Category Archives: John Gilstrap

Free Fall

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On American Idol the other night—yes, I’m a fan and I’m proud to admit it—I heard a bit of advice delivered to an Idolette by one of the industry mentors that rang a resounding bell of truth in my head.  The mentor, a famous drummer that I’d never heard of, told the singer that she was thinking too much.  He said that the secret to a great performance was to prepare, prepare, prepare before the show, but then to “free fall” once she hit the stage.
Hearing those words made me realize what’s wrong with my writing when it doesn’t work, and what makes it euphoric when I’m in the zone: When I think too much, the writing suffers.  I believe that’s one of the reasons why I vastly prefer rewriting to writing.  In those later drafts, I already know where the story is going, and I can allow myself the luxury of playing the in world I’ve created for my characters.  I get to step into the story and free fall.
Sometimes, the free fall happens on first drafts, too.  Actually it happens frequently.  Perhaps that’s how I’m able to write a book per year and still have a demanding Big Boy job.  I don’t know.  That’s one of the things that I try not to think about too much.
I am on the record here in TKZ regarding my thoughts on writing classes and such—that at the end of the day, successful writers are created exclusively through the act of writing—but this throw-away line on American Idol fine-tuned the point in my head. 
Books on writing and classes on writing can be of enormous value, but only as part of the preparation for free fall.  But if the class assignments and the reading invade the writer’s consciousness during the process of writing, those taught words and techniques thrust a giant wind break into the airstream of the free fall.  The writing becomes the fulfillment of an exercise rather than the flow of the writer’s imagination.
I think that’s why so much writing that flows from MFA classes feels stilted and leaves its creators  so frustrated in the long run.  The danger of the wind break is why I tell new writer to quit searching for rules, and to search instead for their own voices.  The only way to do that is through butt-in-the-chair writing.
Let me be abundantly clear: workshops and writing books can be of enormous value, but only insofar as they provide an intellectual foundation for what is essentially an emotional experience for the writer.  If the writer does his job correctly, that emotion will transfer to the reader.
I used to tell people in classes and speeches that the single major difference between the first three (unpublished) books I wrote and the first book to get published was that when I wrote Nathan’s Run, I was less concentrated on Writing A Book (that phrase should be read with rolled Rs and an exaggerated English accent) and more focused on telling a story.
From now on, I’ll tell people that the difference was that with Nathan’s Run, I allowed myself to free fall.  I inserted myself into the world I’d created, and I wrote from the heart.
So, dear Killzoners, what do you think?  Are you ready for a free fall?  You’ll note that I never mentioned anything about a parachute—or about the potential for a very hard, very uncomfortable landing.

Title Trauma

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By John Gilstrap


I have a hard time with titles.  To date, of the nine books I’ve published, only three bear the titles I proposed.  Here’s the history:


Mine: Nathan!
Title: Nathan’s Run


Mine: Most Wanted
Title: At All Costs


Mine: Even Steven
Title: Even Steven


Mine: Scott Free
Title: Scott Free


Mine: Six Minutes to Freedom
Title: Six Minutes to Freedom


Mine: Grave Danger
Title: No Mercy


I confess that after No Mercy, I stopped trying.  My working titles became Grave 2, Grave 3 and Grave 4.  My editor came up with Hostage Zero, Threat Warning and Damage Control.  I love them all, but I’ve come to embrace my limitations.  And typically, the title is just about the last element of the book to be written.


When Damage Control hits the shelves in June, though, it will contain the first chapter of the book that will come out in 2013–the one I have been writing under the title, Grave 5.  That’s a little under-inspiring, so we had to scramble to come up with a title earlier than we usually do.  Since the book deals with some issues regarding the first lady, I thought I had a winner: First Traitor.


Everyone was excited until we said it out loud, and we realized that the title would be heard as First Rater.  That’s bad for radio interviews.


In the end, we decided on High Treason.  I love the title and I am utterly shocked that it hasn’t already been used for a big thriller.


Here’s what I’ve come to understand about titles: It’s more important for them to be compelling and cool that it is for them to apply directly to the story.  The clearest example of this in my writing is Hostage Zero, which actually means nothing, but sounds very cool.  The title has done its job when a reader picks up the book and reads the back cover and thumbs through the first chapter.  That’s where the buying decision is made.


What do y’all think?  I know writers who can’t write unless they’ve got the title nailed down.  I also know writers to fight for the title of their choice, even though their choices are often not very commercial.


