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.