Michael Connelly and I began in the mystery field about the same time. He lived in L.A., I lived in San Diego. He, Alan Russell, and I did some traveling and book signings together. I consider Mike both a friend and a writer from whom I've learned quite a bit.

His career has developed the way a career is supposed to, with a readership that grows book after book. I've got some thoughts about why.

During college, Mike decided to become a writer of crime fiction. But instead of jumping right in and, like most of us, writing about situations we've only read or watched dramas about, he chose to major or minor  (I forget which) in journalism and become a crime reporter. This decision put him way ahead of most novelists for two reasons. First, by the time he began writing novels, he had seen and learned plenty that could make his stories feel authentic. And, as a journalist, he learned how to write clearly, which English majors, charmed  by style and rhetoric, may never do.

In Harry Bosch, the Los Angeles policeman Mike built his series upon, he chose a main character loaded with conflicts. Harry is a battle scarred Vietnam vet. His mother, a prostitute, was murdered. He's a lone wolf in a profession whose job description emphasizes teamwork. Often I've heard people comment about Bosch as a character. They love him and want to read more and more about him. My best guess as to why he's so compelling is that his character revolves around a certain definable trait. Bosch is haunted. Which makes him somehow simple and complex at once. Those who would create a character as compelling as Harry might try finding a single adjective to describe him or her and using that word as a unifying principle. 

I don't know whether Mike intended to write for the niche "police procedurals," but he has become a household word amongst fans of that sub-genre. The idea of finding a niche may seem limiting to writers, but to marketers and p.r. folks it's golden. If you fail to define your niche, you're not likely to get your book published, let alone become a bestseller.

When the time came for Mike to try to sell his first novel, he set out to find not only an agent, but the right agent, whom he found by learning who represented the authors he most admired and to whose work he believed his novel bore a resemblance. The tactic worked, and the agent he landed with, he has stuck with ever since. 

For advice about finding and working with agents, go to my web site and subscribe to my newsletter. 

Most of us writers are introverts, which Mike appears to be. But since part of our job is to impress or befriend people who can spread the word about our books, when we're in the presence of fans, booksellers, librarians and such, many of us attempt to pretend we're extroverts. We act like somebody we're not.  This has never been Mike's m.o.  What he appears to have done, is be himself. And that tactic worked. He's awfully well liked. I've heard plenty of talk about him, and never a bad word. 

Also, Mike learned from masters.  But that deserves a whole other story, which I'll dish out next time.

Happy New Year.

Sandra Cisneros and I were good friends in graduate school and now and then since, so I have some perspective on her career and can offer a couple suggestions about how to follow her path to fame and prosperity:

Find your distinctive voice. Sandra began as a poet. Her first book, House on Mango Street, which I suspect may still be the most popular, is a collection of stories in some cases so brief you wouldn't go far afield calling them prose poems. And they all come from a voice at once both wise and youthful. 

Seek out your niche and build from there. Arte Publico, a small publisher from Texas, originally published House on Mango Street. I suspect they promoted the book to college Chicano Studies professors and to high schools in areas with a substantial Latino population, because in those venues it gradually became not only a hit but a staple. 

Here's a link to an article about the future of publishing that advocates publishers would be wise to dedicate themselves to finding niche markets. publishers, but I suspect it relates to authors as well. I'll give a snippet from it:

"A stark illustration of this hit my radar screen last month.  A major agent told me that he sold a Mind, Body, Spirit author’s book to Random House, which sold 12,000 copies.  He sold the next book by the same author to niche publisher Hay House, which sold 200,000 copies! And Hay House, with over a million email addresses of people all interested in the same type of book, probably spent less on marketing to sell eight times as many."

Sure, finding a distinctive voice and a marketable niche probably won't be easy. The voice has to come from your unique personality, or you won't be able to sustain it. 

The niche? Well, I've been wrestling with this question for a spell, and the best niche I can imagine for my books is that they are most liable to appeal to former English majors with History minors (or vice versa) who appreciate somewhat gritty detective fiction and aren't offended by Christian characters who may be either heroic or despicable. 

If can identify a niche market for your work but doubt reaching it will allow you to support yourself and family with your books, take a look at some of the magazines that appear to thrive. I'd bet if your book sold to one out of every ten people who read English and put ketchup on broccoli, you could pay off the credit cards and buy rental property.

Now the question becomes, how to reach our target audience?

Until I find the answer, I'll leave that issue to marketing pros and move on to describing other paths to literary success, next time. So I'll remind you to subscribe. 

So, suppose you want to become a bestseller not by writing what people want to read but by introducing them to your view of the world, with the stories you feel compelled to create.

Having been around a while, I've gotten some insider knowledge about careers that worked like you want yours to.

John Irving was my first teacher at Iowa, and he impressed upon us that we should not expect to make a living writing. We should accept the fact that (lacking wealth or generous spouses) we would need another career. Our stories should be our passion and avocation. Okay, but a couple years later, The World According to Garp made him a fortune. He's been a bestseller ever since. 

