readers all our lives. D o n Westlake once admitted that if there's nothing else in the house, he'll go read the in gredients label on the bottle of Worcestershire sauce. Over the years I've met a couple of writers who are not like this, but their n u m b e r ' s so few as to qualify them for the endangered species list. While I've always read voraciously, the nature of m y reading has changed considerably over the years. In my college years I went through books like bluefish through a school of menhaden, chewing u p a n d bolting down everything that came within my reach. In a sense, I read a great m a n y books with the determination of a smoker breaking in a new pipe, as if each book I read would somehow season and improve me. W h e n I didn't like a book I simply lowered my head and bulled my way through it anyway, as if setting it aside half-finished would be somehow immoral. Alas, no more. I don't finish half the books I start nowadays, a n d a good many get hurled across the room after a couple of chapters. Part of this, I'm sure, stems from the self-confidence of middle age. T h e narrator of Toby Stein's All the Time There Is confides that she vowed on turning thirty-five never to finish a book merely because she h a d started it, a n d I submit that that's a good vow to make and a reasonable time in life to m a k e it. I think, though, that an increasing ability to discriminate between good and bad writing has had at least as m u c h to do with m y changed attitude toward what I read. The writing I do, day in a n d day out (whatever that means), has served to make me perhaps excessively aware of the technique of other writers. W h e n I read the work of someone lacking in craft, I know it. This knowledge, this acute awareness, interferes with the voluntary sus pension of disbelief upon which fiction depends for its effectiveness. If my writer's ear tells me the dialogue I a m reading is u n n a t u r a l a n d clumsy, how am I to make myself believe in the existence of the characters who are speaking it? If my writer's perceptions force m e to notice that I a m reading lumpish prose, how can I lose myself in the story? As a result, any number of bestsellers with considerable popular appeal leave me colder than an editor's smile. They m a y tell a good story, but if I can't get past the writing I can't enjoy that story. I don't mean to imply that people who do enjoy such books are to be con-

TELLING LIES FOR FUN AND PROFIT

demned for their enjoyment. More often than not, I envy them. They're having a good time, while I, a lifelong reader, am having an increasingly difficult time finding something to read. There are compensations, however. Because when I do find something good, I can enjoy it on several levels at once. On the most basic level, I can get caught up in the story as inextricably as the rankest soap-opera addict. I can laugh when it's funny and cry when it's sad. That, after all, is what fiction is for, and if anything, my professional involvement with the stuff has intensified my ability to respond to it—when it's good. At the same time, I always have my writer's eye open when I read some thing well-written. However involved I may be in the fate of the characters, I allow myself to notice what the writer is doing. W h e n something works, I try to figure out what makes it work so well. W h e n one paragraph in an other wise smooth novel seems a little rough, I take a moment to try to figure out what off-note soured the chord. Sometimes, when I'm reading, I find myself doing a little mental rewrit ing. Does this one particular conversation go on too long? Suppose a couple of responses were eliminated—would that speed things up? Is this transition too abrupt? Or would things move more effectively if we had a fast cut here? You might think that reading like this would be like sleeping with one eye open, that the writer's awareness would inhibit the reader's involvement. Curiously enough, it doesn't seem to work that way. I've seen musicians at concerts sitting in the audience and following the score as they listen to the music, and I've been given to understand that this can heighten their en joyment of what they're hearing. In a similar fashion, my involvement in what I read can be intensified by my awareness of just what the writer is doing. T h e flip side of the whole process is at least as important. One never stops learning the tricks of our particular trade, and I've found that my continuing education takes place in two classrooms, my office and my library. I learn by writing and I learn by reading. If the years I've spent writing have raised my consciousness as a reader, so do the books and stories I read continue to sharpen my skills as a writer. T h e extent to which I've changed as a reader is never more apparent than when I reread something I haven't looked at in years. Sometimes this can be a very disappointing experience. There are writers I treasured in adolescence whose books I find quite impenetrable today, not because they've de teriorated but because I look on them with altogether different eyes now. I

How to Read Like a Writer

was less critical then, less capable of reading as a writer, a n d when I turn their pages now I want to weep for my own lost innocence. These disappointments are more than m a d e u p for by the great delight of rediscovering an old favorite and finding I like it more t h a n I ever did—be cause now I'm far better equipped to appreciate the author's excellences. It seems to me that every time I return to J o h n O ' H a r a a n d Somerset Maugham I discover new evidence of their enormous craft. Years ago I read their novels and short stories for several reasons—for sheer story value, to make the acquaintance of their characters, and for what light their auctorial intelligence could shed upon such matters as Life and T r u t h a n d Beauty. I still read them for these reasons, and get more out of them than I ever did. But at the same time I am more aware now of the m a n n e r in which they achieve particular effects. I observe, while caught u p in the story of The Moon and Sixpence, say, how M a u g h a m wields the perspective of his narra tor like a conductor's baton. Reading Ten North Frederick for the fifth or sixth time, I am no less caught u p in the inexorable decline of Joe C h a p i n for my noticing how O'Hara uses the viewpoints of various characters to reveal facets of his protagonist. I've slowed down in my reading. I used to dash through books like a selftaught speedreader. Now I take more time, savoring what I read, chewing each mouthful thoroughly before swallowing. Writing has indeed m a d e m e a better reader, just as reading continues to m a k e m e a better writer. How to read like a writer? I'm afraid I can't think of m a n y specific tips toward that end. One thing I've observed is that I'm more critical a n d de tached when I read a manuscript than when I read galleys, more so too with galleys than with a bound book. The closer I a m to what came out of the writer's typewriter, the more conscious I a m that I'm reading a person's work rather than something that came down from the m o u n t a i n t o p carved in stone tablets. By the same token, it's easier for m e to get caught u p in a bound book than a manuscript. But that's by the way. I don't know that you have to m a k e a particular effort to learn to read like a writer. If you keep writing—and keep read ing—it just happens. Enjoy it.

CHAPTER

Rolling With the Punches A COUPLE of months ago a writing student of mine was discussing a story he'd written a year or two previously. It had come within a hair's breadth of being accepted by a prestigious literary quarterly. The author then submit ted it to Harper's and got it back with a personal letter from Lewis Lapham. "Well?" I said. "Where'd you send it next?" "I didn't." "Beg p a r d o n ? " "I put it in a drawer," he said, shrugging. "I figured it got rejected twice so there must be something wrong with it, so why should I waste my time sending it out again?" Extraordinary, don't you think? Any story that came that close to accep tance at these two markets is almost certainly publishable somewhere. But this particular story will almost certainly not be published—because the au thor isn't sufficiently determined to give it every possible chance of publica tion. W h e n novice writers ask m y advice about getting published, one point I can't emphasize too strongly is the importance of being absolutely relentless about submissions. Once you've got a story to the point where you think it's worth submitting, you must submit it and submit it and submit it until some one somewhere breaks down and buys it. Before this happens, you will very likely accumulate rejection slips sufficient to insulate an attic. Your collec tion m a y not represent any near misses, may not include any personal notes from eminent editors. You m a y not even experience the wee thrill of seeing Sorry hand-scrawled across the bottom of a printed slip. Tough. If you really want to be in this silly business, you cannot let this sort of thing bother you. You paste the rejection slip on the wall or toss it in the wastebasket. You take the story out of the envelope it came back in and 58

Rolling With the Punches 59 tuck it into a fresh one. You consult your records, see where it's been, then flip through Writer's Market and pick out a place where it hasn't been. A n d then you put it in the mail, and you repeat this process ad infinitum until the damn thing sells. Over and over. Again and again. Relentlessly. What do you suppose it means when your manuscript comes back to you like a well-hurled boomerang? It doesn't m e a n you're a brain-damaged churl who couldn't write your n a m e in the dirt with a stick. It doesn't m e a n your story stinks on ice. It doesn't m e a n you should forget about writing a n d pay more attention to those ads promising high profits raising chinchillas in your bathtub. All it means is that a particular editor didn't want to buy a particular story on a particular day. Maybe he didn't even read it. Editors are as apt to be overworked as the rest of it, and sometimes the prospect of wading through slush is uninviting, and who's to say that no one ever h a d a b a d day a n d just rejected everything unread? This doesn't happen often, but even an editor with the best will in the world can have a headache or a hangover and simply not like anything he reads under those conditions. Suppose the editor does read your story, and reads it on a good day. H e can still despise it—but that doesn't m e a n it's despicable. W h e n all is said and done, editorial reactions to all material, a n d most especially to fiction, are ultimately subjective. T h e fact that one person dislikes something does not mean it is bad. Furthermore, a rejection doesn't have to m e a n the editor dislikes the story. Maybe it simply means he doesn't like it enough to buy it. M a y b e he's over-inventoried on fiction at the moment, a n d you'd have to knock him out of his chair in order to sell him, and he just doesn't like your story all that much. Maybe he just bought a story very m u c h like yours. M a y b e your story's about eggs and he got a b a d one at breakfast. M a y b e — Well, you get the idea. Bad stories get rejected, but so do most good stories most of the time. It's important to recognize—and then dismiss—the enormous odds we all face every time we put a story in the mail. I was talking recently to the editor of one of the little literary magazines. H e buys three or four stories an issue and publishes four issues a year. So he's in the market for twelve or fifteen stories annually, and how many fiction submissions per year d o you suppose he receives? Four thousand. The odds would seem overwhelming. O n due reflection, the inference you

60 TELLING LIES FOR FUN AND PROFIT might draw might be that anyone would have to have his head examined to buck those odds. O n the other hand, twelve or fifteen people every year do get a story accepted by this publication, and those twelve or fifteen stories have one thing in common. They all came out of the pile of four thousand. T h e more you submit, the more you reduce the odds against eventual publication. But nobody ever sold a story by leaving it in a desk drawer. Yes? Did you have a question out there?

/ agree with what you say, but when one of my stories keeps coming back I get discouraged. I figure they're right and I'm wrong. It's only natural, isn't it? Of course. Even a seasoned pro finds rejection disheartening, and for a beginner it's that m u c h more of a blow. W h a t you have to do is work on your attitudes so that rejection doesn't lead inevitably to dejection. T h e best way I know to manage this is to make your resubmission policy as automatic as you possibly can. Establish a hard and fast rule to get a manuscript back in the mail within twenty-four hours of its receipt. Better yet, send it out immediately—make it the first order of business to get that script off your desk and back in the mail. One reason not to keep it around is you might read it, and that's a bad idea. You've already read it enough. T h e addition of a rejection slip isn't going to heighten your enthusiasm. So don't read it. Don't even keep it around long enough to tempt yourself.

