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 Staff Sgt. Michael J. Gabel, 30, of Crowley, La., Cpl. Joshua C. Blaney, 25, of Matthews, N.C., both of the 173rd Airborne Brigade; Chief Petty Officer Mark T. Carter, 27, of Fallbrook, Calif., a Navy SEAL; Cpl. Tanner J. O’Leary, 23, of Eagle Butte, S.D., Spc. Matthew K. Reece, 24, of Harrison, Ark. Both of the 82nd Airborne Division; Staff Sgt. Gregory L. Elam, 39, of Columbus, Ga. of the 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault); and Sgt. Steven C. Ganczewski, 22, of Niagara Falls, N.Y. of the 75th Ranger Regiment.

Thank you all.  May flights of angels sing you to you rest.

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise.  The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt,” Sylvia Plath

Self-doubt and natural gas ovens in Sylvia’s case.

It’s immaterial if it was a suicidal gesture gone horribly wrong or a deliberate attempt to kill herself. The results were the same.  Dead is dead.

Silence is forever.

Chalk up another victim for the most prolific serial killer in the history of the arts.

Self-doubt.

I know this – without reciting the legions of other familiar names it has claimed – from personal experience.

Hello.  My name is Richard S., I am a New York Times and international best-selling writer, and I am a self-doubter.

I think it’s always been there to some extent; rising and falling like a maleficent tide at hard to time, but regular intervals.  By this I mean there have been times – years sometimes – when the condition lay dormant in me.  Times when my life has been filled with overwhelming successes (both real and perceived) and it seemed that every step I took was strong and true; in the right direction and with a bounce to it.

But there’ve been other times – dark nights of the soul, Ilario the Magnificent calls them – when it has plagued me to the point of paralysis.  When I knew beyond doubt that I had lost the ability to create (if I ever had it) and would never regain that so fragile gift and write productively again.

Glorious Glori (my first and greatest believer, throughout her life and still, in my heart, since her death) never wavered in her belief in me and my talent.  His Sartorial Splendor once answered my call with the words:  “Hello, you wonderful writer,” and has never vacillated in his faith in my gift; in me.  And The Reformed Sexual Rapscallion, at the depths of a particularly nasty bout of doubt, told me: “Some gifts you can’t lose.  Even if you try.  Even you!”

I have been blessed with friends and family that will not believe me when I tell them, very sincerely, that it’s over.  Men and women who just smile (the way you would at an idiot child that you love and want the best for) and sometimes shake their heads or chuckle with gentle amusement at playing the scene out again.  Then, ask me with a profound assurance:  “So, what are you going to work on tonight?”

And they’re always right.  It may not happen that night or the next, but I always return to the work.  It took almost four months the last time it got bad.  But the C.L.A.S.S. (Clear Lights Around Steinberg’s Stupidity) always forces me to rise to the top and set off again.

Some might call it masochism.

I call it love.

But, at least for a time, let me talk to those of you without (or who perceive they are without) those kind of ass-kickers whose belief is sometimes couched in a boot to the butt, sometimes by a smile, sometimes a tone of voice.

There are so many people out there who are struggling to figure it out on their own.  People fighting to find the slightest clue that they may be a writer as opposed to a creative typist.  People who, for whatever reason (true or not) believe they have no one around them who supports, encourages, nurtures, strengthens or gifts them with their belief.

It’s okay.

However large or missing the support system around you, there are actually dozens, hundreds, perhaps thousands of believers out there.  Each one of them have passed through their own unique version of your Hell.  Passed through . . .

. . . meaning somehow made it to the other side.

Alexandre Dumas, Bram Stoker, Jack Kerouac, Kawabata Yasunari, Anthony Trollope, John Dos Passos, Charlotte Bronte, Thomas Mann, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Charles Dickens, Murasaki Shikibu, Leo Tolstoy, Jane Austin, and Miguel de Cervantes all went through long periods of judging themselves failures.  Or lived throughout their lives believing they couldn’t cut it and never would.

But if they were right, if any of them were right, how is it that I’ve read ALL OF THEM over the years, decades, or centuries since their deaths?

Writing, almost by definition is the most solitary, most personally unforgiving gig there is.  Trust me on this.  A writer in a big family surrounded by dozens of party-favor friends, all of whom laugh at their efforts, make light of their calling, or worse still . . . ignore their blood-born work feels as alone as can be defined.  Abandoned almost beyond hope.

Ask Sylvia Plath.

Oh, that’s right, you can’t.  She put her young children to bed, placed wet towels under their bedroom door to protect them, and then made love to a gas pipe.

Oh, Sylvia; how I wish I had known you; could’ve been there for you.  I hope your pain is ended.  For I know that in your silence, ours is increased. 

You are a writer if you are reading this; or you’re at least exploring the possibilities of being a writer.  With extremely rare exceptions, you will ply your trade sitting with your imagination, your dreams, your demons, and your doubts.  That’s the conditions of work.  Get used to it, it never gets better.

