Book #2 of my Jonathan Grave series, Hostage Zero, (July, 2010) is done at last. The bad news is, I blew my deadline by a few weeks; the good news is, I like the story, and it think it advances the characters well. I hope that means it was worth the wait. (Knocking wood and all that.)

I’ve spent many hourse this week revising and trimming in preparation for final submission (trimmed 20,000 words with half my keyboard tied behind my back). I’m sure there’s more trimming to come as we put the final coats of polish on. In doing the rewrites, though, I was shocked by my use of adverbs. My key offenders were, actually, really, nearly, clearly, apparently, exactly and quickly. Not that there weren’s a bunch more, but many, did I hammer the hell out of those. I cut every one that I encountered, though I’m sure a few sneaked by.

Another word that invaded my writing like kudzu is “just”. (Just about, just lazy,just wondering . . .) It’s a word that accomplishes nothing. The adverbs accomplish nothing. Their like parasites on prose, and what I found most stunning is the fact that I know better. I teach creative writing classes from time to time; I consider myself to be a journeyman writer. How come I’m still making rookie mistakes?

I hope it’s because we all make rookie mistakes in the initial drafts, and that professionalism is defined by a writer’s ability to recognize the weaknesses and errors before it’s too late, and the book is inflicted upon the world. It’s not a definition of professionalism that would work for, say, brain surgeons, but for us scribes I’ll take it.

My editor noted in her notes for No Mercy that I was obsessed with arching eyebrows. All the characters did it, and I was oblivious. Taking her remarks to heart, I tamed most of the eyebrows in that book, and pretty much kept them at bay in Hostage Zero. It seems, however, that you can’t tame one writing reflex without tickling another. It’s frustrating.

Am I alone here? Do you find yourself locking onto a repetitive writing gremlin from time to time? Are you likewise plagued by adverb invasions? Come on and share your own prose parasites.

John Ramsey Miller

Sixty years ago today I was born in Greenville, Mississippi at Kings Daughters Hospital. I’ve enjoyed every single day since, and look forward to the next decades and making new friends, appreciating the ones I have, and finding new challenges. Next week, for instance, as part of celebrating my 60th I am going to walk rolling plains and attempt to stalk and kill a Bison that is roughly the size of a Dodge Ram and do it with a handgun. If the Buffalo wins, you can bet I was thrown into the next county with a smile on my face. Well, maybe not a smile.

I often think about how lucky I have been. A perfect wife, a wonderful family, great friends, few enemies, great careers that enveloped me, the lessons I’ve learned, the events I’ve participated in, the people I’ve shared experiences (both good and bad) with.

This is about all I can think of to say.

By John Ramsey Miller

No matter how subtly, we authors we can’t help but bring ourselves, or world view, our personalities, our loves and biases into our work, and open ourselves up to our readers. If someone criticizes our work, they might as well slap one of our children. But we wince, wonder what the hell’s wrong with the critic, and go on to do it one more time. It’s as much “write what you are” as what you know. You can learn subjects, research facts, imagine yourself into a scene, but as you write––just like trace evidence––you put some of yourself on the page.

Someone said to me recently that hunting was obsolete because of the availability of grocery stores. I bring this love of hunting and gathering by age-old means, rather than by gathering money so I can pay others to hunt and gather for me. The killing I, and most other hunters do, is humane. I take animals where they live, and up until they are felled as if by a bolt of lightning, they are content living a life they were designed to live. Game animals are not raised in pens, fed by machines or paid workers, and driven into slaughter rooms that reek of bleach. I don’t have to justify my gathering to anybody except myself. But it comes through in my writing. I do not enjoy killing, and I understand how it feels to do so. I write that into my characters and I like to think that the difference between doing and researching is there on the page. We can imagine what something is like, but unless we’ve been there, we can only go by what those who have been through it tell us, or what we can imagine. Some things we can’t do, and those we will have to imagine. Other things we will write more accurately or with feeling than can those who have never experienced that thing. Me, I’ll never write about having a baby from a mother’s perspective the way a mother can, but I can write what being the father who’s watching a birth is seeing and feeling. As I write that I will be drawing on what I saw and felt so I would infuse the story with a shot of me. There’s really no way around it.

