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. 

With the first hundred pages of the new novel done, I took a week off, mostly to travel and eat, as the week included Thanksgiving. Next comes a research trip.

Saturday I’ll drive to L.A. and visit the library and Angeles Temple and Echo Park. Also, I’ll try to figure out exactly where Tom Hickey and some of the other characters lived. And if all goes well, I’ll get recharged for the task of revising the first hundred pages before I send it to my editor to meet the end-of-the-year deadline.

So, I’m looking forward to Saturday, but not without a bit of trepidation on account of my last research trip to L.A.

Three years ago, I was writing a story for an anthology entitled Hollywood and Crime. Each story required a scene at the corner of Hollywood and Vine. To spark some memories and gather details, I prowled around Hollywood for a couple hours. Then my cell phone rang, and I learned that Olga had gone to the hospital that morning and died a few minutes ago.

I should’ve parked, walked to a motel and spent a couple days grieving before I drove home.

Instead, I kept driving. And, while making a right turn off Sunset onto a street I can’t remember, my Corolla got sideswiped by a big Buick driven by a Russian woman. I won’t go into the details but I’m reasonably sure the incident, which scraped along the side of the Corolla and didn’t even dent the Buick’s bumper, was part of an insurance scam. The woman was going about five mph when she hit me, but claimed whiplash or something. My insurance went up $50 per month for three years. The scrape on my car, should I ever get it fixed, will cost $700. That’s $2500 the trip cost me. The story paid $250.

I wonder, can I deduct the $2250 net loss on my tax return as a business expense.

Should anyone care to offer a prayer or good wishes for my Saturday research trip, please do.

I'm feeling rather noble, because I actually finished the first 100 pages of the new novel (for the title of which I'm still seeking inspiration) ahead of schedule. Now, December I'll devote to: research (including a couple days prowling around LA and groping my way through the LA library); revision of what I finished and rough outlining of the rest, so I can send it to my editor on schedule (end of the year); and catching up on all the stuff I didn't do while writing. Such is my life, fall behind, catch up (or almost catch up) and so on.

Since I'm not ready yet to put aside the topic of Olga, here's some rather heady stuff from my book Writing and the Spirit, which I hope will be available in paper within a few months but for now can be downloaded as a pdf from my website.

Consider Olga again:

Søren Kierkegaard contended that belief based on evidence isn’t faith at all, because faith is from a source other than our reasoning minds. Belief based on experienced is reason. And what God wants us to have is faith. In college, I changed my major from Philosophy to English because I found encountering new ideas more exciting than debating them. So I’ll take Kierkegaard’s words to heart because they feel true, and I’ll apply the idea of faith independent of experience to writing.

Consider Olga, while battling cancer, one Sunday in church explaining that faith is something we all have, but it often applies only to certain parts of our lives. We may have faith about our finances, that what we need will always arrive. We may have faith in our friends or family, that they’ll stick by us, no matter what.

Olga contended that we should recognize the faith we have, notice how it may run counter to the weight of our experience and observations, and consider the benefits of peace and security it gives us. God, she argued, wants us to extend that faith into other areas and to trust that he can and will heal us, even though evidence might run counter to such faith.

From which I’ll reason that God wants us writers to extend our faith into our vocations and trust that we have the necessary gifts and are on our way to becoming masterful writers no matter if every publisher on earth has insulted and rejected us, or though everyone in our critique group has said or implied we’re hopeless.

Such faith can be dangerous. If it seems to fail, say we pray for Olga and she doesn’t get healed, we may begin to doubt God or our own judgment. At these times it helps to return to Kierkegaard and remember that belief based on evidence isn’t faith at all, that faith comes from elsewhere, perhaps from the spirit. Even when it seems to fail, faith has enriched our experience.

And writing, like faith, should be judged by the value of the process, not by the results. So if we’ve worked on a novel for ten years, if the process has enriched us, who are we to gripe when no publisher wants it?

Faithful work is always going to enrich us, since exercising faith, even in one area such as writing, builds a stronger faith we can apply to other areas, such as public speaking. Or parenting, or healing. Because faith isn’t a mental quirk. Like Saint Paul tells us, it’s a substance.

