Write a book, friend.

February 26, 2024

Several people told me they’d like to write a book. 

“Ahem.”  Now that I’ve gotten one into print, I’ll briefly share my experiences with you.  Writing and editing and printing my book took about a year, but of course the stories came about over a much longer period.  Years.  My older friends, such as you are, all have a lifetime of stories.  I call that material the mother lode that can be mined. Such a pleasure to dig them out.

I don’t write fiction well.  I’ve tried making up stories and I’ve seen how the listeners disappear to do something else.  

They seem to enjoy the ordinary truth, the deaths, loves, adventures, the injuries sustained.

Therefore, if I want a reader, I must write the truth.  Wish I could say that I was not fearful of consequences.  Many times I was, tossing in bed, bad dreams.  Are you still with me?

PHASE ONE

I guess phase one requires reflecting on life.  Going through old photos and letters helps.  Talking with the people in the photographs is a boon.  They are apt to remember the obscure details, the jewels that make the story vivid.

Here’s an example of a story.  

In 1967, we were seniors in high school in Dillon, Montana, restless, physically strong, intentionally inscrutable.  We loved to do the forbidden, freely using alcohol and tobacco, climbing up and down the mountains in the Pioneer range, doing pranks in town, trying to write a comic book of our own.  We made 3-4 8mm movies from scripts we scribbled the night before.  The super hero comic book would have been printed on an A.B. Dick stencil duplicator. We did a couple of pages before our plan fell apart.

That February, Tad Henningsen and I were into climbing. Rocks, buildings.  

During the week, we scouted downtown for buildings to climb.  Skeet’s Cafe had a sort of tower over the front door.  It probably still does.  We selected a route to climb to reach the rooftop pinnacle, starting at a nearby building, mounting a wooden stairway on the alley.  

As we started the route, I had to pee.  At the top of the wooden stairs I peed on the back steps of what turned out to be a rooming house.  In those days Dillon had several blocks of buildings with rooms to rent.  Homeless old farm workers and ranch hands lived in them if they had the few dollars to pay.  

Turns out the route up the back stairs didn’t lead to any route to the roof, so we hustled down to the alley again.

A woman burst out the door I peed on.  “Go in the alley,” she shouted.  “Don’t pee on my back steps.”  Tad and I looked at each other.  We yelled some double-talk we’d been practicing:  “Odd’n guy’n yank ’n took ’n sissler off my bubble,” we shouted.

“That’s no excuse!” the woman shouted.  (We jogged away, giggling.)

The details, the jewels:  the barbed wire someone strung to keep us from jumping roof to roof.  The injury to my first finger from the barbed wire.  The night time visit that trip to Dr. Seidensticker to have my finger stitched up.  The jokes Dr. Seidensticker told us.  (Why is a turd pointed at both ends?  To keep your asshole from slamming shut.)  Dillon is at high altitude; February can be brutally cold and windy.  We were invincible teenagers.  I didn’t own an adequate coat.  I had a vest I borrowed from Les Gordon that looked like a gorilla.  Our Converse All Star shoes had holes in the tops over the toes.  We studied the art of “not caring.”  Except we did care.  We wanted to seem to not care, in order to escape the adults in our lives.  We wanted to be outlaws then.

Stories.  We all have them. They are good and necessary to tell.

Thus, we have the raw materials.  How do we turn those incidents into stories?  

Answer:  find a kid.  Nephew.  Grandchild.  Any audience will do.  

Sit them down. Tell them what happened in a straightforward way without much elaboration, except for those golden details.  Like the barbed wire.  Perhaps mention the Redwing Irish Setter Boots with Vibram soles you bought for rock climbing.  If the kid clambers for more, keep telling the tales.  Show respect.  Stick to the truth.  At your age, you don’t have much to lose.

You need a platform to share your writing.  I recommend WordPress.  You can start your blog at no cost.  Link your entries to your Facebook page.  That way, you can develop your voice.  People know when you tell them the truth.  That’s your voice.  It is your only salvation.  Nothing else will do.

I think you need a group, or at the very least, a coach.  You need someone to kick you in the rear and get you writing when you don’t feel like doing it.  Coaching costs money.  I’ve paid $25-$50 an hour for sessions, in which we talked about writing.  Less money gets you the same result.  You can get your coaching on the phone from any licensed counselor.  This coaching works because you don’t want to waste your money. If you don’t write, you betray yourself.

Nine years ago I signed up with noted Billings author, Russell Rowland, who led a writing group of about twelve.  He had us meet once weekly, each of us submitting a manuscript.  We took turns reading to each other and criticizing.  I attended two of Russell’s excellent 12-week sessions.  I’ve made friends with most of the other attendees.  I recommend joining such a group.  Helps you find your voice, which I said before, is the chief thing.  I remember when I wrote a story about the first time I experienced sexual intercourse, I felt so ashamed, that I was afraid to attend the next group meeting.  I showed up the following week, but I felt chastised by the group for withholding my story.  Nonetheless, I eventually shared with the group.  Afterward, I didn’t feel unique, because all of the others (I think) could have told a similar narrative regarding their sexual adventures.

You will continue to write your stories, paring them down, bolstering them with great details.  Once you collect the stories, you can start your research, by far the most enjoyable stage.

For me, research was picking up the phone and calling old friends.  I told folks what I was doing.  I learned people don’t necessarily want to be portrayed as teenage criminals.  People, like us, were obtuse and foolish.  Your old friends will help you moderate your language.

I kept a yellow pad at my elbow to take notes of what my old friends said.

I’ll admonish you not to be afraid of telling your stories.  Aloud, I mean, even if you’re thinking of writing a book.  I believe that is good advice.  You might hesitate to tell your best stories, perhaps fearing the story will have been used up, like a joke you wanted to tell.  “Stop me if you’ve heard this…” 

Instead, I want to assure you that repeated telling of a story can help you pare the tale to its best version. Tight, terse, telegraphic.

We’ll talk more, later.