How do you deal with titles?

Can You Feel the Love?

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One of the great pleasures of this writing game is to receive the occasional effusive email from fans who really enjoy my work.  Because my books so often involve adolescent protagonists (usually, but not always, in secondary roles) I hear from many young readers who are almost always complimentary of the stories and the characters.
Of all my books, none gets more fan mail from young people than Nathan’s Run.  In that story, the main character, Nathan Bailey, is a 12-year-old fugitive from the law, having admitted to killing a juvenile detention center guard and running away.  While it’s a thriller at its face, it explores some pretty complex themes about how little voice children have in society.  In schools where it’s not banned, it is frequently taught.  (The book contains, by one irate woman’s accounting, 409 unacceptable words.)
Whether in fulfillment of a class assignment or of their own volition, it’s not uncommon for students to contact me via email to “interview” the author.  On these requests, I am a sure thing.  I never say no, and I always try to respond promptly.
There’s a fine line, however, that I won’t cross, and that is the one where I sense that the student is essentially trying to get me to write his book report for him.  On biographical details, for example, I point them toward my website, or to other places where they would have found the information if they had tried.  I also shy away from questions regarding theme, symbolism, and other very English-classy subjects where I imagine the teacher wanted them to do some analysis on their own.
Last Sunday, I received this email from a boy named, shall we say, Tom:
hi john i have a question i have read yur book now i have a project to do wit it i kinda wanted to ask yuh how did nathan solve the problem and what was the turning point
That is cut and pasted in exactly the format I received it.  Clearly, it was easier to write an email than it was to read a book.  I have no idea how old “Tom” is, but if he’s been assigned to read Nathan’s Run, he’s got to at least be in middle school.  Plus, his email strummed another sensitive note: respect for the language.  I understand that kids are kids, and that texting language is different than real English, but I figure that I owe some allegiance to the rules of grammar.  So I donned my dad hat and took the high ground with the following response:
Hi, Tom.
Nice to hear from you–sort of.  Let’s start over, with you recognizing that I am an author, and that punctuation, spelling and grammar matter.  If you ask some properly formatted questions, I’d be happy to address them
Best regards,
John Gilstrap
That was me doing my part to be cooperative, yet not compromise my principles.  To this, he responded:
suck my dick Nigga
Again, that’s a quote; word choice and punctuation are his alone.
Well, goodness.  I confess that when I first read his response, I laughed.  It was so . . . startling.  But then I thought about the fundamental lack of respect, and my amusement turned to concern.  I’m sure that in his mind my reply showed disrespect, but come on.  To be really honest, I have second- and third-guessed myself about even posting this here, for fear of seeming like a bully.  At least I changed his name.
I’ll resist the urge to draw a larger conclusion about the state of adolescents today, and instead look to my son and his friends as the models for the actual norm.  (Okay, their adolescence is 10 years in the rearview mirror, but work with me.)  I have often thought that I would like to teach writing at the high school level, but when stuff like this happens, I have to check myself.  My hat goes off to those who do teach, and who find a way to control their anger despite their instinct to smack a kid out of his chair.
Yep, I’m becoming that old guy down the street.

The Scoop on Agents

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By John Gilstrap


Last week, our friend and frequent-poster Terri Lynn Coop posted the following comment:


“You’ve talked about becoming agented and querying. However, what happens once your novel or non-fic is sold to the publisher.
What kind of deadlines are there? How firm are those deadlines? What role does your agent play after the publishing contract is signed? What sort of public face does your agent and publisher expect you to maintain from contract to release (is there a difference between fiction and non-fiction)? When do you see your advance?”


It’s a great bunch of questions. I’m going to take a shot at some answers.  The underlying assumption of my answers is that this is a first published book we’re talking about.  The rules don’t change a lot after you have a chip in the game, but they do change a little.  I’m also going to juggle the order of the questions a little:


What role does your agent play after the publishing contract is signed? 


Understand that a lot of negotiation goes into what a publishing contract looks like.  What rights will be sold?  More importantly, what rights will be retained by the author?  Is this a one-book contract, or a multi-book contract?  What will the pay-out schedule be?  If it’s a multi-book contract, will they be individually accounted or jointly accounted?  (Joint accounting means that Book #1 would have to earn back its advances before you could start earning advances on Book #2.  It’s by far the least preferable method, but first-timers often don’t have a lot of heft there.)