But you are NOT alone.

I don’t know every one of my fellow Storytellers, but I know many of them (and most of their work) well enough to tell you this:

You are not alone.

We – all of us – are here with you.

None of us write our monthly entries strictly out of the hope that it will better sell our work, or make us look more erudite.  We’re here because we’ve been there.

Been you.

Our souls are scarred; some with jagged wounds that deform the being beneath, some with slight blemishes that we can ignore most of the time.  Most of the time.  But all of us carry those wounds – not wounds, but badges of survival – brought about by exposing our heart and/or soul to the world.

And we’re still here.

As you will be too, if – big word there – if you have the guts to face the fire, ignore or employ the doubt, move forward or backward or sideways in your literary journey.  Any direction will do.

Any direction but standing still in fear or doubt.

“We {writers} have to learn to be our own best friends because we fall too easily into the trap of being our own worst enemies,” Roderick Thorp

False confidence can be as destructive as creative despair.  It can shut you down just as fast, lessen the depth of your work, and lead you to eventual ruin; and it is not what I argue for here today.

And I’m not advocating standing in the middle of the road.  Flattened squirrels and avaricious politicians dwell there.

“First write the words, then add the music,” Ilario the Magnificent once advised me.  “Only after that should you examine the work.  Examine, never judge.”  I can’t begin to recall how many times that advice has saved me from myself.

Please, from my heart and soul, remember that you are not alone.  I am here for you.  Dave Wilson, Janet Berliner, Thomas Sullivan, Elizabeth Massie, Richard Dansky, Stan Ridgley, Elizabeth Bear, and all of us here at SU are here for you.

As I believe that poor lost Sylvia Plath, in her way, is also.

We can not guarantee you will ever see your work in print; or that if you do, it will be appreciated by your readers.  Good, sometimes great, writers often remain unpublished, unknown, unread throughout their lives and beyond.  It’s sad, but it happens.

But we can guarantee you this much:  no one else can write what you have to say; what’s inside you, what reaches you.  The Universe craves your presence because of your uniqueness; so, write on.

If only for that awesome audience.

One last thing:

This begins Year Three of our journey together on the good ship Storytellers.  Junior Year.  “The Charm” year.  A journey which began with these words:

“I’m a fictioneer; sailing the high seas of ignorance, doubt, apostasy, and the occasional salvation (salvaged) moment.  I’m a writer – blessed to be so – and honored by the community of writers (as opposed to creative typists) around me.”

My journey continues.

This year I confront in this more than challenging forum the meat of the thing, the dark side; the often hysterically funny dark side (you’ll understand some of that next month) which makes up the guts of writing.

If, like me, you spend more time wishing yourself back to Oz, then you do trying to understand the stability of, and mechanisms responsible for, the growth of tornado vortices, let’s journey a time in each other’s company.

Until then, in all ways, always:

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!

By
Richard Steinberg

“Coleridge wasa drug addict. Poe was an alcoholic. Marlowe was killed by a man whom he was treacherously trying to stab. Pope took money to keep a woman’s name out of a satire then wrote a piece so that she could still be recognized anyhow. Chatterton killed himself. Byron was accused of incest. Do you still want to be a writer – and if so, why?” Bennett Cerf

It’s a question I ask myself frequently. 

It’s not to be “happy,” whatever that means. 

Referring to my address book, I know (meaning know well) thirty-seven professional writers.  In reviewing the list, I discovered that four of them could be called happy pretty much all the time, two others were happy more often than not, one pretends she’s happy to please her husband and children, and thirty were pretty much depressives on one level or another, like me.

Why then do we do it?

It’s not to get rich, or even have words be our sole source of income. 

Of the thirty-eight of us, only seven have writing as their only source of income.  There are two computer programmers, four teachers, seven with full-time white collar jobs, and seventeen multiply-employed persons who do whatever they can to support the writing.  Much to his confusion, Prince Mishkin Of Scotland teaches preschool five days a week, and the weekend works in a cattle slaughterhouse.

And it is most certainly not to live in Happily Ever After. 

Twenty-nine of us are either divorced or have had multiple “serious” relationships bloom and then die horrible, disfiguring deaths.  Now writing was not the sole reason for the breakups; except for The Red-headed Stepfather who thought his in-laws history of kleptomania, his sister-in-law’s penchant for young teenage boys, and his wife’s cousin’s oddly disturbing affection for farm animals would make a good book.  The marriage ended, but it really was a good book.

Mr. Cerf asked us: why? 

Why do we want to put ourselves into a business where we will most likely face rejection and attempts to squash our dreams?  Where we voluntarily spend much time in pain and anger?  Where we often experience feelings of inadequacy and psychic impotence in a world that rewards typed flatulence and punishes literary air fresheners?

I think part of it is that we’re not too bright.

