Steven Bryan Bielerhttps://stevenbieler.wordpress.comSteven Bryan Bieler learned to write with a ticking clock above him, an editor with a cricket bat behind him, and dynamite strapped to his leg. Parts of that sentence may not be accurate. His most recent story appeared in summer 2017 at acrossthemargin.com/sweet-oblivion/. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with a wife, a dog, and a mortgage. Bieler makes fun of your favorite bands at rundmsteve.com.
There’s a scene early in the film Gallipoli when two young Australians learn that the British empire has gone to war with the German empire. They are loyal British subjects who, like too many young men, hunt for glory. They make up their minds to join the army and join the fight. They confide their decision to a man who’s been mining in the Outback for so many years, he barely knows that the outside world exists. The miner can’t comprehend what they’re talking about. He finally says, “I knew a German once. Seemed like a nice bloke.”
I don’t lament the way the news ricochets around the world and knits us together. I lament the way hate leaps the oceans and breaks us apart.
After the shooting at Bondi Beach in Australia, after the people trying to celebrate the first night of Hanukkah were murdered, what could we do in our little corner of the world except light our own candles. But first we went to a public menorah lighting at the mall, sponsored by our local chapter of Chabad. It was odd to hear the ancient Hebrew blessings sung between the food court and the bottles of supplements in the window of the GNC.
But it was good to be part of a crowd. The rabbi reminded us that we light candles in the darkest days of the year not just to commemorate a victory from deep in the past but also for the simplest of reasons: To dispel the darkness. Traffic at the mall can’t stop us. The weather can’t stop us. Misguided men with guns can’t stop us.
When I launched this writing blog, I intended to keep world events out of it, but events happen and then the world demands our attention.
Blessing the Hanukkah dogs. We haven’t had a dog yet who didn’t know to report to the menorah as soon as it was fired up to receive my blessing and an Alpo Snap.
I’ve been reading Honoré de Balzac. What that man couldn’t do with the character of the miser! Also the suffering, self-sacrificing mother; the young man scheming to catch the attention of a rich married woman; the rich married women who can juggle a husband and a string of lovers while dancing with the king and wearing 10 layers of clothing; the hopeless pensioners and small-time grifters; and, amid all this 19th-century claptrap, the most cynical character I’ve ever met in literature. What a feast.
Balzac (he added the “de” because it was awesome) was probably the first writer to write about life as it was actually lived, which explains his knowledge of and fascination with money: francs, sous, livres, and gold gold gold. Balzac died in 1850, but whatever year he was writing in, in his head it was 1825. This makes him a tough sell for modern readers, given our lack of knowledge of post-Bonaparte France and our low tolerance for an author who loved to intrude with his thoughts on life, love, and morality. When I read his books I want to yell, “Good God, man, get on with your story,” but when I read them they own me.
Lately I’ve been wondering how I could replicate Balzac’s success. The obvious answer is “talent.” Other answers are discipline (Balzac wrote from 1am to 8am) and nutrition (he supposedly drank 50 cups of coffee a day). Zut alors, am I stuck? Like the typical Balzac hero, could I succeed instead by inheriting or marrying wealth?
A quick check with my wife gave me the answer to that question (no), along with the request that I do something about the bathroom fan. But, in my own way, I have been pursuing a shortcut to success. Over the years, I’ve applied for grants (“Here are your gold francs, Monsieur Bieler”), fellowships (you get the gold francs, but you also get an assignment, for example, throwing a ring into a volcano), and residencies.
The closest I’ve come to winning was the year that a judge wrote to me to say how much he enjoyed my writing. His voice was the minority voice on the panel. Also, a grant I missed went instead to a young Sherman Alexie, so I can’t get too upset about that one. I was recently informed that a writing residency I had applied for—and they really regret this, seeing as how I’m such a nice guy—was going instead to someone a little bit nicer. They hope I will think of them next year.
At that point I put down my 42nd cup of coffee and thought, What am I doing? These arts organizations and their donors are generous people. They genuinely want to do the most they can for the most deserving artists they can find.
Why would they want to help someone as old as me?