The agent is the go-between for all uncomfortable transactions.  For example, in fifteen years, I have never discussed money issues with an editor, and no editor has had to tell me to my face that I wasn’t worth the money I was asking for.  The agent keeps the creative relationship pure.  Beyond that, if everything goes well, the agent doesn’t have a lot to do after the contract is negotiated.


But things rarely go well.  What happens if your editor quits or gets fired?  What happens if you really hate the cover, or if the editor is getting carried away with his editorial pen?  On a more positive note, the agent will continue to pursue foreign publishing contracts, movie deals, etc.


What kind of deadlines are there? How firm are those deadlines? 


Deadlines are part of the negotiation process.  You’ll have to agree to respond to your editorial letter by a certain date with a corrected manuscript, and then you’ll have copyedits and page proofs, all while making your commitment to deliver the next book in the contract if it’s a multi-book deal.  I consider deadlines to be inviolable.  I’ve had to push the delivery date by a couple of weeks once, but I hated doing it because it inconveniences so many people, and it makes me look unprofessional.  Here is another instance where a track record of performance keeps people from losing faith in the author.  For first-timers, blowing a deadline can kill a career.  Remember, by blowing the deadline, you technically violate the contract, which the publisher would have the authority to void.


Writers need to understand that publishing calendars are set 12 to 18 months ahead.  Working backwards from those dates are the in-house deadlines for the production side of things (cover design, copyedits, publicity, ARCs, reviews, and a thousand other details).  If a deadline is blown by as little as a month, publishers may pull the author’s book from the calendar and replace it with another, thus potentially adding months to the publication date.


When do you see your advance? 


This is another  negotiated deal point.  Advances are paid out in pieces.  There’s always one piece on signing.  After that, the milestones vary from author to author, often depending on the horsepower of the agent, and on the “importance” of the author.  Other payment milestones can include: submission of edited manuscript (this is the “D&A payment–Delivery & Acceptance); hard cover pub date; softcover pub date; and even, in some cases, some period of time after the pub date.  If there’s a second book in the contract, there’ll likely be a payment milestone for the submission of an outline for the second book, followed by submission of an acceptable manuscript.


Meanwhile, if you’re happy at the publishing house, sometime while writing the second book of a two-book deal, your editor and agent will start negotiating the next deal.


What sort of public face does your agent and publisher expect you to maintain from contract to release (is there a difference between fiction and non-fiction)? 


This is where the issue of an author’s platform comes in.  If you’re a celebrity writing your autobiography, the pressure will be high to be out there to flog it.  Similarly, if you’ve written a book about a presidential candidate during an election year, the publisher will press hard for you to have media face time.


On the other hand, if you’ve written a novel featuring a feline crime solver (or about a freelance hostage rescue specialist), chances are that you couldn’t buy publicity outside of your local newspaper.  In that regard, an author’s public face is only as public as the author wants it to be.


I think that’s all of it.  Okay, Killzone comrades, let’s hear from you.

NEWS FLASH: There Are No Shortcuts to Success

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By John Gilstrap

Everyone who does anything for a living owes it to himself to take advantage of learning opportunities.  Even after one has attained journeyman’s status, to rest on one’s laurels is to invite disaster.

Last week, I had the honor and pleasure of attending SleuthFest in Orlando, Florida.  I taught a class on pacing, and sat on three panels.  And I hung out at the bar, of course, because that’s where all business is conducted, irrespective of chosen discipline.  I met a lot of talented writers I’d never met—Heather Graham and Charlaine Harris among them—and hung out with old friends.  And, of course, there are our own Kathleen Pickering and Nancy Cohen, whom I finally met in person—Nancy in a meeting room, and Kathleen in the bar.  A lot in the bar.  I’m just sayin’ . . .

For me, the big learning moment—the a-ha moment—came during Charlaine’s luncheon keynote, and it reinforced something I’ve known and admired about Jeff Deaver for years (Jeff and Charlaine were guests of honor, along with Chris Grabenstein).  If I did my math correctly, the first book of Charlaine’s True Blood series—the one that launched her into the authorial stratosphere—was her twentieth book.  Give or take a couple of books, that was the same number of novels that Deaver had published before he became a household name with the Lincoln Rhyme series.  As Charlaine put it, she’d spent many years with $4,000 advances, pursuing what her husband had come to think of as a “well-subsidized hobby.”