Consider Olga

For a couple years I wrote a weekly column for the San Diego Reader. The nominal topic was people and their cars. Here’s one:



Lately even George Bush talks about conservation and cutting our reliance on middle east oil. So I’m convinced it’s time we ask ourselves if living more like Olga Savitsky wouldn’t be preferable to the way we’re living.



Olga’s a minimalist. Though plenty educated (holding a Master of City Planning degree) and able to follow a more lucrative career, she chooses to work only a few short days a week cleaning houses. She shares an apartment and pays less than $400 for rent and utilities, in a pleasant neighborhood near a commercial district. On most of her errands, she can walk. When she needs to drive, she uses her 1994 Toyota Tercel.

She tells me, “It’s not like a sacrifice. I just don’t need much. A person with a family needs more than I do. Usually what somebody needs depends upon their function. A corporate CEO, maybe he’s got to throw parties and he needs a bigger house. But I don’t throw parties, so what good is a big house to me? The only reason I’d want one is because the media tells me I ought to have one. We see all this stuff and the desire to have some gets aroused and commercials come on and convince us we need it all, and so on, until we’re beyond debt and into distress.”



Olga wears jeans and T-shirts. “That’s all I own. They’re comfortable, they last. I just bought two new pairs of jeans for $16 each, and they’ll last two years. To me, the key to living well is living in a way that gives an opportunity for appreciating nature and friends and taking time for prayer and writing and helping people. And unless you inherit a pile of money, the way to live like that is to not want a lot of stuff. Most stuff is just clutter. But our culture feeds the desire to own or consume until what we think we need makes us greedy.



“The Bible says that we should work so we’ll have something to share with people in need. I can work for a few days a week cleaning houses and by not letting myself want a bunch of stuff, I can have money to give away. So I’m careful about what I buy, and I pick the things I do buy for durability and longevity. I need a car, so I buy a Toyota. If I needed a car that would break down, I could buy a Jaguar.

“And it isn’t only the desire for stuff that devours our time. It’s also that we try to buy security. People think they need to not only have lots of stuff, but to save or invest or buy some insurance so they’ll be sure they’ll always have lots of stuff. We need a bit more faith. I mean, I don’t have AAA or any kind of roadside service insurance because every time a car of mine has broken down, it’s been a block or so from my mechanic’s house. Except one time.



“The one time my car broke down in an inconvenient place, a guy stopped to help me, and he happened to be the handsomest man I ever saw. Maybe he was an angel. I don’t know. But it sure was fun breaking down.”


From Battle Hymn of the Republic:

"I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel, 'As you deal with my conviverous soul to you my grace shall deal.' Let the hero born of woman crush the serpent with his heel. His truth is marching on."

"Conviverous" refers to the degree we can live in accord with people of other races and cultures. 

All this reading about Azusa Street and Aimee Semple McPherson may be further warping my mind, or it may be allowing some clarity. 

The Azusa Street movement loosed an unparalleled world wide revival.  Aimee's ministry, regardless if we consider spiritual healing miraculous or physiological, was astonishing in its effects, particularly in refreshing the hearts, bodies and spirits of people who hadn't recovered from the traumas of WW I and the 1918 flu epidemic that killed more people than the war had.

And it's reasonable to argue that what propelled those movements was the acceptance and calling together, by William Seymour and Aimee Semple McPherson, of people of all races and classes.

And that helps give me the hope that yesterday's election marks the beginning of a revival and cleansing of our spirits, minds, and institutions.

Olga Savitsky prayed daily for such a revival.  Return for the next post to learn how she found the time and energy to carry on that way. 

I'm having problems. 

Oh, I'm making my deadlines. Ideas are coming. I'm solving problems when I need to. I've jotted capsule outlines for eighteen of probably fifty scenes.

The problem is, I've gotten so engaged with the world of the novel, I don't much care to live anywhere else. Which is discouraging, because I've got a wife and a six year old daughter, and a condo in Arizona I'm trying to sell, and a Dodge pickup I'm trying to sell, and a day job as president of Perelandra College. And a crucial election is coming next week. And somebody trashed the U.S. economy, which isn't helping me sell the Dodge or the condo.

