Richard Steinberg

By Richard Steinberg

This month’s essay is dedicated with love and gratitude to Sgt. Bryan J. Tutten, 33, of St. Augustine, Fla., who died Dec. 25 in Balad, Iraq, of wounds suffered when an improvised explosive device detonated near his position.  He was assigned to the 1st Squadron, 73rd Cavalry Regiment, 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, and also, to: Pfc. Brian L. Gorham, 21, of Woodburn, Ky., who died Dec. 31  of wounds suffered in Afghanistan when his vehicle encountered an improvised explosive device.  He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 503rd Infantry Regiment (Airborne), 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team.

Gentlemen, find peace.

“I care deeply and passionately about sanity.  I absolutely expect it in my lawyer, my accountant, my doctor, my grocer, the man who does my rubdowns, and the woman who cleans my house.  What?  In Publishing?  You’re new to the business, aren’t you,” Robert Benchley

I was having dinner one night with Glorious Glori, Ilario the Magnificent, and His Sartorial Splendor, at a wonderful Italian restaurant in Midtown Manhattan.  Unlike many such establishments, this one was small, quiet, with incredibly good food, even better service, and atmosphere that was real and not manufactured.  That night is one of my fondest memories of that time.

After dinner and before dessert, Ilario excused himself to go to the bar and have a smoke; a habit I’m very happy to say no longer afflicts him.  Although I don’t smoke, I wanted to check out the bar and went along. And, as neither of us are in the literary business but are both addicted unto death to the literary life, our conversation quickly devolved to the publishing gossip of the day.

While we talked about which editors were moving or staying or considering selling used cars, which authors were meeting their deadlines or young lovers that were in the same class as one of their children, a significant publishing executive walked in.

Now this is where our memories of the moment differ.

Ilario remembers introducing me to Omnivorous Appetite, a brief conversation, and then we continued gossiping as we returned to our party.  I remember significant glances and double-entendres exchanged between me and that rather attractive woman.

Maybe because I would like to be that suave.

In any event, much later that night – well after we had parted from Ilario and Splendor, Glori informed me that she had lost an earring, probably in the restaurant.  And as a dutiful son (who took and still takes any excuse to walk the streets of Manhattan at night) I volunteered to walk back to the nearby restaurant and check.

When I arrived, fairly close to closing, I found the escapee earring and said publishing executive.  We struck up a conversation, and – in part at the urging of the management – I walked her to a cab.

The problem was that Omnivorous was somewhat the worse for wear.  Or for the drinks she had been throwing back all evening.  Regardless, I was uncomfortable at just putting her in a cab – Glori raised me better than that – so I decided to accompany her to her building, and then take the cab back to my hotel.

When we arrived at her place, I helped her out and began walking her inside.  And in the twenty-five feet or so between curb and door, dear beautiful, sexy, very connected in publishing Omnivorous made it very clear that if I were to dismiss the cab and accompany her upstairs, she would make it well worth my while.

And if the stories I had heard about her were even one quarter true, I knew she could do it.

What’s a young-ish author to do?

I escorted her to the door, made sure she had her keys and, heavy sigh, bid her goodnight and returned to my cab. 

Honor –mine, at least – intact.

Several years later, when I was changing publishers, Ilario suggested that Omnivorous’ publishing house would be a good fit.  The manuscript in question was a good one, the kind she liked, and I hoped that my gallantry that night might earn me some points to aid in the eventual sale.

Several days later, she rejected the manuscript.

Publishing:  It’s not just a job, it’s an adventure!

Manic Mathew is a wonderful writer who had never sold a novel to a major publisher.  He’d had three novels published by small presses; but always dreamed of having a major House release.  In 2003, he got his chance.

At a publisher’s forum in Connecticut, a well regarded editor from a multi-national publisher approached him.  The editor informed Manic that he had always liked his work, and had he ever considered moving up to a large House.

Oh, had Manic considered it.

Within three weeks a contract was agreed to.  Six months later, the manuscript was delivered.  It was a spectacularly well written allegory for the rise of fascism in South America in the Forties.  Set in a near future, it was exciting and compelling.  But it needed work.

Something Manic was unwilling to do.

You see, at the small houses he had published through previously, editorial had been limited at best.  This, however, was a world-renowned publisher and they wanted some revisions to better tailor the book to their expected market.

Manic refused; telling them that it was his experience that editors didn’t know anything about real quality, that he knew best and that should be that.

After meetings, e-mails, intercessions by agents and friends and loved ones, the publisher decided not to go to press with the novel.

What happened?  Manic took the manuscript to a small press that: “knew how to treat their writers,” and it became one of their better reviewed books of the year . . . selling 812 copies nationwide.

Publishing:  Be all that you can be!

As we get further into our exploration of the guts of writing, a specific topic demands our attention.  It’s a thing probably less discussed in writers’ forums and websites than any other.  It may not help you write better, is not likely to inspire you to press on when things seem darkest, and probably won’t help you sell your first book.

But it might help – a lot – with your second, third, and the other steps involved in maintaining a career as a novelist.

We’ll call it, with due apologies to Mr. Einstein:

The Theory of Relativity

There are three basic misconceptions that newly sold writers take with them into their first interactions with publishers.  They think the process is centered around them.  They think publishers are the enemy.  They think their career is the result of their talent.

All three statements are true, by the way.

They are also immaterial.

For a book to be a success – in a nonfinancial sense – three things have to happen.  It must be written.  It must be published.  It must be read.  The third step, being the most critical, can not be accomplished in any kind of meaningful way without symbiosis existing between the first two steps.  And often that magic requires significantly more than just everyone doing their job to the best of their abilities.

It often requires things you may have never considered as being part of “the literary process.”  Things like courtesy when you don’t feel particularly courteous, like understanding corporate politics from the perspective of the editors and/or publicists, executives, corporate biggies, and the people in the shipping department.

Things like when to take a Koala Bear to dinner and a show.

The Reluctant Carnivore is one of the gentlest souls I know.  She has a successful midlist career; crossing back and forth from Chick-lit to spy thrillers. 

A few years ago, her editor came to her to suggest that instead of setting her next novel in her native American MidWest, that she set it in Australia.  More importantly, that her heroine have a Koala Bear as a loyal and devoted pet and a plot-point in the new novel.

“But I don’t know any koalas,” she stammered out.  “I do puppies, and occasionally tropical fish, but I wouldn’t know the first thing about koalas.”

Her editor nodded sagely.  “But it would be fun to learn about them, right?”

Neither sucking up to, nor rubber stamping the publisher’s idea, but out of her respect for them, she plunged into koala research.  By the end of two months, there was little she didn’t know about koala culture.

She put together a novel treatment called:  Kalgoorlie Koala.  A romance thriller about a woman from the American Midwest who – while vacationing in Australia one summer – adopts an injured koala, and while nursing it back to health finds true romance with an Aussie game keeper.

Her editor read the treatment, and then looked up with teary eyes.  “The koala dies at the end,” she asked with deep concern.

“He does,” Carnivore replied simply.  “But still plays a major role in the sequel.”

“Really, how?”

Carnivore smiled sweetly, looked the editor right in the eye and said:  “They do a poor job of disposing of the koala’s body, so a mutant strain of a bio-toxin develops from its decaying, rotting corpse and it leaves the people of Australia dying slowly, painfully, and quite grotesquely.”

She sipped her tea and smiled.

The editor considered for a moment.  “What about dingoes?”

“I can do Australian Cattle Dogs.”

“Queensland Heelers?”

“Sure.”

The novel is due for release next year.

“I undertook to discover how many were vital parts of the publishing process for this book.  From the drivers of the trucks that delivered my books to the stores, to the women of easy virtue who delivered their touch to soothe when the words wouldn’t come.  In the end, I discovered the number was best expressed by an equation:  One writer with one vision plus one light equals dirty paper.  One writer with one vision plus a publisher filled with lights equals magic,” Howard Spring

Publishers, editors, marketing executives, booksellers, reviewers, the guy who selects which paperbacks get the best placement in your local 7/11 are not the enemy.  If you don’t succeed, they don’t succeed.  It’s pretty simple.

That’s not to say that they’re all wonderful people; as all writers are not wonderful people.  Hard to believe, I know, but true nonetheless.

I’ve known The Hamster from Hell for a lot of years.  I honestly don’t know whether or not we’re friends, but we’re certainly not enemies and are willing to alternate picking up the check when we share a meal.

On one such meal, Hamster was decrying his lot in life.  His having published nineteen novels under five or six different names, I found it a bit hard to find sympathy for him. 

Until I heard his story that day.

It seems he had been in a West Los Angeles, tragically hip, eatery the month before with some friends.  After the meal, he went to the bar to kill some time before his next appointment.  Who should walk in but Omnivorous Appetite.

They knew each other, in passing, and eventually ended up sharing a quiet table.  One drink, err . . . thing led to another (as tends to happen in bars) and later that evening Hamster ended up driving her to her hotel.  As he escorted her to her room, she suggested to him that she would make it well worth his while if he were to let the Valet park his car in overnight parking.

Never deeply afflicted by scruples – damn his eyes – Hamster agreed.  From his account to me that day, Omnivorous lived up to and beyond her reputation as a sexual dynamo, and they parted early the next morning, mutually exhausted.

Several months later, he submitted a manuscript to Omnivorous that he and his agent thought was perfect for her and her publisher.

Several days later, it was rejected.

Publishing is a collaborative effort; writer centered, sure, but collaborative nonetheless.  You must learn how to make accommodations to the process where you can without betraying your artistic integrity. 

Sometimes it can be a tricky balancing act. 

Sometimes it only takes good manners.

And sometimes, as I pointed out to The Hamster From Hell that day, it’s better to be rejected as a Literary Nobleman than to be found wanting as a literary slut.

Well, maybe not better, but certainly less embarrassing.

Believe!

By Richard Steinberg

“It is one of the most beautiful compensations of this life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself,” Ralph Waldo Emerson

Our Bear In Mind is deep within the world right now, creating light and words.  And as the world is deeply in need of both light and words, it’s a pleasure to fill in for her today.  I’ll see you again on the 22nd.

Abraham Pascal was a writer.

True, he was never published.  He lived his life in a world without computers, so he never blogged.  He worked sixteen hours a day for most of his life, as a type setter in a print shop, so he never had the time to do the things required to begin and nurture a career as a writer.

But Abraham was a writer.

Every day, on his one meal break, he would take bits of pieces of paper and an ever smaller pencil, and write children’s stories.  Some nights when it was too cold to sleep, he’d light a candle and scribble to keep warm.  On his day and a half off each week, he would take these stories to a home for dying children.

Spending his time with them reading – sometimes acting out – his stories for the children’s delight.

Welsh horror writer Arthur Machen encountered Pascal one day.  After hearing his story, he asked him why he spent his off time in this pursuit instead of working additional jobs like most of those around him.  Surely he could use the money?

And Pascal agreed; then sighed and said:  “But then who would bring stories to the children?”

