John Ramsey Miller

A friend of mine recently said that like Westerns, Thriller plots and characters by totally different authors seem to be the same five pounds of words tossed through slightly different fans.

Okay, in Westerns there were only a handful of plots and they pretty much all fit into the Zane Gray/ Louis L’Amour formula. I read and love Westerns, and I always have. I like them because they take me back to a simpler time. The cussing was softer, the men were bad or good with the occasional shade of gray. You could see character arcs coming as soon as the characters were introduced. You know what to expect, like walking into a Burger King. I loved Appaloosa by Robert Parker, a new Western, but not really. The stories tend to be one of a few we’re all familiar with. A newly arrived stranger, a school teacher, a greedy cattle baron who assumes the teacher is going to marry him, and she is fooled into thinking he is a rich and a good guy and would have wed him except for the stranger gets to town who shows her what the baron is really like… Then there’s the trouble-hating stranger come to town (maybe from the Civil War) or to a ranch run by a beautiful woman who is being pushed off or who has a cattle baron wanting her land and perhaps even her hand in marriage… and the stranger is there to right a wrong because he made a battlefield promise to the woman’s dying husband (or her son) to do it… and although he has sworn not to use a gun never ever never again he has to use the dreaded gun once again to put the baron into the barren soil. Then there’s the bad guy (think army soldier sent to kill Indians) who through some sort of life-altering spiritual interaction with the not at all savage savages, just misunderstood, savages becomes a friend of the tribe, who are pure souls and helps fight the evil other just like he once was. That, with a few variations, about covers it. All that’s left are the obligatory shootouts, dialog, knife fights, innocent kisses, rescuing someone who is vulnerable from a terrible and hopeless situation… You all know the stories, and I never get tired of them. Louis and Zane are the undisputed masters of that genre.

Not only are there formulas to every genre, but publishers and editors are loathe to allow an author to stray very far from the formula of his or her genre. And even if the editor agrees, the marketing/sales department usually casts the deciding vote. Editors edit errant manuscripts back into the fold with strokes from a red pen. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, if an editor buys a thriller, the publisher expects a thriller to appear on the shelves, so… I’ve always been told, and I know this from my personal experience, that readers expect an author to give them a consistent series of offerings. They don’t want a Thriller followed by a Mystery, or anything too far off the track of what they’ve read from that author. I have fans that loved Winter Massey and have read the non-Massey books but I know they didn’t enjoy them as much.

File under “Nothing new under the sun.” According to George Ploti there are only 36 dramatic situations possible in the human condition. I have owned that book (a 1st Edition) since the early 1980s, and they are all in there. I suggest every serious author read through it as it is great reference and perhaps a creative stimulus. It’s a very short book and I think it’s still in print. I’ll save you a search and perhaps the cost of the book. The 36 Dramatic Situations are outlined there and it’s certainly worth checking out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thirty-Six_Dramatic_Situations

Okay, any thriller will have at least a loose adherence to the formula, but it’s the differences that separate forgettable Thrillers from the memorable. It’s the uniqueness of characters, how intriguing the story is, the surprises, and hopefully the reader will be trying to second guess the author––hopefully without too much success. A home run is a reader who “knows” they have it figured out, and the author sets off a bomb of a jerked rug. The truth is the novel genre formulas we writers adhere to are in place not merely because publishers demand it, but more because the readers who buy the books find familiarity comforting in an unsure world. You’re not likely to change the formulas, but if you aren’t comfortable with the formula for a say a Thriller, you can always change to a Mystery, Romance, or maybe even a Western.

By John Gilstrap
www.johngilstrap.com

Today’s Killzone entry is born directly of Michelle’s excellent post from yesterday, in which she shared an article by Declan Burke. In his essay, this very talented writer declares that he can no longer afford to be a writer. He cites the opportunity cost of the hours redirected from the freelancing that pays his bills, and the emotional burden of time away from his family.