Maybe all that put together is why I'm thinking about Olga, and why it seems to me that anybody who might read this blog any time in the near future would do well to consider Olga.

Beware, a digression (from Writing and the Spirit): The vows of the Missionaries of Charity, Mother Teresa’s order, are “poverty, chastity, obedience and wholehearted and free service to the poorest of the poor.” The order also has lay members who take the same vow. In their case it means living modestly, reserving sex for marriage, following the guidance of a mentor, and serving the poor wherever and whenever feasible.

As artists, we’ll be lots healthier if we think of ourselves as having taken a vow to cheerfully accept poverty if that’s all the wealth we’re given (and to share the wealth if we get financially blessed); to be chaste in our artistic vision (not be seduced by the commercial or trendy); and to be obedient to the inspiration of the spirit that moves us. If we live in such ways, our art will be of service.

My first class in graduate school at the University of Iowa was with John Irving. I remember an admonition he gave about money. He suggested that serious fiction writers should take an attitude like poets do, conceding that they’re never going to make a living with their art and they need to support themselves some other way.

A couple years later, with The World According to Garp, Irving made a fortune. Which poses a problem for writers like me.

Sensible poets accept that writing poems alone won’t support them, since hardly any poets make a living that way. But more than a few fiction writers make heaps of money, so even the sensible among us may hope to cash in.

My friend Alan Russell and I were on a radio show with Tess Gerritsen, who turned from medicine to writing thrillers. Offstage, Alan asked Tess if she ever regretted giving up doctoring. She said, “Well, you can make more money writing.”

I choked on my gum.

Return to thinking of Olga: My friend Olga was a poet. This past week, while thinking about her, I've decided that asking myself What would Olga do? makes way more sense than asking that mind boggling question What would Jesus do? Because Olga was human, like me, only better at it.

The cliffhanger: For more about Olga, come back next time.

 

Installment 3: Beginning and Structuring a Novel

While staying a jump or two ahead of the one-page-a-day October pace I set (other work is killing about 40 hours a week), in my scene-to-scene brainstorming, I’m attempting to build a supporting cast I can feel compelled to write about, and which has some historical connections.

The story is set during Prohibition. Tom is a nightclub dance orchestra musician. The sister he’s raising is of the wayward sort, and I’m beginning to suspect she hangs out at some speakeasy. And one of my earliest and most consistent impressions of Pentecostal Christians, which the victim at least used to be, is that many of them lead double lives. Meaning the victim could well be involved in, or be suspected of being involved in, some underworld shenanigans.

Also, the victim is a black fellow married to a white woman. The Ku Klux Klan was on the rise in the 1920s and had begun to make their presence known in LA. So Tom needs to investigate the Klan’s possible involvement, even though readers would have just cause to lynch me if at the end they learned these most obvious suspects did the murder. Still, Tom’s duty as a tough guy detective is to stick his nose into some Klan business and get it punched, or carved like Jake’s in Chinatown.

And the Angeles Temple needs to play a role in all this intrigue. After all, the victim was a Sister Aimee devotee, and was found hanging in the park across the street from Aimee’s temple.

So this week, my toughest and most critical job is to find the most effective ways (that will lead to the most gripping scenes, conflicts and character developments) to send Tom out snooping into the secrets of these three sinister or potentially sinister (in the case of the church) organizations or cultures.

Another challenge I’ll need to tackle before long is deciding whether to create other suspects or to consider the bootlegging underworld, the Klan, a mega-church, and the kingpins of the LAPD (who are covering up the murder) enough. How about William Randolph Hearst and his infamous newspaper empire? Shouldn’t I rekindle their infamy, I wonder.

And here’s one more puzzle. Why is Tom Hickey willing to risk his life to learn who killed somebody he hasn’t seen in years, when he has no claim to a professional stake in any of this? He’s not yet a cop or PI. 

I know why he should be willing to take some chances. The problem is, he doesn’t know what I know yet, and I’m not sure how far along in the story he should begin to learn it.

All this stuff is making my head spin.