I am a writer.  A fictioneer prowling the high seas of our too complex world seeking light, bringing light when I can, fighting to preserve the light from those who would blot it from existence.

I am a fictioneer and I have been blessed, most of my life, to be so.  And whenever I could, I worked to continue bringing the light to those still struggling in the dark.

And there are so many in that horrific dark today.

I was talking about this with The Cool Autumn Breeze the other day.  About the new direction I’m taking this space this year.  About how the deeper I got into the guts of writing, the darker and more depressing it seemed to be.

And Breeze – extra bright light of hope and faith that she is – said to me:  “Then why don’t you start off the year with something more positive?”

Coming, as it did, moments after agreeing to fill in for Bear, when I was thinking of Abraham Pascal, and knowing the story of my life better now than I did, I suddenly knew what I must say today.

Time for us all to pay some dues to the cosmos.  To once again cough up the price of admission to our humanity.

Chanukah, Christmas, Kwanza, and the Equinox have passed.  We’re exhausted.  We’re depleted.  January is traditionally the weakest month of the year for charity contributions.  It’s the coldest, darkest, most depressing moment of the year for many.

But Glorious Glori taught me that at your darkest moments, that time when you despair the most of a future, of hope or belief, it’s time to give something back.  Time to reach out to others; and by benefiting them benefit yourself.

Books.

We need books.

Old books, slightly damaged books, books that have sat unopened on your shelves for months or years.  Books your children have outgrown.  Books you didn’t like and are now taking up space.  Books you loved and have somehow acquired three or four or more copies over the years.

A child that reads advances in intellectual and social skills at five times the rate of one that does not.  A teen that reads is sixty percent less likely to have a negative encounter with the police.  A grown man or woman that reads is able to maintain and grow their most basic skill sets, to strengthen their courage to face a harsh and bitter world.

To believe in the future.

They need books, dear gentle readers; and an opportunity to provide them has come to us.

Two extraordinary people have dedicated themselves to making the world we all inhabit a more livable one.  Tina & Steve are religious Pastors, true enough.  We do not share our form of worship, but more than share our belief in the possibilities of people.  They are hard working, moral, honest, remarkable people that bring great credit to their beliefs.

And a large part of what they believe in is that people deserve a chance.

Tina & Steve work hard and strong and forthrightly to help people who have fallen on hard times start again.  Obviously, there is nothing they don’t need for this.  But right now, they need for us to invest in humanity.

Books serve to bring a sense of normalcy to the lost.  They help move the despairing into a different place that doesn’t hurt or demand in pained moments.  Books help to sharpen and retain communication skills of those trying so desperately to start again.

Books, in their way, heal.

Will you, also, heal?

We need books.  As long as they are still readable and in serviceable condition we want them.  All genres, all types, all books.  Those that can’t find a home can be sold as used to raise funds for this and other good works.  We need books.

We need you.

Because this website has occasionally been the victim of automated sales pitchers who use hacking software, I will write out the contact e-mail, instead of putting it in proper form.  When you enter it in as an e-mail just write it out in the usual:  name@email.com form.  But please go to this extra trouble and e-mail Tina & Steve at:  Hesholy at Gmail dot com

Remember to type it in the correct way, not as it’s written here.

We live in a shrinking, more pained every day, world.  We don’t know our neighbors, turn away from ugliness, and insulate ourselves (out of proper need) from the loss and abandonment of our time.  It’s January in the world; a time of cold and dormancy and a waiting for the light and the warmth.

I choose to wait no longer.

I ask you to make that choice as well.

Like Abraham Pascal.

Late in his life, Abraham had difficulty walking, difficulty holding his pen.  He became housebound and catastrophically ill.  The last time Arthur Machen saw him – to deliver ink and paper – he asked him if all his work had made a difference, if all the years of sacrifice and giving had been worth it.

Barely able to speak, his arthritic fingers clutched the pen and wrote:  The future will know.

As our future will judge us.

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better.  It’s not,” Dr. Seuss

One last word on this.

Heart.

It’s a big part of what separates writers from creative typists, wannabes from made-its; human beings from biological large brained hominids.

I am a professional writer.  I am a fictioneer bringing hope to the hopeless and afflicting the pain-bringers. Others here at Storytellers are other kinds of writers.  But we all, in our own ways, believe in some form of hope.

As I ask you all – my dear gentle friends – to believe as well.

In bringing hope.

I hope you will help people you may never meet, with a gift of books.  Simply, passionately, and for all time, help them to . . .

Believe!

By Richard Steinberg

This month’s column is dedicated to the sacrifices of Capt. Benjamin D. Tiffner, 31, of West Virginia; 5th Special Forces Group and Staff Sgt. Patrick F. Kutschbach, 25, of Pennsylvania; 10th Special Forces Group.

Thank you guys, stand easy.

“I’ve been struggling with this toast for several weeks. Should I strike a melancholy, time passes sort of tone? A humorous, light hearted thing? Maybe stentorian wisdom seasoned with a soupcon of slightly controlled emotion? But instead of such frippery, I decided on a taste of truth. After all these years, thank you for not killing me in my sleep,” William Dean Howells

Two years.

Thirty-one columns.

Around 75,000 words on words.

Amazing.

Together, we’ve explored plotting and characterization, evoking reactions from our readers, what it means to be a writer (as opposed to a creative typist) politically imprisoned writers, and the roots of Godzilla. Wherever possible I’ve tried to share with you what I know of the alchemy of literary creation, and certainly I have received from you both insight and inspiration.

Year One, we spent exploring the soul of the writer.

This past year, the writer’s heart.

Next month, we’ll begin a year long journey through a writer’s intestinal tract. Not a pretty picture, but hey, someone has to do it. But for right now, I want to share with you – in keeping with the day – a few of the things I’m thankful for, as a writer, as a man, as a human being.

I’m thankful . . .

. . . that I’m still alive.  It’s been a struggle the last few years.

. . . that God – or whoever’s in charge – has made it abundantly clear that they’re not quite through with me yet.

. . . that I’ve come to realize that last thing is a blessing and not a curse.

. . . that Bob & Dick, John & Katherine, Loren & Michelle, Janet & Bob2 remain close, remain stalwarts, remain rocks that I can lean on, count on, believe in, when leaning, counting, and believing become nigh on impossible.

. . . that my gift of writing is still there, still a part of me as much as my intestinal tract, still compelling me forward whether I want to go or not.

. . . that John & Susan, Miss Anne, Shirley & Jim, Sue & Joe, Cabaret Sue, Sigi & Vic, Patti & P.J., and always Stan the Man have such generosity of spirit, such well intentioned belief that it keeps me warm on the colder, dark nights of the soul.

. . . that in a time of loss and dissolution and depression I saw a child coloring, a teen helping a senior, a senior lending their wisdom to a grownup, and that I have still – rather successfully – avoided growing up myself.

. . . that I can experience Harley’s strength and power blossom, Mike’s first tentative steps into the writing pool that he will one day swim deep in, Detta & Rolf’s commitment to life, Amanda & George’s unbelievable life force and heart, Harrigan’s courage playing out every day, Sarah’s dreams coming true much to her (and only her) surprise.

. . . that America is still a place where it is the quality of your work and life, the content of your heart and the product of your actions that matters far more than anything else.

And yes, I am thankful that I still believe.

. . . that Eileen and Mike, Laura and Liz and Michelle and all of my spectacularly brilliant friends of Brilliance remain good friends and not just publishers.

. . . that critics haven’t caught on to me yet.

. . . that Sister Clare, my sister the Sister, is in the world.

. . . that I’m still alive to experience gifts from God (or whoever’s in charge) curses of talent, the greatness of possibilities, the actual sparseness of evil (however loud it may be) in the world; that I’m free to loathe some writers, worship others, to take a stand or not as my choice rather than someone else’s command.

. . . that Dave Wilson, Frank Wydra, John Rosenman, Thomas Sullivan, Justine Musk, Brian Knight, Stan Ridgley, Janet Berliner, and Richard Dansky are among my fellow collaborators here in the land of Storytellers, with so many others I don’t yet know so well, but admire so well.  Their generosity of spirit takes my breath away.

. . . that Storytellers Unplugged is read by the dissidents who risk arrest (and sometimes their lives) of the Golden Media movement around the world.  These young people risk their freedom and lives to read and circulate banned books and publications in their countries; simply so that they can make up their own minds about the relative worth of the words.

I am thankful that there is light to counter the dark.  I’m thankful that with my gifts, with the gifts of my co-Storytellers, with the gifts and aspirations of so many of you, my dear gentle readers, the light might never go out.

I am particularly thankful for Carly Simon album covers; but hey, that’s me!

There are too many more people and things for me to list here.  A failing memory and a pernicious post-project exhaustion just won’t permit me to pull everyone and everything out for the public acclaim and distinction they so deserve. And so, let me simply thank the world around me for getting me through the world around me another year.

Thank you, for making that year consistently interesting, never dull, always curious, too often painful with too many losses, even more frequently stunningly refreshing, ennobling, in its way . . . healing.

“For people who are artists, the work is the life. It defines and justifies your very existence. If you’re not actively doing a project you’re nothing in your own mind. You can’t retire from it. There is no way out. You are your work. You’re life is defined by it,” Gene Lees

I am a writer.

I am a fictioneer; sailing the seas of apostasy, torment, pain and injustice.

I am a fictioneer; reminding you to hope, to love, to care, to see, to taste, to take a stand for those things that are intrinsically right and against those things which are immutably wrong.

I am a fictioneer, a more worn than new, more sad than happy, more lost than found writer.

But then, I am a writer.

And that makes up for it all somehow.

Happy Holiday, and always in all ways . . .

Believe!

(I want to apologize to Richard and everyone. I had to drive to VA to pick up my sons today, and did not post this in the morning…I hope it will get the exposure it deserves … and I hate it when I screw up…(sorry Rick)- DNW

By
Richard Steinberg

“These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves. From each of them goes out its own voice . . . and just as the touch of a button on our set will fill the room with music, so by taking down one of these volumes and opening it, one can call into range the voice of a man far distant in time and space, and hear him speaking to us, mind to mind, heart to heart,” Gilbert Highet

Silence.

Pained, stilled, threatening, coercive, obscene.

Silence.

Can you hear it? It’s not far from you – down the block, across the street, maybe within sight or across town – but I promise you it’s there.

Lurking.

Smirking.

Growing.

My last two essays here were given over to the beautiful children of Justice Myron E. Leavitt Middle School; their questions and my answers from the day I spent there at the beginning of March. I give this column over to them as well; not as co-authors, but as a gift that I hope will still the silence, and open up a cacophony of voices in their lives.

During a break in that blessed day, my host, Mr. Loren Levine, took me – at my request – over to the Leavitt Library. I love libraries. To me they are simultaneously holy places, and places of the people. They were the only thing that kept me together (in my youth) when my family disintegrated. They were the only thing that kept me together (in my young adulthood) when my life disintegrated. They are today – in their bookish way – the only thing in the world I know beyond all doubt that I can rely on.