Man, I have so been there. Back in 1993, I was a division manager for a behemoth company in the hazardous waste business. It was a time of transition in the hazwaste industry, and after a solid five-year run, I took a hard look at the tea leaves and decided that the company had no choice but to dissolve my division. It wasn’t that we didn’t provide valuable service; rather, there was so much tumult within the organization that none of my rotating bosses had the inclination to pay me a lot of attention.

The details are too complicated for this space, but I realized that their inability to see the value of my group presented a unique opportunity. I hocked everything I owned (and then some) and bought my division away from the behemoth and started a new company, Compliance Services, Inc. It was a sweet deal. And I was terrified. When I say hocked everything, I mean everything. The house, the savings, the kid’s education money . . . everything. If I failed, I didn’t just fail for me, I failed for my entire family.

Failure was not an option. My job became my life, 24/7, and the company thrived.

The bet paid off. Except it never was a bet. A bet implies chance. Obviously, serendipity plays a role in everything, but before launching Compliance Services, I knew exactly what was at stake. I had a business plan. I understood the services I was providing, and I understood the market that purchased them. I knew how much revenue I needed to bring in every month to make payroll, service the debt and pay the bills, and I knew that every dollar beyond that number was mine to keep or reinvest. Truth be told, there weren’t a lot of those extra dollars, but we stayed afloat and comfortable.

I wonder how many writers—themselves by definition business owners—have business plans in place. I’m not talking recreational writers here, the ones who plink at their keyboards the way a duffer swings a club on the weekends; I’m talking about people who depend on their writing for the baby’s shoes and education. Do they know their break-even points and their overhead rates? Do they continuously study the marketplace and strive to serve it?

Do they have a contingency plan in place for the lean seasons? Do they even have a goal?

In business, goals are important. Without them, “success” is indefinable. So, what is your goal? Seriously. If it’s merely to be published, then success is only a Kinko’s away. If it’s to be #1 on the NYT Bestseller List (that’s mine, by the way), then a longer view is in order, and it might be worthwhile to have interim goals. Perhaps being the lead title for your slot at your publisher is a place to start. Maybe it’s just finishing the work in progress. Whatever it is, state it affirmatively.

Having a goal is only the beginning. The next step is to communicate the goal to others. My agent and editor both know where I want to go with my career, and that knowledge helps them shape a thousand different decisions. Being number one on the Times List means writing a Big Book. High concept. My team help me keep my eye on the prize that I’ve laid out for myself. We all know that it probably won’t happen with the next book, or maybe even the next three or six, but we’ve marked intermediate territory to keep us on track.

That brings us to the plan. How are my team and I going to get me to where I want to be? These are the details in which the devil lies and this is where information becomes confidential. Like all businesses, ours is a competitive one, and the microelements of strategy are, I believe, best played close to the vest. Suffice it to say that it’s in constant adjustment.

Finally, there’s the disaster plan. What happens if the bottom falls out of everything? What happens if my plans prove to be misguided? How do I recover? How do I hedge in the good times against the possibility of bad times? For me, the day job helps a lot. The financial cushion and slate of benefits is always welcome—especially now that I’ve crossed the half-century mark—but as I’ve written here before, I enjoy the daily intellectual distraction from things fictional.

Life deals unequal cards. Sometimes the royal flush is followed ten straight hands of garbage. You get knocked off your path, or the path itself becomes a tangle of weeds. These are the times when your goals feel most threatened, when achievement seems too daunting. I think that Declan Burke was in such a place when he wrote his essay. If so, my heart goes out to him.

I just hope he doesn’t give up. Regroup, yes. Change what he writes? Maybe. Who knows? Who am I to say?

I think that our most defining moments occur when our goals seem most threatened. I pray that I’ll always have the stamina to blaze whatever trails I need to keep the goals in sight. I worry that surrender would kill me.

John Ramsey Miller

Hold your ire, girls, I was just trying to get your attention. We can talk, now that the men have by now nodded and gone on to read something else. Here’s the thing, I don’t know why so few women win EDGAR and THRILLER Awards for mysteries and thrillers. I know Sisters In Crime are up at arms over the new PW list of top Ten Books or some such crap. When was the last time Sisters In Crime gave an award to a male-written novel? I used to belong to Sisters In Crime, and I paid dues faithfully, and was totally ignored by them. But I’m not upset. If PW had posted a top ten list with no male authors I would not have thought twice about it. But I get that I’m not part of the minority of authors.