Just submit the damn thing forever? Well, forever's a long time. You can work out your own system, but I'd recommend keeping it constantly at market for a m i n i m u m of a year. Then, if you want, read it. Maybe you'll see something you want to change. Maybe you'll decide you hate it altogether. After a year, you can give yourself per mission to withdraw it from market—or you can confirm your original judgment and resubmit for another year.

Isn't it a mistake to submit a story to an editor who's already rejected a dif ferent story of mine? No, and why should it be? Remember, you weren't rejected. Your story was rejected. It's not the same thing.

It costs a lot to keep a story in the mail Don't you reach a point of diminish ing returns? Admittedly, the whole process was less of a wrench when first-class mail cost four cents an ounce. Even so, the high cost of submission isn't all that

Rolling With the Punches 61 high. If you ultimately sell the story, you'll come out ahead. If the story proves ultimately unsalable, you'll have spent a few dollars establishing its unsalability. Depending on your current status, you m a y regard the expense of stamps and envelopes as part of the cost of doing business, a n aspect of one's apprenticeship, or the price of a relatively inexpensive hobby. I don't believe it when someone tells m e he stopped submitting a story because of the expense. I think he's simply rationalizing an unwillingness to face further rejection. You mentioned the long odds we all face. Isn't part of the problem the amount of amateurish tripe every editor has to wade through? It seems to me that people who submit inferior work make it harder for the rest of us. Why don't you say something to discourage them from wasting editors' time? I received a letter from a Florida writer who m a d e essentially this point. What she failed to realize is that a writer's own perception of a story's salability is no index of anything. Unquestionably, a great m a n y would-be writers submit inferior work. But I don't think they do so knowing it to be inferior. Nor is this glut of inferior work a problem for the rest of us. If m y story doesn't sell, it's not the inferior stories that have kept it from selling. Quite the opposite. It's the stories that were better t h a n mine that got in m y way. If I were going to be self-seeking, then, I'd try to discourage good writers from submitting their work for publication. Of course nothing I might say would be likely to influence their behavior—any more t h a n it would influ ence those people sending in amateurish efforts. Back up a few steps. You dismissed the pain of rejection very blithely a few mintues ago. Believe me, it's real pain! N o kidding. D o you think I enjoy it myself? There are some things you can do, however, to minimize the pain. First of all, you can keep involved in the constant production of new work. By fo cusing your concentration upon the work itself a n d making the marketing process as mechanical as possible, you can shrug off rejection more easily. This leads to the second method of reducing pain. K e e p as m a n y things in the mail as possible. That way when a story comes back it's not your entire output that's been rejected but only a very small fraction thereof. By the same token, you'll have so m a n y swallows u p in the air that one will be re turning to Capistrano every day or so. Oddly, this makes things easier. When rejection becomes a routine fact of life, a virtual daily occurrence, you get used to it.

TELLING LIES FOR FUN AND PROFIT

Ultimately, you may reach the point where you see rejection not as a ne gation of your worth as a writer, not even as condemnation of a particular story, but as what it is—an inescapable part of the process which ultimately results in acceptance. D o n ' t be too upset, though, if it takes time before you acquire this philosophical detachment in full measure. Until then, just sum u p the editor's ancestry a n d personal habits in a few terse sentences—and get your manuscript back in the mail.

CHAPTER

Bic, Scripto, Parker and Cross " S o YOU'RE a writer," they say, time and time again. "That must be very in teresting." Must it? My work, such as it is, consists of sitting alone at a typewriter and tapping fitfully at its keys. It has occurred to me that the only distinction be tween what I do and what a stenographer does lies in my having to invent what I type. If I say as much, it's generally assumed that I'm joshing, whereupon my questioner will very likely chuckle. Should another question seem called for, he'll ask where I get my ideas, or if I've h a d anything published. Or he may ask what n a m e I write under. I've written under any n u m b e r of things in my life. Low ceilings. Hanging plants. Threats of exposure. Duress. I have also written under a whole host of aliases at one time or another. In recent years, however, I have written solely under my own name, but if I say as m u c h to my interlocutor I'm going to put him off-stride; he'll feel he's committed a faux pas, having assumed I use a pen n a m e since he's so clearly unfamiliar with my own. A n d I'll only make things worse by obligingly trotting out some pen n a m e I used in the past, for it surely will be equally unfamiliar to him. " N o r m a n Mailer," I'll say. Or Erica Jong. Or both of them, if the mood strikes me. It may be my doing that any n u m b e r of people are walking

Bic, Scripto, Parker and Cross 63 around today, secure in the knowledge that N o r m a n Mailer is a p e n n a m e of Erica Jong's, and for all I know they m a y be right. D i d you ever see those two at the same time? But let's shift gears before all of this cuteness gets irretrievably out of control. Pen names, to judge from m y mail, are a subject of at least passing concern to many of my readers. I h a d a letter just the other d a y from a woman intent upon keeping her true identity a secret not only from her readers but from her prospective publisher as well, a n d wanting to k n o w how she could do all this without getting into a tangle with the tax author ities. I assume she has her reasons. But just what are the reasons for writing u n d e r a n a m e other t h a n one's own? Surely the ego gratification of seeing one's n a m e in print is a powerful motivator for most of us. W h y should we pass u p that satisfaction for the dubious pleasure of seeing our words attributed t o Helena Troy or Justin Thyme or some other appropriately altered ego? At the present time, I'm a fairly strong believer in writing u n d e r one's o w n name. It has taken m e over twenty years a n d the occasional use of at least that many pseudonyms to arrive at that conclusion. Before I explain m y p o sition, perhaps we can examine some of the reasons w h y a pen n a m e c a n b e useful. 1.

T H E AUTHOR'S OWN NAME IS UNSUITABLE. A writer's n a m e can be a

liability for any of several reasons. It m a y be too similar to that of a n estab lished writer. Journalist T o m Wolfe is evidently willing to chance confusion with the late novelist Thomas Wolfe, a n d there are several J o h n G a r d n e r s and Charles Williamses who write for a living, but why tempt fate? A pen name m a y be indicated if one's own n a m e is unpronounceable or somehow ridiculous. Remember, though, that nomenclatural absurdity is largely subjective; consider the p o p singer w h o rose to fame after changing his own inoffensive n a m e to Engelbert Humperdinck. Sometimes a lackluster n a m e clamors to be changed. Martin Smith p u b lished several mysteries under his o w n name, a n d while the books were ex cellent nobody could remember w h o he was. ( T h e situation was com pounded by the fact that his friends all call h i m Bill.) In the course of time, Smith's agent dubbed him Martin Cruz Smith, interposing the author's mother's maiden name, a n d his first book u n d e r that name, Nightwing, soared on to bestsellerdom. Perhaps it would have done so regardless, b u t the added Cruz certainly didn't hurt. 2.

T H E AUTHOR HAS A SPECIFIC REASON TO AVOID RECOGNITION. I k n o w

at least one writer who uses a pen n a m e solely to shield his identity from his ex-wife. If she knew he was publishing novels, she'd almost certainly peti-

64 TELLING LIES FOR FUN AND PROFIT tion for a n increase in alimony, and she'd very likely get it. By using a pen name, this author gets to keep his literary earnings. Of course h e still pays taxes on them, and lists them o n his tax return. T o do otherwise would b e to risk a jail term for tax evasion. 3.

T H E AUTHOR IS WRITING DIFFERENT TYPES OF BOOKS. This is a stan

dard argument for employing a pen name. Suppose you're writing juveniles for one publisher, shoot-'em-up thrillers for another. Won't your readers be upset to learn that the same person's writing gory stuff on one typewriter and sweet verses about b u n n y rabbits on the other? Won't you b e better off doing the juveniles as Hillary Everbright, the rough stuff as Studd Blud geon? I'm not sure it matters. Most readers won't even notice what you're doing in fields they themselves don't read, and won't hold it against you if they do. But this maintenance of different literary identities for different kinds of writing is a time-honored principle. 4. T H E AUTHOR IS TOO PROLIFIC. Some writers use several names be cause they publish several books a year. They feel that neither the booksell ing industry nor the reading public will take them seriously if all these books are identifiable as the produce of a single writer. I don't know how valid this is. O n the one hand, I've seen reviewers take a shot at "this latest potboiler cranked out in nothing flat by Writer X." O n the other, over the long run your books help each other. Fans want to read everything you've written, and have a n easier time of it if they know what to look for. I don't think Isaac Asimov is hurt by having published so many books of so m a n y different sorts, all under his own name. Yet I could n a m e other writers who have lost credibility with critics in this fashion. 5.

T H E AUTHOR WANTS TO LOOK LIKE A N EXPERT. Years ago, I wrote a

series of books that purported to be case histories of various anonymous souls. T h e subjects of these case histories were indeed rather more than anonymous. They were fictional, m a d e u p out of the whole cloth, with their sexual histories displayed for the reader's education a n d / o r titillation. I used a pen n a m e o n these books—you bet your bippy I used a pen n a m e — a n d the pen n a m e had a n M.D. (In this particular instance, the publisher knew the n a m e was a phony b u t thought t h e author was a legitimate physician operating under a n alias. Ah, what a tangled web . . . ) It is quite lawful, I was told, to use a doctor's pen n a m e so long as one does not usurp t h e prerogatives of a doctor. Since I neither diagnosed nor prescribed, I was presumably within m y rights. As far as the ethics of all of this may have been concerned, I'm not sure there's any good sense in im-

Bic, Scripto, Parker and Cross 65 posing questions of ethics upon a profession which has m u d d l e d along for centuries without any. More recently, I used a female p e n n a m e on a novel written from a woman's point of view, thinking that the book would b e better received for my doing so. I don't think I would take this particular position now. 6.