Consider this:  In the year 2000 approximately 1,825,000 novels were begun in the United States alone.  Of these, only 181,250 were actually finished within two years.  Of those, only 71,400 (give or take a nervous breakdown) were actually shown to someone other than a blood relative.  And of these, right around 26,000 were submitted to an agent or a publisher for consideration.

For consideration to be one of the 718 fiction titles published in the USA in 2005.

That’s under one percent.

0.04%

And upwards of ninety percent of the 718 titles published by mid to major houses were sold for an advance less than five thousand dollars. 

Not exactly quit the day job money.

Why then do we do it? 

I had actually forgotten that the pub date of my first novel was upon us, and was looking for a copy of The Moon Is Down by John Steinbeck.  I walked into the local Barnes & Noble, knew Steinbeck was kept on the next to the bottom shelf on the back left wall, and stopped.

There it was.

Requiescat by Gloria Usiskin Steinberg & Richard Steinberg

Steinbeck, then . . . Steinberg.

And I realized that despite the truth that my publisher at the time was a sonuvabitchin’ thief who would never give us an honest accounting, I had the book. I had the accomplishment.  I had crossed a unique Rubicon and could honestly and without doubt or hesitation call myself an author . . . and mean it.

A feeling of almost inexpressible achievement and wonder that I wish for every one of you.

I charged out of that bookstore ready to conquer the world.

Like I said, we’re not that bright.

And as evidence I would point to this harsh statistic:  less than twenty percent off all published writers are ever published again by a mid to major house.

I asked Adjective Brandishing what kept him in the game?  When, despite the relative success of his small press novel, he had as much trouble as I (and most) to get published a second time; this time with a major house.

“I guess I’m not that bright,” he said after a moment of thought.  “I just knew I had to write, and that writing by itself wasn’t enough.  I had to be read as well.  And why not at a major house?  They deserved the chance to publish me as much as any small house did.”

And amen.

Against all odds, and due to a gentle insanity that neither of us questions or examines too closely, Brandishing and I have managed to scratch out not insubstantial careers in words.  Some highs, many more lows, but in all we represent the most fortunate of the not too bright ones.

So, I say this in all seriousness and with a sense of profound responsibility to those who might wish to follow. 

Go back before it’s too damned late!

I cite all the above – this irrefutable argument of the intellect – to discourage you.  To convince you that there is a greater chance of your being elected Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire than there is of making a career in the arts; let alone making a living as a writer.  That for you to believe that what you have to say and the way you need to say it would have any meaning to total strangers you will never meet is ridiculous, dumb, and a complete waste of your time . . . and probably significantly painful to your loved ones and closest friends as well.

Give it up.  They let nine people make a living as a writer.  You have no chance.  None.

Leave and be happy.

. . .

      . . .

            . . .

Anybody still there?

I thought so; I hoped so.

The thirty-seven writers in my address book (along with me) are a pretty diverse bunch.  We live in five countries spread across two hemispheres, to say nothing of a bunch of us scattered throughout AmeriCanada.  The youngest is nineteen, the oldest ninety-three.  Male and female, rich and poor, gifted and self-taught; frighteningly wealthy, piteously poor, and all stages in between. 

And we’re all not too bright.

But we also have a brand burned into our brain; no . . .  It’s seared directly into our hearts and so battered souls.

Block bold letters that read, simply:

This Being Shares Dreams

That’s all.  We share our dreams with you.  And we hope we’ve presented them with sufficient skill, talent, whatever, for you to lose your occasionally too pained selves within.  At least for a time.  We do that because we know that within creation – as in all life forces – there lie three, or maybe four, dimensions.

Length . . .

Breadth . . .

Width . . .

And sometimes, when we’re luckiest and work hardest . . . Magic.

It is the magic which sustains us; nurtures and enriches us.   That sometimes destroys, sometimes renews us.

It is the magic which we offer to our readers after our painfully gentle reshaping of it into our books, plays, stories, songs, poems, presentations. It is the same magic which compels a reader to turn the page, to read on.

And if it is the magic – nascent or oppressive – within you that demands words/worlds for creation and life, then I welcome you to this company of not so bright people.

For you have been kissed by the Demon Gods and not one of the aforementioned difficulties in “making it” will ever stand in your way for long.

“I can’t help but to write, I have an inner need for it. If I’m not in the middle of some literary project, I’m utterly lost, unhappy and distressed. As soon as I get started, I calm down,” Kaari Utrio

Perhaps I’ve failed in my role as a Storyteller today.  I’ve offered no technical tips, no structural insights; nothing that will materially and really help you become a better writer.  In my defense, I don’t know whether or not I can help anyone become a better writer.

Myself most assuredly included.

Ilario The Magnificent calls it:  THE ROLLERCOASTER.  Lost Weekender refers to it as:  THE SPLENDID CHAOS.  But I think His Sartorial Splendor said it best.