I am currently pounding away at my tenth novel (fourteenth, if you count the ones that no one wanted).  I’m proud of them all, but the recent ones are so way better than the older ones.  And the ones that were never published?  Well, thank God they weren’t.

At SleuthFest, I learned (again) what I’ve long known to be the truth: writing is a business, and the only way to succeed—and success to me means hundreds of thousands of copies sold—is to keep writing and playing by the rules. Agents are more important than they’ve ever been, and brutal, professional editing is what makes the difference between passable and entertaining.

Even in these days of new media and instant gratification, the bottom line is the bottom line: There are no shortcuts to success.

All comments welcome . . .

The Pain of Rejection

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Ten years ago this month, my career hit rock bottom.  The wounds of 9-11 were still raw, the lingering malaise still thick.  I’d just been screwed out of a screen credit for the movie, Red Dragon (actually, I wasn’t screwed; I’d merely lost an arbitration, but when you’re living it, there’s precious little difference).  I’d been orphaned twice on Scott Free, my second book of a two-book contract with Atria, on the heels of Even Steven, on which I was likewise orphaned twice.  The publisher had lost interest in me, and they’d made it clear that they were going to ship a tiny number of books and do nothing to support them.

My book-writing career was in severe jeopardy.

I was able to keep it all in perspective, though, until I got a phone call from my film agent that no one—no one—even wanted to take a look at Scott Free, which to that point had everyone in my publishing food chain convinced that it would be an easy movie sell.  The call came in at around 6:00 pm Eastern time, and I remember Joy rubbing my shoulder as she read the body language of the call.  When I hung up, I felt like I had nothing left.  I tried to smile and shrug it off, and then she hugged me and I lost it.

I don’t cry much, but that one came from a deep dark place.

It wasn’t about how to make the mortgage payment.  It was the realization that I had all these stories inside of me that I wasn’t going to be able to tell because people who’d liked my books well enough to buy them no longer liked them enough to sell them.  It felt so . . . unfair.  Our own Mr. John Ramsey Miller took a lot of phone calls from me back then.  Thanks, John.

I make it a point not to dwell in dark places very long, so I went on to write a book called Living Wil, which I couldn’t give away, but really, that just kept me busy while I took a long look at where I was:

FACT: My bestselling books to that point had been written while I’d had a full-time job.
FACT: While “writing full time” I actually spent a lot of time hangin’ out and playing Dad.
FACT: The entertainment business makes no friggin’ sense.
FACT (and this one’s embarrassing): While I actually craved the normalcy of a Big Boy job, I resisted for fear that others would see that as an expression of failure.

When all was said and done, I reverted to one of my overarching philosophies in life—“fuck it”—and I forged ahead.  It turned out that no one was watching me as closely as I thought they were.  In fact, I was shocked to find that most of my friends who write full-time were envious of my Big Boy endeavors.

Funny what an adventure life turns out to be sometimes.

I write of this now not just because of the ten-year anniversary, but because it’s American Idol season again, and the sight of those devastated young people who’ve just found out they didn’t make the cut churns up memories.  When you want something so badly, the pain of rejection can be unbearable.  It feels like there’s no future.

But of course, there always is.  The problem is, too many of us work so hard to engineer the future that we lose sight of the fact that we’re powerless to affect it.  The best we can do is dream big and work hard and maximize opportunities. 

After ten years, you look back and realize how much better a person you are for the pain.

The Pain of Rejection

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Ten years ago this month, my career hit rock bottom.  The wounds of 9-11 were still raw, the lingering malaise still thick.  I’d just been screwed out of a screen credit for the movie, Red Dragon (actually, I wasn’t screwed; I’d merely lost an arbitration, but when you’re living it, there’s precious little difference).  I’d been orphaned twice on Scott Free, my second book of a two-book contract with Atria, on the heels of Even Steven, on which I was likewise orphaned twice.  The publisher had lost interest in me, and they’d made it clear that they were going to ship a tiny number of books and do nothing to support them.

My book-writing career was in severe jeopardy.

I was able to keep it all in perspective, though, until I got a phone call from my film agent that no one—no one—even wanted to take a look at Scott Free, which to that point had everyone in my publishing food chain convinced that it would be an easy movie sell.  The call came in at around 6:00 pm Eastern time, and I remember Joy rubbing my shoulder as she read the body language of the call.  When I hung up, I felt like I had nothing left.  I tried to smile and shrug it off, and then she hugged me and I lost it.