Recently I helped judge the EDGARS, and when there were no females on the top five a woman judge (who has since passed away) told me, “I tried to find a book that was written by a female that I thought belonged in the top five and it just wasn’t in my stack.” She paused and added, “Well, we’ll catch hell from the usual suspects––none of whom have ever written a book worth seeing in the top 200––but remember, it’s not what’s between the legs that makes a great book, only what’s between the covers.” I stand behind our choices, and two of five of us were women authors, and we all agreed that the top five were indeed the top of our choices.

Some of my very favorite authors are women. I recently read Carla Buckley’s THE THINGS THAT KEEP US HERE, and it is one of my all time favorite books and it’s out in February. I could name twenty female authors who are every bit as talented as the top twenty male authors.

Do I think female authors are discriminated against by list judges? I hope we’re beyond that. I suggested that judges should be given novels in text format (I suggested downloaded to a reader like Kindle) with no cover art nor the name of the author so all submissions (once they were deemed to be valid entries ) to make it a fairer process. Invariably some judges would recognize some authors’ continuing characters. I do believe it’s hard not to give high grades to authors you are more familiar with, and have enjoyed reading more than others. Plus, if you dislike an author personally, it’s got to be hard to enjoy their work. Judges are merely human, after all.

I thought it was unfair (with the Edgars) to judge Cozies, Mysteries, and Thrillers side by side. This will never change because––as I was told––Cozy authors would take offense at being judged separately. Well, it isn’t politically correct to point out obvious differences in anything these days, but I think if there was a prize for Best Cozy as opposed to Best Non-Cozy, the cozy authors who won an Edgar would not complain. I was told that Cozy authors had their own awards (The Agatha) and I felt my concerns were dismissed. How can the same judge enjoy MC Beaton on the same level as Sandra Brown or Patricia Cornwell? How does having a kitten batting yarn on the cover compete with a bloody knife piercing a purse or one with a hard-boiled detective leaned against a street lamp? That’s just judging apples and marbles. Some of this is never discussed where it would count because everybody is so afraid of being seen as bigoted or discriminating or maybe honest. Try having any opinion that is not in the PC mainstream. I thought twice about writing on this subject, but then I decided, “what the hell do I have lo lose?”

So at the risk of being attacked, I will say that I believe some women have “genetic” or “gender roles imposed by society and therefore learned” strengths in writing that men lack, and that the reverse is also true where men are concerned. I see a deeper understanding of both male and female characters in novels written by female authors. I think in general that men write action and especially violence more convincingly than females for obvious reasons, but that said, some women can write both head-to-head with any male author.

So do I believe female authors being conspired against by the good-old-boy network? I won’t say it isn’t the case, but I’ve not seen it first hand. In fact I’ve seen just the opposite from the judges I’ve dealt with. I think judges go out of their way to be fair to every author. Can I explain why so many of the nomination lists are dominated by male authors? No, I can’t. Is it that the action/thriller/hard-boiled genre has been dominated historically by male authors due to life interest or our societal pressures and influences? Maybe that makes some kind of sense.

Do you think that until there are categories for “Best Novel Written By A Man,” and “Best Novel Written By A Woman,” there will never be a level playing field? But if “they” did so categorize authors’ works would there be a storm of protesters saying that the judges, in recognizing the separation, were saying that one group was superior, since pointing out any difference might bring forth the evils of comparison? Either we are all equal or we aren’t, right? Seems to me the playing field being level is in the eye of the beholder, and the winning team rarely complains about it.

This is quite the mine field, isn’t it? So does anybody else want to touch this one with a ten-foot pole?

By John Gilstrap
www.johngilstrap.com

Before I begin, allow me a moment of Shameless Self Promotion: The Copper Bracelet—the serial novel created by International Thriller Writers (and to which I contributed a chapter) is the #1 Bestseller at www.audible.com. Hooray!