We were at a photo shoot for my third solo novel’s publicity tour, and I was bemoaning the chaos of my life.  During a break in an otherwise uncomfortable three hours, I said: “When is all this chaos going to stop?”

Sartorial just smiled, told me to tuck in my shirt (so the shoulders would have a better line in the pictures) and said:  “You’re a writer.  It doesn’t.”

However much pain, however fleeting the ecstasy, however wounding the setbacks or ennobling the few wins have been and will be, I would not trade my life as a writer for a life of perfect happiness, consistency, and contentment.

I couldn’t.

Anymore than I could bleach my soul.

There’s one other thing I should tell you at this point, but I don’t have time.  It’s almost eleven, and time for me to go to work . . .

. . . as Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire.

Believe!

By Richard Steinberg

“The person who tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echoes of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration,” Pearl S. Buck

I’ve been incredibly gifted by my friendships. Ilario the Magnificent, His Sartorial Splendor, the Reformed Sexual Rapscallion, The Squire, the Goddess, and certainly the Dreaming Anchor are critical parts of my world. In fact, there are far too many for me to mention here. But as we continue this monthly journey together, I want to concentrate on two I haven’t mentioned often, but who bear being held up as examples of how to do what we do; and do it well.

The Ojai Warbler.

The Hot Mommy Chick.

The women have much in common, over and above their momentary lapse in judgment that allowed me in as a part of their lives. They’ve both been successful actresses on stage, in television, and other performance media. They both are painfully honest in their performances, their writing, and their lives . . . don’t ask their opinions unless you’re prepared to hear their truth.

They’re both truly gifted storytellers in their chosen formats.

One believes in herself without question, and keeps the self doubt to herself . . . more or less.

The other is publicly self-deprecating, and keeps shows of personal confidence to quiet, very private moments . . . more or less.

But there is much for all of us to learn from these remarkable writers.

Because of personal tragedy in her youth, The Ojai Warbler believes she turned herself off honest emotional expression for ten to twenty years. You know the person: good party manners, likeable, but no way to really get to know them. A lot of things slowly brought about a change – not the least of which was meeting, falling in love with, and becoming soul mates with The Supernal Bedrock. And when she grit her teeth and finally unleashed her decades suppressed creative soul-truths, my God . . . the results were stunning.

Her heart has been witnessed, quite literally, around the world. One of her works has been translated into over fifty languages. She has personally plied her heart’s truths from England to China. As a specialist in the performing arts’ written word, her works have been interpreted by a mass of household names from Bette Midler to Harry Belafonte to Judy Collins to Alvin and the Chipmunks.

That last most impressing me.

So, how does she do it? What’s her secret to harvesting real emotional content from the air and plugging it into her characters and stories? Once, when The Dreaming Anchor and I spent a day with her and the Supernal Bedrock, I asked her to share; to let me in on the magic.

She laughed – a sound that makes all men around her wish they didn’t like Bedrock as much as they do – and between attempts to catch her breath she gasped out the following pearls of wisdom:

“I MAKE IT UP! I pretend! I don’t write what I don’t believe, but I’m not limited to who I’ve been or what I know. Learning is cool, and taking what you learned and putting yourself into it (even though you’ve never been that person or even that sex) is very cool! I write from my heart, but also from my brain.”

Later, she added: “Our first job is to entertain; and if we blow that, nothing else really matters.”

Like her partner-example in this essay, The Hot Mommy Chick also took a few decades to discover her writer-hood. But she has a different excuse . . . she was too busy being a highly in demand, well regarded interpreter of other people’s words in movies and television. I guarantee you’ve seen her, and more than once. She’s worked across the board – movies, television, the stage – with every one from Steve Martin to Meg Ryan to Lauren Bacall to Brad Pitt. And on breaks between shots, she’d write a few words on a novel she knew knew she’d never finish; let alone get published.

Hell, she was an actress. Not a writer.

Yeah, well . . . with her fourth novel set to come out in the not too distant future, that’s not exactly accurate.

Hot Mommy Chick is as self-effacing as The Warbler is bold. In part, because she hasn’t been doing it as long; in larger part because she doesn’t really know how good she is. Don’t get me wrong, The Chick knows she’s a good writer; but she has not yet reached the point of standing up and saying she’s among the best at what she does; just isn’t ready to believe it regardless of other’s opinions.

I asked her once about her writing – which she does daily around a pile of children, activities in various schools for same, and the less than creative acts required of a writer with a new novel out each year – and her answer was (like the woman herself) spectacular:

“I always loved writing and love it even more now that I’m figuring out how to do it. Come on! As an actress you only have a little control over the product. As a writer, it’s all on me. I love it, especially when you get to do new things with old characters; or find new characters where you didn’t expect to. That’s really fun.”

Another time, she added: “With kids and a life and stuff it’s hard to find the time to write. I have to work hard to find it. But I almost always do, and whether or not that day’s work was good, my doing it is what’s important. I do it, and I feel better.”