Balzac would see this clearly. (He would also, of course, burst into the narrative to deliver a lecture on the passage of time and the depths of denial as well as my endless self-regard.) If you had cash to dole out or a room you’re funding at a beach house or a ranch house or a townhouse, whom would you rather help? A writer who could have a 20- or 30-year career if she just caught a break, or an aging white male who has escaped into a comfortable retirement complete with a wife, two dogs, most of his hair, and a bathroom fan that makes too much noise?
There wasn’t much money in writing when I stumbled off the starting block and there’s not much money today. Unless you’re running an email scam. When beginning writers discover that success in the creative arts is elusive and might take years, some start searching for a short cut. That’s what scammers are waiting for. They arrive in your inbox like promises for weight-loss drugs and erection extenders. This problem has become so pervasive that there’s now a site dedicated to sharing data on scammers and fighting them.
Scammers are clever, but they’re also morons. A U.S. lawyer in Tokyo recently published a book about the history of the gold standard. This lawyer’s name is my first name and my middle name. So naturally the scammers latched onto me. Like leeches. They’ve leeched onto me.
The emails I receive about the gold standard book I didn’t write are well-written, because the scammers scooped the text from the book’s jacket copy or from reviews in Kirkus or Publisher’s Weekly.
“In my work with a trusted network of over 10,000 active book clubs, I see a consistent appetite for meticulously researched works that combine academic rigor with compelling narrative,” Evelyn Carter, Book Club Placement Specialist, writes. “Readers in history, economics, and political science-focused clubs, particularly adults aged 30-65 who enjoy thoughtful, discussion-driven texts, will find your book both illuminating and provocative. The way you illustrate how nationalist concerns and imperial ambitions shaped the adoption of the gold standard provides numerous entry points for conversation.”
Ms. Carter doesn’t mention her employer. Her address is from gmail, where there are already 413 other Evelyn Carters. Spam spam spam spam egg sausage and spam.
“If this sounds like an opportunity you would like to explore, simply reply with the word Interested, and I will share the details of how we can connect your book with engaged book club readers. There is no obligation, just a chance to ensure that your work is read, appreciated, and discussed by audiences who will treasure it.”
No mention of money. Guess she doesn’t want any. Her name changes with each email. It’s always Anglo-Saxon. It’s never Carlos Danger.
I’ve decided not to ask Ms. Carter to pretend to promote a book I didn’t write, won’t read, and want to forget.
Another man, whose name is the informal version of mine, Steve Bieler, self-published a science fiction novel a few years ago. Scammers came after me on that one, too. A college friend read the book, which was a big deal for him because he has dyslexia and reading costs him something. You can imagine his aggravation when he found out he had wasted his time.
What are the lessons here? You already know them. Never engage with scammers. If it’s too good to be true, it’s not true. And keep your hopes up! Even if you never make a dime at writing, if you want to write, write.
Last week I received an email with this subject: HOW TO LAND A JOB IN INDIE LIT. I read about a class I could take, taught by a person who is a fiction editor for one literary magazine, a guest editor for two others, and a non-fiction editor for a fourth. She could’ve listed a fifth litmag where she was the editorial intern, but that zine stopped publishing in 2018. To land the job you love in literature, you must be prepared to work hard, not just at one job, but several at the same time. Be prepared not to make a pile of money, either.
And then I thought, why am I reading this? I have a job: Writing novels. So far it pays nothing, but guess what? I’m retired. The last thing I need is employment.
But I get distracted.
A newsletter arrives and offers me a list of 13 DAMN FINE LITMAGS WITH 5-10% ACCEPTANCE RATES. Later lists up the ante to 22 and 51 of these things. Literature moves slowly, but not if I submit a story to 13 LITMAGS THAT RESPOND IN 7 DAYS OR LESS. How about something prestigious: 10 LITMAGS TO LAUNCH YOUR WRITING CAREER and 9 INDIE PRESSES THAT WIN AWARDS FASTER THAN TAYLOR SWIFT.
I haven’t submitted anything to any of these places, but I think about them. Time is money. Thought is, too. Thinking about DAMN FINE LITMAGS and editors who respond to submissions in seven days or less because they live in another dimension is wasting money.
