John Ramsey Miller

I missed the Obama inauguration because I was writing something, and I honestly just forgot it was on. By the time I tuned in I’d missed the swearing in, but I read his address online. Although I had my reservations, I think if he can bring about real change in Washington it will be good, if that change makes life better for Americans it will be very good, and if he can fix the economy, it will be a miracle, but one I approve of. If the economy gets better, maybe they’ll work on the fundamentals to help it stay that way. I’ll be watching as his term progresses, and I’ll be hollering at the TV a lot. I’m a TV talker and it drives my wife crazy. My grandmother talked to the TV, answering any questions the actors asked with personal comments. Once I heard her address James Arness, Matt Dillon, tersely when he asked Miss Kitty a question, “mind your own business! You don’t know me that well.” She wasn’t in control of her faculties, but she had a good time in Lu-Lu Land and it entertained us kids. I tend to be sarcastic and abusive when something on the TV touches a nerve. When Justice Roberts flubbed the oath because he didn’t have crib notes, if I’d been Obama I would have said, “Check the damned script, your honor!” I also suspect that Chief Justice Roberts used the Hussein part of the President’s and messed up the text on purpose because Obama opposed his nomination to be the Court cheese. I think he thought it would make Obama look silly, if he knew the oath and said it correctly. Imagine just one of them had practiced over and over in front of his Blair House mirror the night before.

The publishing and book-selling industry is no doubt getting a lot of business from the spate of Obama books that have shot from the presses like stomped shrimp, but it won’t inspire anybody to start reading other books, the way Harry Potter did. So (in a way) President Obama is helping the economy and he didn’t have to give the publishers billions of dollars of tax money. However, that said, books are one of the few our country actually still produces from raw material to finished product. Well, that and cheese. And books are as necessary as weapons for our armed forces. The sharing of knowledge is paramount to maintaining our country’s greatness, and literacy is a national treasure. The best thing about Obama being elected is that inner city youths can see the value of education and how simple knowledge can get you ahead in life more surely than a trick shot on the basketball court, or throwing or catching a pass accurately under pressure. I hope this spurs an interest in reading, and that everybody benefits from it, which they’d have to. Stupidity is forever, but ignorance is fixable.

I found it astounding that out of two million visitors to Washington on Tuesday, there was not one arrest related to the people attending the inauguration ceremonies. They did make one hell of a mess. The Mall looked like Woodstock after that event. Astounding. Woodstock, in comparison, even given the love-and-peace theme, didn’t even come close since a lot of the music worshipers were arrested, beaten, overdosed on that brown acid and stuff like that. Seriously, I have never seen so many smiles and people who’d, in a lot of cases, given up a lot to get to DC and went to a lot of trouble to be in attendance. I find that amazing, awing, heartwarming and hopeful. If this man can bring so many different kinds of people together in such a joyous manner then there is hope. The President is just a figurehead really. He can do a lot officially like start wars, and earmark stimulus money, and raise hell on TV, but it’s just a shame that he’s going to be working with the same old people who are corrupt and shortsighted and nearsighted and greedy for mo power.

I like to think there is hope and that reading will become popular once more with young people as it was with my generation. People are still reading, buying books, When I was fourteen my mother enlisted me in The Book of the Month Club, and I chose my books and I waited for them to come the way kids wait anxiously for a new video game. If Obama can do just that––just bring back a sense of awe for books by his example, I’ll be in awe of him. That’s the kind of change I’m looking for. Have at it, Mr. President, and best of luck.

By John Gilstrap
http://www.johngilstrap.com/

Perhaps the future is not as bleak as we fear it to be.

According to the January 19, 2009, edition of Publishers Weekly, the National Endowment for the Arts reported last week that the population of fiction readers in the United States has increased by 16.6 million since 2002, “creating the largest audience in the history of the NEA survey.” No one knows why, exactly, but there’s general agreement that this is a good thing.