The Killzone posts have been extraordinary this week, I think. Had I not been up to my eyeballs in day-job meetings and crises, I would have been commenting like crazy. Alas, I was unable to do so. On the positive side, I happen to have my very own posting day, and I thought I’d continue the theme (sort of) by discussing lessons I’ve learned from the perspective of what I would change about my own journey if granted the opportunity.

I’ve been way more fortunate than most in my writing career. My first published novel, Nathan’s Run, was anointed a Big Book by the publishing industry. The book was reviewed everywhere—mostly positively (starred reviews in PW, Kirkus and Library Journal)—and the sale itself generated the kind of buzz that brought a swarm of movie producers to fight over the film rights. It was very heady stuff at the time, yet because it was my first book, I had no idea how unique my experience was.

It was a little like showing up to the World Series as a spectator and leaving as MVP. Nothing—nothing—prepares you for that overnight success. I don’t regret a moment of it, but looking back on that experience versus where I am now in the pantheon of writers, there are a few things I would do differently if I could climb into my Way-Back machine and fine-tune the past.

In no particular order . . .

I would insist on a multi-book deal. I was in the driver’s seat in those days, and my agent at the time pressed hard for a one-book deal (hardcover only) with HarperCollins, and we auctioned off the paperback rights separately to Warner Books. I agreed, of course, because I didn’t know any better, but in retrospect, that was a mistake. It’s a strategy that is designed to squeeze the most money out of a publisher, but at the expense of any sense of loyalty. Everybody worked hard for my book to make money, but only I had a vested interest in my career.

Worse than that, I effectively had no editorial feedback as I wrote At All Costs as a spec project. It was like writing a first novel all over again, albeit with a pocketful of affirmation. Ultimately, the book sold to Warner Books and did reasonably well, but that was another one-book deal. After a dispute arose by no fault of my own regarding the movie rights for that book (and I beg those few who know the details not to share them in this forum), Warner chose not to publish me anymore.

So there I was, writing my third book on spec, without editorial help. Folks, that’s an exhausting way to advance a career. I pushed back against my agent, insisting on a multibook deal. (By way of full disclosure, I was orphaned midway through Even Steven and had two editors during Scott Free, so the multibook scenario is not without its own set of problems and risks.) When all was said and done, that agent and I parted company on good terms, in favor of my current agent, our own occasional contributor Anne Hawkins.

I would not trust the marketing and publicity departments. After the rock-star treatment I enjoyed during Nathan’s Run’s publishing cycle, I foolishly assumed that such was the rule for all books. I would write the novels, and the publisher would promote them. Wow, was that not true. By the time I caught on, way too many horses had already fled the barn.

I would network more and make myself shamelessly visible. Hey, I’m a party animal. I like people. I knew nothing about the writers conference circuit until after Nathan’s Run had been on the shelves for months. Thank you Harlan Coben to cluing me in. Long-timer Internet surfers will likely remember the heyday of AOL, back when you paid by the hour for access. During those days, AOL hosted the Writer’s Club, where hundreds of writers of all levels of success would gather and chat. (That’s where I first met John Ramsey Miller, in fact.) During one of those chats, Harlan told me about this thing called Bouchercon, and of all the other themed conferences. Who knew?

I hit the circuit pretty hard for At All Costs, but not so much for the succeeding two. By the time Six Minutes to Freedom came out—my nonfiction book—I figured that with the real star of the book still alive and on the speaker’s circuit, no one would be all that interested in hearing from the author. That was a mistake. I allowed myself to disappear from my fan base, and to lose touch with far too many friends. Never again.

As I write this blog entry, I realize that this is a topic that could ramble for thousands of words, so I’ll let it go here. What about you folks? Any hard-learned lessons that haven’t already been shared this week?