To follow Irving's path, I'd suggest you:  1. have a wild imagination and get over any fear of using it; 2. diligently study the plotting of Charles Dickens, as Irving did;  3. become a master humorist and express your humor in quirky ways.

Richard Russo and I were friends at the University of Arizona. Though he had already finished the MFA program, I read and critiqued several of his stories. Since then, he has become a master. Film adaptations of his novels have starred Paul Newman. His books all become bestsellers. And they're mighty fine books, both enjoyable and thoughtful, as are John Irving's.

To follow Russo's path, you might: 1. seek out advice and when you get it, ponder to glean all you can from it; 2. find an agent who is in the business of nurturing authors; 3. build your stories around unique and colorful characters; 4. place those characters in an environment, such as Russo's Mohawk, that may intrigue folks in the publishing business, in the case of Mohawk, because it reminds them of their weekend retreat.

If neither of those paths seem the one for you, come back. I'll steer you in some other directions.

So, you want to become a bestselling writer but also want to guide readers into new realms, new ways of thinking. Here's a problem you'll no doubt run into:

Most readers don't want to learn new ways of thinking. They may like learning new facts, but regarding their outlook on the world, they want writers to validate and lend ammunition to their current attitudes. If you want to change Democrats to Republicans or Christians to athiests, good luck. Most people don't buy books that will challenge their belief. 

So, along with learning how to craft a suspenseful story, the most effective formula for becoming a bestseller is to share the attitudes of the majority. Which makes life difficult for those of us who don't.

A very well read and learned librarian told me that successful writers are those whose internal metaphors and symbols, conscious and unconscious, are  in accord with the ones in most people's minds. If this describes you, then your stories will come alive to those people and you can paint vivid pictures with a minimum of words. But suppose you're a bit quirky, and your internal symbols and metaphors are out of sync with the multitude's. You can attempt to discern what symbols and metaphors work best for most readers, say, by attending critique groups. But this may prove a challenge that would require more than one lifetime.

Similarly, if your beliefs about conspiracies or politics or spiritual growth or romance are close to what your readers believe and you can express their thoughts or desires, perhaps more fluently than they can, you may be half way to riches and fame.

But suppose your attitudes are somewhat singular. Suppose you think for yourself and you want to express what you think and that's a main reason you write. And suppose you dream of being looked up to, for financial reasons, by your brother the mortgage broker.

Next post I'll offer a few solutions. 

A Perelandra College writing student recently commented that she wants to be a bestselling author so she can enlighten or awaken people. This gave me pause, and prompted considerable reflection about what makes a bestselling author. 

To make any sense of this topic, we need a solid definition of bestseller. 

One author might claim bestseller status because a given bookstore tallies its sales by the month and his book ranked among the top ten during one of those months, perhaps because he visited for a booksigning and drew dozens of buyers, since it was his hometown.

Another author, whose long time career was public relations, developed an elaborate plan to lure folks to an online book launch party. She was attempting to land in the top hundred selling books of the day on amazon.com and thereby claim bestseller status.

Even the bestselling claims that give specifics may not be as reputable as they seem. If an author, by luck or design, happens to be featured at signings in the same week in the four or five stores the local newspaper surveys to determine its bestseller list, this may give a valid yet misleading claim to bestseller status. Such things can even occur in major cities, say Los Angeles, with the Times.

For this discussion, I'll define bestseller as a book that shows up on many bestseller lists and puts the author in a position to quit his day job without rousing anger or trepidation in his family.

And I'll turn to the heart of the matter by suggesting that the desire to become a bestselling author may be in conflict with other, and perhaps more important, desires. So those who aspire to be read by millions had best pause in their quest and answer a few questions before plotting their strategy.

First question: Do you want to write about what you witness, experience, and/or believe, or about what people want to read?

To revisit this topic every few days, in case it leads to some revelations, look right for the Subscribe gizmo and sign up. 

Here's a rather long quote from Josephine Tey (the speaker is Grant in The Singing Sands) 

"It's a harmless sort of weakness," Tad said, with a tolerant lift of a shoulder.

"That is just where you are wrong. It is the utterly destructive quality. When you say vanity, you are thinking of the kind that admires itself in the mirror and buys things to deck itself out in. But that is merely personal conceit. Real vanity is something quite different. A matter not of person but of personality. Vanity says, "I must have this because I am me." It is a frightening thing because it is incurable. You can never convince Vanity that anyone else is of the slightest importance; he just doesn't understand what you are talking about. He will kill a person rather than be put to the inconvenience of doing a six month stretch."

"But that's being insane."

"Not according to Vanity's reckoning. And certainly not in the medical sense. It is merely Vanity being logical. It is, as I said, a frightening trait, and the basis of all criminal personality. Criminals--true criminals, as opposed to the little man who cooks the accounts in an emergency or the man who kills his wife when he finds her in bed with a stranger--true criminals vary in looks and tastes and intelligence and method as widely as the rest of the world does, but they have one invariable characteristic, their pathological vanity."