I have to tell you that the news doesn’t surprise me. For years—even during the days of the booming economy—I’ve listened to publishers and frightened authors complaining that no one ever reads anymore; yet when I walk into a B&N or Borders anywhere in the country, the aisles are fairly packed with people, and I have to wait in line before I can check out. Who are these people if not readers?

More recently, we’ve heard about the “collapse” of the publishing industry, with the concomitant panic response of layoffs and such, but then we hear of net sales declines of less than one percent. I understand that negative growth is never good in business, but a gnat’s whisker from break even—on the heels of five years of record growth—is hardly a “collapse.”

Years ago, when I was a junior officer in the fire service, a veteran captain gave me one of the great antidotes to panic: a good old fashioned deep breath. When you roll up on a working fire in the middle of the night, where people may or may not be trapped, and there’s a fleet of additional fire trucks on their way, and you have to make a thousand relatively irreversible decisions in just a few seconds, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. The captain’s specific advice was to sit in the cab of the fire truck for five seconds, and allow myself a couple of cleansing breaths before I say anything to anyone. It always worked.

I think the CEOs of the major publishing houses need to take a breath. I think authors need to take a breath, too. There seems to be this snowballing of doom that is augmented by rumors of more doom. This despite the fact that bookstores are still crowded, and more people than ever are reading. More books than ever are being published. Writers make the Times List for the first time every year. The Internet is an unexplored new frontier.

There are a lot of positive things happening. Sure, there are negatives, too, but I choose not to concentrate on those.

For the time being, I get to write books and get paid for it. No, really. Think about it. I get to write books and get paid for it! The publishers and their distribution networks will find their balance, and good times will return; but even when they do, I’m still going to have to work just as hard as I do now. In fact, no matter how good the business becomes in the future, this business of living one’s dream will never be easy.

As writers, we face far greater challenge than any of the suits in the publishing houses: We have to stay relevant.

I think of that great line from Field of Dreams, “If you build it, they will come.” Nowhere is the statement truer than in the entertainment business–our business. The reading public is building everyday. They’re building new tastes in new media. They’re seeking new inspiration, and they’re facing new fears. They’re telling us all as clearly as they know how what they’re looking for.

But will we come? Will we be the ones to satisfy their needs, or will that honor fall to others who spend less time looking behind, and more time thinking like entrepreneurs? They’re the customers, after all. We are merely the supply chain.

By John Ramsey Miller

There is an oft-told story about William Faulkner and I’m not sure if it’s true, but it probably is. One day he was walking near the downtown square in Oxford, Mississippi and someone who knew him socially spoke to him, but he didn’t so much as turn his head to look in her direction when she saluted him. Later she complained to Mrs. Faulkner, who said, “Don’t take it personal Honey, Bill was writing.” It’s a great story, and it applies to so many authors I know. It’s quiet where I live, and I have the luxury of not being interrupted through the days and nights. I do my best writing when I’m using a chain saw, building something, or driving, and when I’m plotting in my head I am oblivious to everything.

We fiction authors are a group of individuals who have so much in common. What we do is ninety percent mental and ten per cent physical. Kate Miciak, my editor at Bantam, told me that good writing requires deep thinking, and I think about what I’m going to write a lot more than I write. I think that’s true for most of us, and if it isn’t it should be. If you are writing without planning where you are going, your work could probably be a lot better.

I’ve had a long-running discussion with Gilstrap over many a cocktail ….many, many a cocktail about process. We’ve discussed this and I think John may have blogged this one, and if so I apologize for repeating it. I heard an author say recently that he creates his characters and follows them around recording what they say and do. My characters don’t write the books, I do, and I can’t imagine how much LSD I’d have to eat so that I could follow them around and record what they do. It seems absurd to me that you can let fictional characters dictate to you, but it may be true. I create my characters and I dictate what they will do on my pages, and by God they do it. Unless my editor says they can’t, or they shouldn’t oughta do it, or that it couldn’t happen in a hundred million years, not even if we’re talking California. And I never talk California, nor do I allow my characters ever to go there. They can go as far west as Las Vegas, but no farther. A character off on their own could get stuck in California, and I’m not about to go way out there to fetch them back, or follow them across Death Valley with my pen flying.