John Ramsey Miller

You know how “old” guys are always giving advice, usually unasked for and often as not unwanted. I find myself doing that these days. In the fifteen years since I began writing fiction, I’ve picked up a lot of knowledge, mostly by stumping my toe on obstacles that I didn’t know were in my path until I tripped over them. I wish I had known then what I know now. You get published and you learn this one way or the other, or you don’t…

Here goes…

The first advice I would give soon-to-be, or newly published authors would be:

1) No matter how much your publisher loves your first book, they won’t tell you that they’d better love your second book even more, and then your third, and so on and so forth.

2) No matter how many critics love your first book or rave about how amazingly talented you are, don’t let it go to your head. Next week they’ll use pretty much the same words to describe another author. So, take a bow and go right back to work. More often that not, the worst thing that can happen to a new author is to have a first book really do well, or to get an award on their first book. Chasing an initial success is a lot harder for most people than building success one book at a time over time.

3) You are responsible for your career. Don’t depend on the publisher’s promotions department unless your book is looking like it will be a big seller. Publishers tend to put their promotion and advertising money where the return is most promising. This is true with most businesses, so don’t take it personally.

4) Don’t lose sight of the fact that your publisher is a corporation and as such is pretty much only interested in the bottom line. Corporations hate to lose money because their bankers and shareholders don’t like it.

5) Keep things in perspective. Remember that your book is one in thousands that are printed every year and every author is competing for the limited space in bookstores.

6) You are seldom as well known as you imagine you are. It becomes your job to reverse this by getting your name and the name of your book out there. Remember that memories are short and growing shorter all the time.

7) Listen to your editor and remember that he or she probably knows more than you do about the shape your book ought to be in and how you can best get it there. When you think you know more than your editor, you are more than likely wrong, or you should set about finding one you think knows more than you do. The first thing authors with bloated egos usually do is ignore their editor’s advice because they know their work and audience better than anybody. It’s possible, but unlikely. Maybe most editors can’t write a book, but they are usually in their position because they know when your piano is out of tune and how to get it in pitch.

8) Always assume an advance is all the money you’ll get from the publisher until you sell another book. And you should pay the taxman as you go.

9) Get to work on the next one immediately.

10) Don’t take your positive or negative reviews too seriously, especially Amazon reviews. It’s all very subjective, and negative people, wing-nuts, and haters (especially failed writers) seem to love slapping published writers around. On balance, it’s also a place where an author’s family, friends and supporters post their applause.

Okay, authors, any advice for new authors you wish you’d had the benefit of, or paid attention to?

By John Gilstrap
www.johngilstrap.com

This year’s Bouchercon in Indianapolis was a terrific event. It was extremely well organized, and I had the opportunity to participate on a terrific panel. Then I blew it. I missed my own book signing. How humiliating is that?

For as long as there have been conferences, signings have always followed panel appearances. I know this–I’m not a rookie, after all–but at Bouchercon, I forgot. In my own defense, my panel was in the last slot of the day, just hours after I had arrived in town. Apparently I had a lot on my mind. I dunno, maybe I’m just grasping at straws to make the simple reality of a brain fart more complicated than it really was. In any case, I forgot.

It wasn’t till much later that evening, well after dinner, that a colleague approached me in the bar and asked why I had blown off my signing. “What signing?” I asked. Then, as soon as the words left my mouth, I got it. The signing that always follows a panel at Bouchercon. Damn.

I did my best to make amends the next day by visiting each of the booksellers the next morning and offering my apologies. I signed their stock, and begged them to spread the word to anyone who asked that I was terribly sorry for any inconvenience or disappointment I caused. I truly am sorry. Beyond that, I’m more than a little embarrassed.

A couple of days ago, I got a blistering email from a (former) fan who tore into me for having so little regard for my readers–the people who make or break my success. God love her, she had waited for me in the signing room, and when I didn’t show, she was naturally put out. I get that, and I have reached out to her to make amends.

That email, though, raises an interesting point, I think: The fragility and intensity of the relationship an author creates with his or her readers. By offering our imaginations for scrutiny, we touch people, whether for good or ill. We invite them into our brains, if not a little bit into our lives. It’s important to take that seriously.

And I bet you a hundred bucks that I’ll never again forget that there’s always a signing after a panel at Bouchercon.