I'm thinking about M. Scott Peck, in People of the Lie, arguing that all of what we call evil is rooted in narcissism, and of Patricia Highsmith's Ripley character who is perfectly charming except he needs to bump off whomever gets into his way. 

And I'm considering widening Tey's analysis to include even those we don't usually label criminals but just dishonest, such as liars and all kinds of cheats. 

Of course there are degrees of vanity. Still, observing people from this angle might serve to warn us about those we ought to keep our distance from. And no doubt it would help us write real and convincing  bad guys.

I'm developing a class in memoir for Perelandra College.  Yesterday a sort of introduction came to me. 

Here's a note I'll send students:

Unless you're a celebrity or have lived through some wild and overt (not interior) drama, nobody except maybe friends and family wants to read about you. At least when picking up a memoir, they want to read about themselves or people they know and are puzzled about.

So, to find more than ten readers for you memoir, you need to: 1. become such a stunning prose stylist that the one out of a hundred or so potential readers who appreciate fine writing will keep reading for that alone, or 2. focus your story on an element of your life or the overcoming of a problem that everybody, most everybody, or lots of people can relate to on account of their own experience.

The best example that comes to mind, I had the honor of teaching a class Philip Yancey attended. He's a masterful writer of non-fiction, but he hadn't yet tackled a memoir, and he was preparing to write one. We talked afterward and he said that during the class he had recognized the focus of his memoir. The story would be overcoming a childhood spent around a toxic kind of religion.

I'd bet a few hundred million of us can relate to that. 

I'm feeling a kinship to Pontius Pilate, as I keep asking myself "What is truth?" 

What's got me so ponderous is, I'm creating a class on memoir for Perelandra College, and at the same time beginning to pull together a collection of articles, hoping they can become the rough draft or the outline for a memoir.

My question isn't some James Frey issue about whether I should include a blockbuster scene that never happened. And it's not about distrusting memory. I'm comfortable writing scenes and thoughts from the long past as best I can recall them. If I later discovered it was really Gretl who said something I attributed to Harry, I would lose no sleep over the error. 

What's got me stumped is bigger than detail, and more thematic. 

My life is rocky at best these days. For now, at least, I don't intend to tell what happened to land me here. I'll just confess to struggling with depression and ask, because our past is the story of what got us to where we are, can I honestly conclude the memoir in the uplifting way I would prefer to, by ending the story at a time when I felt on top of the world?

Suppose I were a tycoon, and the theme of my life was that diligence pays off. Suppose I made a billion dollars, then lost it all. Is the truth that diligence made me a billion dollars or that it made me lose a billion dollars? It all depends when I end the story, right? Suppose I go all the way and end with losing a billion, then publish the book and make millions on royalties. Does that make my story a lie?

What I'm asking is, how can we honestly know the theme of our life story or stories until after we die?

I can think of a half-dozen pat answers for this dilemma, but none of them seem to work.

I considered ending a previous post with a quote from Branch Rickey, but realized the quote deserved to be more than a punch line.

For those who don't know the man: Branch Rickey  (1881 –  1965) was an baseball executive best known for: breaking Major League Baseball's color barrier by signing Jackie Robinson and drafting Roberto Clemente; creating the framework for the modern minor league system; and introducing the batting helmet. His achievements and outspoken Christian faith earned him the nickname 'the Mahātmā.'"

This wise and accomplished fellow advised,  "Prefer excesses of enthusiasm to the complacency of wisdom."

Which doesn't work as a punch line, as it's easily misinterpreted to mean prefer enthusiasm to wisdom. 

To me, it means, when wisdom becomes complacent, it threatens to nullify the enthusiasm that arises from passion, imagination, or inspiration. 

In the context of writing, the proper role of wisdom (craft) is to serve enthusiasm.

For instance, wisdom ought to remind us that not every passage delivered from a passionate heart is a gem to be shared with readers. Some of them will only speak to us, or only to to us in a certain frame of mind. And even the real gems might not deserve to be in the context we've placed them, if they intrude upon the story.

All of which is why some folks claim writing can't be taught and some claim it can. Craft can be readily learned. Passion, imagination, and the openness to inspiration, not so readily.

 

A forwarded email told of a master violinist who spent time in a subway station playing a most intricate piece on a violin worth millions. But few people paid him or his music any attention. 

Raymond Carver, a master of the short story, commented that a writer doesn't need to be the smartest person on the block, but should be able to look with amazement at a leaf or an old shoe.

We writers need to pay attention.

But many of our heads are spinning too fast to allow us to stop and look. No doubt we could benefit from practicing some of the attentiveness meditation that's popular these days, unless the idea of practicing anything else than what we're already doing sends us into quakes of horror.

Lately, I've been writing, running Perelandra College where I also teach, and raising my amazing seven year old Zoe pretty much on my own. I'm determined she'll stay happy and as innocent as one can be in a perilous world, and that she'll grow up emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and financially able to pursue whatever she's called to. 

All these tasks are privileges for which I'm grateful and which give me joy, but they don't leave much time to pay attention to leaves or old shoes. I could quit running the college, or teaching, and when the time's right, I will. 