But then I received a newsletter from Barrelhouse (“Serious writing. Pop culture. News about things and stuff.”). If you’re wondering where the cool kids hang, it’s here. I would love to see my byline in their pages. The newsletter was a call for submissions for their “Dirty Issue”:
Barrelhouse wants the dirt. From playing in the dirt, to dirt on a rival, to the filth of humanity, to the grime or greenery of your particular locale, we want it all. Go ahead, tell us everything, you dirty birds! We want the kinds of stories and poems whispered behind cupped hands, the ones that giggle and scatter when you enter the room, the ones that draw grimaces and gasps. The stuff you find scrawled on the bathroom walls of a dive bar. Talk dirty to us, if that’s your thing. Talk about the feeling of “dirty” or being labelled as such. Got a dirty job? Tell us about it. Take us back to our childhoods, digging for worms and building mudpies; talk about the spaces, sensations, and memories full of dirt that mean a lot to you.
By the Flaming Sword of Taylor Swift! That set me scrambling. I didn’t want to write something new, but what did I have that was old that I could fix up and that was about dirt, dirtiness, dirtitude? This wasn’t one of those times where I gave the submissions call 15 or 30 minutes of my day. I read my old blog posts. I read the files I had stashed in my SALVAGE folder. I considered past jobs where I couldn’t stay clean. I considered secret things I knew about people, but there weren’t many people or things and some of these folks are still capable of stabbing me in the pancreas. I considered secret things I knew about me, but those things are secret because they’re boring, not dirty. Where’s the dirt? Where’s the beef?
At last, I waded into my GIVE THE FUCK UP folder. And gave up.
What did I learn from this exercise? That when you’re occupied with something you shouldn’t be doing when you have something you should, two hours can pass like the snap of your fingers. That I should stabilize my rear deflectors, stay on target, and watch for enemy fighters. Because they can come at you even while you’re congratulating yourself for outrunning another day of internet distractions.
Contending with the distractions of Red Five and Gold Leader.
I’ve been so focused on writing my novel that it never occurred to me to wonder what life would be like when I was no longer writing.
True, I’m not finished. I wrote a first draft. I spent several days at the library, reading it and marking it up with different color markers and highlighters and attaching Post-It guideposts. It was exceedingly pleasant, in the fall weather, to walk the half hour downtown to the post office and then back again, with my book tucked into its own cardboard box, stopping for coffee and maybe a nosh somewhere along the route.
Then I took a week to revise based on my edits. This took longer than I thought it would. I’m a former copy editor. I’m accustomed to editing other people’s work and to following other people’s edits in my own. But there are many types of editing (check out this list) and I was never trained to edit for structure. Grammar, word choice, tone, dialog, rhythm—that I can look for. How it all fits together—for that I need help.
So I printed a fresh copy of the manuscript and handed it off to the head of my order. No, not my Chief Rabbit. My wife. Deborah has so far said, “It reads like a book.” She’s still immersed in it. Maybe she’s also consulting a marriage counselor. Haruki Murakami, in his memoir Novelist As a Vocation, mentions his wife exactly once, and not by name. He does say that she reads his early drafts. Then they argue and “harsh words are sometimes exchanged.”
In our house, we reserve harsh words for the occasional canine caper. I’m eager to hear what Deborah has to say. I’ve worked on my book almost every day for a year and I feel bereft without it. What am I supposed to write now? What do I do with all my notes, background material, and writing that led me down detours or into a cul-de-sac? Or do I pivot out of the book and into all of my abandoned stories and narrative misfires? Maybe I should write a memoir. Say something nice about my wife.
When I figure it out, I’ll let you know.
When I was working, Theodore Bernstein was my brother, my captain, my king. His books would seem antiquated now; this one, his last, was published in the 1970s. But for me he was a far more readable helper than Henry Fowler of A Dictionary of Modern English Usage.
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.
“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.
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.
Taylor and Travis are getting married. Everyone is talking about this. Now I must, too.
Travis, of course, plays football, which immediately makes him of zero interest to me. Also, no character in a book, film, or song will ever be named Travis. Yuck. Imagine these famous lines with his name:
Travis, can you hear me?