But on entering the rather lovely and large room that is the Leavitt Library, I felt as if the life had been forced out of me; like cresting a pacific hill on a pleasant day’s hike and suddenly seeing a lifeless (or more precisely a life destroyed) desert that went on forever.

The neat and clean and sparkling facility with good people running it, and caring people worrying over it, lay forty percent empty. More even, as the five shelf bookcases (two shelves of each lying empty) lined the perimeter walls only. No shelves crossing the room, no shelves creating study alcoves, no sense of the forest of strength and growth that this place should be.

There were all the necessary accoutrement: nice study tables, relatively comfortable chairs, wonderful lighting, and staff that know their stuff.

But minimal books.

I cast no blame here. Principal Shana Mack Pippin and her hard working staff do everything they can. EVERYTHING! But in an age where schools are compelled to spend more on testing than they do on books; in an environment where underpaid and overworked teachers spend several hundred dollars a year out of their own pockets for adequate classroom supplies, replacing old, worn out, falling apart books just isn’t possible. And buying new books? Not a chance.

So forty percent of the shelf space lies empty, as does much of the rest of the room, and the wondrous journey that each of these children should be allowed the chance to choose to take is denied as cruelly as any backwater, fascist police state ever did by banning books.

There is nothing unique here, I’m sad to say. Thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of public school libraries are in various states of disarray and decay with no hope in sight. No: “. . . voice of a man far distant in time and space, and hear him speaking to us, mind to mind, heart to heart . . .”

I consider myself a strong man, a caring man, but there is little to nothing I can do about all those emptyish rooms that should be filled with the sound of books speaking to the minds and the hearts and the souls of those we would give stewardship over the world to come.

But I can – I hope – do something about the library at Justice Myron E. Leavitt Middle School.

They need books.

Many of you who read this are writers – either in fact or in hope. You understand that need.

David Lilienthal once said that a man should be judged by what he is for, not what he is against. Let us then declare that those of us who believe in the power of words to heal the sick or afflict the sickening stand with the children of Leavitt Middle School. Let our actions ring out as a clarion moment of crystalline statement:

“HERE, AT JUSTICE MYRON E. LEAVITT MIDDLE SCHOOL, WE BEGIN TO FORCE BACK THE SILENCE AND REPLACE IT WITH VOLUMES UPON VOLUMES OF BEAUTIFUL NOISE MADE UP OF THOUGHTS, DREAMS, LESSONS, FANTASIES, AND TRUTHS!”

They need books. Fiction, nonfiction, adventure, history, biography, technical, vocational, fantastical.

They need books in hardcover, paperback, trade-paper, audio (with equipment to play them) collections, and magazines.

They need the basic wherewithal that a library requires to thrive.

The students are ages 11 through 13, for the most part. Bright and inquisitive, they want to read. They want to learn . . .

Do we care enough to help them?

If you cannot donate books or equipment, money – as ever – is acceptable. But the money MUST be very specifically donated ONLY for the improvement of the Leavitt Library. And we’re not talking only of big donations . . . ten bucks can buy a book, sometimes two.

The details are fairly simple; and in this harsh world in which we struggle with our art being judged almost solely by its commerciality, also very hard.

I ask you, dear, dear gentle readers, colleagues, publishers, suppliers, any and all that read these words and believe that a child’s right to learn is ABSOLUTE and not a gift that might easily be taken away on the whim of a policy change to contact Mr. Loren Levine, a fine and dedicated teacher at Leavitt, and offer your help.

Mr. Loren Levine
lllevine@interact.ccsd.net
or: EaglesVoice@att.net

“I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves,” Anna Quindlen

So long as there were enough books to fill those shelves.

The beyond vast majority of you may not give a damn about a school named after a man you never heard of, in a place far from your homes.

Fair enough.

Find a more familiar school closer to home. Walk into its library.

Then do what has to be done.

I am tired this evening as I finish this draft. Physically ailing, beat up mentally, sick and burned out by the bullshit that piles higher by the moment. By publishers grown too cautious, by bookstores grown too rote, by a public that seems to genuinely care less and less about more and more.

Tired.

I see good and close friends dying in far off hostile lands . . . and there is little to nothing I can do about that.

I see the country that I love discussing cosmetic issues while homeless children starve and good people die of eminently curable diseases.

I see us all – like fighters who have taken too many blows – becoming unwilling to summon up within our hearts the will to go on for one more round.

And yet, here – on those empty shelves in that room that needs even more shelves crowded with books and with them opportunities for empowerment – I see an opportunity for us to do that most difficult thing for any writer to do:

Substitute actions for words.

Each month from now on I will, at the beginning of each essay, call to your attention another school library in need; along with a contact for that library. Act or don’t. That decision lies with you. Support one of your local school libraries instead . . . a sensational act if you don’t want to help the ones I name.

But you, I beg of you, must . . . ACT!

For only through our inaction will the silence grow until it is so loud, so stultifyingly complete, that books will go the way of art and music and culture in our public school.

And libraries will become conference rooms or be broken up for classrooms, or perhaps will simply lie empty and alone.

A billion voices silenced and the future lost.

Silence reigns.

Until a voice is raised in action.

And, together, the silence is vanquished forever.

Please . . .

Believe!

By

Richard Steinberg

“This is about you.

“It’s not about me, it’s not about your teachers, it’s about you. It’s about you becoming powerful. It’s about you being noticed, and you all forcing the world to listen to you.

“There’s only one way you can do that.

“That’s by learning how to take your thoughts, combine them with your beliefs, and put them out there to be tested,” Richard Steinberg at Justice Myron E. Leavitt Middle School 2007

I think the thing that impressed me most about the kids at Leavitt was their genuine curiosity about worlds they’d never heard of. How to find them. How to live in them. How to create them. Sure, there were the expected number of dumb or bored questions, and more than a little interest in famous people I had met or how much money I had made. But in every one of the seven assemblies of 70 to 100 middle school students there were truly outstanding and probing questions about a life lived out in words.

Two weeks ago, I shared with you some of the questions I got about general topics. Today, I present you with a glimpse inside the minds of the 11, 12, and 13 year olds of Justice Myron E. Leavitt Middle School. It’s a place of true glory and beauty. A place that – maybe – might save us all.

My thanks to their teachers: Terese Collins, Alisa Gilbert, Natalie Burgess, Ebony Duma, Patrick Graham, Bonnie Hall, and Charlene Arbach. And, again, to Principal Shanna Mack Pippin, and Mr. Loren Levine for allowing me the honor of becoming a better writer (and person) by knowing, if only for a few moments, their charges.

Now, over to the children.

Q: Thinking about it, would you have still dropped out of school?

A: No. When I dropped out, my life came to a stop! I could barely support myself, couldn’t help the people I cared about, had nowhere to go and nothing to do. It was the single biggest mistake of my life. It took me almost ten years to get past it, and no one should lose ten years of their life.

Q: What was the moment that you realized you should drop back in?

A: I was stacking cartons of shoes in the back of a store I was working in for minimum wage, looking out at other people my age who were living a life instead of watching a life. And I suddenly realized that I wanted to live a life as well. But I had learned that you can’t live a life if you can’t think. I started dropping back in the next day.

Q: What do you mean that our teachers are teaching us to think?

A: Everything they give you to do is all about thinking. Sure, they want you to learn to read, do math, remember history; because without those skills you can’t make it in the world today. But more importantly, the way they teach you those skills are all about learning how to approach problems, figure them out, and solve them by yourself. That’s called thinking. That’s called winning.

Q: Do you write what you think your publisher wants or what you want?

A: Heavy sigh. I’ve done that. And it’s almost always been a mistake. Now I’m not saying disrespect your publisher, or ignore them or anything like that. What I am saying is your writing – if it’s good – comes from a place deep inside you that only you can know until you’ve actually written it. No way for your publisher to know that place. And the truth is a really good publisher will never just tell you what book to write. They may say they’d like another thriller, or historical drama, or action adventure. But only sometimes will they tell you where the book should be set, and who should be in it and how it should turn out. It happened to me once, not so much the publisher telling me what to write but me only writing things I THOUGHT the publisher wanted. Stupid me. Eventually I found myself again, but it took a while. You have to believe in yourself, in your vision and your talent – whether natural or earned – and stand up for that. If you don’t you’ll end up like a bear in a trap trying to gnaw your leg off to get free. And since I only have one leg left, I’m going to try never to do that again.

Q: How did you lose your leg?

A: I didn’t lose it. When last seen it was in a laboratory at UNLV.

Q: If you write a good book, will it always sell?

A: When I started writing professionally, I believed the answer was yes. That in publishing, all that mattered was the quality of the work. But, like with most things, the older I get, the smarter I get. Yes, quality counts for a lot in publishing. NEVER turn in work that is less than your best effort, this is critical to making it. But also turn in “smart work” at the same time. Don’t send a Western to a publisher or an agent that doesn’t want to do Westerns. After you’ve finished your book and made it as close to perfect as you can, take some time and think about marketing; that is those things the publisher or the agent needs to help sell the book. But, in the end, you can still get everything right, and still not sell it. This is a tough business. According to the people who keep track of such things, maybe three million people in America today are writing books. Maybe four hundred thousand of them will finish their books. Maybe ninety thousand of those will let someone other than close friends and family read their books. And only about seventy-five hundred of them will ever submit their book to an agent or a publisher. If their lucky – as well as good – they’ll be among the MAYBE eleven hundred titles published each year. So you don’t write books, not ever, with the expectation of getting a sale. You have to write them, the only reason that makes sense and the reason it took me a lot of years to learn, is this: you write because you love writing. You write because writing makes you visible, makes you matter, makes you sane. At least it does me. You write, well . . . because you’re a writer.

Q: Do you ever make mistakes when you are writing?

A: Too often. But I work very hard during the rewrite process to catch them.

Q: Do you have to rewrite your books?

A: Good writers don’t write. They REWRITE. Whether you write from an outline (which is the smart way) or without one like I do (the dumb way) the first draft is ALWAYS going to need work. But you can’t fix what isn’t there. Fight through it if you get stuck on the first pass, skip forward if you have to, but finish that first draft. Then take some time away from it – with my books, I usually take two weeks off before going to the first rewrite – and then come back with clean eyes and an open mind and make it better. Then you do it again. And again. And again. The fewest rewrites I ever did on a book were on THE GEMINI MAN, which was only three rewrites before the publisher bought it. The most is a book called RATTLE which is in its ninth year and I think its twenty-first rewrite.

Q: Do your publishers ever make any mistakes when printing your books?

A: It happens, but not often. There are so many people going over your book, and checking for stuff that very little gets through. Of course, when my first book came out it was pointed out that the Isar River was put on the wrong side of Munich. The publishers said that I made the mistake. HOW RUDE!

Q: Did you make that mistake with the river.