Meanwhile I often remind myself of  the way my friend Bob cooks and washes dishes, at a leisurely clip, as though he'd as just as soon be doing those chores as anything else. The only way we busy folks can wash dishes without rushing is to convince ourselves that the other chores on our agenda aren't as urgent as we've considered them.

Us Christians are advised that the only crucial chore is communing with God. Besides, in all but rare cases, the key to succeeding with our goals, whether they be clean kitchens or novels, isn't urgency but persistence. 

Lately, I keep thinking about Bob Dylan and King David and the benefit of being ornery. Dylan's "Desolation Row" is a favorite song of mine. I get a kick out of the lines "Yes I received your letter yesterday about the time the doorknob broke. When you asked me what I was doing, was that some kind of joke? All these people that you mention, yes I know them, they're quite lame. I had to rearrange their faces and give them all another name."

Another of my favorite Dylan lines is, "I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes, and just for that one moment I could be you. I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes. You'd know what a drag it is to see you."

King David got so ornery in some of his psalms, wishing everything but good on his enemies, for years I puzzled about how a fellow so bent toward revenge and apparently lacking in forgiveness could be not only a big contributor to the Bible but could get himself referred to as a "man after God's own heart."

I'm neither brave nor ignorant enough to launch into an analysis of God's heart. I'll stick to what I know best, which is the process of writing. 

Philip Yancey's book Prayer got me to reassessing King David by pointing out that the man's excesses aren't meant to be taken as righteous but as honest frustrations of a fellow who has taken some major hits. I was reminded of this last weekend when Pastor Ed suggested that our prayers oughtn't be nice and respectful but real. If we're frustrated, be frustrated. If we're confused, be confused. Furious, go ahead, let it out. We all get those ways, and (I'll add) to pretend we don't is an attack upon everybody we're trying to fool.

I've long thought that if I built a church, I'd inscribe into the wall over the entrance, "No Bullshit." (Of course I'd be tempted to censor and make it "No BS" but since everybody would translate anyway, what's the point?)

As I'm in danger of skating off into tangents here, I'll return to Bob Dylan. Anybody who doesn't appreciate him as a lyricist either hasn't listened or has my sincere sympathy. But, he's not always good, either in a moral or an artistic sense. Sometimes he's downright mean, sometimes he's brokenhearted, sometimes world weary, sometimes flippant, sometimes smitten. He writes insightful commentaries, ho hum ballads, sappy love songs. 

My point is, he's real, and maybe his willingness to be real is a essential part of his gift, and a key to his mastery.  And maybe, like King David (I'm asking for trouble here),  he's a man after God's own heart, at least when declining to censor his emotions.

So I finished The Biggest Liar in Los Angeles. Unless another wild idea or inspiration arrives before tomorrow, I'll send it off. It's scheduled for publication May 2010. It's the sixth book (though the earliest in chronology), in what I'm calling the Tom Hickey California Century series, which is a hit and miss chronicle of the years during which California became the promised land and later the place whose customs, attitudes, and values shaped the world.

Now that I can return to real life in the present, I'm realizing once again a reason I write novels. For the past few months, life has been treacherous. This past week was the most distressing. When I'm doing chores, driving, trying to sleep, taking care of Zoe, pursuing anything but writing, my mind whirls, besieged by questions and concerns.

A while back, my friend Mark told me he planned to start writing again once he'd worked out some family and financial issues. He said he couldn't write with all that on his mind. I said, most writers I know, if they waited for respites from such issues, would never finish a book.

One solid piece of wisdom I've picked up: as long as we're thinking about ourselves and our concerns, we're in grave danger of becoming distressed and unhappy. When we turn to thinking about other people, we rise above that distress and at least have a chance to feel joyful.

Similarly, writing takes us out of ourselves. I've gone to live in 1926 with a bunch of fascinating characters. The present, with all its fears, worries and dilemmas, couldn't reach me there.

I've had it. 

All Labor Day weekend, while I should've been living in 1926 Los Angeles (as that's when and where the novel I'm trying to finish takes place), I couldn't quit returning to mental and gut responses to the flack about Obama's talk to students.

As a parent, an educator, and a believer in American principles, I've been sickened to read and hear of people using, for the sake of partisan politics, the President's attempt to encourage students to stay in school, set goals, believe in themselves and work hard.

My big daughter, a high school assistant principal, had to endure enraged phone calls from parents.  A teacher at her school reported that his pastor asked parents to refuse to allow their children to view the video. My little daughter's school district declined to show the video until they had the chance to censor it "if appropriate."

Media commentators have referred to the speech as "indoctrination" and "mind control." Should we broaden the definitions of those terms to include the content of Mr. Obama's speech (the text of which is available at  www.whitehouse.gov), hardly a television show, classroom lesson, news article, or advertisement, and certainly no pastor's sermon, or parent's guidance, could escape fitting those labels.

All weekend, I kept recalling these lines from "The Second Coming," a poetic masterpiece by W.B. Yeats:

"Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, 

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity."