You’ll have to think for both of us, Travis.
Tell me about the rabbits, Travis.
Travis Jones, I always knew someday you’d come walking back through my door.
[Whispered before dying:] Travis!
With Travis out of the way I can discuss Taylor. I recently learned that two men of my acquaintance are Swifties. I will call them Swifty 1 and Swifty 2. Swifty 1 is an internationally recognized expert on Bruce Springsteen. Swifty 2, when we lived in the same city, was in my face every day with his love for Hungarian composer Béla Bartók, plus he could catch anything hit to him in center field. Both men are devoted to Taylor, despite the fact that each of them was already a walking, talking, go-to-work-every-day adult in his 30s when Taylor was born.
Obviously, I’m missing something. Also, my wife says I’m being a grump, or just stupid, for ignoring her. And my wife is not Swifty 3. So let’s move on to Taylor and writing, because people already have, as in this workshop, “Write Like a Popstar.”
Continuing the discussion I began in our last, very exciting post, I will quickly mention a few more writing books because I believe they can help you. Just don’t get bogged down in them and forget to write. You can be sure that Taylor and Travis read these books to each other on their date nights.
In my first post, back in 2016, I wrote about Jessica Page Morrell’s Thanks, But This Isn’t for Us: A (Sort Of) Compassionate Guide to Why Your Writing Is Being Rejected.I stand by these thoughts.
You can’t go wrong with Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft,and I guess that proves I’m not a grump, O my wife, because I really resisted reading this thing. The overall tone is ornery; King wrote a chunk of it while he was in terrible pain from being run down by a van in the middle of the night. But the book came along at the right time for me. I felt as if Stephen King were giving me permission to write again following a lengthy silence.
Elizabeth Benedict’s The Joy of Writing Sex (good sex scenes should always be about sex and something else) is enlightening and fun to read. It was published in 1996, when Taylor was listening to Britney and Travis was playing T-ball, but sex is still sex.
I’m not going to tell you that Bruce Holland Rogers will always be helpful in Word Work: Surviving and Thriving as a Writer, but he’ll always be friendly and I found some real inspiration in these pages:
“Even if the overall odds are terrible, a story that you wrote in the glow of overconfidence has an infinitely greater chance of publication than the story you didn’t write while you were feeling more realistic.”
Rogers includes something I have never encountered in a writing book. He believes that writers can’t make it without willpower and discipline; no argument there. But he also believes that willpower and discipline wear out. “What helps more is to profoundly overestimate your chances for success,” he writes. “This isn’t just a matter of positive thinking. You’ll perform best if you actually change your state to something that’s close to hypomania.” Dear Readers: Would one of you (other than Taylor) please try that and tell me how it goes.
Lastly, I want to mention Jane Anne Straw and Unstuck: A Supportive and Practical Guide to Working Through Writer’s Block. It’s not a great book, but Straw is unflaggingly honest, and frankly, reading about how screwed up she is, and her writing clients, I felt better about how screwed up I am.
Straw says good things about your writing practice, writing as a process and a product, “positive interactions with the page,” and the importance of showing up for yourself. She also suggests that you take your book on vacation. Just as sales people follow the rule of ABC (always be closing), you should always be writing. The only complication with this advice is taking your book on vacation while you are also taking your partner on vacation. On a nine-day road trip through the Great Cities of the Pacific Northwest in July, I managed to write three days out of nine while successfully maintaining my marriage. A .333 batting average was probably the best I could have hoped for.
And that’s my writing advice for my favorite tortured poets, Taylor and Travis.
Word count: 68,217. Sometimes I leap forward and sometimes I’m learning to crawl. That’s Steve’s version.
The first time was in 1982 at a science fiction convention in Vancouver, B.C. The interviewer, a woman from a local TV station, thought I was Frank Herbert. The interview ended abruptly when she asked me, looking back, what I thought of Dune and I told her.
The second time was in 1991 when a reporter on the environmental beat asked me how I had conquered junk mail. I don’t ever expect to field a question on this topic again.