The Ojai Warbler who writes from her head then her heart.

The Hot Mommy Chick who writes from her heart then her head.

Or are they the other way around? Depends on the day, I guess.

And between them . .. me – now there’s a picture to be libidinously considered on a muggy September evening – The Believer.

The Believer: who desperately wants to see and taste and wrap himself up in the glorious splendor The Warbler finds. But usually falls short.

The Believer: who longs for a life lived simultaneously in the world and the words; being nurtured by both, renewed by all like The Hot Mommy Chick. But who has mostly failed living successfully anywhere but in the words.

Writing is both mystical and manual to me. A thing I do to the highest professional standards possible. That I conjure from the most unexplainably dark and gooey place my so damaged soul can secrete. It is my sanity.

Even more, it is my lunacy.

But I look out at my friends of words – tonight The Warbler and The Chick – and I draw a certain sense or order from them. An understanding that there is no one right way to do this thing we do. That we must – and must is too light a word – find those rhythms and internal music that works for us, that nurtures and expands us.

That makes us writers instead of creative typists.

“The conclusions of passion are the only reliable ones,” Soren Kierkegaard

The Ojai Warbler and The Hot Mommy Chick are beings of incandescent passion, luminous life force, and radiant creative energy. They won’t like my saying that, but truth is truth. Within their words/worlds you are distracted, challenged, entertained, provoked, or simply amused. Maybe all you’ll get from their work is a genuine diversion from life; often the most profound gift possible.

Together we are fictioneers! Alchemists, who just make it up or plan it out in depth; who work while waiting for inspiration. Who know that however profound our message, it is meaningless if we have failed to lower your barriers by entertaining you first. So that you are transported away from who and what and where you are to become lost in who and what and where we would conjure.

The Ojai Warbler.

The Hot Mommy Chick.

The Believer.

And you?

Believe!

By Richard Steinberg

“The creative artist seems to be almost the only kind of man that you could never meet on neutral ground. You can only meet him as an artist. He sees nothing objectively because his own ego is always in the foreground of every picture,” Raymond Chandler

It’s an interesting moment.

Dark and light seem completely balanced in my life right now. Not as if I have finally got a handle on life – far from it – but rather, as if a climactic change is about to take place. A thing whose scope and impact will resound for years.

It’s happened before.

Seven years ago.

Six years before that.

This is the artist’s life, if they’re honest with themselves. Periods of mournful depths beyond description; pain and despair so searing its recounting is a sin.

This is the artist’s life, if they’re honest with themselves. Periods of fairytale glory and Promethean reward that would make a Nereid blush; fulfillment and contentment (if not happiness) so spectacular its living seems a permissible sin.

This is the artist’s life.

But it is not their art.

And here we speak of art.

Let’s start by getting our terms clearly defined. I’m not talking about the high-brow, the elite, or some artificial exclusionary definition of art. Art is simply that which is created with the purpose of provoking a reaction. Art is beautiful or frightening or thought-provoking works produced through creative activity. Art is the channeling of creative visions to elicit a reaction.

This is the crisis I now face; that taunts me in the recesses of my soul.

I am beginning to despise my art.

My work continues to be of high quality; very entertaining, commercially strong, and with meaning. To this point I have been able to separate my crisis from my productivity; will continue to do so for some time to come if necessary. But a longing grows within me, a soul-kiss from a distant being that whispers quietly:

“It’s time for something more.”

I heard the voice for the first time thirteen years ago. I was writing, but for myself. I didn’t seek an audience; I didn’t want to be read. What I wrote, was private, secret, packed away. The benefit of this was simple and absolute: as the only reader, I was also the only critic.

It’s a cool place to live. Whatever you write only you read only you judge. Nice and safe. No matter how harshly you might judge your work – and although I publicly extolled my brilliance, I was often privately deeply critical – its all gold. But as long as I kept that criticism (and the work) to myself I could proclaim my greatness without public contradiction.

But within me burned the writer’s soul. A soul that demanded something more.

I completed my first solo novel – just me naked on the page. In an act of great personal pain I printed it, boxed it, and sent it out . . . to be roundly (and properly) rejected. It wasn’t that it was horrible, I’ve always been a pretty good writer, rather it wasn’t professionally written.

I seriously considered never submitting anything for rejection again. If the world didn’t understand me, their loss.

But some chemical reaction had begun in me, and I returned to the computer. As I wrote, I reread voraciously all of my favorite books. I carefully worked to understand why I liked some things, not others, why some things left me flat. That’s about all I did with any time I had. I read, I analyzed . . . I wrote.

And I set aside my desires or my protective ego as I judged what I wrote.

I wrote every day for at least an hour, often through the night. Literally, a million words in fifteen months. By the end, I was averaging close to three thousand words a day. Writing, reading, analyzing, rewriting, judging . . . growing.