A: Yeah, but don’t tell anyone.

Q: If Harry Potter was an American, would it be as good?

A: Wow! Great question! You know, I think it probably wouldn’t have been as good. I think there’s something very important about setting and history that can elevate a book beyond an okay thing into a FANTASTIC thing. For whatever reason, it’s easier for a reader to accept sorcerers and witchcraft and castles and monsters in a European or English setting than it is in an American setting. You can have all that in America, but I think you have to work harder to pull it off. I also think that the issue of class structure and class conflict is better played out in a European or English setting. But you know what, R.L. Stine has proven that American horror can be very similar and just as possible. But there’s just a special quality to the Potter books that I think needs the United Kingdom to work. Great question.

Q: Do your feelings at the time you are writing affect what you are writing?

A: If I’m honest, they do. I’m not going to make a major change in a book I’m working on because I’m really happy or really sad, but it is going to color how I write about the section I’m working on. Writing comes from inside of you, and sometimes that hurts. Sometimes you’re in a bad place when you’re writing and things outside the writing are deeply affecting you. Just be honest with yourself. Use yourself as a filter. Pass that anger or happiness or rage or love through the eyes of your characters as you write them, and they’ll thank you for it.

Q: Your characters talk to you?

A: Yes, if I’m doing it right. When it works perfectly, which isn’t often, I’m just an outsider writing down what I see and hear them do. That’s what’s supposed to happen. But don’t worry about it, it’s a good thing.

Q: Do you talk back to them?

A: Uh . . . next question . . .

Q: What is a story and what is just stuff?

A: Some of the greatest writers of all time couldn’t answer that question, and that gets back to the rewrite question from earlier. A story is that thing which belongs, and stuff are those things – sometimes very cool things – which the story can live without. That’s my definition. When I’m rewriting, it’s one of the biggest things I look for. It’s also hard to cut out the cool stuff that the story can live without. How do you tell the difference? Well, we won’t get into a discussion of rhythms and pacing here, but when you’re reading your work with the clean eyes I talked about; you begin to realize that some sections are taking to long to happen. And sometimes to get this “timing” right, you have to cut cool stuff. But I never throw away the cool stuff. I save it for another book.

Q: What’s more important, theme or story?

A: Easily the hardest lesson I ever learned. There’s a Gnome Wizard-King (named Ilario the Magnificent) who lives in the far off kingdom of Key West with a Sorcerer Elf
(name His Sartorial Splendor) who I used to argue about this with. But, in the end, his spell worked and I learned. Every good book has a strong theme. But if it doesn’t have a story, it’s just not a book.

Q: Do your stories always end up where you wanted to go?

A: I can’t think of one that did.

Q: How do you know when you’re done writing?

A: That’s the hardest question yet. For me, it’s that point where I find myself writing just so I won’t type “the end.” I think if you’ve resolved the problems you created in the book, if you’ve said those things you set out to say or discover in the writing, then you’re done. But I’m never really sure.

Q: Do you have a problem with authority?

A: I have no problems with authority justly and honestly exercised, like I’m sure your teachers and administrators do every day. I’ve just never experienced it in my own life.

Q: Have you ever seen proof that your book is changing the world?

A: A United States Congressman sent me an e-mail and then called me to say that after reading my book, THE FOUR PHASE MAN, he had changed his mind about a thing called “intelligence oversight,” and was going to reexamine the issue. And I know he did because he sponsored legislation to create tighter oversight over the intelligence community. That was absolute proof – in a world filled with many other examples – that what I wrote was changing the world . . . maybe just a little bit and only a little at a time. But it was changing it. My voice was heard. I was seen. I had attached a thought to some words, wrapped them in what I believed, and it was out there looking for minds to change. And it changed them. Very cool. THAT is power; and the best kind. The power of ideas.

Q: Are we supposed to try and make the world a little better? Won’t someone else do that?

A: You betcha! And when THEY change the world, they’ll change it into what THEY want it to be. And by then, you’ll have very little you can do to change it again. It can be done, but it’s a lot harder to do it after someone else has already done it. Take your ideas, combine them with your beliefs and put it out there. Thinking, intelligence, having some control over your world is YOUR RIGHT! And don’t let ANYONE ever tell you different, or take that right away from you. Especially if they’re smiling and promising you, it’ll be okay after they make the changes without you. You have the right to think, you have the absolute right TO MATTER! Exercise it, like a muscle, and it’ll make you warm and strong and powerful in the world to come.

Q: Growing up who did you read?

A: Hugh Lofting’s “Dr. Doolittle” books, the “Danny Dunn” books by a guy named Raymond Abrashkin. Also “Sherlock Holmes” by Arthur Conan Doyle, and everything from Robert Louis Stevenson.

Q: Do you ever have any doubts about your writing?

A: Every day.

Q: Have you ever thought about giving up writing?

A: Every other day.

Q: Are you going to keep writing?

A: Forever, and ever, and ever. Amen.

“If a child is to keep his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in,” Rachel Carson

It was an honor to speak to these 700+ young people for one day a few weeks ago. Justice Myron E. Leavitt Middle school is not a “special” school filled with only gifted children from perfect, wholly functional homes. It is a school – like so many others in our country – filled with the fortunate and the not, the gifted and the struggling; those who will unquestionably succeed, and those who will have to fight and claw and gouge to make it happen. It has too limited resources, too overworked teachers and staff, too few options. And I will speak more of this, gentle readers, in my final installment; Leavitt Learning Part Three, next month.

But for now, let me publicly and as loud as I can in the printed or downloaded word for the entire world to hear:

HAIL TO THEE, LEAVITT MIDDLE SCHOOL – TEACHERS, ADMINISTRATION, STAFF, AND MOST CERTAINLY STUDENTS – YOU ARE ALL DOING WONDROUS WORK. AND YOU ALL DESERVE TO MAKE IT!

And I will leave the last to a student from Leavitt:

Q: Why do you always end your writings with the word “Believe!”

A: To remind myself, to remind anyone who might read anything I write, that without belief – in a thing, in a philosophy, in yourself – you are powerless, you are invisible, and you are silent. And so I put that one simple word – that contains the words BE and LIVE at the end of everything I do.

Believe!

–Richard Steinberg

By

Richard Steinberg for Elizabeth Bear

“If you must hold yourself up to your children as an object lesson, hold yourself up as a warning and not as an example,” George Bernard Shaw

A very few days ago, I had the privilege to spend the day at Myron E. Leavitt Middle School in my hometown of Las Vegas, Nevada on the final day of reading week. Through seven assembly periods, I spoke to seven or eight hundred students from the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades. The children were bright, eager and not, interested and not. But by the end of each assembly, they were all paying attention and I felt that maybe, just maybe, we had ALL won a little victory for the future that day.

My theme was simple: you can be powerful, or you can be weak. You can create yourself or be told who to become. The choice belongs to you. And through the story of my life, and those of John Steinbeck and J.K. Rowling, I made my point.

If you can’t read, if you can’t think; then someone else will tell you what is going on, and what to believe. That reading IS, in fact, fundamental; but more importantly, the ability to read and to THINK, is power.

And that I wanted them all to become the most powerful people they could.

My special thanks to Mr. Loren Levine for inviting me and Principal Shanna Mack Pippin for allowing me this opportunity.

At the end of my seven, twenty to twenty-five minute talks, I took questions from the children – about writing, reading, and other things – and this Q&A, I now share with you, gentle readers; as I turn the further creation of this essay over to the children of Justice Myron E. Leavitt Middle School.

Q: Who inspired you to write?

A: I grew up in a house where I thought the roof was supported by all the books we had in the place. There were books in every room, every top surface, everywhere. And everyone in my family wrote. I was incredibly lucky, in that I thought writing was just what everyone did. Maybe you don’t have a lot of books in your house, but that’s okay. Because you have a school library and public library and they’re all out there – all the books – just waiting for you to come to them. It’s your RIGHT to read, it’s OKAY to read, and don’t let anyone tell you differently.

Q: Is it hard to write a book?

A: It’s like trying to catch a cloud with your fingertips. But the amazing thing is sometimes you look at that blank piece of paper or computer screen and you start to write and the magic comes, or it comes because you work hard to make it come, and sooner or later (usually later) a book comes out of it. It’s like trying to catch a cloud with your fingertips . . . but when you catch it, when you feel it there, it’s the best feeling in the world.

Q: How long does it take to write a novel?

A: I wrote THE GEMINI MAN in forty-eight days. NOBODY’S SAFE took about eight months, RATTLE took years and I’m not sure I’ve gotten right yet. There’s no rule to it. You start and you know what you’re doing, then somewhere along the line, it gets out of your control – or at least it does for me – and it comes alive on its own. Then you just hang on (with hard work and dedication) and hope you know when it’s finished.

Q: What do you write about?

A: I think if there’s one thing I write about more than anything else is how hard it can be to do the right thing when doing the wrong thing is easier. About how doing the right thing – especially when it’s hard to do it – is the most important thing we can do.

Q: Does what you write about ever change?

A: It does. Lately, I’ve been writing a lot about a thing called destiny. Whether people are born to be one thing or another. And if they are, can they change that. If they can, would their changing it be a good or bad thing to do.

Q: Do you ever take stories and characters out of one book and put it in another?

A: It happens all the time. The lead character (and his story) in my third novel (THE 4 PHASE MAN) started out in my first novel, got cut, played a really big part in my second novel (NOBODY’S SAFE) got cut and finally found a home in my third novel. If you write something, and it’s good, but it doesn’t fit in the rest of your story you have to cut it out . . . and that’s the hardest thing to do in writing. But if you’re smart, you won’t throw it away, you’ll keep it in your pocket so you can pull it out to see if it fits in another story.

Q: How long have you been writing?

A: I started when I was a little younger than you are, but I know people who didn’t start until they were older than me. That’s one of the incredible things about writing. It doesn’t matter how old you are, or how strong you are, or if you’re big or small. All that matters is that you have something to say, and that you learn to say it in a way people will understand.

Q: Should I start by writing a book?

A: I think you start by writing a paragraph. Just four or five sentences that describe something . . . a thing or a place or a person or just how you’re feeling when you’re writing it. After that try writing a page (just one side) about the same thing. And when you feel comfortable doing that, you might want to try writing what we call a short story. A short story is just a bunch of paragraphs which, when you read them altogether, start with a beginning where your reader finds out where the story is and generally what it’s about and whose in it, takes you somewhere where something happens – that’s the middle – and then goes someplace where the story is completed and we find out how everything turned out. After a few of those, you might want to think about a book. But there are a lot of really good writers out there who write only short stories, or more short stories than they do books. And there are writers who write news articles, and magazine articles, and book reviews and all sorts of things. Just start writing, and do it every day, and the writing will end up telling you what kind of writer you are.

Q: Do you know other writers?

A: I know A LOT of other writers. In fact, I think one of the most important things you can do if you want to be a writer is to hang out with other people who want to be or are writers. Writers help writers and those who want to be writers because only writers can really understand writers.