I don't believe those parents who made enraged phone calls are "the worst." But perhaps those who encouraged them to do so are, no matter if they are pastors. 

Yeats wrote "The Second Coming" between world wars, when frightened people were being recruited into terrible movements, while pastors for the most part stood by merely observing and declining to risk losing church members by speaking hard truths.

My current most fervent prayer is that our pastors begin to prove themselves braver than those.

While in the midst of the polishing the new Tom Hickey novel, whatever I'm inspired to write about, unless it regards the novel or 1920s Los Angeles, I try to shelve. 

Hence, not many posts these days.

Last night Zoe and I watched Chinatown. Not the '20s, but close enough. Of course I had to send my little girl out of the room a few times, and get creative with certain explanations. 

Zoe's questions and observations entertained me nearly as much as the movie did. 

When, during a drought, Jake the detective follows Hollis Mulray to the coast and sits on a rocky cliff watching while Mulray observes water pour out of the storm drains, Zoe got scared for Jake because she saw a dinosaur hiding in the rocks. Which puts a great film into a whole new light.

We have a flexible one hour a day time limit on television watching. Zoe asked if movies counted the same as tv shows. I said if it's a good movie,  longer is okay.  I remarked that a half hour of Sponge Bob might be plenty, while two hours of Mary Poppins seems reasonable. 

Zoe said, "Yeah, because Sponge Bob shows us his underwear and Mary Poppins doesn't."

The moral: if you haven't got a seven-year-old to watch movies with, borrow one.  

I'm not somebody who washes his car every week. Although I often admire shiny cars, making mine shine has never seemed to rate a high priority, unless I'm going to sell the thing. 

But a month or so back, when I stopped into Pep Boys looking for a roof rack, since Zoe and I were about to leave on a camping trip, I spotted a bottle of Turtle Wax Carnuba and decided t buy it, to give the old Corolla a thin skin of protection before we headed off into desert sand storms. 

However, the roof rack took longer to assemble than I'd planned, as did packing. So the Corolla didn't get waxed until today.  

When a car hasn't gotten waxed in some years, stains appear, at least if the car is white. I supposed those stains would remain for eternity, but once I started rubbing, they began to vanish, which prompted me to rub more diligently and to remember The Karate Kid. When Mister Miyagi ordered the kid to polish the cars with a circular motion, that was only to teach him blocking, right?

Wrong. The circular motion works like magic, I discovered today. So does Turtle Wax Carnuba. 

As the stains continued to vanish, I remembered a lesson from long ago, when a book called Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance persuaded me to seek quality in a task I didn't see a lot of value in: paneling the interior of a Ford van. All the pains I went to, and the time spent, proved a small price for the pleasure I got from driving around in an aesthetically pleasing environment. 

Here's the lesson: whatever we approach with an effort to achieve quality not only gives us pleasure, it boosts our ability to devote ourselves to quality in everything else, such as writing, raising children, creating a business, or kicking field goals.

Besides, the shinier my Corolla becomes, the lighter the temptation to spend money I don't have on a replacement. Okay, it's travelled 165,000 miles. But not only did it take me 4000 miles to Chicago and back in June and another 3000 miles around the west in July without a sputter, it's almost as shiny as the new ones.

When the Bible admonishes us to do everything as unto the Lord, it's not just telling us how to make God or our employers happy. It's also serving up some mighty practical advice.

Now, I'll go out vacuum that lovely 2001 Corolla.

Yesterday, Zoe (she's seven) asked who would be fighting in the war at the end of the world.

Pam said, "Probably Arabs and Israelis."

"Which ones are the good guys?" Zoe asked.

After a moment of reflection, I said, "I suspect there'll be good guys on both sides."

"Okay," she said. "But who should we vote for?"

Now, I'm all for a bit of childhood indoctrination, but to ask a seven-year-old to take sides against anybody feels wrong, as my strongest desire as a parent is to help my kids hold on to their innocence as long as they can without endangering themselves. So, I sighed relief when she said, "If Texas was one of the teams, we would vote for them, wouldn't we?"

"Well," I said, "Who would the other team be?"

"Los Angeles. So we should vote for Los Angeles, right?"

How I love that girl.

Long ago, during an Arab oil embargo, when gas prices soared and reports told of small towns in which the only gas stations closed because they ran out, my friend Laurent and I drove east from the west coast in a 1948 Dodge pickup. He was on his way to New York, chasing a woman he believed was his soul mate. The truck was his. I rode along as far as Iowa City, to learn what I could about the writing program at the University of Iowa, which I had thoughts of attending. 

As this was an interesting time to be on the road, we took notes, intending to sell a story to a newspaper or whatever and use the loot to help with gas money. On the way home from Iowa, on a Greyhound, I began to elaborate and imagine. Before I could make myself stop, some months or years later, I had written some 1500 pages, a quarter million words.

Ever since, I've put aside other projects and attempted to wrestle those words into some coherence. As yet, I haven't succeeded. So I'll make this entry about my latest road trip brief.