When we write a scene, we put ourselves in it, and, no matter what we have the characters do, we’re consciously (or unconsciously) writing what we would or wouldn’t do, think, or feel. If we are identifying personally with the character, we do one thing, if not we do another, perhaps the opposite, and maybe what we wish we could do in the same situation, but couldn’t.

Most of the authors I know who write violence, are not at all violent people themselves. Jeffery Deaver is one of the most gentle men I know, but nobody writes pure evil like Jeffery. I think he writes it so well because it is the precise opposite of what he is, and therefore easy to imagine.

I may be wrong, but I don’t think a sociopath writes sociopaths as effectively because they don’t see or admit what they are to themselves, and they don’t feel empathy, so they can’t really write it convincingly. Of all of the writings of psychopaths that I’ve read, it was all about the acts of violence and the characters are cardboard, just moving around performing some heinous act in one dimension. Perhaps I’m not explaining it well, but if you read the fictional fantasies of psychopaths, you’ll see a definite lack of engagement, or understanding character. It shows a lack of self-reflection, just self-gratification and delusion. There’s nothing scientific about this, just my impression. Perhaps psychos can write in great emotional depth. So how many psychopathic authors do you know? I can think of several.

By Johngilstrap
http://www.johngilstrap.com/

My bachelor’s degree comes from the College of William and Mary in Virginia. As most graduates from prestigious schools, I am capable of being an academic snob when the occasion arises. It happens far less frequently now that I’ve become a gentleman of a certain age, but back in the day, my loyalty to the alma mater was pretty fierce.

In the late ’70s, when I was in college, Virginia Tech (then known as VPI-Virginia Polytechnic Institute) had nothing of the reputation that it enjoys today. It was every good student’s “safety school,” the one you knew you could get into if W&M and UVA let you down. In the good spirit of interschool rivalry, I held it in low esteem. Thus, as a young safety engineer investigating an explosion at the explosives processing plant where I worked, I made multiple references to “Techie engineering” as the primary cause of the accident. It was my throw-away phrase to describe anything that was well-meaning yet substandard.

Remember that I was all of 28 years old at the time. Many minutes into my presentation to the seniormost members of management, after I had committed to this good-humored course of bashing my academic rival, Paul Lumbye, the vice president of all things that paid my salary, raised his hand and said, “John, I think it’s appropriate for me to tell you that I am a graduate of VPI.” Something seized inside my gut. Then he went on to point to a good thirty percent of my senior-executive audience, all of whom were likewise graduates of Virginia Polytechnic Institute, and at least twice my age.

When Paul-the-VP was done, the room was silent, and I found myself facing a dozen smug smiles, all of them rejoicing that I had been so thoroughly put in my place. It was my moment to cower and apologize.

Alternatively, it was my moment to show the true depth of my loyalty. With all those eyes staring, I made a point to look Paul in the eye when I asked, “Does this mean I need to start over again and use smaller words?”

To this day, I look at that comment as a pivotal moment in my professional career. I learned that all reasonable people appreciate a great line well-delivered. I wish I could say that I continue to be that glib and fleet of tongue, but forever and ever, I will know that at least once, I delivered a killer rebuttal. It’s a great feeling.

Which brings me to the actual point of this week’s blog entry: great lines. More specifically, great movie lines—the ones that perfectly capture the emotion of the scene and stick with you long into the future.

A few that come to my mind:

“Fill your hands you son-of-a-bitch!” – Rooster Cogburn, True Grit.

“I won’t be wronged, I won’t be insulted and I won’t be laid a hand on. I don’t do those things to other people and I require the same of them.” — J.B. Books, The Shootist

“Are you going to do something, or just stand there and bleed?” — Wyatt Earp, Tombstone

“Dyin’ ain’t much of a livin’, boy.” – Josie Wales, The Outlaw Josie Wales

“I’m thirty years older than you are. I had my back broke once, and my hip twice. And on my worst day I could beat the hell out of you.” – Wil Andersen, The Cowboys

“The Germans wore gray, you wore blue.” – Rick, Casablanca

“You’re gonna need a bigger boat.” Chief Brody, Jaws

Each of these lines, at the moment they were delivered, slyed their respective audiences. Certainly, they slayed me. What about you? What are your favorite lines from the real world or the world of fiction? C’mon. You know you have one. Or five. Share.