T H E AUTHOR IS NOT PROUD OF WHAT HE HAS WRITTEN. H e r e , finally,

is the strongest single reason for using a false name. W h e n one is well aware that one is publishing trash, one can salvage at least a m o d i c u m of self-re spect by refraining from publishing it under one's own n a m e . An objection comes quickly to mind. If it's tripe, why publish it at all? Why not limit oneself to the publication of work one is p r o u d to see printed under one's own name? This is a good argument, logically unassailable, but I don't know that it is too closely grounded in reality. This is n o easy business for t h e neophyte, and to publish anything, trash or treasure, is very m u c h a n accomplishment. The beginning writer must make it his first priority simply to write a n d get paid for it. In the greater majority of cases, h e cannot expect to b e doing so at the top of his form. Someday he m a y write first-rate work for first-rate markets, but that may take a while. In the meantime, h e may write and publish a lot of lesser work. H e m a y not be actively ashamed of this work, may indeed take a professional's pride in it, but may still recognize it as unworthy. W h y shouldn't h e reserve his own name for work of which h e is altogether unashamed? There's a thin line here. A person's reach does exceed his grasp, after all, and if you wait for perfection you'll wait forever, publishing your entire life's work under one pseudonym or another. Similarly, there a r e books I liked well enough when I wrote them but regard as inferior work now; ought I to regret having published them under my own name? I d o not regret hav ing done so, any more than I regret being a better writer now t h a n I was twenty years ago. As I started to say earlier, I've come grudgingly to the position that a pen name ought not to be used unless it seems necessary. I a m able to see now that I used pen names as a way to avoid taking responsibility for m y own work, not in the eyes of others as m u c h as in m y own. By the same token, I got a kick out of the element of deception that is in herent in pseudonymous writing. Pen names provided me with a vehicle for escaping the prison of self. T h e lure of a false identity always appealed to me, and there was a time when I traveled a r o u n d the country u n d e r a p e n name, acting out in a rather bizarre fashion. I h a d two of my p e n names

66 TELLING LIES FOR FUN AND PROFIT carrying on an affair, dedicating books to one another. It was all a touch schizoid, now that I think back on it. I don't know that I would go so far as to say I regret it. Pen names hurt me professionally in two ways that I can think of. They diluted m y efforts and thus kept me from building a following as quickly as I might have, and they allowed me to spend more time writing recognizably inferior work than I might otherwise have done. All the same, the freedom of a pen n a m e may have constituted a liberating influence at the time; perhaps, knowing I in tended to publish everything under my own name, I'd have tightened u p and written nothing at all. Should you use a pen name? I wouldn't presume to advise you. Your own circ*mstances, like everyone else's, are special. T h e choice must be entirely your own.

CHAPTER

Writing With Two Heads COLLABORATION ALWAYS seems like such a good idea. Two heads, after all, are purported to be superior to one, especially if they're attached to two dif ferent bodies. W h y shouldn't a piece of writing go faster and more smoothly if two minds conceive it and two pairs of hands commit it to paper? N o body's perfect, and if one combines one's talents with another writer, per haps the match will be complementary, with each making u p for the other's deficiencies. With luck, the union may even prove synergistic, with the col laborative persona of two writers yoked in harness greater than the sum of their separate abilities. Where, after all, would Beaumont be without Fletcher? Gilbert without Sullivan? Abbott without Costello? Jekyll without Hyde? Leopold without Loeb? Ahem. By collaboration I m e a n those joint ventures wherein two writers work together. This might well seem obvious, but for the fact that the oppor-

Writing With Two Heads

tunity for collaboration most frequently presented to us is something rather different. Typically, we are offered this sort of chance by a bore at a co*cktail party. "You know, we ought to get together," a chap will say u p o n learning m y occupation. "I got some stories you wouldn't believe. My problem is I have tons of ideas but I'm not a writer; I can't put them on paper. So what we'll do is I'll give you the ideas and you'll do the writing a n d we'll split the money. How's that?" "Suppose we switch roles?" I'm apt to say, particularly in the party's later stages. "Suppose I give you my ideas, said you do the writing. A n d then we'll split the money." Whoever's ideas we use, I'm not inclined to call this sort of literary part nership collaboration. It's a good deal closer to what the non-fictioneer calls ghostwriting. And on occasion it's exactly that. I know of one instance, for example, in which it was decided that what this country most needed was a novel of political intrigue by a muckraking Washington columnist, since deceased. Unfortunately the m a n in question was either unequipped or disinclined to write such a novel. H e was, how ever, quite willing to see his n a m e below the title, so a competent novelist was quickly found to handle the actual chore of hatching a plot, dreaming up characters, and tapping out a few h u n d r e d pages of unexceptional prose and dialogue. The columnist's contribution, in addition to the use of his name, consisted presumably in his sharing some inside p o o p with the writer and reading the final manuscript to m a k e sure its reflection of the Washing ton scene contained no obvious clinkers. In this case the book sold reasonably well, so none of the parties con cerned had reason to complain of the financial result. Still, the process was substantially less collaborative than the ghosting of a movie star's autobiog raphy, in which case the star at least provides the story and a working ver sion of the facts. It was certainly not a matter of the work being shared by the two principals of the arrangement. Such genuine collaboration seems to work out m u c h more often for play wrights than it does for prose writers. I'm not certain why this should be true, but it may well be that theatrical writing, even when one m a n does all of it, is apt to have a collective aspect to it. O n e takes it almost for granted that rewriting will play a substantial role in the process of readying the play for production, and that any n u m b e r of persons will offer input in this di rection. Producers and directors will suggest changes. Actors will propose improved versions of their lines. Finally, the process of actually performing

68 TELLING LIES FOR FUN AND PROFIT the play, first in a bare theater and then before an audience, will indicate where changes must be m a d e if the play is to succeed. Thus there's a long record of theatrical collaboration. This seems to be particularly true with comedy, and there are some comedic playwrights who can't seem to work effectively by themselves, George S. Kaufman having been perhaps the most obvious example. Bill Hoffman, a playwright friend of mine, spent three years collaborating with another playwright and found the process quite successful. " O n e of us would sit at the typewriter and we batted each line around before it got written. T h e process seems to stimulate both of us. Our abilities comple mented one another to a certain extent; he was a little better at storyline de velopment and I was probably a little better at actual dialogue, but by the time something was actually written down it was impossible to say who had contributed what. Everything amounted to a joint effort." I know two women who write novels in this fashion, Barbara Miller and Valerie Greco. One of them sits at the typewriter, the other stands alongside, and they discuss and come to agreement on every sentence before it gets typed. Curiously, I find this perfectly comprehensible as a means of produc ing work for stage or screen, and the image of a pair of sitcom writers swig ging coffee and tossing gags back a n d forth strikes me as quite the way that sort of thing ought to be done. Yet I simply cannot imagine writing a short story—or, G o d help us, a whole novel—in this fashion. There are, however, any n u m b e r of other ways for fiction writers to share the work. A few years back D o n a l d E. Westlake and Brian Garfield decided to collaborate on a book called Gangway!, a comic thriller (Westlake's forte) set in the Old West (Garfield's milieu). Here's Westlake's description of the process: "First we sat down and dis cussed the whole thing at length. T h e n I wrote a fifteen-page outline of what we had discussed. I gave this to Brian, and he expanded it to forty pages, putting in all the historical context and everything. Then he gave it back to me and I cut it back down to twenty-five pages. At this point we were think ing screenplay, and this version was shown around as a treatment. W h e n it didn't fly, we decided to do it as a novel first. "I wrote the first draft, limiting myself to action and dialogue—not where they were or what they were wearing, just what they did and said. My draft ran about thirty thousand words. I gave it to Brian and he doubled it, turn ing each of my pages into two pages, putting in all the background and such. Then he gave me his sixty-thousand-word version and I edited it, and I gave it back to him and he edited it, and then we gave the whole mess to an edi-

Writing With Two Heads

"It sounds," I ventured, "like five times as m u c h work as sitting d o w n a n d writing a book." "Yes," he agreed, "and about a quarter as m u c h fun, a n d for half the money." Two writers I know collaborate frequently on short stories, discussing a plot at length before one of them sits down and writes it. Since they live three thousand miles apart, one or the other of them does the actual writing unassisted. Even so, the leading profitmaker on m a n y of their joint ventures is Ma Bell. Years ago, I wrote some novels in collaboration, including three with Don Westlake and one with Hal Dresner, who has since gone on to write screenplays. At that time we were all earning a curious living writing soft core sex novels, a medium that lent itself tolerably well to the collaborative process. These collaborations could hardly have been simpler. There was n o prior discussion of plot, no careful development of outline. One of us sat d o w n and wrote a first chapter and gave it to the other, who wrote a second chap ter and gave it back. The book loped along in this fashion until ten chapters had been written and it had come, as all things do, to an end. It was all great fun. D o n and I tended to leave one another with impossi ble cliff-hangers, killing off one another's chief characters at will. Hal a n d I devised a La Ronde form that m a d e sex-novel collaboration almost effort less—i.e., the viewpoint character in the first chapter had, uh, a carnal con nection with someone, who went on to become the viewpoint character in the second chapter, wherein he or she got it on with the person destined to star in Chapter 3. And so on. These collaborative experiments led in due course to the ultimate reductio ad absurdum, the Great Sex Novel Poker G a m e . This ill-advised venture consisted of half a dozen of us, all writers of this sort of trash a n d all fond at the time of nightlong poker sessions. Operating on the premise that any of us could produce a chapter in an hour or so, we met for a night of poker during which five of us sat around the table while one of us at a time went upstairs and wrote fifteen or twenty pages of T h e Book. By the time the night was done—or the following day, or whatever—we would each have contributed two chapters, the book would be finished, a n d a division of the spoils would make us all winners, even those of us who h a d proved unlucky at cards. This well-laid plan went speedily agley. After five more or less successful chapters, one of our number, his brain an object-lesson in the folly of a m phetamine abuse, wrote his two chapters back to back a n d went home. U n fortunately, his contribution turned out to be absolute gibberish, a n d the