Q: How long do you write every day?

A: I start each night around eleven o’clock and work for at least two hours, usually more like six or seven. And I do this every day whether I’m home, traveling, or have had a busy day. One of the most important things you can learn if you want to be a writer is called: “writing discipline.” All that is, is getting into the habit of writing regularly. It’s hard at first. At least it was for me, and it took me a long time to learn. But once I learned it, the discipline became my friend and my writing got better. You get better by doing, and discipline helps with the doing.

Q: Have you ever had help writing a book from other writers?

A: Well I ask my friends, other writers, for advice all the time. A writer named Thomas Sullivan has taught me how to use gentleness as strength. Another one named Elizabeth Massie has shown me how to use words like they were musical notes to make a word-tune for a reader’s eyes. Two of my best writer friends – Janet Berliner and David Niall Wilson – I go to when I’m really confused about stuff and they have a way of making me understand things that I thought I could never understand. All of them have written books, and all of them have “helped” me when I was writing mine.

Q: Do you use outlines?

A: I don’t, and actually that’s pretty dumb. It’s a dumb way to write and it only works for me and some other writers. Most writers are smarter than I am and they use outlines, and log-lines, and character studies and things like that. I think when you’re starting out, you really should use an outline, even if it’s just taking a sheet of paper and numbering it from one to fifteen, then filling in the most important things about your story and the order they go in. When you get a little more comfortable with writing, you might want to try doing it without an outline, but only when you get comfortable with the technique of writing. Until then, don’t be dumb like me.

Q: Do you read?

A: I hate to admit it, but I don’t read as much as I would like to. Maybe I need one of your teachers to give me a reading list and make me read it. I know they sometimes do that with you, and let me let you in on a little secret . . . years from now you’re going to thank them for it. When you read you’re not alone, you’re not without power, you can be in any world or time or way you want to be. When you read a good book, you’re totally free while you read it. And that’s a good thing.

Q: What are your favorite books to read?

A: Mostly history and biographies. I like to read a bunch of different books about people or events I’m interested in and then make up my own mind about them.

Q: What’s the best book you ever read?

A: ODD JOHN by Olaf Stapleton. It was written in 1935, and may be kind of hard to find. And it may not be age appropriate for you guys right now; but if you can find it or your parents can find it, you should read it. Trust me, your gonna love it!

Q: Do you write things other than books?

A: Well, I’ve just completed my third play, and my fourth screenplay . . . which is what they use to make movies. I also write short stories, articles about boxing, political speeches for some Congressmen and some who want to be Congressmen, and a bunch of other things. I write a lot about a lot of things.

Q: Who is your favorite poet?

A: Two people. A man and a woman. The interesting thing is that they are both best known for their singing. But most of the time they were or are singing their poetry. The man’s name was Robert Johnson, and the woman is Amanda McBroom. Poetry is so personal a thing, that when someone can write a poem that touches everyone who reads it or hears it, it’s a fantastic thing. And most everything these two people write touches everyone who hears it. It’s amazing.

Q: How many countries are you published in?

A: Thirty-two.

Q: How many books do you write each year?

A: Usually two; with a good start on the third.

Q: If you weren’t a writer what would you be?

A: The guy who works the follow spot in a nightclub. Or a teacher.

Q: Have you ever made up words?

A: Grotesquerie. But I recently saw it in a book twenty years older than mine, so I was disappointed. I mean I was seriously ferschnickled!

Q: How old were you when you started to write seriously?

A: Around twenty-two or twenty-three.

Q: Are you rich?

A: No, I’m a writer.

Q: How many books have you finished?

A: Nineteen.

Q: How many books have you not finished?

A: Twenty-three.

Q: Do you know Lemony Snicket?

A: No, but I met Daniel Handler who is the man who writes under the name Lemony Snicket.

Q: Are you related to RL Stine?

A: No.

Q: Which was your biggest selling book?

A: Nobody’s Safe.

Q: What is your favorite short story book?

A: Dangerous Visions edited by Harlan Ellison.

Q: Do you like writing?

A: More than breathing.

“See, that’s what I do. I’m a fictioneer! I’m out there looking for stupidity and trying to stamp it out! I’m out there looking for evil, and trying to stamp it out. But you know what? I’ve had my time. I’m going to keep writing books for years, but the world you’re going to grow up in, the world you’re going to be grownups in, you guys are going to build.

“And if you can’t think, and if you can’t express those thoughts, I guarantee you, someone who can is going to be the one telling you what to do,” Richard Steinberg at Leavitt Middle School 2007

In two weeks, I’ll be back with Part Two of my incredible exchanges with the students at Leavitt. Their questions grew better and deeper and gave me more insight into them and myself as the day wore on. It’s going to stun you! But at this point, as we break for our lunch period, I can tell you this much:

If the future of the thirty storytellers on this website, if the future of all of you seeing this – dear, gentle readers – depends on these extraordinary, energized, LOUD AND INTELLECTUALLY HUNGRY beautiful children, then I will sleep quite soundly at night.

See you in two weeks. Until then . . .

Believe!

By
Richard Steinberg

With more on the topic by Janet Berliner on the 26th

“If pain could have cured us we should long ago have been saved,” George Santayana

I remember going to the podiatrist that morning. I remember the wait in the Emergency Room later that day. I remember wondering if I was going to die and discussing the details of my death with my friend the Entrepreneurial Schoolteacher. I remember worrying about a staff meeting scheduled to be held that night for the charitable organization I had founded; and giving him instructions about that too. I remember thinking of a storyline for a novel about patients dying in an emergency room.

Then nothing.

I know a day passed; that I interacted with some family and friends, saw a couple of doctors, had some tests run. I’m told that I watched some television. But I don’t remember any of that.

I remember being in Pre-Op. The look in my mother’s eyes that I’d seen before . . . this wasn’t our first time facing emergency surgery together. We’d both been on either side of the bed before. I remember seeing the doctor – a good-looking guy who seemed full of himself – and his telling me that he didn’t know how much of my leg he could save, but he’d try.

Try.

The word stayed with me as they took me into the operating room. It rang in my ears as they hooked me to their machines and talked among themselves as if I wasn’t there.

Try.

Try to save my foot, my leg?

My life?

And I couldn’t think of a sentence that used the word “try” that ended positively.

“I’ll try to get that done for you . . . but probably won’t.”

“I’ll try to fix that for you . . . but, hey . . . shit happens.”

“I’ll try to save you . . .”

Those words are from my forthcoming book: “The Next Step,” but are as valid here as there.

There’s been a lot of talk here recently – and sporadically throughout the last year – about the role of exercise and diet and good health in a writer’s life. Much of it valid, some of it farcical, some irrelevant to any real world I know of. And the assumption that has powered these essays amounts to this: If a writer is in bad health, his process must somehow be dysfunctional.

Bullshit.

I was talking about it with fellow contributor Janet Berliner, and asked her what she thought of the idea that going to a gym and doing isometrics was what writers had to do in order to “stay in shape” to write. Her answer:

Bullshit.

And so this two part essay; today by me, later this week from Janet. Call it A Primer On Pain. Call it The Disease’s Side Of The Story. Call it The Effect Of Physical Frailty On The Artist At Work.

Call it whatever the hell you want to.

But read it and leave yourself open enough to consider the role of a less than functional body on those artists for whom getting up in the morning is a far bigger triumph than winning an essay contest. Consider the strength required to type your byline when every keystroke sends a paroxysm through your body, but you type it and beyond it anyway. Consider that for some, for many, trips to the gym, jogging or power walking just aren’t possible; that they must live their lives in fleshy cages through which they fight like hell for the main thing in their lives that has meaning.

Their art.

We’re not asking for your pity, or even your understanding. The one is offensive and the other purposeless. But if you are to call yourself “writers” in any real sense of the word, we ask you to remember that being in “good” shape and maintaining such is an idealized concept.

And I and my friends whose physical existence is less than perfect live in the real world.

I’ve spoken in this venue of my difficulty learning how to write (or think) after my strokes many years ago. At the time, doctors said I would most likely remain in a fugue state for the rest of my life. Through personal hard work, through the resolve and belief of my mother, through God’s caress and life’s quirks, I’m not terribly fuguey today.

“Wow, what an incredible story of miracles on Earth! It’s almost a Lifetime movie.”

Hardly.

No gyms, no health food and clean living brought me back from the abyss. Hard work did. Refusing to give up did. Knowing that without my ability to commit wholly and completely to my work, my art, I was doomed to silent watching instead of active participation was what drove me. But there were impediments I had to find improvisational solutions to.

From that day to this (so many years later) I have a sensitivity to light, to contrasts. My brain no longer processes visual stimuli like yours does. It seems, at times, that the monitor is a tank in which the words are suspended in a gel. That I can reach in and grab a word and move it to another place with the gentlest touch. This isn’t a hallucination, but rather a wiring problem. I melted a neuron or warped a synapse so things look different to me. Writing in the daytime is extremely hard unless I am in a dark room. It all combines to make it very easy to get distracted, lose concentration, get a blinding headache from trying to process the typing. Easier still to lose the magic as I try to translate it from my heart to the page.

So I adjust.

Sometimes I work with white lettering against a blue background or red lettering with a black background as I am at this moment. I work, on average, at 165% magnification. I tend to work in Verdana or Trebuchet fonts because they’re easier for me to see and process. But before I submit my work, I must make sure that I convert it back to black letters on a white background, at 100% magnification in Times New Roman or whatever type is necessary to the project at hand.

The byproducts of the strokes impact how I perceive, therefore how I write.

As a child, I was an enthusiastic but untalented athlete. I broke nine of my ten fingers (individually) at least once each. My left little finger seven or eight times; maybe nine, I don’t remember. These juvenile misadventures now combine with another condition to cause extreme pain and often swelling in the joints of fingers. Typing can be a physically hideous experience. Typing slowly can be an intellectually hideous experience.

Constant pain, even on low levels, can be the most debilitating experience a body can experience. Constant pain medication cannot only ruin your stomach, but it can also cause heartburn, and the aforementioned fugue state I’ve been trying so hard to avoid these last years.

So I adjust.

I call it “catch and release.” I type for a few seconds, up to a minute, and then I stop for a bit. Maybe a sentence or two, maybe a paragraph or two at a time at most. Then, when the fingers come away from the keyboard, I read what I’ve written. This amounts to performing my first rewrite during the creation of the initial draft. It may lose some spontaneity, but it gains introspection and focus.

Pain, therefore, is my constant collaborator.

Again, this isn’t about sympathy. It’s about the stark reality that in a world where writers are pressured on character gender issues, character ethnic issues, even character age issues, we need to be cognizant of the greatest discriminator of them all:

Physical conditions that impair or enhance the content and soul of what we write.

I’m tired of hearing: “You know, when I put on a couple of extra pounds I just don’t feel comfortable sitting and working.”

I don’t care.