John Ramsey Miller

I am happy for Dan Brown, I’m happy for his publisher, Random House, and I’m happy for his broker. I think he deserves his success, even if I do not fully understand it. None of us knows what readers will hit on, but I do know that chasing a wildly successful book by taking the elements you feel are what struck the chord with the audience is usually a waste of good keystrokes. I don’t think most people can write what they don’t feel and hit home runs with an audience. You know what sells? Entertainment. I can break that down. Readers want to feel good, to know their dreams can be realized, that they can escape reality by getting involved, that good kicks evil’s wide ass, and that hope exists despite a great deal of evidence to the contrary.

Look at the how the lowly Vampire of a few years ago has suddenly been lifted to the heavens. We have vampires drinking synthetic blood, walking about in the daytime, flying like superman, fangs that open like switchblades, feeling emotions, being all sensitive, falling in love, and next we’ll have them procreating like the living, roasting garlic to sprinkle on their popcorn, and ordering scotch and Holy water on the rocks. And now werewolves, ghouls, witches, ghosts, zombies, voodoo priests, magical beasts of every description, are all lining up in the wings waiting their turn to elbow their way into the middle of the stream. Because readers want to feel fear from the safety of their armchairs, and triumph over it without breaking a sweat. They want to believe that there are things they don’t see in their own lives. They (we) want to imagine they can live forever, only if it’s just at night, and they want to believe in monsters, but want even their worst monsters to have a smidgen of goodness buried in there somewhere. And most people believe that animals in jeopardy are more important than people in the same fix. Seriously you can have a monster kill a child that toddles too close, but one that kills curious cats or protective dogs is beyond redemption.

Successful authors gravitate toward subjects, characters, and stories that attract them. I suppose I could write a convincing vampire novel, if I were interested in vampires it might even be interesting, but I’d rather write about gangsters. I’d love to write about the wild West. I’d like to back off to a time when there were no cell phones, few if any telephones, no TV sets and maybe just a radio here and there and newspapers instead of CNN.

The thing about Dan Brown is that his work isn’t a fluke. About anytime a writer is successful, critics pick at his style, impugn his accuracy, and generally rain poo-poo on his ability. Dan Brown is into his story, cares about his characters, and likes slaying giants. Brown is a great writer, and his financial rewards are well deserved because it is a gift to Mr. Brown for what he is offering them in exchange. Maybe Dan Brown won’t win an Edgar, or the ITW for best novel, or any other rewards his contemporaries can bestow. Like so many great commercially successful artists jealousy keeps those prizes away. But authors like Dan Brown, Tom Clancy, JK Rowling, John Grisham, James Patterson, Stephen King, Stephanie Meyer, and Dan Brown, the people are voting, and they are voting yes, yes, yes. When millions of people think you are a great writer, the Nobel, Pulitzer committee, and the critics are irrelevant and should be. Would you rather have a line of awards on your bookshelves, or some producer from the Today show begging you for the fifteenth time to make an appearance, or a Gulfstream V taking you and your family to Europe so you can watch your book being filmed. For most authors I know, it isn’t even close. Of course, all of the above would be heaven.

John Ramsey Miller

This week I was reading about a famous photographer with serious financial problems and I was thinking about how her dilemma is really nobody’s business but hers and the people she owes the money to. She collateralized a loan with the copyrights of every photograph she’s ever taken or will take. Other than the fact that it’s a cautionary tale of reversal, it’s just another story about someone who got in over their head. Why do we thrive on other people’s problems and especially their failures? There’s a German word for it that I can never remember how to spell and have to look up. It’s Schadenfreude. I don’t know why we don’t have a word in English for it. We watch fascinated like we’re getting paid for every Icarus that flies too close the media’s headlights. This incident with the photographer got me thinking about copyrights. It’s something authors should think about, become familiar with. I checked on the Net.