Over ten days, I drove my 2001 Corolla round trip from San Diego to Schaumburg, Illinois, with stops in Colorado Springs and Iowa. Here are a few observations.

• The Interstate highway system needs plenty of work, especially in Colorado.

• Just as the people one meets in Walmart are generally nicer than those in Nordstrom's, so the patrons of McDonald's are friendlier than those in Starbucks.

• McDonald's, whose burgers and such I won't eat, as the quantity of salt they use makes my mouth numb, now offers good iced latte and fruit and yogurt parfaits.

• Most, but not all, country music is silly.

• A drive across the west can still inspire and revitalize our sense of awe.

At the church I attend, Ed the pastor does a series each year called "God at the Movies." 

This week, while introducing the series, he commented that lots of believers limit their watching and reading of stories to the stuff "Christian" authors and producers offer, which is usually some attempt to adapt the kind of "secular" art they appreciate into stories the most delicate believers won't find offensive. 

So, these readers and viewers partake in largely derivative stories with all but the least dangerous truths bleached out of them. 

Better, he suggested, to realize that God appears stories no matter the author's beliefs or intentions. Better for us to read secular stories with an eye for spiritual truth than to waste our time on stories that will only reinforce our safe beliefs. 

And I'll add, better for artists of Christian beliefs to give up pandering and approach their work with an attitude like Flannery O'Connor's when she advised that Christian fiction is simply honest fiction written by a Christian. 

Note the word honest.  

An element of what we'd call a talent or gift is the ability or the will to do whatever is required to develop it. 

When people say to be a writer you need to write every day, what they actually mean is, you need to be willing and able to spend whatever time and energy is required to transform your potential gift or talent into a flourishing one. 

I took up guitar when I was twelve. But I never could make myself spend more than about ten minutes a day actually practicing. I might play longer, but not work on scales or on learning new and difficult riffs. Many years later, I'm no better at guitar than I was at fourteen. But even now, I could gain some real mastery if I could make myself practice a half hour a day.

My dad built and operated a par three golf course. Most of my life, I've played golf, but I'll never be able to approach par regularly unless I play at least once a week and add to that a couple hours on the driving range and another hour chipping and putting. 

The point is, I could be a good (though probably not great) musician or a superior golfer if I would, and could make myself, put in the required time and energy.

We're born with gifts. Making them work or not is our choice.

C.S. Lewis, in Made For Heaven, argues that since God's nature is love, and the essence of love is giving, " ...in self-giving, if anywhere, we touch the rhythm not only of all creation but of all being."

Let's say that's true. And let's apply the truth to our writing.

Maybe as we approach our writing with the intention of giving all we've got, then we'll be given more to give, and so on. Holding back, out of timidity, laziness, embarrassment or whatever, could be our tragic flaw.

F. Nietzsche, who coined the phrase "God is dead," had another favorite line. He admonished people to "Become who you are." I wonder, is this a prerequisite to Lewis's self-giving. Until we are who we are, we may only be giving a ration of stuff we picked up from others, and withholding our true selves.

Perhaps becoming who we are, instead of what we believe others would have us be, should be our first priority. And maybe we should pursue that goal with all the energy we can bring to it. As Mother Teresa contended, “…it is not how much we do, but how much love we put into what we do.” 

I picked up a book, What Nietzsche Really Said. Overall,it's a valuable book, by some professors from  Texas. But what follows, I balked at: 

In defense of wicked acts either inspired by Nietzsche or justified by reference to him, the authors wrote, "Once again, we want to proclaim, rather indignantly, that an author is not responsible for vile misreadings of his works."

Okay, it would be silly to hold an author to blame for the extreme misreading of a theme or metaphor. But to give a writer absolute license to create without taking any responsibility is in a sense denying the power of language and image.

For example, the Beatle's White Album got some vile misreadings by Charles Manson. He perceived "Blackbird" as a call for him to spark a violent uprising by the black community, and at least one reason he engineered the Tate murders was so that white folks, blaming black folks, would take revenge, causing black folks to retaliate. That interpretation was truly nuts. But for him to accept the literal words of "Happiness is a Warm Gun" as a validation of his homicidal inclinations didn't require the slightest misreading of any kind except to decline to replace the literal with the symbolic.

If I went to Texas and bumped into the professors, I might argue that while authors shouldn't plague themselves with guilt over potential misreadings, they most certainly should consider how their words might affect impressionable readers. And children are the only impressionable ones around.

I'm a fan of Kinky Friedman, who is making his second bid to become governor of Texas in 2010, and who writes and performs such country classics as "They Ain't Makin' Jews Like Jesus Anymore."

Specifically, I'm a fan of Kinky's songs, not such a fan of his novels. That's not to negate the value of his books, only to note that they're not of a sort I prefer to read.

My favorite of Kinky's songs is "The People Who Read People Magazine." One verse goes: "If you're too New York for Texas, too Texas for L.A., you've been chasing trends like rainbow ends and you're always just a song away, if the White House wouldn't have you, play at every little honky tonk and bar, the good Lord made the heavens, but he never made a star. (chorus) It's the people who read People Magazine, it's the soap opry lovers, it's the home town bowling team ..." 