Try opening your eyes each morning trying to figure out if you’re still alive, whether you’ll have the strength to get out of bed that day. Try sitting and typing a novel, wholly on spec, while wondering if you’ll ever live to see it published.

Hit that Stairmaster, drop those pounds. But don’t tell me that going to the gym twice a week is going to solve that block you’ve just hit. If it works for you, great. But I promise you that sitting in that chair actually working to improve your writing, solve story problems; working to get better at your craft no matter how you feel physically is a much more valid solution.

Imagine yourself sitting at your desk, working happily away, on a good roll with good material . . . and a pain drives through your leg with such force that you can’t immediately identify it as a pain. It’s more of a sensation that grows in a matter of seconds into a paralytic urgency that makes all the lights grow bright beyond imagination, your heart pound in your ears. Your chair is on wheels on a hardwood floor and you wonder if it’s stable enough for you to push on it to stand up to force the pain away. And to your amazement, you do stand and “walk it off.”

Do you then go lie down a while, play with the puppies, take the rest of the day off?

Or do you then sit back down at the computer and return to work, PRAYING that you can recapture the moment?

When you take that leisurely walk through the spring foliage to clear your mind and “regain your center,” think of me. I’d appreciate it.

Because I’ll be back at my computer.

Working.

I’m not a masochist for embracing my pain and making it a part of who I am as a writer, anymore than some are hedonists for wanting to look and feel as good as they can.

I want to look and feel as good as I can.

We all want the act of working to be as physically unencumbered, unstressful, and emotionally pleasant as possible. And if going to the gym, taking that walk, or maintaining that diet does that for you . . . FANTASTIC!

Just don’t tell me that the statuses enumerated in the above paragraph are a necessary part of the writer’s life, in order to work to the highest standards.

That’s bullshit.

I am a damaged person. The damage is such – particularly physically, but to an extent psychologically and spiritually – that I will always be a damaged person. I could go to the gym, eat right, meditate, get counseling, never get angry, never judge, melt away the rough edges and probably become a healthier person in the process. I don’t deny that.

But I do reject it.

Because the pain is mine. The discomfort, the visual affects, the visible effects, the warping of reality caused by the betrayal of my body against its soul belongs to me.

To me alone.

And if it is part of who I am it must – in and of itself – be a part of what I write.

I am a damaged person. I don’t argue that all of you out there should become damaged as well. In fact, my prayer is that none of you ever experience what I have, what Janet has. What some others of our fellow contributors here at Storytellers, and others of our acquaintance have.

But do me a favor, will you?

Stop telling me that those five extra pounds are blowing your novel. Don’t remind me of the endorphin rush you get at the gym that is going to so benefit you at this difficult juncture of your book. And, please, if nothing else, don’t force me to read or hear your story in badly constructed, uninspired prose about the time you stopped writing because you were feeling “a bit claustrophic” and just had to get out.

I have seen Janet Berliner barely able to breathe, with every reason in the world to stop and spend the rest of the day in bed, knowing she would receive nothing but validation and approval for resting that day and subsequent days.

And I have seen her work through those hours of pure Hell, because she had tapped into the magic, and wasn’t about to let it go.

I know of times when Thomas Sullivan’s hands hurt him so much he could barely hunt and peck with one finger; when no one, NO ONE would have judged him lazy or slothful for stepping away from the work and hitting the blades or the skis.

And I have known Sully – who I think should be a national literary icon – to actually go blading or skiing in that condition . . . AFTER he has allowed the magic it’s head and formation upon the page; no matter the agony.

Personally, I have quite literally bled upon the page. Been in a mind numbing agony there are just no words for. Despaired of surviving the night, the moment, to see the work come to its fruition.

And I have worked through it, nonetheless.

Because I am a damaged person. But I will not allow distractions to prevent the translation of spirit and heart into words.

Go to the gym, eat right, meditate, go through therapy. Speak to me of the benefits of such things. I don’t deny them.

But if you do any of the above instead of writing, or as a “solution” to a writing problem, or because you think it’s going to improve the writing, do us ALL a favor:

Keep it to yourself.

Because, in your way, you are more damaged than I.

“Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive,” Josephine Hart

In a few days, Janet Berliner will continue this discussion; I’ve no doubt with greater tact, and smoother skills than I have. And I know she will do so while on oxygen and in pain. I wish she would work less and rest more. Even as I know she won’t.

Even as I understand completely.

Until then . . .

Believe!

By
Richard Steinberg

“Al dra ‘n bobbejaan ‘n goue ring, bly hy nog ‘n lelike ding,” C.J. Langenhoven

How true that is.

Words for every writer, serious about their craft, to engrave on their frontal lobes, emblazon on the hearts, print out and carry around in their pockets. Perhaps even one of the “three great truths” to any writer’s being. Maybe the most important of the three.

In our work, when it properly reflects the essence of the above quotation, it becomes clear that . . .

What?

I don’t . . .

I don’t understand you.

Oh! You mean you don’t read Afrikaans?

Huh.

How can you NOT understand it? It’s one of the most wonderfully written things I’ve ever come across!

But then, wonderful writing can’t make up for an inability to communicate something, can it?

I’m talking about the personal regret Robert Louis Stevenson felt when Edward Hyde was perceived as the hideous freak and Henry Jekyll the pure at heart victim.

What Curt Siodmak experienced when The Wolfman was seen as the monster doomed to “B” remakes opposite Maria Ouspenskaya.

The pain of Bram Stoker when his Count was vilified, rather than Victorian morality.

Don’t get me wrong, there are smart readers and stupid readers – none of the latter viewing this website, of course – those that get it and those who couldn’t get it if it was force fed them in a world with no distractions. Nothing we can do about that.

And there is absolutely nothing wrong with beautiful strings of words laced together in a necklace of flawless prose that signifies absolutely nothing.

But there is nothing right with it either.

And the truth is, no matter our facility, our talent, our gift(s), or our experience, if the reader doesn’t get it, the blame belongs only on our shoulders.

The first responsibility of the writer is to be understood. After that comes entertaining, influencing, teaching. But none of that is possible without understanding coming first.

I’m not arguing for “writing down” to our readers, and certainly not for assuming that our readers are so dumb we can only write to the level of a Me & The Chimp episode. Far from it! I’m arguing that we respect our readers enough to take personal responsibility for communicating our message to our audience.

I was at a Book Show several years back, sitting in the green room waiting to take my place at one of the autograph stalls, and got into a conversation with a major author of “important” books who was always well reviewed by the most “edgy” reviewers. This individual was lauded, and promoted – and most importantly to me at the time – highly paid.

Work that I had read, but didn’t have a clue what the books were about.

This writer wrote with some of the finest licks I’ve ever seen. I mean profoundly moving imagery, stunning narrative, compelling dialogue. And images, well . . . I hope one day to create images as vivid. But, in the end, the books left me essentially empty; as I didn’t understand what the message was, barely understood the story, and hadn’t a clue as to the purpose of those 400+ pages I’d consumed.

And as the author and I stood to take our places, they turned to me and said: “It’s not important that you understand. It’s only important that I understand.”

Wow! Cool! I mean think of the poetry of . . . wait . . . uh . . . what was that again?

Bullshit, is what it’s called.

I’m not arguing for the lessening of majesty. I could’ve started The Gemini Man with the words: “Piatigorsk was a really depressing place.” Instead I chose to write: “The Rainbow never made it to Piatigorsk.” I love well put together words almost as much, if not more, than I love well put together women!

Yeah, I need to get out more; I know.

But don’t let the poetry get in the way of the story telling. Don’t get so caught up in vocabulary that you end up not saying anything. Don’t let your love of language reduce your point to an indecipherable hodge-podge.

Write from your heart and your soul; and if those words demand artistry, then by God give them artistry!

A whaling vessel has had two people lost at sea, this is known by another whaler that is passing her. And the author writes:

“But by her halting course and winding, woeful way, you plainly saw that this ship that so wept with spray, still remained without comfort. She was Rachel, weeping for her children, because they were not.”

Beautiful writing. Fat, gorgeous writing. Wholly understandable writing. Written, more or less, in the style of the time, but so much of the rest of the novel was written in stark phrases and dark imagery that this was clearly an attempt by the author to elevate . . . if only for a moment.

A doctor’s patient continues to worsen, so he decides to consult another. And the author writes:

“My news today is not so good. Lucy, this morning, has gone back a bit. There is, however, one good thing which has arisen from it; Mrs. Westerna was naturally anxious concerning Lucy, and has consulted me professionally about it. I took advantage of the opportunity, and told her that my old master, Van Helsing, the great specialist, was coming to stay with me; and that I would put her in his charge conjointly with myself.”

Beautiful writing. Stark, to the point writing. Wholly understandable writing. Written, more or less, in the style of the time, but so much of the rest of the novel was written in poetic images and soaring rhetoric that this was clearly an attempt by the author to impart, rather than to affect . . . if only for a moment.

And the grace of Herman Melville and Bram Stoker rings in our ears over a century after they wrote those words.

Because we understood them.

I’ll be honest with you, gentle readers, as I hope I always have been. I haven’t always been able to write understandably, to communicate my purpose, to even write in a clear enough tone to be generally understood.

Big Bad Bob (the Baddest man ever to walk down Broadway) who has been my friend, mentor, manager (perhaps keeper) for going on twelve years now tells me that sometimes he has to read my drafts several times; he can feel that something’s wrong in them, but my facility with language makes it hard to find right away. And it must be found for the project to succeed.

The Sexual Rapscallion – a bright, vibrant minded individual – told me after reading a draft that “it’s good, but I don’t get it.”

The Entrepreneurial Schoolteacher – smart, sharp, and insightful – says that one of my published novels he can only understand if he reads it in the bathroom . . . sitting down.

Writing to be understood, while still creating art and affecting other souls, is a stone bitch of a job, no question.

I know this from reaction to my own works, as well as my own reactions to the work here at Storytellers. Each day you read entries from some of the best there are at what we do. Yet, I will admit that there are times when I don’t get it. I read their words, recognize their imagery . . . and yet somehow their meaning sometimes slips right past me.

If we write to be read, mustn’t we also write to be understood? And as the world has become genres and subgenres, sub-subgenres, isn’t that making our task easier?

Which is better, the title I placed at the top of this essay or it’s English translation: The Lone Water Lily Signifies The Essential Loneliness Of Existence

Here’s your answer: neither of them.

I love the sound of French, and as I am currently having an affair with existentialist impressionism, I am drawn to Monet. But in French or English, the title has nothing to do with anything that lies above this line.

So let’s do a rewrite. Some sweeping language that also clearly imparts the intent . . . as is the purpose of a title. How about, with apologies to Gloria Estefan:

When Words Get In The Way

By

Richard Steinberg

How’s that stack up? Is it clear, literate, evocative?

Easy, right?

Not really.

Heavy sigh.

Not at all. Those of us in a life long romance of passion and lust and fury and tenderness with words struggle with the issue of clarity on a regular basis. Which is why I always wait for a rewrite to dial back the rhetoric a bit.