TELLING LIES FOR FUN AND PROFIT

writer who followed him, instead of proclaiming as much, spent hours trying to write a sensible sequel to it all. T h e book, in short, did not turn out well. I don't remember how I did at the card table. Since then, I've used collaboration—or the prospect of collaboration— largely as a means of avoiding work. If there's something I really want to write, I'll probably sooner or later sit down and write it. If, on the other hand, there's something I recognize as a good idea but don't really want to mess with, I can propose it as a subject for collaboration, secure in the knowledge that I'll never have to have anything further to do with it. " W e ought to collaborate on this," a friend and I will agree, and then we'll spend a jolly hour tossing ideas to and fro, and that'll be the end of it. Be cause we'll each keep having other things to do, yet neither of us will feel at all guilty, because it's something we can always get around to eventually, whenever we both h a p p e n to be between books at the same time, and in the mood to collaborate, and like that. A case in point occurred a few years ago, when I came u p with an excel lent if incompletely formed idea for a book involving global intrigue during World W a r II. It wasn't really m y kind of book, yet there was a lot of strength in the basic idea, so I talked about it with Brian Garfield and pro posed it as a subject for collaboration. Brian happily agreed, and we dis cussed it some, and that was the end of that. Except, of course, that it wasn't. Some years later I got a handle on an other element of the plot, which m a d e it an even stronger notion, though still not really my kind of thing. I talked it over with Brian a n d decided to go ahead with it alone, since as a collaboration it would never have gotten written. This way it did get written, but it turned out that it really and truly was not my kind of book, and what I wrote wasn't terribly good. At which point it turned back into a collaboration, in this case with yet another writer, Harold King. This was his kind of book, and he liked a lot of what he saw in m y first draft and had excellent ideas of his own to bring to bear upon it, so we talked it over and he went to work on the book. And it should finally m a k e its appearance in the stores sometime during the fall or winter. Finally, another project in which I'm currently engaged was done collab oratively not as a way of avoiding work but to avoid avoiding it. I'd been entertaining the idea of a guidebook to vegetarian and natural food restau rants for a while, but I doubt I'd have got anywhere with it if Cheryl Morri son and I had not entered into collaboration upon it. T h e problem with this book was that it would require little bits of work here and there over the course of a great m a n y months. Because I would always have a primary

It Takes More Than Talent 71 project on the table, the guidebook would have been lost in the shuffle. A n d the same thing would have happened if Cheryl h a d undertaken the whole project herself. As it stands, each of us feels an obligation to the other. T h u s the work gets shared, and, a little at a time, it's getting done, largely because neither of us is prepared to let the other down. I haven't tried to tell you how to collaborate. Indeed, on balance I'd prob ably advise you against trying it altogether, unless you really a n d truly feel you'll write more effectively as someone's partner. There have been any number of viable partnerships—Fern Michaels, W a d e Miller, M a n n i n g Coles, Ellery Queen, Burdick and Lederer—but most of the time the desire to collaborate stems from the hope of making the process of fictional crea tion less lonely, and most of the time that just doesn't seem to be possible. The Concerto for Four Hands and Two Typewriters has its appeal, but for most of us writing is probably destined to remain a solitary occupation. Like dying, it seems to be something we have to d o on our own.

CHAPTER

It Takes More Than Talent IT CONTINUES to astonish me what a widespread a n d enduring fantasy Being a Writer is for the population at large. It's a rare day when I don't encounter some misguided chap who expresses the desire to trade places with me. A n d it's on those not-so-rare days when everything goes wrong, when the words won't come but the rejections fly thick and fast, when the b a n k account's gone dry again and editors don't even bother lying about the check's being in the mail, that otherwise sane folks tell m e how m u c h they envy me. "I wish I had your self-discipline," they'll say, generally saying so on a day when I've got the backbone of a threadworm. "I envy you the imagina tion to keep coming u p with ideas." Or they m a y envy me m y education, which was an unremarkable one, or they'll say they wish they knew m y for-

72 TELLING LIES FOR FUN AND PROFIT mula for writing success, as though I h a d somehow unearthed an alchemist's secret for transmuting the dross of nouns and verbs into the shimmering gold of fiction. Nobody ever says, " I wish I h a d your talent." A n d I find that fascinating. I don't think artists in other media get the same response. I doubt somehow that people kept grabbing Picasso by the shoulder a n d telling h i m how they envied his self-discipline, standing in front of the easel day after day. I don't suppose Caruso h a d to listen to that kind of crap, either. Actors a n d singers in particular seem to be plagued by people w h o think talent is all there is to it, that they've been given a gift which allows them to stand u p there in front of the microphone a n d show their stuff. T h e hours of training a n d practice, the essential will a n d tenacity, are somehow discounted. With writing, it's the talent that's apt to be discounted. There are times when I tend to resent this. T h e unspoken premise in "I wish I h a d your selfdiscipline" is that anyone with m y self-discipline could do what I do, that a persistent chimpanzee could match m e book for book if he could just sit still long enough a n d work the space b a r with his non-opposable t h u m b . My ego doesn't m u c h like to hear this sort of thing. A n d yet I have to admit that there are times when I think these people are onto something. It strikes m e now a n d then that talent m a y be one of the least important variables in the writing business. People without a super abundance of talent succeed anyhow. People with tons of talent never get anywhere. It happens all the time. A n d it happens, I guess, in every field of creative endeavor. F o r years I subscribed to the popular myth that talent will out sooner or later, that all people with genuine ability in a particular field will ultimately achieve suc cess in that field. I'll tell you, you'd be better off believing in the tooth fairy. All over America there are singers a n d actors a n d painters a n d composers and sculptors and, yes, writers, blessed with a sufficiency of talent but born, as T h o m a s G. would put it, to blush unseen, a n d waste their sweetness on the desert air. If talent's not the answer, what else does it take? W h y do some of us suc ceed while others do not? Is it just a matter of luck? I'll tell you this much. Luck doesn't hurt. A n d simple luck has a great deal to do with the fate of a n individual submission. W h e n you mail off a story to a magazine, elements that have nothing whatsoever to do with the quality of that story will play a part in determining whether or not it sells. T h e editor's mood when he reads it is a factor, a n d one you have n o way of controlling.

It Takes More Than Talent 73 The state of the magazine's inventory is another. Competition being what it is, I'd go so far as to say that every time you m a n a g e to sell an unsolicited submission to a magazine, you've been lucky. But I also think that luck tends to average out over a period of time. T h e writer who sells his first story to the first editor who sees it is a lucky writer indeed, but that first sale provides n o guarantee of a second sale. Luck runs hot and cold, and nobody's lucky all the time. What does it take, then, to be successful at free-lance writing? What, be sides talent and luck, helps determine who makes it a n d who doesn't? It seems to me that will is enormously important. There are any n u m b e r of jobs a person can pretty much fall into, but I don't believe writing is one of them. Every once in a while somebody does become a writer apparently by accident, but such persons rarely remain writers for very long. In order to get into this business and in order to stay in it, you generally have to desire it with a passion bordering on desperation. And the intensity of that desire doesn't seem to have anything to d o with talent. A couple of summers ago I taught a seven-day seminar at Antioch College. One of my students was head and shoulders above the others. She was a middle-aged woman who h a d spent all her life on a farm, raising chil dren and helping her husband with the farmwork, a n d she h a d as good an eye and ear for rural settings as I've yet encountered. Her prose was clear and clean, her dialogue was excellent, and her stories and sketches abso lutely sparkled. It was immediately evident to m e that she was the one per son in the seminar who had more than enough ability to succeed as a pro fessional writer. She also had something to write about. She knew that she wanted to write fiction that derived from what she knew—life in the rural midwest. Some of us know that we want to be writers without having the faintest idea what we shall write about—I was certainly in that category—but this w o m a n h a d n o problems on that score. What she did want was reassurance. Could I assure her that her prospects were good? Could I tell her it was not unrealistic to hope to m a k e sales writ ing the sort of stories she had in mind? Because if such expectations were unwarranted, she explained, then she didn't want to go on wasting her time writing. I spent quite a bit of time telling her how good she was, but even as I did so I wondered if perhaps / was wasting my time. Oh, she h a d the talent, all right. And there were any n u m b e r of ways in which she could ultimately

TELLING LIES FOR FUN A N D PROFIT

exploit her background and turn it into successful and commercially viable fiction. But her question suggested to me that she would never achieve her goal because she didn't want it badly enough. Because for almost everyone the road to writing success goes through some very rocky territory indeed. If she was that worried in advance that the time she spent writing might turn out to have been wasted, how could one expect her to rise above the inevitable rejections and disappointments that just plain come with the territory? Perhaps I should not even have encouraged her. There's an old story about a young m a n who cornered a world-famous violinist and begged to be allowed to play for him. If the master offered him encouragement, he would devote his life to music. But if his talent was not equal to his calling, he wanted to know ahead of time so he could avoid wasting his life. He played, and the great violinist shook his head. "You lack the fire," he said. Decades later the two met again, and the would-be violinist, now a pros perous businessman, recalled their previous meeting. "You changed my en tire fife," he explained. "It was a bitter disappointment, giving u p music, but I forced myself to accept your judgment. Thus, instead of becoming a fourth-rate musician, I've h a d a good life in the world of commerce. But tell me, how could you tell so readily that I lacked the fire?" "Oh, I hardly listened when you played," the old master said. "That's what I tell everyone who plays for me—that they lack the fire." "But that's unforgivable!" the businessman cried. " H o w could you do that? You altered the entire course of my life. Perhaps I could have been another Kreisler, another Heifetz—" T h e old m a n shook his head again. "You don't understand," he said. "If you h a d had the fire, you would have paid n o attention to m e . " Perhaps my student h a d the fire. I've h a d no contact with her since that seminar, so I can't say whether or not she has continued to write, or if she's h a d any success with it. But it wouldn't surprise me to learn that she's given up. Not everyone has the will. Not everyone cares that much about writing stories and getting them published. Will is every bit as important for those of us who have a taste of success. Several years ago a w o m a n of my acquaintance decided to try her h a n d at writing. She showed m e a couple of chapters of an erotic novel she'd written and I was immediately impressed by her ability. She was a natural stylist, readily able to assume the general style of any literary genre. While she tended to minimize this talent, insisting it was simple mimicry, that's what stylistic ability generally consists of at the outset of one's career. She abandoned the erotic novel, finding it an uncomfortable genre, and

