Month: September 2025

Tale of the tape

When Ann Patchett finished writing her first book, she placed the manuscript on the floor, took off her shoes, and stood on this pile of paper to see how much taller it made her. Patchett did not reveal her new height.

Last week, I reported that I had finished writing my first draft. I thought I would put it away for a couple of weeks, but of course I kept playing with it, and the story stretched a few hundred words. When I hit 74,000, I said, Enough, and uploaded it to FedEx Office. I picked up the boxed manuscript today. I am 3/4″ taller. (If I had selected double spacing instead of space and a half, I would’ve been 1″ taller.)

I admit this is not the equivalent of the young Mickey Mantle launching a baseball on a 565′ parabolic course into baseball history, but it’s a momentous event in my little life.

On October 1, I’ll start reading. I’ll know going in that the quality of my work was checked by FedEx Office employee 6499086. FedEx wouldn’t have let my book out of their shop if it hadn’t met their high standards.

Today’s recommended reading

The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing by the poet and teacher Richard Hugo. This is a well-lit look under the hood of our weird craft, and so charming that it made me want to write poetry, which is not something our world needs. They don’t need it on Earth 2, either.

Hugo (1923-1982) was an original thinker and I’m sure he was an inspiring teacher. I’m inspired by Triggering Town, even though only a small part of the book is about triggers and towns and some of this stuff didn’t interest me and didn’t belong here (for example, politics in academia). Overall, it’s worth your time.

Random lines that spoke to me:

Give up what you think you have to say, and you’ll find something better…say nothing and just make music and you’ll find plenty to say.

You may object that the meaning has changed, that you are no longer saying what you want to say. Never want to say anything so strongly that you give up the option of finding something better. If you have to say it, you will.

…the single-syllable word with a hard consonant ending is a unit of power in English.

25 years of memory can kink a lot of cable

Some things are just meant.

[On notebooks:] Don’t use blank paper. Lines tend to want words.

Next week: I turn to chapter 1, page 1, and try not to be triggered.

How I broke on through to the other side

“The brick walls are not there to keep us out. The brick walls are there to give us a chance to show how badly we want something.” –Randy Pausch

I’ve discovered that when you’re writing a book, you lose some of the filters you’ve set up against the world. Words, sentences, ideas, thoughts, feelings, colors, moods, the weather, and the shit your Dad says all strike you as inspiring or instructional or something you should steal. These words, sentences, etc. can come from anywhere.

It’s no secret that I love trains. The characters in my novel work on trains, ride trains, try not to get run down by trains, would enjoy consensual sex on trains. I was reading the latest newsletter from Lance Mindheim, the man to go to if you want to hire a craftsman to build your model railroad, when I found this gem:

At some point, there will be folks who want to transition from casual recreationalists to modelers. Doing so entails moving out of your comfort zone and learning how to use new tools and new techniques. The techniques are usually pretty simple. The moving out of your comfort zone? It’s a lifelong roadblock for many.

Mindheim was talking about using an airbrush (“Using an airbrush isn’t like running a nuclear power plant. You push a button, and paint comes out.”), a barrier that forever restricts casual recreationalists to paint brushes and rattle cans. But I immediately thought of my career as a writer.

My comfort zone was writing short fiction. Novel-writing was my airbrush. I had to break out of that zone to write a novel. It was indeed a roadblock, and that roadblock stood fast for a long time. Mindheim described it more succinctly that I could.

One thing writers don’t have to worry about but modelers do is using too heavy a touch when painting or weathering your work. One coat too dark and you are screwed. But in writing, we can counteract too heavy a touch with two handy inventions: the backspace key and your editor.

“Have fun!” Mindheim concludes. It is fun. It’s too good to miss.

Word count: 73,548.

I’m done.

I began writing this book in the window of Common Grounds Coffeehouse in Portland, Oregon, and finished writing it on a late-summer afternoon, under the enormous Oriental plane tree outside the FireHouse Arts & Events Center in Bellingham, Washington.

Between “Once upon a time” and “The End,” I wrote in the basement of our Portland home and on the top floor of our Bellingham home. I wrote in many more coffee shops, where I mostly enjoyed the music. I wrote at the Clark County Public Library in Vancouver, Washington, with its glass face, astounding sunsets from the fifth-floor terrace, and its pleasant and good-looking librarians. I wrote in the lobby of our car dealer while our car was being looked after, and in the waiting rooms of doctors and dentists, where the music can only be endured.

Now all I have to do is read this damn thing.

The kind we grow here.

If it’s not Scottish it’s crap

Stuart MacBride is not just another Scot. He’s the best-selling author of the Logan McRae police procedural series. The man knows a thing or two about Scotland and also about writing. He recently said that your first book is probably crap. Stuart learned an important safety tip from another best-selling author, Socrates, who in 399 B.C. told his “Introduction to Novel Writing” students that their first book was definitely crap. His students forced him to drink hemlock.

MacBride said the first book he wrote was crap. The second book he wrote was crap. The third book he wrote he didn’t describe, but it sold after he became a best-selling novelist, so it must have been salvageable crap. The fourth book he wrote was crap. The first book he sold was the fifth book he wrote.

I appreciate the warning, laddie, but frankly, I don’t have that kind of time.

I don’t expect my book to be long-listed, short-listed, nominated, or selected. Nor will I consent to be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered. I intend to finish this draft, get the feedback I need, rewrite it, find an agent, and see it into print. While all that is going on, I’ll start writing my second book. Which, I hope, will not be crap.

Word count: 70,353. I’ve written 60,000 words since January 1, despite my wife’s surgery and Trump’s war on the United States. I’ve sailed 5,000 words past my original conception of the book. For what seemed like days, if not forever, my protagonist was standing at the edge of a forest. I didn’t know what to do with him. And then somehow I did know, and he walked into the trees, where I had figured out what for the love of god was waiting.

This way of writing is alien to my wife, who wrote six mystery novels under her pen name, Deborah Donnelly. I have no deadline. Ms. Donnelly had one every year, and she was writing mysteries vs. whatever it is that has me in a muddle. She had to condense the nonsense. She couldn’t think halfway through, “Maybe this character will be the murderer. No? How about this character?” or “Clues. I want one.” She had it all figured out in the beginning. As usual.

How Lucky handles deadline pressure.