I don’t cry much, but that one came from a deep dark place.

It wasn’t about how to make the mortgage payment.  It was the realization that I had all these stories inside of me that I wasn’t going to be able to tell because people who’d liked my books well enough to buy them no longer liked them enough to sell them.  It felt so . . . unfair.  Our own Mr. John Ramsey Miller took a lot of phone calls from me back then.  Thanks, John.

I make it a point not to dwell in dark places very long, so I went on to write a book called Living Wil, which I couldn’t give away, but really, that just kept me busy while I took a long look at where I was:

FACT: My bestselling books to that point had been written while I’d had a full-time job.
FACT: While “writing full time” I actually spent a lot of time hangin’ out and playing Dad.
FACT: The entertainment business makes no friggin’ sense.
FACT (and this one’s embarrassing): While I actually craved the normalcy of a Big Boy job, I resisted for fear that others would see that as an expression of failure.

When all was said and done, I reverted to one of my overarching philosophies in life—“fuck it”—and I forged ahead.  It turned out that no one was watching me as closely as I thought they were.  In fact, I was shocked to find that most of my friends who write full-time were envious of my Big Boy endeavors.

Funny what an adventure life turns out to be sometimes.

I write of this now not just because of the ten-year anniversary, but because it’s American Idol season again, and the sight of those devastated young people who’ve just found out they didn’t make the cut churns up memories.  When you want something so badly, the pain of rejection can be unbearable.  It feels like there’s no future.

But of course, there always is.  The problem is, too many of us work so hard to engineer the future that we lose sight of the fact that we’re powerless to affect it.  The best we can do is dream big and work hard and maximize opportunities. 

After ten years, you look back and realize how much better a person you are for the pain.

Technology Scares Me

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I remember a few years ago being amused and amazed by the fact that I never had to print and mail a manuscript in order to submit a book to my publisher.  For the first ten years or so of my writing career, a $30 Fed Ex bill was a rite of passage that marked the giant milestone of having finished a book.  It seemed sort of anticlimactic to just attach the manuscript to an email and hit send.
This year marked yet another excursion into the frightening world of ones and zeroes: The entire editing process was handled by email.  My editor’s comments came in “Review” mode in MS Word, accompanied by an editorial letter.  In that case, I printed out the marked up manuscript, acknowledging my Luddite nature, and I confess to being frustrated by the tiny, tiny typeface.  I soldiered on.  I made my initial changes to the edited manuscript in pencil, and then I transferred them to the version I got from my editor.  Weeks passed.
A few weeks later, I got the copy edited manuscript, and-lo and behold–gone were the scribblings in red pencil and the marginal notes.  It was another “Review Mode”  manuscript.  I’m happy to report that the manuscript was refreshingly clean, but I found the instructions to be a bit confusing.  My orders were to not accept or reject the copy editor’s marks, but to comment “stet” where I thought they were wrong, and to rewrite the areas where I agreed.
Damage Control has been put to bed now.  My last opportunity to reengineer anything is in the rearview mirror.  The book is heading toward a June release, and here’s nothing anyone can do about it.  I hope y’all like it when you read it.
Here’s my concern: I love seeing the manuscripts of the authors I admire.  Reading the hand-edited typescripts of Hemingway or the handwritten manuscripts of Dickens is a master class in choices made by the writer.  Such documents have gone the way of the do-do bird now.  The brilliant authors of today (and believe me when I say that I do not put myself among their number) will have no record of the sentences that nearly worked but were changed to make them better.
The brilliant thriller writer, Stephen Hunter, told me once over dinner that back when he was first getting published in the late seventies, the typewritten manuscript was a form of natural selection.  Having never suffered a rejection himself, he believed that the willingness to re-type a 400-page manuscript four or five times separated the truly committed from the pretenders.  I think there’s a lot of truth in that.  Plus, there’s a great paper trail.
I don’t even keep previous drafts anymore.  As I make changes, I simply overwrite the master file.
When people talk about the romance of writing, I harken back to the days I never knew, when typesetters had to insert handwritten additions that were noted by carrots and chicken scratchings.  In my mind’s eye, that’s a far more organic process than merely typing in changes as you go.
So, Killzoners, what do you think?    Do you keep your original versions of stuff you write?  Do you secretly harbor dreams of future generations uncovering the way your mind works when you write?  Has the world of ones and zeroes made writing less . . . romantic?