It Takes More Than Talent 75 took the time to read half a dozen gothics. Then, in rather rapid succession, she wrote and sold two gothics. After that she wrote a h u n d r e d or so pages of an unsuccessful mystery novel, and after that she didn't write a thing. She had the talent, and she h a d enough success to m a k e it clear that a career as a free-lance writer was available to her. She had, too, enough drive and self-discipline to produce those two books a n d get them published. But, ultimately, being a writer was just not that important to her. She h a d drifted into it largely as a result of association with other writers, a n d she drifted out of it when it proved insufficiently rewarding. I suspect my friend has something in c o m m o n with the p h e n o m e n o n of one-book authors. The common wisdom holds that such writers have only one book in them, that having gotten it out of their systems they have noth ing further to say. I think it might be more accurate to say that they have a very strong desire to write a particular book but n o real desire to become a writer per se. Having written that book, they have slaked their hunger. Fair enough. Some people climb one m o u n t a i n and complete one m a r a thon and let it go at that. Others define themselves as m o u n t a i n climbers or marathoners and go on climbing or running as long as they have breath in their bodies. And some of us go on writing. I have a feeling that the tendency to perceive onself as a writer is a some what different matter from simple will. I think, too, that it plays a big part in determining who makes it as a writer and who does not. In my own case, I decided (or recognized; it may have been more a matter of recognition t h a n decision) that I was going to be a writer when I was in the eleventh grade. A teacher's offhand remark put the idea in my head, but once planted it grew like a weed. I had no idea how I would go about becoming a writer or what I would write about, but I somehow knew it was what I was going to do. I am quite certain that this self-definition h a d a lot to d o with the develop ment of my career. I submitted my earliest efforts to magazines, a n d while they came back like bad pennies, and with better cause, I took this in stride. The day came when an editor suggested a rewrite, a n d then another day came when he bought the story. That was not the end of rejection and disappointment. Sometimes it seems more like the beginning, and the end is not yet in sight. But throughout it all I have never been able to shake that perception of myself as a writer. It has kept me chained to this bloody desk for more years than I care to number, and it has made it impossible for me seriously to entertain the idea of doing anything else for very long. That recognition of self as a writer can h a p p e n at any age. Consider an-

TELLING LIES FOR F U N A N D PROFIT

other friend of mine, who awoke eight or nine years ago to the idea of be coming a writer. H e was at the time editing a scientific trade j o u r n a l for little money and less glory, and he h a d lately become friendly with several of us who wrote fiction for a living. One weekend he realized two things—that he wanted the sort of life we were leading, and that such a life was attainable. M o n d a y morning he called in sick and rolled a sheet of paper into his typewriter. By the time his wife got h o m e from her j o b he h a d eight or ten pages of a novel written. H e called in sick Tuesday and did another chunk of the book. Same thing Wednesday. Thursday he got u p bright a n d early, ate as hearty a breakfast as the next condemned man, and went to his office. A couple of hours later my phone rang. "I just quit my j o b , " he said. " T h e book's coming along nicely and I want to stay with it." I don't remember what I said. Probably something along the lines of yeah-but-how-are-you-gonna-make-a-Uving? " N o problem," he said. " I ' m a writer now." I wasn't convinced of the truth of either of those sentences, but even so I figured his downside risk was limited. After all, his wife was working, they didn't have any kids, their basic overhead was low and the j o b he'd quit hadn't been such a much. After a little token breastbeating at having en couraged him to persist in his folly, I gave a shrug that would have glad dened a Frenchman's heart and went on about my business, such as it was. Couple of weeks later he presented m e with something like two hundred fifty pages of manuscript. W o u l d I be so kind? Ahem. I took it home. I sat down with it. I started to read. Page for page a n d line for line, his book was as bad a piece of writing as I've ever been confronted with, and that covers a lot of ground. It was not publishable, but that's the least of it. It was not rewritable, either, nor was it readable. Nor, alas, could it have been described as promising. There was nothing promising about it. N o one could in good conscience read that manuscript a n d encourage its author to try writing anything more ambitious than a laundry list. I was aghast. M y friend h a d quit a j o b to produce this? Well, he'd better get another in a hurry. Assuming he could find someone fool enough to hire him. I didn't have the guts to say any of this. Instead I passed the buck—and the manuscript with it—to m y agent. W h e n his judgment echoed mine we tried to figure out what to tell the author. W e decided to stall, and while we did so m y friend told m e he was halfway through Novel N u m b e r Two. T h e second book was m u c h better. It was still nothing you'd be tempted to

It Takes More Than Talent

call good, but it was written in a language readily identifiable as English. M y friend finished it, gave it to me and then to my agent, a n d went on to the third book. The second book didn't sell. T h e third did, though, a n d the fourth a n d fifth. They were not wildly successful. They were published as hardcover mysteries, had reasonably positive reviews and mediocre sales, and did not go into paperback. One got nominated for an award but failed to win. The story could stop right there and it wouldn't be the worst story ever told, either. But there's more. My friend went on to write several m o r e mys teries, and these did not sell. There was a market slump about that time, a n d hardcover mysteries were suddenly about as m u c h in d e m a n d as legion naire's disease. My friend wrote three or four in a row and couldn't get ar rested. By this time he was single again, and broke. H e took a j o b tending bar a n d wrote days. After a while he quit writing mysteries that nobody wanted a n d began doing the preliminary research for a large-scale adventure novel that would capitalize on his interests and areas of expertise. H e spent a lot of time on research and more on plot development, and then he went on to spend a great deal more time writing a n d rewriting. T h e n the book came out, had a six-figure paperback sale a n d a six-figure movie sale, touched one or two of the bestseller lists briefly, a n d must have earned him something like—what? Half a million? I don't know, and it's not really important, be cause this chapter isn't about money. It's about writing, a n d the set of m i n d necessary to make a go of it. At first glance, the story's point seems obvious enough. My friend h a d the will to succeed, the drive to keep going in the face of discouragement a n d rejection. He had, too, a perception of himself as a writer that refused to fade. In addition, he had a single-mindedness of purpose that enabled him to take chances. Quitting his j o b on the basis of a few days' production was probably ill-advised, and I certainly would not recommend it to anyone in a similar situation, but perhaps it was essential for him. Suppose he'd worked nights and weekends on that first book, taking a year or so to produce an unsalable manuscript. Would he have been as quick to plunge in again a n d write books two and three? When, after having sold several books, he found himself incapable of supporting himself by writing, he might have tried to find a j o b rather like the one he had left. Instead he deliberately sought out a subsistence j o b , un demanding parttime work that let him pay the rent while he went on writing. Again, he was taking a chance instead of playing it safe. It's worth noting, though, that the chances he took were sane ones. If he

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was walking a tightrope, he was not doing so without a net. If he'd failed at the beginning, the worst thing that could have happened is that he'd have h a d to find another j o b . If his big adventure novel had failed, he'd have had to go on tending bar, or look for something with more long-range promise. But no one was going to starve to death because he wanted to be a writer. This talk of starving puts me in mind of another attitude that's important if one is to be comfortable as a free-lance writer. You have to have a pretty high threshold for financial insecurity. If a regular paycheck is emotionally essential to you, perhaps you'd be well advised to stay with a regular j o b . I was very fortunate in this respect. I started writing so early in life that my ordinary expenses were extremely low. T h e last j o b I held before taking u p writing fulltime was in a literary agency, where my base pay was sixty dollars a week before taxes. That doesn't sound like much money now, and it wasn't m u c h money then, either. My low standard of living m a d e the small sums of money I could earn writing more significant than they'd have been otherwise. If I went home from the office and wrote a three-thousand-word pulp story and sold it for a cent a word, that was half a week's income right there. And, once I'd left the job, I didn't have to hit the bestseller list in order to match my previous in come. Before very long I h a d a standing assignment writing a book a month for a paperback publisher. T h e pay was six h u n d r e d dollars a book, which was more than double what m y salary h a d been. All of this was helpful early on. As I grew older and acquired a wife and children and a higher standard of living, what helped keep me from going crazy was a temperament which took financial insecurity for granted. This is not to say that I find poverty a treat, or that I a m not aggravated by slow-pay publishers and inconvenienced by the stretches of financial hardship that seem to be an inescapable part of the writing life. Sometimes a pile of bills and dunning letters can have a paralyzing effect on just about anyone. But most of the time my writing goes on independent of my solvency or lack thereof. This is true of most of the people I know who function successfully as free-lance writers. But not everyone is so constituted. I know a n u m b e r of established professional writers who simply lack the temperament required for fulltime free-lancing. They continue to hold forty-hour-a-week jobs, jobs which they often profess to hate, simply because they are not comfortable without the security of a regular paycheck. In several cases, there's no ques tion but that they could earn more if they gave u p their jobs. A n d they know this, but some of them have found out fulltime self-employment cuts their

It Takes More Than Talent 79 writing production to the bone because they can't work effectively when burdened with all that anxiety. It has always seemed to me, on the other hand, that writing is infinitely more secure than any employment could hope to be. All m y friends who hold jobs could conceivably be fired. W h o can fire me? Even a tenured col lege professor could one day see his college go out of business, a n d then where would he be? I, meanwhile, can go on writing for a variety of publish ers, adapting to changes in the marketplace, and all without a care for com pulsory retirement rules or other abominations. Of course I can't look forward to a pension, and I have to pay m y own medical insurance, and I don't get any fringe benefits or sick leave or paid vacations. Nor am I guaranteed a day's pay just by showing u p for work in the morning; if I don't produce anything, neither do I earn anything. I can generally accept all that. But not everybody can. There's another essential quality in the writer's temperament, a n d it seems on the surface so obvious that I came close to overlooking it altogether. Quite simply, you have to like the work. By this I don't mean that the physical act of sitting at a typewriter has to be enjoyable in and of itself. Most writers hate the process, to one extent or another, and everybody hates it now and then. (This is an anomaly of writ ing, and an interesting one at that. Most of the painters I know enjoy the act of painting, and almost every musician I've known loves to play so m u c h that he goes on doing it after his day's work is done. But writers often hate writing.) What a writer must enjoy, or at least be able to tolerate, is the utterly soli tary nature of the work. W h e n all is said and done, writing is a matter of sit ting alone at a desk, staring more often than not at a blank wall, and turning thoughts into words and putting the words on paper. I know a m a n who free-lanced for a while some years ago. H e started off working at home, then rented a hotel room so he would have an office to go to. That structured his days somewhat, but it didn't really help because he couldn't take the solitude. He gave u p the hotel room and rented space in an office so that there would be other people working a r o u n d him. H e enjoyed that more but it cut into his productivity because he preferred interacting with the other people to concentrating on his own work. H e stopped free lancing and got a j o b , and he's been gainfully employed ever since. He's published books now and then, writing them at night and on weekends, a n d periodically he tells me how much he hates his j o b and how he longs to quit it and write fulltime, but that's nonsense. H e ' d go nuts without a j o b to go to.