Then, I stopped.

I don’t know why I stopped, it certainly wasn’t a conscious decision, and it wasn’t giving up or burning out. I pulled away for a couple of weeks, the only thing close to writing was rereading a first edition of Olaf Stapleton’s: Odd John: A Story Between Jest and Earnest. For the first time, I understood what it was that Stapleton had done to make me react as I did.

The technique behind the art.

Sadly, I no longer have that book, but I have The Gemini Man, my novel that was its bastard child. It’s been published around the world, read from Spain to China. Critiqued by geniuses (they all loved it and me) and morons (they all disliked it and me) from all walks of life.

For the next six years, I rode that generous, beloved, blessed wave as far as it could take me, and that was far indeed! Novel after novel, I reached my dreams and beyond.

But then, seven years ago, I changed again.

I began to assume that my talent was a gift and not a loan whose payments needed to be kept up. I got lazy and began to us my technical skills to cover-up a lack of commitment to the creative magic. I coasted on my success and assumed my future.

We are NONE OF US guaranteed a future! Futures must be earned, must be entreated and seduced. They are so fragile that simply ignoring them can lead to their end.

The fall began slowly, gently and without notice; although I can look back now in shock that I didn’t see the signs. Gradually the writing lost meaning, lost pith, with excruciating but inevitable slowness I went one way as my gift went another.

I began a seven year existence in a place of dark gray and muffled dissonance. As the career faltered, as the writing became typing, as the assumptions of surety became pornographic jokes with me as the punch line I fell. Not of the body, but of the soul.

Then, somewhere around rock bottom I encountered my talent again.

It floated placidly beside me, not gloating at my destruction (as it had a right to do) but simply asking in nonjudgmental words: “are we learning yet?”

This wasn’t rock bottom – I had and have a few things left to burn away before I can begin the wholly uninsured climb again – but it began to arrest my hadean momentum. I began to heal before the final wounds were even struck. I regained my gift, now integrated with my technique like a couple long, divorced and grown apart, might rediscover each other and be married again until death.

Which now, after a fourteen year roller coaster (that Ilario the Magnificent warned me of many years ago) leaves me here, on uncertain ground.

It’s an interesting moment.

I stand uncertainly balanced on the fulcrum of past success, past failures, and the promise of an unknown future. But it is only unknown because it hasn’t happened yet. I don’t put it that way to be glib but from a sincere appreciation of the fragility of all futures. From a deep respect that I’ve never had for future before.

You see, I know now not to assume future. To never take it for granted or neglect the tender care and hard work it demands. We are, none of us, guaranteed a happy ending. We are all of us gifted with the most profound legacy there is.

Possibility.

“We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations,” Anais Nin

I now know that being read by strangers around the world that I will never meet is better, by far, than just me reading my work. That being commercial does not mean I have to abandon art. That taking risks can hurt, sometimes almost beyond measure . . . but its rewards are all the greater for it.

Layers.

Cells.

Constellations.

And it is when we ignore that multifaceted reality to be just one thing – be it bestseller or hermit – we have not been true to our art.

One more thing as well:

Rich or poor, wealthy or not, healthy or not, happy or not . . . I’m going to be okay.

So long as I have, and am true to, the writing.

Believe!

—Richard Steinberg

{This month, Rick asked me to post an essay written by a friend of his, Mike Paulle, a well known writer in the realm of poker coverage. There are some words that deserve a wider audience, and Rick offered these words a voice here. In the man’s own words…Believe!)

From the Greek: To please no one will I prescribe a deadly drug nor give advice that may cause…death. (Hippocratic Oath)
First, doctor, do no harm.

To me as to many others, the most shocking aspect of the recently thwarted London bombing attempts and the successful Glasgow bombing is…who the alleged culprits are.

Most of those involved signed off on the following statement (in brief) for physicians and medical students in the UK:

General Medical Council

Good Medical Practice (2006)

The duties of a doctor registered with the General Medical Council

Patients must be able to trust doctors with their lives and health. To justify that trust you must show respect for human life…

Pretty straightforward wording it seems to me. Not a lot of wiggle room to…say…BLOW UP AN AIRPORT.

Am I missing some tricky semantic shadowing here that would allow doctors and medical students to kill?

Or is it more likely that people who secretly wanted to kill took up medicine as a way to get at the largest number of potential victims?

It’s hard for me to believe that altruistic young people were turned, by world events, into terrorists. Perhaps a few were. But most took ‘The Hypocrite’s Oath’ I fear, in order to seek revenge on the western democracies.

Since the health care system in the UK is so short of medical personnel, quite a few hardened criminals must have been allowed in. So we haven’t heard the last of the destruction.

The war in Iraq has caused great hardship for hundreds of thousands of refugees. Many of the displaced came from formerly well-to-do families that spawned doctors in better times even under Saddam Hussain. Probably those doctors lost everything: Their houses, their wealth, their futures back home. Grief and anger are understandable under these circumstances.