John Ramsey Miller

Recently I listened to, “Breaking Through The Wall Of Sound,” an audiobook about Phil Spector, and it was a very sad listen. I’m sure most people are familiar with Spector, if not for his unprecedented unbroken string of number one hits in the fifties that lasted through the eighties, then because he was convicted of murdering actress Lana Clarkson.

Spector produced 25 top 40 hits: “To Know Him Is To Love Him, The Beatles White Album, Lennon, George Harrison’s “All Things Must Pass” album, A Concert for Bangladesh, The Ramones, the number one played song in history – “You’ve Lost That Loving feeling” and “Unchained Melody” by the Righteous Brothers, and many, many more. There is no doubt that Spector was brilliant at what he did with recordings and sound, but he was, as best I can tell, a miserable human being. Now he’s in prison for between nineteen years and life, and since he’ll be 88 at his earliest parole date, he’s likely to die in there. Once the small man who wore four-inch heels and wigs was much larger than life, but by the end he was just lonely, pathetic, an alcoholic and a convicted murderer.

The book is a cautionary tale about success, fame, insecurity, and behaving badly because you have money and influence. But it’s more than that. No matter how good you are at what you do, you have a window in which to operate and when it closes, you move aside, or you are moved aside by talented comers. In his later years Spector did practically nothing because he was professionally frozen by the fear of producing a flop. He made a record with Celine Dion that he wouldn’t release to her label, Sony, and that he couldn’t release independently because she owns her vocals. He didn’t care. He was rich and had never failed, and by not trying he couldn’t fail.

There’s nothing like being at the top of your game in the eyes of the world, but the world is always changing and looking for the next thing. Nobody gets to stick the world in place. It’s true in music and just as true in any profession. The up and comers produce the new work that the world turns to next. The young lions wait for the old lions teeth to dull and for them to grow lazy and then they move in. It’s the way of the world, and the way it should be.

In writing, success is all about the work, not so much the author. A lot of authors believe it’s about them, but I suspect most readers aren’t all that impressed with the lives of any of today’s authors the way they once were. I remember when authors were larger than their books. Once it was Hemmingway being a man’s man with deep-sea fishing, big-game hunting, bull fighting, hanging out around wars. There was the suave F. Scott Fitzgerald being a woman’s man and social butterfly whose exploits were legend, and Bill Faulkner who won the Nobel Prize for Literature and was hanging out with the Snopes in Mississippi and the Bennett Serfs in New York and drinking to excess in whatever place he found himself in. I’m talking about men who were bigger than their books. I’ve been sitting around trying to think of today’s equivalent examples. I draw a blank after Mailer and I know there are some of us worth a mention. Any ideas on authors who are larger than life in the world of literature?

John Ramsey Miller

Writing a blog is sort of like having a weekly column in a newspaper. In fact that’s what it is, only without the publisher paying you for it, or having newspaper for priming your fires after you’ve read it. Don’t get me wrong, I get a kick out of it or I wouldn’t do it. The blogs here are mostly about writing thrillers, defining our craft, and I try to blog about my writing process, the rules, what I’ve learned and the shortcuts to being published and becoming best sellers, which all published authors are sworn not to share with laboring inspirons. Often I blog here about what I do when I’m not writing, which is sometimes the better part of a day. I know it can make dull reading, but when I judge contests for ITW or MWA awards I always have to read the bad as well as the good.

Let’s be honest here. At this point I have served up everything I know about writing that came to mind in some form since I began writing this blog. Here’s what I have to write about:

A) Writing process, technique, style, character, story, plot, re-writing, setting mood, place as character, dialog, promotion, working with editors, etc…

B) Growing older. I just turned 60 last week, but I feel a robust fifty-seven. My hair is turning gray, I’m more easily winded than I used to be, and my eyesight is no longer eagleish. I am also more cynical, have a lower threshold for annoying things and boorish people, am more interested in making my time and effort count, spending more time with my grandchildren, and my animals, whom very likely could all care less.