How long does a copyright last?
The term of copyright for a particular work depends on several factors, including whether it has been published, and, if so, the date of first publication. As a general rule, for works created after January 1, 1978, copyright protection lasts for the life of the author plus an additional 70 years. For an anonymous work, a pseudonymous work, or a work made for hire, the copyright endures for a term of 95 years from the year of its first publication or a term of 120 years from the year of its creation, whichever expires first. For works first published prior to 1978, the term will vary depending on several factors. Of course it’s complicated, and I don’t really know much about it. I guess we might all do to know where we stand legally speaking.

How familiar are we with the laws that protect us. And do you understand the Google Settlement? How pissed are we to get if our copyright is violated?

I started a new work this week and I’m excited about it because I’ve been doing a mental dance with the protagonist for a couple of months getting to know him, his cadence, his backstory. It’s not a thriller, it’s a story and I want to tell a story that isn’t a chase against the ticking clock. I don’t want my characters wearing their shoes out twice from the front cover to the back. I just want to once be able to peel an onion layer by layer and build suspense differently. I wonder how I would feel if somebody took this character after I am dead or have wandered off into the woods or am living with my chickens and dogs and put him in a book they wrote. I think I’d be weirded out.

A question comes to mind from a recent lawsuit. If I want to write a book that includes characters from Salinger’s book, CATCHER IN THE RYE, can I do it? Say you want to write a book that takes Holden Caufield thirty or forty years beyond where Salinger left him, can you do it? Why pick up something Salinger dropped? Can you do it if you get Salinger’s permission? Why would anybody write a book, spending a couple of years laboring at it using someone else’s character or characters?

By John Gilstrap
www.johngilstrap.com

I know that people read blogs for entertainment, and that as a writer, it’s my professional obligation to put fans’ needs ahead of my own. This week, though, I beg your forgiveness, because that’s not going to happen. This blog entry comes from a dark, dark place.

Eight years ago today, 2,980 people were murdered on a beautiful morning. According to WikiAnswers.com, 247 passengers were killed on hijacked airplanes, 2,595 workers were killed in the World Trade Centers, and 125 civilians and military personnel were murdered in the Pentagon. Officials estimate that 1,609 people lost their spouse or partner, and over 3,000 children lost parents. Nearly 6,000 mothers and fathers lost sons and daughters.

Ever stop to think about how horrible it must have been for the victims who’d been sentenced to death that day? Well, here’s a peek (be warned that it’s tough to listen to): http://tinyurl.com/yqdmjw

Does the video make you as angry as it makes me? Good God, those bastards bitch-slapped the most powerful nation on the planet. We should be acrimonious–shouldn’t we?

Well, apparently not. It seems that anger’s no longer cool. I recently heard a late night talk show host use 9/11 as a punch line in his monologue. Not this week, of course, because this is too near the anniversary, and that would be in bad taste. He didn’t mean to make light of the murders, I’m sure, but merely to score a cheap laugh by sticking a rhetorical finger in the eye of a politician. Sorry, some things will never be funny.

But humor eases pain, right?

I understand from educators and psychologists that the images of September 11 are too traumatic to be shown on television anymore. It’s not healthy to think about so much suffering, they say. I’ll defer to their expertise, but I don’t understand how we’re supposed to remember the dead if we don’t think about the plot and the people who murdered them.

And if we don’t remember the victims, how can we possibly remain vigilant? It depresses me that today’s seventh-graders likely have no concept of the trauma that the world endured on September 11, and it angers me that the world seems comfortable with that. Our children are not taught in school that bad people continue to lurk in terrorist cells planning their deaths, and yours, and mine. We teach them to fear garden-variety strangers, but not terrorists.

Is it possible that we’re just lazy? Anger is exhausting, after all, and fear is even more exhausting, so maybe it’s just human nature that we move on and try our best to forget; to let time do its thing to heal wounds. We can always remind ourselves of what it feels like if another attack comes, and then we can be angry again. We can even wave a few flags for a while.