Surely not all the network of conspirators who’ve been rolled up were trained operatives (excuse the pun). It’s the individuals — who’ve sworn to save life – then deal with their grief and anger by trying to kill. Those are the plotters I’m confused by. How do they make what I would think is the most gigantic moral leap possible?

We hear constantly that people who kill aren’t following Islam. I’ll admit I haven’t read a translation of the Koran. But evidently Muslims believe that Islam was revealed to Mohammed through the previous teaching of Abraham. In which case, little could be more violent. I’m purposely not religious exactly because murdering of humans seems to be acceptable, in all major faiths, for some transgression or other.
We were lucky so few people were killed by the bombing and the failed attempts. Maybe next time – and most certainly there will be a next time – we won’t be so lucky.
But what about those that took The Hippocratic Oath, rather than the Hypocrite’s Oath?

This is the grievous collateral damage from the incidents: Altruistic doctors and medical students in the UK are being looked upon as untrustworthy. Perhaps even dangerous. How heartbreaking.

–Mike Paulle

By
Richard Steinberg

“I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process,” Vincent Van Gogh

Have you ever looked into the night sky and wondered if there was someone out there looking back at you wondering the same thing? Have you ever felt the pain that rises out of that place deep within yourself that you deny existence to, which chokes off your spirit, your belief, your hope? Have you ever stood – surrounded by people you know, by strangers, in the midst of a throng of life – and known you were completely alone?

Do you then – at the height/depth of that doubt and misery – sit down and create?

Welcome to the Artist’s Soul.

Suffering, searing emotional pain, failed relationships, failed ambitions, psychic scar tissue, self-doubt, and personal travail are not requirements to be a successful person in the arts. There have been many – too many to name here – that have led wonderful lives; far from any of the conditions mentioned above who have not only been successful in their artistic endeavors, but often fabulously successful. We see their names almost daily. Hear their stories constantly and often they are held up as the example:

LOOK AT M.E. HAPPY! OVER THERE, SEE I.M. GREAT! LOOK AT THE MONEY, THE ACCLAIM, AND THE COMFORT THEY’VE ATTAINED FROM A CAREER IN THE ARTS!

A career in the arts.

As opposed to being an artist.

I don’t begrudge them a penny of their millions or a moment of their fame. But neither will I call them artist.

Because their work has no soul; and after its brief flight in the lower atmosphere it will fade from view. And in a few years – two, five, ten, twenty – will be forgotten, cast aside as if it had never existed in the first place, because it has no connection to its audience.

The Artist’s Soul is what connects them to the rest of the world. It is the thing which transcends the experience of a white, male, raised in the upper middle class, Jewish, American writer to allow him to have a reader base in Japan, Bulgaria, Guatemala, Germany, and twenty-eight other countries around the world.

It is the magic that allowed a British civil engineer to create a series of novels that have never received great acclaim . . . but have not been out of print since their original publications, beginning in 1920.

It is the ethereal greatness of the works of the son of a glove maker in England that cause him – over four hundred years later – to still be one of the most read authors on every continent of the globe today.

The Artist’s Soul.

The Writer’s Soul.

How do you find that soul, connect with it, entreat it to become your collaborator so that your work might connect with other souls out there staring into the sky also praying/doubting companionship?

Christopher Morley felt he never did.

Once the collaboration is established, how do you care for that soul so that your work doesn’t become bitter, poisoned, so wrapped up within itself that it becomes virtually unrecognizable to any other?

Sylvia Plath was eventually suffocated by her slowly failing efforts to do so.

The first step, actually all the steps in one, is not to try.

My mother had a friend, an extraordinary ninety-three year old woman who lived in amazing harmony and grace in a two room cabin among the Northern Prescott Fern and Calico Oak of Lake Josephine in northern Montana. Cut off from the world, from most of modernity, there were only her and her friends: the gray wolves.

Each night for weeks on end, she would take fresh meat and put it around the grounds in front of her porch. Then she’d sit back and gently play her guitar till she was tired and fell asleep.
And after weeks of waiting, Maggie saw her first wolf step rather tenuously into the clearing. Eventually, on any given night there were five to seven wolves there, chowing down on her USDA Choice.

But here’s the thing: it wasn’t that they had found an easy meal with little risk in comfortable surroundings. Rather, they brought Maggie into their community. Stayed around the cabin, made a ruckus when anyone approached, sometimes interposing themselves between the woman and others they perceived as threats.

Maggie did the things necessary to attract the wolves, then left herself open to living with them.

Are you making a careful study of the New York Times Bestseller Lists to see what’s selling? Reading Publishers Marketplace to see what kind of books publishers are buying right now? If you’re not an agent, cut it the hell out! I could no more write a Janet Berliner novel than she could a Thomas Sullivan novel or he could a David Niall Wilson novel or he could a Richard Steinberg novel. We are who we are.