The third time was in 2023 when I won a contest at Moment magazine. One of the editors asked me for writing advice for beginners. I told her that there’s so much writing advice flying around the world that it could make you insane trying to make sense of it. As a writer, I could’ve offered some subtle imagery (roll up your sleeves, dive into the deep end, step up to the plate, fish or cut bait, cut the tape, cut the crap, the longest journey begins with a single step), but instead I kindly suggested that you just do it. I don’t believe I quoted William Zinsser, but I should’ve: “Write it first. We’ll figure out what it is later.”
I can’t predict if anyone will ever ask me this again (if they do, I have Hemingway cued up), but I do stand by my statement that there’s too much writing advice in the world. My favorite used bookstore has an entire bookcase of barely used how-to-write books. My second favorite used bookstore could boast the same if they ever got organized enough to fill up a bookcase with these hopeful yet unwanted books.
This is the part where I contradict myself
Are all writing books useless? Here’s a definitive answer: Yes and no. Yes because you could easily substitute learning about writing for writing. No because a few have spoken to me. They might speak to you. Here’s one:
Dorothea Brande’s Becoming a Writerwas published in 1934, which might make it the first book ever published on the topic. (If I’m right, the second would be Brenda Ueland’s If You Want to Write, published in 1938.) Becoming a Writer still sings. Ray Bradbury read this in high school a year or two later, and it meant a lot to him; Becoming a Writer is mentioned 10 times in Becoming Ray Bradbury.
Brande believed that writing could be taught, that we all have some genius inside us, and that writing is usually taught wrong: creative writing classes only teach the technical aspects, when they should be investigating the personality flaws that get in our way. She had a lot to say about unlocking the unconscious.
She divided beginning writers into four categories:
The person who finds it difficult to write anything at all.
The one-book writer.
The occasional writer (writes well but suffers long silences).
The uneven writer (excels in some things but not in others, creating no satisfactory whole).
Brande’s diagnosis of the beginning writer’s troubles made me think of Thomas Mann: “A writer is a person for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”
Brande’s ideas about the unconscious reminded me of something Brenda Ueland wrote in her autobiography, Me: “I learned that you should feel when writing, not like Lord Byron on a mountain top, but like a child stringing beads in kindergarten, happy, absorbed, and quietly putting one bead on after another.”
Finally, Brande, almost a hundred years ago, gave me my motto:
“It is well to understand as early as possible in one’s writing life that there is just one contribution which every one of us can make: we can give into the common pool of experience some comprehension of the world as it looks to each of us.”
If you read the edition with the introduction by John Gardner, you’ll find that it’s appreciative for a while, but soon veers into a defense of creative writing classes. This strikes me as a dick move.
Jeremiah Murphy was a Boston Globe columnist who was one of my journalism teachers in college. “Throw the semicolon key right out of your typewriter!” he said in our first class. He taught us how to write an obituary, which has served me well. He was probably as scared of us as we were of him.
Jeremiah Murphy’s Boston is not a writing book, and because it was published in 1974 I don’t recommend it unless he was your teacher, too, or you lived in Boston in the 1960s. But Murphy learned an important lesson early his career when the paper sent him to Rome to cover the elevation of a Boston cardinal.
“When I got to Rome I somehow got my identity mixed up and decided I was Harrison Salisbury or Scotty Reston of The New York Times or somebody like that,” he recalled. “My stories were flat.”
His editor, after reading these stories, called him and said: “I want you to write this story just the way you would write it from South Boston.”
After the ceremony, “I walked part of the way back to the hotel in the rain. I needed time to get the lead just right in my mind. I got up to my room and ordered a big steak and a lot of beer, and then I sat there in my skivvies and wrote that story just the way I would have written it from South Boston.”
So the editor’s advice (“I suspect now it was really an order”) “taught me that when you get behind a typewriter you have to be yourself, and this is what I always try to do.”
Good advice; thanks.
My word count: 67,575. I might be able to finish the first draft by the end of the Labor Day weekend. As of this evening, I have my protagonist hanging by a thread over a pit full of Bengal tigers who are really angry about colonialism. All I need is a timely rescue and an epilogue.
Steven Bryan Bieler, Writer 