You know, until it’s okay again to turn the tragedy into a punch line on late night television.

John Ramsey Miller

I got this e-mail the other day from a college student:
“I love your writing. Since I was little I hated reading books. I absolutely hated it. But the first time I read one of your books, I was hooked. So far I have made it through Inside out, Upside down, and Side by side. Not once have you disappointed me. Usually when I read your books, I have some sort of background music playing which really adds to the intensity, just like in a movie. Usually I just play the song “Anxiety” by the Black eyed peas and it’s so far worked pretty well. My goal is to try and hopefully read all of your books by the time I’m done with college. Thank you so much for your writings.”

Naturally I’m flattered, but ultimately I wonder why has he hated reading since he was little? Leaves me thinking if maybe it’s the music he’s really enjoying.

Some few do manage to live forever through their work, although I doubt they are aware of it. We can’t physically live forever, but a person’s work can live on after them, and that may be one of the reasons we write, or design buildings, or paint, or quilt, or run for political office. Last week, with the death of Edward Kennedy, I was thinking about politics, and how the four presidents whose faces are carved into Mt. Rushmore will certainly be there staring out at the landscape long after people forget who they were, and possibly even after there are no people left to puzzle it out. I was considering the great statesmen and orators I’ve seen in my lifetime, and the sorry crop of legislators I see in office now. Perhaps it has always been the case that there are a few shining examples of solid thinkers and unselfish statesmen, men and women of conscience and always doing what’s best for the country, and the rest have always been minor players (if not intellectually or morally subpar to the standouts of history). Conservatives and liberals may argue to the last man standing over which of their own were the greatest hits in legislative history.

In talking to students recently I got the impression that a lot of them think books are taught in classrooms based solely on the importance of the author’s work to dusty academics, and not how relevant their work remains, and certainly not based on what benefit students get from reading them. Let me say here that I think literary history is every bit as important as the U.S. history or art, politics or of music. I think every student ought to understand how important the first amendment to the Constitution is, and how censorship by one group has threatened the free exchange of ideas for all people.

Might it be better if literary history was taught the way art history is taught where students learn a little about a lot of artists and why their work was relevant to their period as well as ours. Do students need to read Beowulf, or won’t Cliff Notes Lite do for most of the classics. You don’t get two artists like Degas and Picasso in a semester’s worth of art history classes. In my mind, Melville, Poe, I get a picture of a bunch of now-dead authors on a carousel that has been turning faster and faster for centuries and decades until they are hanging on by their fingernails.

In high school I read Hawthorne and Melville, but what average high school student would read MOBY DICK were it not out of academic necessity. For me, reading the classics––especially CATERBURY TALES and any Shakespeare play was like taking Cod Liver Oil. If the idea is to instill an enjoyment in reading, toss them CARRIE, INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE, BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS, BELOVED, SOPHIE’S CHOICE, BULLET PARK, IN COLD BLOOD… make your own list. Save the true Classics for lit history and college courses. I think the idea is to get young people reading more than spending their free time glued to TV or computer screens where their minds aren’t making pictures to accompany the words.

I guess when reading is homework and the books more or less inaccessible and seemingly irrelevant to someone’s life, you are making pages filled with words an enemy. You say Beowulf and kids see spider webs. Some old peg-legged guy (an obsessive, self-destructive, revenge-seeking whale hunter) chasing the object of his rage across the oceans means less to most kids today than it did our grandfathers. We all have white whales that we are chasing, or running from.

As writers we understand the importance of celebrating great writing, and great ideas, and want to know how literature affected or reflected the time. So, do you believe educators should keep pushing the classics, or put more emphasis on works more relevant to the lives and interests of our young?

I’ll be back next week. I do have one thing to say. Or rather to show you. This woman is a member of the House of Representatives elected by actual voters. How, I ask you, can this country be in any trouble?

http://www.breitbart.tv/la-congresswoman-praises-cuban-revolution-castros-health-care-system/

I’ll have a real blog next week. This week political thoughts were all I had.