TELLING LIES FOR FUN A N D PROFIT

Even if you're the sort who finds solitude comfortable, I think it's very important for writers to m a k e sure they have sufficient h u m a n contact when they're not working to compensate for the lack thereof during their working hours. W e can't be alone all the time, nor can we expect our families to fill our needs in this area. T h e isolated writer loses touch with the world. He forgets what people are like. He uses u p his writing source material and fails to replenish it. In my own case, I've found that I need the occasional company of other writers. There are things about writing which people who are not in the busi ness simply cannot share. T h e company of m y fellows is stimulating. There's a certain amount of cross-pollination in such social intercourse, and a few hours in another writer's company serve to reinforce my own perception of myself as a writer. At the same time, I definitely require the company of people who are not writers. A n exclusive diet of shop talk is an unbalanced one. Besides, one wants to be occasionally exposed to reality, if only in small doses. As a friend of mine, herself a writer, says, "People who spend the most meaning ful hours of their lives in the exclusive company of imaginary people are apt to be a little strange." A n d that's the final requisite of the writer's temperament. We're every last one of us a little strange, a wee bit different. And vive la difference.

PART TWO

Nose to the Grindstone. Shoulder in the Wheel: Fiction as a Discipline

CHAPTER

III

Writer's Hours I'VE FOUND over the years that the mechanics of writing appear to be end lessly fascinating to writers and non-writers alike. Perhaps because the crea tive process is so utterly incomprehensible, even to those of us w h o are per sonally involved in it, it is easier for us to focus on more tangible aspects of writing. D o we write in the morning or at night? At the typewriter or in pencil—or with a crayon, for those of us who are not allowed to use any thing sharp? D o we outline in advance or plot things out as we go along? Somewhere in the course of this sort of conversation, one is apt to be asked just how many hours a day he tends to put in. T h e answer, whether it's two or twelve hours a day, is apt to be followed by a qualification. "Of course that's just time spent actually writing. Of course that doesn't include the time I devote to research. Of course, when you come right down to it, a writer is working from the instant the alarm clock goes off to the m o m e n t when he goes to bed. For that matter, the process doesn't stop when I ' m asleep. The old subconscious mind takes over then a n d sifts things a r o u n d and sets the stage for the next day's work. So I guess it's safe to say that I actually practice my craft twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week." I suppose most of us deliver some variation of that speech at some time or other, and I suppose some of the time we even believe it. A certain part of me, however, does not buy this load of p a p for a minute. As far as that stern writer's conscience of mine is concerned, I ' m only really working if I ' m sitting at my desk tapping my typewriter keys and turning out pages of finished 83

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copy. Thinking about writing isn't work, and research isn't work, and read ing proof isn't work, and meeting with publishers isn't work, and talking on the phone isn't work, and not even rewriting and editing are work. Unless I can actually see a manuscript of mine getting further from the beginning and closer to the end because of what I'm doing, I'm not entirely capable of regarding the task I'm performing as work. Understand, please, that I know better. I realize intellectually that the non-writing chores I've enumerated above are directly related to my pro fession, that they take time and energy, that I can't slight them without ad versely affecting the quality a n d / o r quantity of my writing. But this knowl edge doesn't seem to help m e much. Unless I've put in my daily stint at the typewriter, and unless I've got something to show for it, I feel as though I've played hookey. This attitude probably serves a purpose. My mind is sufficiently fertile that I can almost always dream u p some worthwhile occupation which will keep me away from my desk. There's always a book it would pay me to read, a neighborhood I could profitably explore, a person whose expertise I should seek. N o n e of these extramural activities is as hard as actually sitting down and writing something; thus, but for the conscience that hounds me, I could happily go months on end without wearing out a typewriter ribbon. Sometimes, though, I find myself backed into a corner, locked into a nowin situation, d a m n e d if I do a n d d a m n e d if I don't. This happened quite vividly when I was working on The Burglar Who Liked to Quote Kipling. Bernie Rhodenbarr, the burglar of the title, h a d just hied himself off to For est Hill Gardens, an upper-middle-class enclave in the borough of Queens. It occurred to m e that I h a d not been to Forest Hill Gardens in over twenty years, at which time I h a d visited it very briefly. I h a d only dim memories of the neighborhood and h a d n o way of knowing if it h a d changed in the in tervening years. I h a d two choices. I could trust m y memory while taking comfort in the fact that every work of fiction takes place in its own alternate universe any way. Or I could spend an afternoon zipping out there on the F train and walking aimlessly around to see what I could see. Either way I was determined to feel guilty about it. If I stayed home and worked, I'd beat myself u p for slacking on research. If I went out there, I'd accuse myself of wasting time on pointless research when I might have been tapping typewriter keys a n d producing finished pages. Once I was able to see that I was in a double bind, I tossed a mental coin and went to Forest Hill Gardens. As it turned out, my memory was sound and the place hadn't changed a

Writer's Hours 85 bit. But I felt my time h a d been profitably spent; I'd refreshed m y impres sions, picked u p a little local color, a n d certainly enabled myself to write the scene with increased confidence. It doesn't always work out that way. Sometimes hours devoted to this sort of research are a waste, a n d sometimes there's n o way to determine in ad vance whether this will be the case. American Tobacco's George Washing ton Hill used to say that fifty cents of every dollar h e spent on advertising was wasted. T h e trouble was, he went on to explain, that there was n o way of knowing which fifty cents it was, so h e ' d go on spending the whole dollar all the same. It's that way with research, a n d with all the other tasks that take me away from my desk. One factor in the operation of my personal Jiminy Cricket mechanism is, I'm sure, that I don't spend all that m a n y hours at m y desk. Years ago I was given to putting in long stretches at the typewriter; I was younger then, which may have h a d something to d o with it, a n d I was a less meticulous writer, which must have h a d plenty to d o with it. In a n y event, I could work effectively for five or six or eight hours at a clip. I can't do that now. I don't structure m y work in terms of hours, finding it more useful to aim at producing a certain a m o u n t of work, usually some where between five a n d ten pages depending on the sort of material I'm working on, the deadline I'm facing, a n d the phases of the moon. M y work usually takes me somewhere between two a n d three hours. If I'm done in a n hour, I'm delighted to call it a day. If I'm not done in three hours, I generally call it a day anyway, though I'm by n o means delighted about it. There's a point at which it becomes counter-productive for m e to continue to work, o n a par with running a car's ignition when the gas tank's empty. Y o u don't get anywhere and you just run down the battery. Most workers, I've been told, don't really spend more t h a n two or three hours a day actually doing anything. They take breaks, they file their nails, they daydream at their desks, they talk baseball, a n d two hours get stretched into eight. It's comforting to know this, but it doesn't change the fact that I think of myself as putting in a shorter working d a y t h a n the rest of the world. I've found a couple of things I can do to m a k e m y writing life as guilt-free as possible, a n d I pass them on for whatever they're worth. 1.

I MAKE WRITING THE FIRST THING i DO. Over the years, I've written at

every possible time of day a n d night. F o r some time n o w I've written imme diately after breakfast, a n d it's by far the best system for me. T h e r e are sev eral advantages—I'm freshest then, m y batteries recharged after a night's sleep—but the most important reason for m e is that once I've got m y day's

TELLING LIES FOR F U N A N D PROFIT

work done, I'm able to give myself permission to d o as I wish with the re mainder of the day. 2.

I TRY TO WORK SEVEN DAYS A WEEK. Again, there are other reasons

why this is useful. With a novel, for example, working every day keeps the book from slipping away from m y subconscious mind. Whatever I'm work ing on, novels or short stories, daily production helps m e keep from feeling profligate over working so few hours per day. By the same token, when I d o take a n unscheduled day off, I can d o so with a clear conscience; after all, I'm still working six days that week. 3.

I SAVE ROUTINE WORK FOR LATER. I'm frequently tempted to answer

my mail the minute it arrives, to proofread galleys as soon as they hit m y desk. These chores enable m e to be practicing m y profession without ac tually having to write anything. But they're of secondary importance, a n d I don't have to be at m y sharpest to deal with them. They'll still be around when I've got m y daily five pages finished. Lately, for example, I keep get ting packages from Cincinnati, parcels chock-full of entries in the Writer's Digest short-story contest. M y natural inclination is to drop everything a n d read these stories as they appear, but instead I stay at m y typewriter a n d save those stories for late at night when I can't sleep. After I've read a couple dozen, I sleep like a baby. Finally, I allow myself to m a k e occasional use of that old reliable copout—i.e., that writers are really working twenty-four hours a day. Because in certain respects it's undeniably true. Just the other day, for example, I did my daily quota of pages in the morning, spent the afternoon in the gym lift ing heavy objects, a n d then wandered around for a n hour or so. In the course of m y wandering I watched a car enter a n apartment building's u n derground garage, a n d it suddenly occurred to m e h o w Bernie R h o d e n b a r r could get into a n otherwise impregnable apartment building by first locking himself in a n automobile trunk. Will I ever use that little bit of business? I probably will, as it happens, but almost every walk I take produces some comparable bit of woolgathering, and most of the wool I gather never gets spun into a yarn. Is it work? A n d does it matter if it is or not? Points to ponder, a n d I leave you to ponder them. F o r m y part, I've spent a shade over three hours writing this chapter, a n d I'm done now. I think I'll give myself permission to enjoy the rest of the day.