Put it down the way you hear it in your head. Fancy or stark, flowing or in snippets. Get it down, get it out. You can’t rewrite what hasn’t been written. So let it go and get the first draft finished.

But then sit back, morph from writer to reader; and read your draft. Discount style, and concentrate on how well the ideas in your work have been expressed, and how easily they’re understood.

Now morph back to writer, and begin again.

Some of what you’ve written will be reduced to low, gentle murmurs from the string section. Other parts will reach shouting crescendos with all sixty-four pieces joined in a symphonic exclamation point. There will be moments of starkness, and moments of poetry. Mix and match, play with it, juggle the tones and the rhythms and the stylings so that when you’re done, and you’ve stepped away from it for a few days, you can return – as a reader – and decide whether or not you will be understood by your future readers.

Because if you don’t, if you allow great writing that says absolutely nothing (but in a flowery beautiful way) to be what you would have the rest of us read, then all you’ve done is prove the truth of the quote I opened this essay with:

“Al dra ‘n bobbejaan ‘n goue ring, bly hy nog ‘n lelike ding,” C.J. Langenhoven

“Even when a baboon wears a golden ring, he still remains an ugly thing” C.J. Langenhoven

I hope, no . . . I pray you understand.

Believe!

By

Richard Steinberg (pinch hitter deluxe) for Dick Hill

Dick Hill is deeply enwrapped within the preparations for, and the recording of, Thomas Pynchon’s new novel: Against The Day – and rather unwisely has allowed me to fill in for him.

As a writer, not as a reader, so relax; Pynchon’s in great hands. As for you, well . . .

“We are taught that God, the unchangeable, is the ultimate author of the Good Book. Unchangeable? That explains why he wrote only one good book,” Mary Wilkins Freeman

This is the first full essay I’ve written since I began my exile and regenesis on 20 November. And I’m not at all sure how that will affect my style, substance, or delivery. But I am INTENSELY curious to find out. So let us begin to find out . . . together.

You see, I’m pissed off with God right now. And, for the record, I have plenty of evidence of God’s existence, because the Devil or random caprice couldn’t possibly be anywhere near as cruel as the force behind my life the last two years.

Now I’m not saying I didn’t have it coming – who’s to say? Damnation is as likely (perhaps even more so) to come when you’re having a good time and enjoying yourself as it is when you’re doing something wrong and regretting it. And once damned, how would you know anyway until you become God’s one and only chew toy?

Of course, there’s another side to it. Once damned, forever liberated.

I mean what’s the big guy gonna do? Sentence me to immeasurable time in Hell PLUS twenty years? Inflict unspeakable tortures upon my soul for eternity and a half? Force my essence into the implacable blackness of his absence, peek in every few eons, scream “BOO” and then giggle and say: “just kidding,” as he snickers away like a kid who left a bag of burning dog shit on your porch?

So, if I can just survive (however barely) being his chew toy, maybe I can actually turn the tables a bit on His Judgmental Ass and call a thing or two of his into question. And as is my chosen way, I’ll do it through my writing.

Who we are as writers must never be who we will be as writers. We live in a living world and as that world changes so must we. When I began writing seriously, I wrote questioning man and his power structures. It was who I was then, who I had been, and it seemed like a good place to start. The Gemini Man was a novel that embodied that. And because my interests were already changing as I was writing it, I threw in some thoughts on evolution and human destiny as well. Not many, but a few. Nobody’s Safe still dealt with man and his power systems, but almost equally with man’s place in the universe. The Four Phase Man continued the journey being, in part, about man and his power systems, but more about the universal constants of ambiguities.

These three novels – written in about three and a half years – when taken with other writings in the period show a clear and consistent evolution in my writing. As I became more comfortable in my talents, more skilled with form and figure, my message changed. I changed.

Then came the fat and happy years that I knew would never end. I was writing with more skill and style than at any other period in my life. I mean I was GOOD! But meaning crept away from my stories, replaced by a slick style. Message became less important than execution. Making sure I met the expectations of my readers (and, more importantly, my publishers) was the be all and end all. I became obsessed with writing for Tra L.A. (my preferred way of referring to Hollywood) because it was Tra L.A., more than publishing, that could provide me with the creature comforts that had made me fat and happy; and being fat and happy was the goal.

That’s when God sent the first shot across the bow.

I began to accumulate rejection letters from publishers whose parties I attended, whose homes I visited, and sometimes whose beds I occupied for a night or two, that raved on about the quality of the writing, the strength of the storytelling, the vividness of the characters! While rejecting the projects because “we’re not exactly sure what this is about.”

Fat and happy meant, for me, skilled and lazy.

So I began to change again. I rejected some of the trappings of comfort and ease – probably less than I should have – studied my earlier success and worked assiduously on writing the next, perfect, “Steinberg Novel.” But there was a problem, in that I was trying to write as though I was again the person I had been rather than the person I was.

I might as well have been trying to write the “perfect Hemingway” novel; or maybe to become the “next Clive Cussler.” And since I was no more Papa or Clive than I was the guy who had written The Gemini Man, I failed. Of course. There was no other possible outcome.

And my descent continued.

I had people who believed in me – thank God, the bastard – who encouraged and cajoled, but it was almost as if I had lost the ability to write in my own voice. Or, more precisely, I had lost the ability to write in my old voice; which is only normal and proper . . . if you don’t have your head up your ass. I wasn’t the guy who had written Nobody’s Safe in a tiny apartment just above a dumpster and below heavy power lines on an alley in a bad neighborhood on the eastside of Los Angeles in a sweltering summer without air conditioning.

I was five years older, had sold my soul for comfort, repossessed it when I couldn’t keep up the payments, and now hovered somewhere between “okay” and “deep shit.” I was stressed three or four days a week about life things, enraptured (about the same amount of time) about new work (plays for legitimate theater mostly) and convinced that if I ignored the problem and allowed the current change to take hold, I could return to the writing with a new voice. And in so doing, I could reclaim all that was mine previously: peace of mind, comfort, money, supermodels as dates, invitations to the best parties, being able to live life without ever having to worry about “stuff.”

Did I mention that I still had my head up my ass?

When I returned to the novels, my voice well reflected my life. It was coarse and haunted. Thank God – the flatulent landlord that he is – the skill remained, and the stories were more original than they had been. But there was still something not right about them. Every novel in this period was close, sometimes a hair’s breadth from being right, but always missing. What it was missing, I wasn’t exactly sure, but now I didn’t need others to tell me it wasn’t there; I could see it for myself.

This was when I entered Wilderness.

Wilderness is a place I suspect most real writers end up at some time or another. You don’t feel yourself entering it, are rather surprised when you look around and find yourself there. But you also know – as surely as you breathe a labored prayer – that no one put you there, no one sentenced you there. You walked in of your own accord for an indeterminate sentence that could not be understood.

It isn’t a bad place, Wilderness. It is only as harsh as you make it yourself. It’s made up of self-doubt, apostasy, disillusionment, soul-pain, and self-inflicted wounds. But there is a nurturing scent in the air in Wilderness, a sense of expectation that you are wandering through seemingly changeless tableaus, but that somewhere beyond your inner vision lies an end to it; a way out. The real sense that Wilderness is the preamble to something else. Something singular, whether good or bad.

Something . . . extraordinary.

And you would be amazed at the people and signs of people you find there; also wandering in search of lost blessings/curses. Good people, strong writers, inspired talents who have lost their way through their own fault or others’ faults. There are the footsteps of Fitzgerald and Hemingway showing the way, a shelter built by Poe and left for the next wanderer, Harper Lee’s frustrations and fears cast aside on a lonely sand dune. As you trudge through despondency and doubt, there rises up Raymond Chandler’s pain hanging from a vine covered tree, Van Vogt’s ego being gently chewed by a croc, and the thing which sustained me most: the shallow grave where Olaf Stapleton laid the bones of the fraud he had been before he shed them in Wilderness to rise to the heights of Odd John.

As well as the faces of one or two of my fellow contributors here at Storytellers.

I wandered and trod through my doubts and insecurities, the bullshit that my gift had been allowed to lapse into, and I discovered something I had lost years before.

Me.

Not the guy who wrote The Four Phase Man, or the one who tried to please everybody, or the gifted playwright who had little enthusiasm for the craft. Me. Who I was at that moment, who I could be if I listened to my soul. The essence of the man who had written Gemini, not the facts of him.

At that moment, my path became clear, if still hard. I came to understand who I was as a writer, what it was that allowed me to write quality works that affected my readers in 19 languages and 32 countries around the world.

My gift is rage. Who I am as a writer is built on a foundation of rage; and when I write from any other place, I am not writing as me. Rage at a system, at a wrong, at hypocrisy or inequities. But rage was the ground upon which my house was built, and rejecting it was rejecting my talent . . . my gift.

I rather self-delightedly told this revelation to my agent/manager of many years and he replied: “well we knew that.” I instantly demanded to know why he had never told me this Rosetta Stone truth, to which he replied simply and honestly: “I did. Who you were just wouldn’t listen.”

Oh.

And I realized that the revelation was only a light on the path out of Wilderness; not the exit itself.

For almost two years now, I have been following this barely lit path. It’s been a rough two years. I’ve had everything thrown at me that God – the sadistic voyeur that he is – could conjure. There’ve been several great illnesses, the loss of a large part of one leg, career and personal failures that would shrivel your soul if I went into detail; my mother (who was my best friend) died suddenly and unexpectedly, many friends were lost in pointless battles with enemies declared and diseases ignored, and still more.

But I stand now within sight of the edge of Wilderness; poised to move that final unknown distance back into – not success – but life. My next book will come out at the beginning of June, and several thereafter I believe. I know I have discovered a truth, two truths really, and through those discoveries have rediscovered the Galactic Orgasm that my writing has been and is rebecoming. And I consider these truths so valuable, so critical to who we are as writers, that I took the time to detail my journey for you so that you might appreciate them all the more.

Truth #1: We must write from the heart of who we are. Only starting from that most feral place can we succeed. For me, it’s writing from rage. For you, who knows? But take the time to find it, to savor it. Because, and you need to trust me on this, it is too God damned easy to misplace!

Truth #2: Only the truly wild can survive Wilderness. And that’s a good thing. Because the truly wild are truly free; and the truly free are blessed above all. The truly wild do not obsess on failures either in the past or that might happen in the future. The truly wild can rest, replenish, and carry on despite their circumstances; can survive and thrive in the harshest environment God or man or their heart can throw at them.

I will leave Wilderness soon, I think. But I will not leave “Wild” behind; I’ll carry it with me always. And from time to time I’ll return to the barren plains of torment – this time on my own terms – to remind myself how easy it is to lose the balance of what we are, who we are.

To rekindle the wild spark within me.

“I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief . . . For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free,” Wendell Berry

And because of God’s damnation, I AM free. If he had not thrown so many things in my way, I would never have found these basic truths which have saved my writing, and therefore my soul.