Technology Scares Me

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I remember a few years ago being amused and amazed by the fact that I never had to print and mail a manuscript in order to submit a book to my publisher.  For the first ten years or so of my writing career, a $30 Fed Ex bill was a rite of passage that marked the giant milestone of having finished a book.  It seemed sort of anticlimactic to just attach the manuscript to an email and hit send.
This year marked yet another excursion into the frightening world of ones and zeroes: The entire editing process was handled by email.  My editor’s comments came in “Review” mode in MS Word, accompanied by an editorial letter.  In that case, I printed out the marked up manuscript, acknowledging my Luddite nature, and I confess to being frustrated by the tiny, tiny typeface.  I soldiered on.  I made my initial changes to the edited manuscript in pencil, and then I transferred them to the version I got from my editor.  Weeks passed.
A few weeks later, I got the copy edited manuscript, and-lo and behold–gone were the scribblings in red pencil and the marginal notes.  It was another “Review Mode”  manuscript.  I’m happy to report that the manuscript was refreshingly clean, but I found the instructions to be a bit confusing.  My orders were to not accept or reject the copy editor’s marks, but to comment “stet” where I thought they were wrong, and to rewrite the areas where I agreed.
Damage Control has been put to bed now.  My last opportunity to reengineer anything is in the rearview mirror.  The book is heading toward a June release, and here’s nothing anyone can do about it.  I hope y’all like it when you read it.
Here’s my concern: I love seeing the manuscripts of the authors I admire.  Reading the hand-edited typescripts of Hemingway or the handwritten manuscripts of Dickens is a master class in choices made by the writer.  Such documents have gone the way of the do-do bird now.  The brilliant authors of today (and believe me when I say that I do not put myself among their number) will have no record of the sentences that nearly worked but were changed to make them better.
The brilliant thriller writer, Stephen Hunter, told me once over dinner that back when he was first getting published in the late seventies, the typewritten manuscript was a form of natural selection.  Having never suffered a rejection himself, he believed that the willingness to re-type a 400-page manuscript four or five times separated the truly committed from the pretenders.  I think there’s a lot of truth in that.  Plus, there’s a great paper trail.
I don’t even keep previous drafts anymore.  As I make changes, I simply overwrite the master file.
When people talk about the romance of writing, I harken back to the days I never knew, when typesetters had to insert handwritten additions that were noted by carrots and chicken scratchings.  In my mind’s eye, that’s a far more organic process than merely typing in changes as you go.
So, Killzoners, what do you think?    Do you keep your original versions of stuff you write?  Do you secretly harbor dreams of future generations uncovering the way your mind works when you write?  Has the world of ones and zeroes made writing less . . . romantic?