CHAPTER

The Carrot and the Stick "So YOU'RE a writer," she said, spearing a co*cktail frank. " Y o u know, I'd love to be a writer, but I know it's impossible. I lack the discipline." I suppose I could have offered to supply the missing ingredient, perhaps by lashing her nude to a desk chair a n d flogging her with a flail, but I only muttered something inoffensive and went off in search of the stuffed grape leaves. Because everybody would love to be a writer, a n d everybody lacks the discipline, and it's a good thing, because the profession is crowded enough as it is. Imagine, for instance, if every dreamer with an urge to see his byline on a book jacket actually went so far as to roll a sheet of paper into his typewriter and start filling it u p with words. Imagine, further, if all the people who started novels had the effrontery to finish the bloody things. Imagine if everybody with an itch and an idea took the trouble to turn the idea into a plot, and then sat down and wrote the story. Why, we'd be u p to our nostrils in literature, for heaven's sake! Forget the trees that would be pulped to facilitate such a gush of literary productivity. Think instead of the editors who would be the recipients of it all. T h e y all have too much to read as it is, and it takes forever to get an answer from them, and just consider how m u c h worse the situation would be if their daily reading load were increased by a factor of ten or twenty or two hundred. You lack the discipline to write, sir? Well, good for you. Stick with it. Ah, but for you, Gentle Reader, the situation is rather a different matter. You, let it be said, are a writer, not a bore at a co*cktail party or some similar sort of ship passing in the night. T h e last thing I want to do is discourage you from putting words on paper. You, clearly, are Serious About Y o u r Work. Haven't you purchased this book? Are you not reading this very page? If 87

88 TELLING LIES FOR FUN AND PROFIT that's not a commitment to one's art, a dedication to one's craft, whatever is? It's my belief that self-discipline is a problem for the vast majority of writ ers, however productive and successful they may be. In order to get his work done, the writer has to be every bit as much of a self-starter as the chap they're always looking for in those ads for door-to-door widget salesmen. He doesn't even have the advantage of an early morning pep talk from the divi sional sales manager. He has to supply all his motivation himself. Ulti mately, he has to tempt with the carrot and swat with the stick—and at the same time he's the poor old donkey pulling the cart. Novelists are especially assumed to require a full measure of self-disci pline, and for good reason. It takes a lot of hard work over an extended pe riod of time merely to complete a book-length work of fiction. A poem can be dashed off in a matter of minutes. A short story can be hammered out at a single sitting. In both cases, inspiration can carry the writer through the completion of the work. This is simply not true with the novel. Inspiration alone will not get the thing written, any more than sheer speed will carry anyone to the finish line in a marathon. T o continue the analogy, a novelist, like a marathon runner, receives praise simply for having completed his task irrespective of how well he's performed it. N o one (except perhaps the runner's mother) congratu lates a last-place sprinter for having survived to the finish line of a hundredmeter dash. N o r do people hail one as some sort of conquering hero for having typed the last line of a poem or a short-short. All this notwithstanding, I submit that the short-story writer has every bit as great a need to apply the carrot and the stick in order to be either pro ductive or commercially successful. While seeing one story through to com pletion may be a less than Herculean task, it takes n o end of discipline to do the same thing repeatedly, coming u p with idea after idea, grinding out story after story, and working throughout at the top of one's form. T h e novelist has the advantage of momentum; once into a book, he can give it its head and follow where it takes him. He knows, when he gets u p in the morning, what he's going to be writing that day. The writer of short fic tion, on the other hand, has to keep developing new projects and developing enthusiasm for them as he does so. A n d he has to do so while marketing previously completed efforts, shrugging off the inevitable rejections that are a part of that marketing process and refusing to allow them to interfere with his steady production of new stories. Are there tricks of self-discipline? Is there a particular distance to extend the carrot, a special way to apply the stick? I'm sure there must be, and I live in hope that one day I'll find the for-

The Carrot and the Stick

mula. Because I've been indefatigably productive over the years, turning out more books than anyone should reasonably have to read, people tend to as sume me to be a model of self-discipline. Yet I frequently look at other more industrious writers and castigate myself for m y dilatory nature. Doubtless they in turn berate themselves for falling short of their role models—the bee and the ant, I would imagine. A n d does the ant in turn worry that he's a closet wastrel? I wouldn't be a bit surprised. Here are a few tricks of the trade: 1. GIVEN WRITING TOP PRIORITY. At executive training programs they like to tell the story of Charles Schwab, then president of U.S. Steel. H e told an efficiency expert that he didn't have time to listen to him at length but wondered if the m a n h a d any quick suggestions for him. "Every m o r n i n g , " the expert said, "make a list of the things you have to do that day. List t h e m in order of importance. Then concentrate on the first task until it's finished, without diverting your attention to anything else. T h e n go on to the second task, completing as much as you comfortably can in the course of the day." Schwab looked at him, shrugged, and asked what he wanted for the sugges tion. "Try it for a month," the m a n said, " a n d then pay m e what you think it's worth to you." Thirty days later, Schwab put a check in the mail for twenty-five thousand dollars. The expert's advice is as good as it ever was, a n d as m u c h so for writers as for steel company presidents. I would suggest that you put writing at the head of each day's list. Make it the first thing you do. Give it priority, not letting yourself be sidetracked until the day's writing is done. 2. SET GOALS FOR YOURSELF. I work mornings, generally putting in two or three hours a day; when I work more than three hours m y concentration flags and the work suffers. My objective, however, is not to put in a certain number of hours but to produce a certain quantity of work. M o r e often t h a n not, the goal I set myself is five pages a day. If I get my five pages written in a flat hour—which does h a p p e n now a n d again—I'll generally call it quits then and there. I m a y do an extra page or two, if the words are flowing nicely and I want to leave off at a natural stop ping point. But I'll feel under no obligation to put in all the hours allotted for purpose of writing. On the other hand, if I don't reach m y five-page goal within three hours, I may stay at the typewriter a little longer and see if I can't fulfill m y quota. I'm not absolutely compulsive about this, but I know I'll feel better during the rest of the day if I get my pages written, a n d I do so when possible. I can usually manage it—in part because I've h a d the foresight to set eas ily attainable goals for myself. I rarely find five pages a day to be a strain; if I

90 TELLING LIES FOR FUN AND PROFIT did, I'd adjust the quota accordingly. I avoid the trap of raising the goal as I go along, like an assembly line speedup. T h e object's not to test myself. It's to get my work done. 3. STAY IN THE NOW. T h e most important single element in enabling me to concentrate on today's work is the ability to m a k e that the only thing I'm concentrating on. If I let myself worry about tomorrow's work and next Tuesday's work, I'm not going to do my best work today. If I'm writing a short story, I can't let myself get diverted into worrying about what story I'll write next, or where I'll send this one when I'm finished with it, or what I'll do if it's rejected, or what I'll buy for myself when it sells. I can only do today's work today, so why waste energy? 4. JUST GET IT WRITTEN. Frequently I find myself convinced that all I'm doing is turning perfectly good bond paper into garbage. Sometimes I'm right. Sometimes it's an illusion. W h e n I feel this way, it's impossible to tell which will prove to be the case. T h e answer, I've found, is simply to get it written, giving myself permis sion to throw it out later on if it turns out I've produced swill. This is occa sionally easier said than done. It's hard to persevere when I'm convinced that the last sentence I typed is utterly wooden. But I frequently find after ward that what seemed horrible while I was writing it looks perfectly fine the next day—or at least n o more horrible than the rest of my work. And, on those occasions when I do wind u p tearing it u p the next morning, at least I've done some work and the m o m e n t u m of my writing is undisturbed. 5. D O N ' T TAKE IT TOO SERIOUSLY. T h e work of any artist requires a cer tain degree of doublethink. In order to practice m y craft day in and day out, I have to be very serious about it. But if I take it too seriously I'll clutch, ren dering myself incapable of the relaxed approach necessary for optimum cre ativity. Here's a story for illustration. Two retired gentlemen meet, and one com plains that he's going nuts. "You need a hobby," the other one says. "Some thing to give you an interest in fife and a reason for living." T h e first is skeptical. "You m e a n like pasting stamps in a book? Doing needlepoint? W h a t kind of a h o b b y ? " "I'll tell you," says the other, "it doesn't even matter what the hobby is so long as you got one. My hobby, just as it happens, is bee-keeping." "You keep bees? You, riving in two and a half rooms on Pitkin Avenue? How m a n y bees do you have, anyway?" "Oh, it's hard to say, but about twenty thousand." "Where do you keep ' e m ? " "In a cigar box."

Creative Procrastination

" B u t . . . but, don't they get all crushed and dead a n d everything?" "So? Listen, it's only a hobby." It's only a book, I've told myself time and time again. Sometimes it feels like the most important thing in your life, and it seems to be what you do to justify your own existence, but don't take it so seriously. It's just words on paper, it's just a pack of lies. Listen, it's only a book. That takes the pressure off. Knowing it's only a book, knowing empires won't rise and fall on the strength of it, I'm able to breathe in a n d breathe out and get the thing written. Ahem. Those are my professional secrets, and you're welcome to 'em. I can as sure you they work for me. By applying t h e m diligently, I've been able to get this written and in the mail—only two weeks after the d u e date. Listen, it's only a column.

CHAPTER

Creative Procrastination PROCRASTINATION'S HAD a bad n a m e ever since 1 7 4 2 , when E d w a r d Y o u n g called it the thief of time. (He'd have written that line back in 1 7 3 9 but h e just kept putting it off.) Lord Chesterfield inveighed against putting off until tomorrow what you can do today, lumping the pastime with idleness a n d laziness. And Thomas DeQuincey, tongue tucked firmly in cheek, saw p r o cratination as the end product of a chain of character deterioration that might begin with a simple act of murder. We free-lance writers, fixed with the responsibility of scheduling our own time and temperamentally prone to procrastinate, have every reason to agree. And surely this column, designed to send its readers scampering to their typewriters, will take a firm stand against the gentle art of keeping u p with yesterday. Right?