Earlier in the song, we hear, "... if anyone should ask you, here's who I'm singing for. It's the people who read People Magazine ..."

Get it? It's the people who read People that make entertainers into stars. So that's who he's singing for. And writing for.

Which is a grim but crucial piece of wisdom for us writers: select the audience you're writing to, and consistently address that audience. 

Kinky's a smart fellow. I may move to Texas so I can vote for him. But in his novels, he doesn't try to be smart. He sticks to entertaining, primarily by using his gift of humor, often to excess in my opinion. But I don't count. I'm not who he's writing for. 

From an email: "I would like to be writing on a much deeper level in hopes of creating the kind of prose that touches hearts, inspires minds and lifts spirits. I don't particularly want to go to a sweat lodge and smoke peyote - but I'm looking for a similar, yet more accessible (& legal) experience. I'm thinking there must be some kind of meditative/creative exercises. Any thoughts?"

Over the years I've been writing, a whole industry has gotten created to fleece writers and would be writers. Magazines and agents charge reading fees. Contests charge entry fees. Writers conferences feature speakers who've struck it rich, so that conferees will dream big and cough up the money for the next conference. Free lance publicists arrange blog book tours, book signings, and radio spots, and by doing so make a better living than the writers they serve ever will. Writers of little merit hold seminars promising ways to unlock our inner whatever. 

Exercises may help writers understand point of view or the value of concrete detail, but I've never heard anyone claim that an exercise unlocked anything. 

The best I can offer is: I read about somebody who asked a master painter how to paint a perfect painting. His answer was something like, “To paint a perfect painting, first become perfect, then paint." So, I translated, to write a perfect story, become perfect then write.

I labored over this advice, aware that I was far from perfect. And I considered that what I know about certain writers of masterpieces of literature makes me believe they were not much more perfect than I am. The advice made no sense unless I interpreted it this way: It’s not essential to our writing that we be perfect all the time, only when we’re writing.

When we sit down (or stand up, or pace) to write, we need to cast off imperfections such as our tendencies to rush to judgment, our impatience, our preconceptions, our worries about whether we’re going to succeed. We need to clear our minds of anything that keeps us thinking or feeling out of accord with the spirit of truth and try to approach our stories in an attitude of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, so we can treat our creations with deep respect and compassion. Even if we don’t reach perfection for a nanosecond, the closer we come, the closer our stories may come to realizing their possibilities.

How to cast off our imperfections is a whole other question. Some writers take walks before they write. Others pray. Others meditate. My friend Don, who always argues with my posts, listens to music while he writes. Or he used to.

We're all different, which is one reason simple answers don't work. We need to try methods out. 

I attend a church in which the pastor recommends that our process of growing closer to God can benefit from times of solitude, and he tells about a hideaway in the desert , which some nice parishoners lend him.

Okay. I'm pleased he's gets to do that.

But imagine a single mom or dad with no nice friends offering a desert retreat. What's this person to do if his or her mind or emotions or art could use a healthy jolt of solitude?

I've been pondering this thorny question for a few days and here are some thoughts on the matter.

At least part of the refreshment we get from solitude comes from silence. And those of us who are verbal creatures are going to talk to somebody, to spill our frustrations, or wrestle with ideas, or seek answers, or put words to our excitement or wonder. If we've chosen solitude, we'll talk to somebody, maybe to God or maybe to ourselves, maybe to our pet iguana. And talks like these can be the most honest, outrageous, and creative.

If they get too crazy, we can always chicken out and find some person to talk to.

In the novel I'm writing, one of my favorite scenes involves a parrot. It's a version of a factual gathering I read about. I used it because it serves to develop some characters and because it's funny, even though, in the kind of novels I write, those reasons alone are not enough to thoroughly justify a lengthy scene.

Still I chose to include it, and a month or so afterward, while continuing to research, I learned in a book about politics in LA during the 1920s that a fellow named Parrot served as the mouthpiece for one of the story's potential bad guys.

Because I'm not always awake to the obvious, I didn't catch on right away. But later, while jotting notes, I saw the connect. I laughed and shouted "Yes." And in the scene I'll probably finish this afternoon, Tom Hickey will realize that the reason the leader of the gathering brought a parrot was to clue someone to the possible involvement of Parrot in the crime.

Tom didn't see that connection at first because, like me, he's not always awake.

I could deliberate about whether the parrot and Parrot connection is a result of coincidence or something otherworldly, but I'll pass on that and instead point out that such connections are occasions for joy and delight, and the willingness to accept them and use them may be part of what we mean when we call somebody gifted.

Something happened this morning that alerted me to a writer's need for peace of mind. Ever since I felt called to write, I've dreamed of a retreat, a trailer in the desert, a mountain cabin.

But over the years, I've come to see that a retreat doesn't insure peace of mind, only the opportunity for solitude, which is perhaps as valuable as peace of mind, but not the same.