I haven’t been writing much for the past few days because I’ve been winterizing my pump house, and the chicken coop because the Yankees are sending their damned cold weather down here. Heated water bowls, brooder heat lamps, thick layer of sawdust on the floor, covers on the outside faucets, stacking firewood close to the house, and gathering chestnuts to roast. I don’t want my rooster’s comb to get frostbitten and turn black, which can happen and could seriously diminish his sex appeal although he’s the only rooster in the yard and the hens have no choice in mates. Cold is an unwelcome export and definitely not a Southern thing and from here on out none of my characters will be allowed in the North in winter, although my villains might well come from there.

I am going to try to write a few hours every day on my new book, regardless of the weather. It’s hard to write on a book that’s set (at its beginning) in the Louisiana Lakes area south of Houma in August. Think par-broil. I fish there a few times a year, and there isn’t a more beautiful place on earth and although I’ve used the locale in other books, I’ve never had a Cajun protagonist before. I like Cajuns. They talk funny but there’s nothing funny about them if you piss them off. How do y’all feel about Cajuns?

That’s it for this week.

http://www.johnramseymiller.com

By John Gilstrap
www.johngilstrap.com

If you’ve ever been a thirteen-year-old boy, chances are the title of this blog entry made you chuckle. (If you don’t know what I’m talking about, just say it out loud.) When I was a kid, this was the Holy Grail of setups. I lived for the moment when I could set up a friend or a teacher—or, ideally, a store clerk—to help me find my friend. As far as I know, the only time it ever worked was in the movie, Porky’s, but at least I had a goal.

Thinking back on those days, it occurs to me that language is funny. It’s such a regional thing. Where I grew up, a group of more than two people were greeted as “y’all.” Where my wife’s family comes from in the Pittsburgh area, that same group would be “y’uns.” Each of us thinks and writes in the language that resonates to us.

Cussing was part of my kid culture. I’d have cut out my tongue before I did it in front of my mother—or any adult, for that matter—but the creative use of the F-word was a major league sport among my friends. By the time I joined the fire service, I considered myself a veteran potty-mouth; but man did I have a lot to learn. Hanging out in a firehouse was like a master class in creative cussing. Way beyond the words, there was that magical combination of cynicism, dark humor and truly foul imagery. It was inspiring. Seriously, if you’ve never been chewed out by a fire captain, you’ve really never been yelled at.

It makes sense, then, that my potty mouth would transfer to my writing. My first book, Nathan’s Run, is replete with cuss words—enough, in fact, that the book has been banned in some school districts, despite the fact that the protagonist is a 12-year-old. There are F-bombs galore, more than a few GDs, and a character who calls herself The Bitch. I didn’t put the words into the book with any intent to shock; I just wrote it the way I heard it in my head. Who knew that the rest of the world would be so offended? If I had, I would have written it differently.

While F-bombs and GDs ruffled a few readers’ feathers, nothing—nothing—brought as much hate mail as my assassin’s one-time use of the C-word in a sentence. As in, “I’m going to effing kill you, you effing c-word!” Whoa.

It seems horribly naive, I know, but this was a dozen years ago, and I had no idea that that word carried the burden that it does. I’m not sure I fully understand it even now, but I sure as sh . . . shootin’ know not to use it again. In fact, now that I know that bad language actually offends a lot of readers, I’ve recently made a concerted effort to de-effify my writing. The F-bomb still detonates from time to time, but now it’s a conscious decision on my part, and it’s used to make a specific point.

Writing is ultimately about the reader, not the writer . . . right? What accommodations to readers’ tastes have y’all made in your writing?