92 TELLING LIES FOR FUN AND PROFIT Wrong. O n the contrary, I would submit that procrastination has its place. I'm not endorsing it out of hand, understand. In writing, as in the rest of life, the best way to get things done is to go ahead and do them. They rarely do them selves. A n d it has been my observation that those writers w h o sit down and write, day in and day out, are the very writers who get the most accom plished. So procrastination in general is a massive liability. Creative procrastina tion, however, can be a definite asset. T h e trick is to know just when to defer action and when to get busy. Let me give an example. W h e n I first started writing, about the time the pterodactyl m a d e it onto the endangered species list, I saw to it that as little time as possible elapsed between the onset of an idea and its tranformation into a piece of fiction. I was writing stories then for the surviving crime pulps, and I would typically get a story idea of an afternoon and deliver a finished manuscript to m y agent the following morning. More often than not it sold. Not to a very good market, mind you, and not for m u c h money, and the story itself would rarely be memorable in any way, but I was young and that was the best I could do. Nowadays I do things a little differently. A couple of months ago, for example, I got a Noteworthy Idea. I con ceived of a mystery story in which the m u r d e r victim would function as the detective, solving his own murder after it had taken place. I had recently read Life After Life, by R a y m o n d A. Moody, Jr., and his reports of afterdeath experiences triggered m y story idea. In the old days, I'd have gone directly to my typewriter. And, most likely, I'd have gotten nowhere with the story, because this particular idea was not an easy one to turn into a piece of short fiction. Furthermore I had no plot, no theme, no characters, n o conflict—nothing but the bare idea as I've de scribed it to you. I could have tried contriving these other elements at the typewriter, but instead I procrastinated. I m a d e a note to myself on the little m e m o pad I carry around. Man solves own murder, I scribbled, right between Pick up laundry and Water philoden dron. Every now and then my eyes would hit those words and I'd tell myself I'd have to get around to doing the story one of these days. Each time this happened, m y subconscious got a little nudge. Gradually, these little nudges m a d e a collective impression. My original concept of the story, never fully formed and never committed to paper, called for the lead character to operate on some sort of spectral

Creative Procrastination

plane, perhaps spooking the killer into a confession, something eerie like that. After a spell of creative procrastination, I changed this. I decided the lead would die clinically in the operating room while they were removing the bullet or some such, would then have an after-death experience of the sort Moody described, in the course of which he'd be given to understand that he could not be permitted to die until he'd carried out the mission of finding out who had killed him. W h e r e u p o n he'd return to life a n d set about investigating the circ*mstances of his murder. Much better, I decided. T h e story was starting to have a shape to it. But I still didn't feel ready to write it, so I put it back in a warming oven a n d left it alone. A while later, I was reading poetry. I wasn't reading Robert Frost, but something reminded me of Frost, and I realized the title I wanted for m y story was " A n d Miles to G o Before I Sleep." I wrote that on m y m e m o p a d and crossed out Man solves own murder. (I'd already picked u p the laundry by that point.) I like having a title before I write a story. I certainly don't insist on it but it helps. So I had the title now, and it was a good one, but I still didn't have the story. So I put it off again. A week or a m o n t h later, I started thinking about the lead, trying to figure out who he was. A n d who had killed him? A n d why? I wasn't sure, but I de cided maybe he was a middle-aged businessman. I provided him with a wife and a business partner and a mistress and a son a n d a daughter, a n d I gave all five of them motives so they could be suspects. Vague motives, because they were still vague people, and because I h a d n o idea which of t h e m was the killer. Time for more procrastination. One day, you'll be pleased to hear, I decided I was ready to write the story. I don't know what told me this; most likely I was avoiding work on something else. At any rate, I sat down at the typewriter a n d got to work. Somewhere along the way I h a d decided to write the story in the first per son. It was trickier to do it this way, describing those after-death experiences in the lead's voice, but all that time spent living with the story convinced m e it was the way I wanted to do it. A n d it turned out to be easier t h a n I'd thought, because the mood and tone came rather easily to m e by now. Another interesting thing that happened is that the lead turned out to have more of a purpose than simply bringing his killer to justice. As he in vestigated each suspect, he found himself resolving his unfinished business

94 TELLING LIES FOR FUN AND PROFIT with each in turn, putting his emotional affairs in order before dying for a second and final time. This change turned a simple gimmick story into something with substance. I was pleased with the way the story turned out. It didn't seem to need substantial rewriting, perhaps because it had received so m u c h unconscious modification and restructuring before I sat down to write it. Eleanor Sulli van liked the story and bought it for Alfred Hitchco*ck's Mystery Magazine, where it appeared as "Life After Life" in the October '78 issue, should you care to see for yourself how it ends. My point, though, isn't that I produced a brilliant piece of work or won fame and fortune with it. It's not and I didn't, but it would surely never have reached its present form if I hadn't repeatedly put off until tomorrow work I was insufficiently prepared to do that day. Code of Arms is another example of creative procrastination in action—or inaction, come to think of it. I first got the germ of the book a full four years ago. I was reading something about World W a r II and wondering, not for the first time, why on earth Hitler h a d halted the G e r m a n armor outside of Dunkirk. That two-day respite permitted Britain to withdraw a quarter of a million troops; otherwise she might have been unable to continue the war. Suppose some Englishman h a d penetrated the Wehrmacht High Com mand? Suppose that was the cause of the stop order? I decided that would m a k e the premise of a hell of a novel, and I went off and occupied myself with other things. It wasn't until years later that I sud denly remembered that idea and hit on the precise identity of the person re sponsible for saving the British at Dunkirk. I now h a d not merely an idea for a book but a compelling and commercially viable one. I promptly devoted the next six months to research, which is not quite the same thing as procras tination, although they often look alike. T h e n I talked to a publisher and worked u p an outline, and after more work than went into Chartres Cathe dral and more perils than Pauline, Code of Arms was published in the spring of 1981. In this instance, I'm lucky I didn't lose the idea altogether. It's important, I think, to keep the idea visible—in a notebook, on a wall chart, whatever. That way you'll j o g your memory from time to time, and when an idea or a piece of information comes along that you can use, you'll reach out and in corporate it in the story as it evolves. W h e n does procrastination become other than creative? W h e n it consists of avoiding work rather than postponing it, and when my alternative to working on Project A is not working at all. Since I'm inherently lazy, I force myself to work on Project B instead.

Time Out

Another thing—it was D o n Marquis who called procrastination the art of keeping u p with yesterday, and conscience compels m e to give credit where it's due. And pretty soon I'll share with you my thoughts on the subject of Creative Plagiarism. Perhaps we'll take u p that topic next chapter. Perhaps I'll put it off for a while. Meanwhile, though, I've got to go water the philodendron.

CHAPTER

Time Out I'LL TELL you something. T h e more time I spend in this writing game, the clearer it becomes to me how little I know about it. It's a rare m o n t h that goes by without my wondering that I have the temerity to go on writing for a living, let alone offer you out there suggestions as to how you can go a n d d o likewise. This humility attack is not the product of an insight gained from contem plation. Would that it were. O n the contrary, it is the bitter fruit of experi ence. Consider if you will the pattern I have established for myself over the past several weeks. Each morning, as is m y custom, I awaken a r o u n d seven. I get out of bed, see my shadow, and dive back into bed, where I contrive to spend the ensuing four hours with the covers pulled over m y head a n d m y eyes clenched shut. Because I'm not really tired a n d have already h a d plenty of sleep, I have to be quite relentless about this, forcing myself to stay put each time I'm moved to awaken. Then, round about eleven, I roll out at last a n d put the teakettle on to boil. By that time it's safe to start the day. I'm a morning writer, and with the morning gone I can proceed directly to the non-writing portion of m y d a y — a meal, a gym workout, a lunch date, a long walk, whatever pleasing pros pect presents itself. I don't have to walk into my office, I don't have to look at my typewriter.

TELLING LIES FOR FUN AND PROFIT

I've avoided work for yet another day. I've won. I'm not going to dignify this curious behavior by calling it writer's block. I'm not altogether certain what writer's block is, but it seems to take the form of an inability to get anything written however hard one tries. It's painfully clear to me that I have not been trying, that I have indeed done everything in my power to avoid finding out if I a m or a m not capable of writing by giving my typewriter a wide berth. Regular readers of my column may well recall how I tend to stress the im portance of Keeping at It. T h e writer who gets things done, I've pointed out, is the writer who shows u p for work day in and day out. Regular hours and regular production are the keys to productivity. T h e hare may show a lot of early form, but the smart money's always on the tortoise. I've argued, too, that not only one's productivity but the quality of one's work is enhanced by this slow-and-steady modus operandi. W h e n I work every day—or six days a week, say—the book I'm working on stays very much in mind. I think about it during the day and let my subconscious work it over at night. I don't have a chance to lose my grasp of it. Why, then, don't I start the teakettle going at seven, get to my desk by eight, and nail down the Pulitzer Prize? I suppose because things don't always go as I would have them go. My best-laid plans, like those of other mice and other men, gang aft agley. But perhaps a little background on m y present situation might be instruc tive. Couple of months ago I started work on a very intimidating project, a novel that's rather more ambitious than anything I've undertaken in the past. It's going to be a fairly long book, probably running four to five hundred pages in manuscript, which would m a k e it twice as long as the mysteries I most often turn out. It will also cover a lot of ground temporally and geo graphically, and although I know the general shape of the plot I have no outline for this book, and don't want one. T h e plot is going to have to dis close itself to me as I go along. The writing went very well at the onset. In the first m o n t h I worked five or six days a week, wrote five or six pages a day, and completed the first section of the book, a chunk of one h u n d r e d thirty pages. Then I h a d to switch to a different viewpoint character a n d pick u p the story at another time and in another place. I took a week off to give myself time to get out of the first character's head and into the second's. At the week's end I hurled myself once more into the breach and wrote every morning for three days, and on the fourth day I got u p and realized I could not go on.

Time Out

This realization has since become a way of life, repeated each m o r n ing with subtle variations. It would be nice if I were at least enjoying this non-writing time, but of course I'm not. I constantly beat myself u p for it, accusing myself of self-indulgence and sloth, a n d that certainly doesn't help. What does help is if I a m able to regard this time off as a part of the crea tive process. I'm able to take that stance when I look at some of the time outs I've called in the past. Last fall, for example, I sat down on schedule a n d wrote the first sixty pages of the fourth Bernie R h o d e n b a r r mystery novel. Somewhere a r o u n d page sixty I got the nagging feeling that something was wrong, although I had no idea what it might be, or what to do about it. I resolved this dilemma by lapsing into the sort of paralysis I'm in now, albeit of a different style. I was then able to avoid work without staying in bed, simply by setting u p dates to resume work. "I'll get back to it after Thanksgiving," I told myself. Thanksgiving came and went, and I realized that I had the auction of the paperback rights of Ariel coming u p in mid-December. "Well, I'll wait until that's out of the way," I allowed. " W h o can work with all that hanging fire?" W h o indeed? Not I, certainly. Once Ariel h a d gone under the h a m m e r , the holidays were upon us. W h o would initiate a project at such a time? Again, not I. I decided to get back to work when the new year started. And I did. New Year's Day I took the subway clear to Riverdale to scout a location, one I did not wind u p using in the book, as it turned out. A n d on January 2 I sat down at the typewriter and started the book over on page one, and I swear the thing flew. I wrote the whole book in five weeks flat a n d was delighted by the way it turned out. T h e prose flowed like water from a well. The plot evolved very neatly. All I had to do was show u p each m o r n ing and type it out. What this suggests

Telling Lies for Fun &amp; Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers - PDF Free Download (2024)

Telling Lies for Fun & Profit: A Manual for Fiction Writers - PDF Free Download (2024)