Are you?

Don’t try to be the next John Grisham or Judy Blume; Audrey Schulman or Caleb Carr. Don’t. When you sit down to work decide what it is you want to write about. Not the genre, not the setting, not the style or length. Certainly not what you think people want to read. Because if you’re anything like me, every time you figure out where it’s at, it’s usually someplace else.

It.

That thing that comes from deep inside you (often a place where the hurt mixes with the hope in kaleidoscopic images that might turn you to a pillar of salt or of the community) that drives you on. The issue or circumstance or condition you are most driven by. Maybe the thing you feel most passionately about but are terrified of expressing out loud. The concept that is real and dimensional and ugly/beautiful and that you know like you know the position you shift to in the moments before falling asleep. The thing that is a weight bearing column of your very being.

Write about that. Be true to that.

Set it however you want. Mask it, camouflage it; paint it with colors that bear no resemblance to you and your life if you like. That’s fine. But stay true to its heart, and eventually you’ll hear a twig crack, a soft paw fall on damp leaves. You’ll look up to see a pair of strange but familiar eyes regarding you from behind the brush, or in the dark just beyond the window the lamp glares on and thereby obscures.

Now go back and rewrite what you wrote. Make sure that with all the wallpaper and blusher, cool stuff and highly marketable plot points, your IT hasn’t been diluted into near unrecognizability or lost entirely. You have something to say, I promise you that, make sure you’ve said it. Demand of yourself that this truth or horror be fully expressed before you call the work: “done.”

Then, you’ll see your writer’s soul step fully into view in all its magisterial perfection and peculiar odium.

But be careful, because it stands on the balls of its feet, ready to leap away; back into the unreachable zones if you don’t nourish it at least to the extent it nourishes you.

Soul’s are like that.

Now, to keep contact with your Writer’s Soul, to make it more and more comfortable so it comes all the way over, curls up around your feet making happy sounds . . . do
it again.

And again.

And again.

This is the place you must live. If your writing is to reach off the page or screen and connect with an unknown soul somewhere they call: out there, you must regularly reach inside yourself, force open the door that leads to your nightmares and dreams, and rip out great bloody hunks of yourself to add to the pudding of your work. Write commercially, write obscurely, but if your ink is seasoned with the viscera of your being you’ll be writing with your soul, from your soul, to other souls and at that moment (in the glory of one soul touching another) there will be your victory.

It hurts.

Sometimes it hurts a lot.

It can be embarrassing, distressing, intensely uncomfortable and just plain awkward. So, when it is, you have to make a not simple decision: which is more important to you, your personal comfort in a society that may never understand you, or writing a story that will connect with others simply because it is written in the universal language of the soul?

That decision will not always be easy to bear.

The Reformed Sexual Rapscallion and The Gracious Autumn Breeze are getting married in a couple of weeks. Together, they make a gentle symphony of rainbow colors and muted three in the morning saxophone solos on a dark urban street of forever possibilities.

I was almost there once; then, the lady said to me one night: “You care more about your writing than you do about me.” To which I answered: “Uh, yeah.” The ungraciousness of my comment still rankles me today.

However, I cannot deny the truth of it.

“Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world,” C.S. Lewis

I am a writer.

As Hugh Lofting was a writer.

I am an artist.

Like William Shakespeare was an artist.

I am God’s megaphone.

I commit myself wholly, in detail, without reservation or hesitation to confront the things I believe are wrong (in society, in the world, in me) and to reinforce the things I believe are right (in society, in the world, occasionally in me.)

And I do not wish, advocate, or even suggest that any of you out there, dear gentle readers, follow the road I have. It is soaked in the blood of apostasy and blessedness. Littered with boulders of surety and the remains of doubt. The path always leads up hill and the climb gets harder day by day.

But there is one other truth about the path of art, particularly of a writer’s art, that I will share with you.

The path leads to others.

And reaching others – soul to soul – is why I’m walking it.

And you?

Believe!

By
Richard Steinberg

“The rainbow never made it to Piatigorsk. Three colors only were in evidence: the white of the snow, the gray of the sky, the black of the souls and the hearts.”– from The Gemini Man

It was the spring of 1995, I wasn’t living in poverty; but poverty was just down the street, two buildings over, smiling expectantly whenever I walked by. I was recovering from a heart attack and two strokes three years before that.

And I so wanted to be a writer.

I’d written two books in ’94 – the first quite awful, the second only slightly less so – and had rather naively dedicated myself to writing five more (hopefully better) in ’95. The apartment didn’t have air conditioning, I didn’t have a computer or an idea. But everyday for hour upon hour I sat in a folding chair in front of a card table on which was an already antique word processor. To my left was an in-wall space heater which – although I knew the pilot was out – always seemed to generate heat. To my right the backside of a six foot tall and long bookcase which cut off the air and the light from the living room beyond.