Fabre d'Olivet, in The Hermeneutic Interpretation of the Origin of the Social State of Man, contended that: "Only in the heat of battle did the ancient Celts, besieged on all sides by demons, find a sort of repose."

I guess I've met a lot of the ancient Celts' descendants. Maybe I attract them. Or they attract me. Or they're everywhere.

What happened this morning was neither unusual nor particularly tragic. Yet it soured my spirit, dimmed my hope, and lured demons out of the labyrinth. Then, for hours, while I tried to write, every phrase I put together struck me as verbal slop. And every thought felt like trivia.

I wish I had a point to make, some pertinent or provocative advice. But I'm stumped. Except I'm remembering a time when peace of mind had fled far away, and a book by Thomas Merton helped. It's called No Man Is An Island, Thoughts on Solitude. I'll read it again and report.

Spending all day yesterday on planes gave me plenty of time to reflect. I was on my way home from the Florida Christian Writers Conference, where I had encountered questions about the ethics of writers.

I agree with what John Gardner presented in his book On Moral Fiction, that whether or not we writers aim to be teachers, we are. And what we teach has consequences.

At the conference, student writers, aside from matters of craft and marketing, were presented with strange ideas such as that writing isn’t just about making money, and that we could do well to find contentment in our work, rather than in our bank accounts or egos, and we’ll only find aggravation in comparing our success to others’. Though I’ve been to dozens of conferences and my job was to teach, I also learned, and came away feeling blessed and inspired.

And a new wild idea came to me.

Here goes: the world only has room for a finite number of popular writers. Ergo, the more of us who seek and present the truth and grow to become masters of the craft, the less room will remain for those who would write any piece of nonsense that pays.

Jerry Bumpus, a wonderful friend and teacher, told me long ago that if we get good enough, we’ll break through the competition and succeed. Not that many fine but unsung writers aren’t better than many successful ones. Still, at some point in their growth, if they keep growing, live long enough, and put their work into the world, they’ll get discovered and read.

So:

If enough principled writers dedicate themselves and thereby become good enough to displace the perpetrators of easy answers and other lies, they can transform the world.

The other evening, I gave a talk and read a couple stories at California State University, San Marcos. One of the stories, which I'm going to post on my web site, had a scene at a long ago Billy Graham crusade. After the story, during question time, a student asked me if I had an agenda for my work.

A thought provoking question. I tried in my rambling way to explain that with each piece, I might have a the kind of agenda that is my view of the world in the context of the happenings in the story. For example, in The Vagabond Virgins, I wanted to portray the people of Mexico in a way that might increase readers’ understanding of their struggles. But the only overall agenda I’m conscious of is to suggest to people that they seek the truth with an open heart and open mind.

Some of my work might appear to promote Christian beliefs but that truly is not my intention. I only would hope readers might choose to look into Christian beliefs and reconsider their attitudes toward them. And that would apply to people who already believe as well as people who don’t. Once we think we have the truth and don’t need to seek it any longer, we’re dangerous and often evil.

Maybe a hundred times I’ve heard writers comment that if you take this vocation seriously, you need to write every day. Well, they all must live in a different dimension than the one I live in. Here, stuff happens.

Like occasional burnout. Tax time. Catching up on all the nonsense such as bill paying, household chores, yard work, and family outings I didn’t do when I was writing every day. Not to mention another job, which for me at this point is trying to do justice to teaching and serving as president of Perelandra College.

No whining intended. I’m preparing to make a point. Which is, the most valid reason for writing every day is that once you take days off (let alone a month or two), getting started and finding momentum again is an arduous proposition.

It’s likely I won’t return to the current novel, book one of the Hickey family series (described in part in previous posts) until around March 1. So, in order to jump start the reentry, I hope to arrive at that date with a solid outline of the rest of the novel. I’m much better at outlining once I’m in the middle of the story and have lived with it for some time. And even if I feel no need to stick to the outline, having a solid one urges me on, so I can reach those scenes I most long to write and read.

Okay, it's been a month. The holiday season is my only excuse.

Since I didn't send cards this year, or form letters, I'll list a few memorable (for us) events:

After 6 years of substantial work and frequent anxiety, the college we created became legitimized by the most recognized accrediting agency for distance education.

The book Pam (my wife) and her friend Dr. David Noel Freedman published, What Are the Dead Sea Scrolls and Why Do They Matter?,  was selected as the best history book by the San Diego Book Awards. But dear Dr. Freedman (an inspiration to us for his brilliance, humor, dedication to his work, and generosity, died in April, the month before the award was announced. 

My novel The Vagabond Virgins came out, to excellent reviews, and I had a swell time on the road for a book tour. 

Our amazing Zoe finished kindergarten, and half way through 1st grade still loves school, which is a blessing, since she has a mixed heritage on that issue. Pam always loved school. I didn't, until college.

Darcy (my big girl), upon completing an MA in Education Leadership at Northern Arizona University, got hired as the assistant principal of the first laptop high school in the country.

In other words, all's well.