Wait a minute . . . maybe he wasn’t damning me after all.

Believe!

By

Richard Steinberg

“The human mind is not capable of grasping the universe. We are like a child entering a huge library . . . The child knows that someone must have written all those books. It does not know who or how,” Albert Einstein

Among the vast dark matter plains of space, galaxies are constantly in motion; often coming into contact with each other. Millions of stars and planets (perhaps more) are constantly sliding effortlessly and harmlessly past each other. Each getting a close up look at the other without being essentially changed by the experience. But occasionally a rogue galaxy will not go softly into that good night of the Universe.

Such is the case of Galaxy ESO 510-G13.

Recently – in cosmic time – 510-G13 slammed into another galaxy, and rather than passing harmlessly by, it destroyed much of what was in the second galaxy; swallowing what was left and sweeping it up on its never ending journey across the heavens. The light/energy generated by this cataclysm was so bright it’s likely it was seen in the furthest corners of the universe.

Forget the intricacies of physics and quantum/celestial mechanics for a moment and just picture the remarkable magic unleashed over the app. three million years it took for 510-G13 to remake that other galaxy into a part of itself before blissfully moving on. And within that stunning mixture of blue stars, purple nebulas, and stunning new star-births lies my fondest, most intimate aspiration.

I want to be 510-G13.

I want my words to soar gracefully out into the universe, impacting anything with a brain they might encounter. I want them to hit with such closeted force that they destroy preconceptions, obliterate ill-conceived judgments, and reduce to ash hatreds and misconceptions based on ignorance. And then, rather than leaving wreckage behind, I want them to remake the destroyed (and therefore malleable) mentalities into something better, something more beautiful, something filled with purples and greens and newly formed stars of passionate perspectives.

Picture the child Einstein mentions in the open of this piece. For the first time, standing in the doorway of a great library like that in Alexandria, in Paris, in New York; the child looks at the walls of books not knowing where they came from or how they came to be or who wrote them or why they were written. The youngster takes a step forward, and then another. Walks close enough to smell the bindings, reaches out to barely touch the spine of the closest book; hesitates, then opens it and . . . SLAM!!!! The child is changed, perhaps only a little bit, forever.

Chalk another one up for the followers of 510-G13.

But my problem is this: I don’t write for children. Most of my fellow contributors at Storytellers don’t write for children. Most of you, gentle readers, don’t aspire to write for children. And when grown-up (physically at least) people are your target audience, it becomes incredibly hard to live up to my favorite galaxy’s example: to penetrate through a lifetime’s experiences and cultured beliefs; to obliterated wrong-headedness, to remake a fully developed soul.

But we have to try.

This is the end of my first year with Storytellers Unplugged, my 18^th column/essay or story to appear on this site. I’ve discussed technique, theory, theme, and a few things that don’t begin with “T”. I’ve tried to take my monthly opportunity to speak to other writers and convince them to become heartists. I’ve attempted to get through to basic truths, to share common dreads, to express as eloquently as I can what I believe is a writer, is good writing, what goes in the mystical stew, what temperature to cook it at; what garnish to serve it with to create something worthy of being called: writing rather than creative typing.

But I wonder sometimes – as the majority of our readers never leave a comment – if anything I write is connecting on a galactic rewrite level. Not to remake you into my image – that bare possibility sickens me – but rather into a galaxy of your own; dancing gracefully through celestial fields of possibilities. Seeking out weaker galaxies in need of help or guidance. Remaking them into something more beautiful or uglier . . . but something new and capable of continuing the gavotte on their own.

“Although written many years ago, Lady Chatterley’s Lover has just been reissued by the Grove Press, and this pictorial account of the day-to-day life of an English gamekeeper is full of considerable interest to outdoor minded readers, as it contains many passages on pheasant-raising, the apprehending of poachers, ways to control vermin, and other chores and duties of the professional gamekeeper. Unfortunately, one is obliged to wade through many pages of extraneous material in order to discover and savour those sidelights on the management of a midland shooting estate, and in this reviewer’s opinion the book cannot take the place of J. R. Miller’s Practical Gamekeeping,” Ed Zern, Field and Stream, November 1959

Clean miss. Galaxy D.H. Lawrence had no effect at all on Mr. Zern. He came, he read, he yawned.

But then there’s A Catcher In The Rye; a book that the FBI tell us was either owned or had been repeatedly read by 83 out of 100 serial killers they’d interviewed. Guess Galaxy J.D. Salinger managed to impact right-on with that.

So, how do we pull it off? What is it we must do as writers to connect so completely with our readers that our words might (and we never ask for more than “might”) destroy and remake, smother and kindle all at once? How do we make sure we’re not misunderstood in our efforts to release grace?

As I said, this is my 18^th column for Storytellers. I’ve written 19 novels, two short story collections, been a New York Times and international best seller; am published in 19 languages in 32 countries, and occasionally write features on boxing for the Japanese. I’ve been paid for my writing for eleven years now, can be found in most libraries, and my work is being turned into films and TV shows.

But I still don’t have a clue. Not even when it comes to my own books, essays, or stories. I can recognize it when I see it, though.

If you want to be worthy of being called a child of 510-G13, you will put truth in your writing. Not necessarily arbitrary truth, and often not even your own truth, but real truth based on your characters’ realities and your story’s requirements. You will season these truths with believability. Even in the wildest fantasies (that succeed) you are drawn into a believable world where everything makes sense within the reality of that world. And you’ll top it off with just a little passion. The smallest part of the mix, but possibly the most critical

Passion: intense or overpowering emotion.

And therein lies the difference between ESO 510-G13 and Abell 2218 . . . a collection of galaxies that all move at the same rate and intensity, and therefore pose no threats to each other. 2218 has no passion. 510-G13 reeks of it.

Want to change minds, beliefs, get your readers to begin questioning the status quo? Write with passion. This doesn’t mean writing on a grander scale. It does mean writing in more intense colors. Not falling into the trap of spilling reds across the canvas for effect, but creating characters that care about what they are doing, whose motivations are strong and true, who – no matter what side of the story they’re on – have something real vested in the outcome. Write a story that reflects these things and you’re beginning.

But just beginning.

Fellow Storytellers contributor Dave Wilson recently turned me on to the writings of the Marquis de Sade . . . don’t ask, it’s not a pretty tale . . . and in looking at these often absurd, often profound, and always galactic writings, I discovered something.

“Never lose sight of the fact that all human felicity lies in man’s imagination, and that he cannot think to attain it unless he heeds all his caprices. The most fortunate of persons is he who has the most means to satisfy his vagaries,” Donatien Alphonse François, Marquis de Sade

EOS 510-G13 is constantly on the move, expanding, consuming galaxies, filling the space they once held with its uniqueness, its nonstop evolution, the power of its essence. So too, must all writers. It is a requirement of the art that we do not limit ourselves, do not pull back from that which frightens or embarrasses us. Even more, that we do not pull that gift back from our creations.

I have written far less sexual violence in my work than most in my genre. Not because I find sexual violence abhorrent (although I do) or because I’m trying to be politically correct; but simply because it never fit into the stories I was working on. But soon, a new novel of mine will come out that contains several sequences of sexual violence. Because it was in keeping with who the characters were and the story they found themselves within I didn’t hesitate or limit myself.

I have a friend who will not read a book that has a dead child in it; and another for whom the death of an animal – like a cat or a pigeon – is the ultimate sin.

Tough.

If the truth of my story requires children spitted upon pikes, I’m going to deliver that. If the course of my story requires a character to crush a cat’s skull, well . . . I did that already in The Gemini Man. The point is this: as I sit down to write, there are no limits on where I am prepared to go. These are the strengths of Anne Rice or Stephan King; the gifts of William Vollman or Irving Wallace. As much as I enjoy the lyrical scents and visions of Shelly and Keats or Wouk and Asimov, give me the punch to the solar plexus of Van Vogt, or the soul challenge of Conroy, or the inner reach of Herbert.

Crush your conscience, set aside your morality, jail your judgments. THEN reach out and write. And when conclusions become called for, reach them. Through your own conscience, morality, or judgments if you must; through that of your characters is better. But don’t fetter them with any moral or emotional compass other than their own. Let them breathe, live, heal, fuck, abuse, torment, resurrect or strike down as THEY will . . . not as you will, and then, perhaps, you can claim your birthright as a child of 510-G13.

Or not.

The Gemini Man met almost all those criteria, enough so that it should have had a real chance to change some minds, influence some hearts, touch some souls. But after having labored and fought and bled and created my lungs out, it was, in the end, misunderstood.

A Conservative columnist trumpeted it as: “A brave new voice in the conservative struggle against moral pluralism.”

A Liberal columnist called it: “A long overdue tribute to liberal values and perspectives, and an indictment of conservative pseudo morality.”

In fact, it was about none of those things; and when I look up into the midnight sky, I can just see the disappointment in 510-G13’s eyes. And in the mirror as well.

I can’t blame the readers; none of us can ever blame the readers. It’s not and never is their fault for not getting us. It is our job – first and foremost – to reach them, to compel them, to entreat them. And in the final analysis critical and commercial acclaim – while nice – is not the point of it all. Whispering possibilities into other people’s souls is.

And I failed at that, for the most part.

As we will all fail most of the time.

But when we succeed, when we reach that moment of critical mass when what we have to say is what our readers hear . . . my God, how unbelievably spectacular it feels! More than making up for the failures, the near misses, the false shots, the abject shortfalls. It feels as though God has leaned close to whisper in our ear, his lips barely touching as he says: “You can rest now.”

At least for a moment.

This is the end of my first year at Storytellers Unplugged; and I want to take this opportunity to thank Janet Berliner who leaned on me to join up, Joe Nassise for letting me in, Dave Wilson for being my spiritual guide within these cyber borders, and Thomas Sullivan for being a kindred soul. I want to thank all my other partners in this extraordinary enterprise, whether I’ve become a close friend or a passing acquaintance, for the impact they’ve had on my life and writing.

I want to thank all of you – our gentle, curious and so contributing readers – for your comments, probes, stabs, and compliments. You make the website as much as those of us who write here do.

But, as I gear up for year two, ESO 510-G13 taunts me in the night asking if anything I’ve written here has risen to that galactic level that is our duty to at least aspire to.

“Although the dream is a very strange phenomenon and an inexplicable mystery, far more inexplicable is the mystery and aspect our minds confer on certain objects and aspects of life. Psychologically speaking, to discover something mysterious in objects is a symptom of cerebral abnormality related to certain kinds of insanity. I believe, however, that such abnormal moments can be found in everyone, and it is all the more fortunate when they occur in individuals with creative talent or with clairvoyant powers. Art is the fatal net which catches these strange moments on the wing like mysterious butterflies, fleeing the innocence and distraction of common men,” Giorgio de Chirico

Or galaxies consuming other galaxies to make a more beautiful world.

Believe!