Lesson From Gun Camp

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Last week, I wrote a teaser blog about some firearms training I was to receive while pulling duty as a VIP guest of 5.11 Tactical at the SHOT Show in Las Vegas.  First a few words about the SHOT Show: Holy Cow!  You have to see this thing to understand the size.  It takes up the ENTIRE Sands Convention Center, occupying all three floors.  Every conceivable manufacturer of any firearm is there, and while they cannot sell to individuals from the floor, you are perfectly welcome to handle any weapon you want, up to and including dry firing it.  (The Las Vegas Police Department checked every single one of the thousands of firearms there to verify that the firing pins had been removed.)  Never held an M4 or a Glock or a 1911?  You can play with them.  Ditto the Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifle, the M2 “Ma Deuce” .50 cal machine gun and a Dillon Gun.  It’s the mother of all gun research opportunities, and EVERYONE I spoke to was more than willing to chat about their products.  What I found most stunning was the number of firearms makers that I’d never heard of.
Last Thursday, I met Jeffery Deaver in the lobby of our hotel at 6:45 a.m.  We were driven a half hour out into the desert to a shooting range that looked like it covered twenty or thirty acres.  We were driven way to the back of the facility, where I realized for the first time that Jeff and I would be the only students for the entire day.
Our instructor was Steve Tarani.  Look him up.  Yeah, he’s qualified.  And he’s very, very funny, in that zero-bullshit kind of way.  After an extensive safety briefing, we were issued our .40 caliber Glocks, holsters and three mags of ammunition.  (A million thanks to Barry, who made sure that we always had a 12-round mag ready to go so that our pouches were never dry.)  Jeff drew a thigh rig holster, while my holster rode on my belt.  As an aside, the 5.11 Tactical pants we wore were specifically designed with an extra belt loop that keeps a belt holster from moving around.  I like that kind of attention to details.
For the next three hours, we shot hundreds of rounds of ammunition, first while standing still, but then while moving and turning.  Finally, we were shooting from the driver’s and passenger’s seats of an SUV (a late model Acura that did not belong to either student).  The day ended with a quick-draw contest and an NSR (non-standard response) drill that involves  shooting everything in the mag at short range, as quickly as possible while still hitting center of mass on the target.  As Steve made clear from the very beginning, this was a tactical shooting class, not a marksmanship class (although I did pretty well in that department, too.)
Lesson One: Tactical shooting is only a distant cousin of target shooting.  Until this lesson, my range training had consisted of picking a weapon up from a table, taking my time and concentrating on placing shots in the center ring.  I’d never drawn a pistol from a holster and just that much movement changes the game.  Throw in multiple points of impact on the target (we’d be instructed, for example, to put two in the chest, one in the pelvis and one in the forehead–not the jaw, though) and now you’ve got more to think about and more to do.  By the time you’re pivoting and turning and throwing open the car door while drawing your weapon without ever pointing it at your own leg or anywhere near your partner, it’s tough to get your rounds downrange to the target.  And very, very fun.
Lesson Two: My grip was AFU.  This one’s hard to describe without specific pictures, but my hands didn’t have enough contact with the gun.  I was also using an out-of-date and out-of-favor shooting stance called the Weaver Stance, in which my support side leg (my left, since I’m right-handed) was slightly forward.  I’ve never been entirely comfortable with that stance.  In my new Isosceles Stance (or “Tony Chin” stance), I square off at the bad guy with my toes, knees and chin touching the same vertical plane–Toe-Knee-Chin.  Tony Chin.  Get it?
Lesson Three: It’s disconcerting how much of one’s own body can become a target when drawing a weapon.  Think about your free hand, for example.  Given that one of Steve’s Four Golden Rules is that the muzzle never cover anything that you don’t want to completely destroy, that free support hand needs to be anchored somewhere when the pistol is coming out of the holster.  I learned to place it on my chest, where not only is it out of harm’s way, but it’s also ready to do its job in supporting the shooting hand.
Lesson Four: I was a “booger flipper,” Steve’s term for one who lets one’s finger off the trigger after every shot.  If you watch what that looks like, booger flipping really does come to mind.  I learned in the early part of the class to hold the trigger all the way to the back of the trigger guard after the first shot, and then let it up only to the reset click to prepare for the next shot.  It takes far less pull, and increases accuracy by a lot.  After a few hundred rounds, it was second nature.
Lesson Five: It’s stressful as hell to run out of ammo in the middle of a drill.  Running out when the target is shooting back must be really unnerving.  Steve taught us to drop the spent mag and slap in the new one while never taking our eyes off the target.  Truth be told, this was my hardest lesson to learn.  My thumbs are too short to reach the mag release without shifting my grip.  I sorta got the hang of it in the end, but it’s really hard not to look.  After a couple dozen tactical reloads in which we let the spent mags just drop to the ground, we even changed it up to replace a partially-spent mag with a full one, in which case we needed to put the old mag back into the pouch after reloading while still staying on the target.
Lesson Six:  If you own a gun, you really need to practice this stuff.  In just three hours–and about 200 bucks in ammo (Thank you again, 5.11 Tactical!)–so many of the tiny details became second nature.  Even the simple act of reholstering has its complex parts.  In Steve’s class, after the threat is cleared, you sweep left, sweep right, then return to low-ready before you put that support hand back on your chest to get it out of the way, and then slide the weapon back into the holster.  We did that every single time we reholstered, even if we hadn’t fired a shot, and by the end of the training, doing things otherwise would have just felt wrong.
As I write this, I realize how long the post is, and how few of the lessons learned I can actually document here.  My big take away was this: As a guy who’s always liked guns and has played with them a lot over the years, I in fact knew nothing.  Now, after this experience, I’m fully aware of the fact that I still know way too little, and that much of what I did learn will disappear from my muscle memory in just a day or two.  I need to find a range that will let me move and shoot.
The world is full of five-day classes on this stuff, and I’m seriously thinking about taking one.  How about a Killzone field trip for a week at Sleep-Away Gun Camp?  That could be fun.