(C) For more blog subjects, I have my wife, my three children, their spouses and six grandchildren, three dogs, 75 chickens, close friends & casual acquaintances, problems we all have, and problems only I could have, and hunting and stalking game a few times a year to get wild organic meat for our table so we can stay healthy and trim.

Life is filled with great moments. Sunday our youngest grand baby kept spitting out her pacifier, and her four-year-old cousin kept putting it back in the baby’s mouth. After repeating this five or six times, the four-year old looked at me exasperated and said, “It won’t stay in her mouth because she doesn’t have any teeth. I don’t know why she didn’t get any.” Life is filled with moments like that if you just slow down and take the time to open your eyes and ears.

After so many years on the planet, I have learned a few things, and it has never been more apparent that I have a lot more to learn. I know that things you don’t need, but merely want because they call to your ego, are not important and you will probably be happier without the added complication. I’ve also discovered that nobody with an ego wants to hear it. I never did when people told me the same thing.

I am a far better writer now than I ever have been before because I’ve learned as I have written along over the years, and as I have read more good (and bad) books. I have experienced more, and I’ve figured out more of what makes people tick and know better how to get that on paper.

The only thing I’ll say, is that getting older is great experience if you just pay attention as you do it. So, are any of you getting older too?

By John Gilstrap
www.johngilstrap.com

This post is a little late because it is not the one I had intended to put up today. That one was already written, but then I experienced something yesterday that I thought would make a way better topic: Political Discourse. You know, something light and nonconfrontational.

I’m at Bouchercon this weekend, one of my favorite events. I like the conference environment. Lots of smart, talented people hanging out with each other, discussing smart topics in intelligent ways. Writing is by definition about ideas, right? It’s about expressing ideas and tolerating the opposing views of others. Until, it turns out, the topic wanders toward politics.

I dined last night with a new group of friends. There were ten of us, and the evening was a lot of fun. Toward the end, one member of the party (I swear it was not I) started saying, a propos of nothing, ugly things about people who occupy the right end of the political spectrum. The presumption was that every thinking person would agree. As one whose politics run maybe ten degrees to the right of center, which put me at least ninety degrees to the right of the group, I saw trouble on the horizon, so I found an excuse to announce that I was more conservative than liberal, and the I thought the current administration could be in real trouble if some important things didn’t start turning in their favor.

Two things happened instantly. One, the sense of disgust that someone of my ilk would be breaking bread with them was palpable (not from all, but from more than one); and two, it was announced that it’s time to stop talking about politics. I tried to point out that my intent was not to shut conversation down, but rather to talk about the strategies that will be necessary for the Democrats not to take a significant shelacking in the mid-term elections. Voices were never raised, and no one got ugly. I was trying to trigger the kind of discussion I frequently have with my colleagues in Washington, where politics is every bit the spectator sport that football is (and given the performance of the Redskins this year, a way more enjoyable one).

Nope, no politics.

Okay, fine. I was good with that. We moved on to other stuff, the check came and we went off on our own. No harm, no foul.

But then I started thinking. Is it possible that the current polarized, scorched-earth nature of politics these days is directly attributable to non-discussions like the one last night? The overarching message there was that political discussion is only unacceptable if there’s an opposing point of view. Firing broadsides against an ideology or against a large group of people is fine so long as the other group is not present to defend their point of view. It’s the Rush Limbaugh theory of discourse, and I think it’s doing great harm in this country.

As mentioned above, Washington is an epicenter of intelligent political discussion. I explore issues all the time with colleagues who are on the other side of what I believe, and through rational (sometimes passionate) discussion, opinions really can be influenced. Certainly, stereotypes can be dismantled.

It’s no secret that the current administration’s politics don’t agree with mine, but the fact that people I admire are huge fans gives me solace, born of the knowledge that the opinions on the other side are well-reasoned; something I wouldn’t understand if we hadn’t discussed the issues. If groups of us don’t start having these discussions, if we don’t start discussing issues intelligently, and airing differences, how will we ever undo the polarization?

If we don’t invite opinions from the other side–or worse yet, if we reduce the other side to ugly stereotypes–how can we ever grow, either as individuals or as a nation?