Stephen King: We Lie for a Living

Hello writers, this is Adair Heitmann writing about meeting Stephen King on July 18, 2013. How does it feel to meet an author worth over $400 million? Pretty damn good. How did it feel, even though I’m not a voracious King fan? Pretty damn good. Thank goodness I’ve liked some of his movies. I attempted to hold my own among his thousands of fans.

I met King at a VIP reception at the Mark Twain House and Museum, in Hartford. His devotees were then bused to the Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts for a sold-out author interview. The Twain House was a fundraiser, with all proceeds benefiting the continuing educational and preservation activities of The Mark Twain House. My friend, David Williamson, owner of Betts Books, LLC, got VIP tickets.  He was kind to include me in his family for the night.

Oh, it’s good to know a book-rock star. Not King, Williamson. David was besieged with Stephen King groupies at the VIP reception. While King was protected by his body guard and posed for pictures, the rest of us enjoyed an open bar and ate gourmet finger foods. It was the fans, however, of David’s, who flocked and buzzed around him. For you King lovers, David is the model for the character “Father Callahan” in King’s The Dark Tower series.

King, as you know, is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books. King has published 50 novels, and five non-fiction books. He has written nearly two hundred short stories, most of which have been collected in nine collections of short fiction. He wears his fame well. King was authentic and surprisingly funny.

I’ve been to a lot of author talks, yet this was the first time I’ve witnessed an author receive a standing O just by walking on stage. The audience roared to their feet, clapping and whooping, before King even sat down. Interviewed, at the Bushnell, by WNPR radio personality Colin McEnroe. King said, “All fiction writers are liars, We lie for a living.” King went on to encourage writers to “. . . find a sweet spot in what you are doing. When you get it right, no matter what it is you are doing, you get the buzz, you know you are in the sweet spot.”

King praised Charles Dickens as one of the best published authors to provoke emotions in his readers.  King commented that he, himself, was a sensitive and imaginative boy. Now when he starts writing a book, he “starts with an image.” Once he has the image, the story flows from there.

When an audience member asked King what his favorite book-adapted-into-a-movie was, he answered, “Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, and Misery. In that order.” Gasping, I leaned over to David, and whispered, “That’s my list too!” In an instant I added my name to the Stephen King fan club.

McEnroe and King discussed many topics. The one that tattooed itself in my brain, was hearing that 36 years after first publishing it, King is writing the sequel to The Shining. As a writer myself, I think that is worth a standing O.

Advice from Peter Abrahams & Dennis Lehane

If you are lucky, an author appearance at the local public library can resemble a master class for an aspiring writer. The Fairfield Writers’ Blog (FWB) was two times lucky in less than 24 hours not long ago.

Our home base, the Fairfield Public Library, through its “Friends of” support group, hosted a lunch on Tuesday, October 9 with author Spencer Quinn, the pen name used by suspense novelist Peter Abrahams for his Chet and Bernie Mystery Series, in which human shamus Bernie is assisted, Dr. Watson-like, by narrating dog Chet. The fifth and newest title is A Fistful of Collars. The previous evening, the nearby New Canaan Library, in its “Authors On Stage” program, featured Dennis Lehane reading a chapter from his new Prohibition-era gangster novel Live by Night before spending close to an hour answering audience questions, many related to craft.

Abrahams is a writer of bestselling success in many styles. His thrillers include The Fan, made into a 1996 movie starring Robert DeNiro, Wesley Snipes and Ellen Barkin, and End of Story, which Stephen King called a primer on writing disguised as a crime story. For young readers, he wrote the Echo Falls Series of mysteries. The Chet and Bernie books are targeted at adults.

Abrahams has a demanding fan base. He told us of a letter he had received from a schoolkid about one of the Echo Falls titles: “I have to do a report on your book Down the Rabbit Hole. Please tell me the story in your own words.”

At age 7, Abrahams began trying his hand at writing adventure stories. His mother, a writer herself, was his first editor. After reading the opening passage of one piece, she explained why he ought to cut an unnecessary adverb, then imparted a lesson he still follows: the need to find the exact word to use, not a word that is a close second.

Perusing Abrahams’ website before the lunch, the FWB came across more timeless writing wisdom from the author’s mother, summarized as “Enid’s Laws.” Here is the streamlined list; for further explanation, go to the chetthedog website.

1. Organization is everything.
2. Fiction is about reversals.
3. Torment your protagonist.
4. Push everything as far as you can without contriving.
5. Always advance the story.
6. Be original.
7. Be playful. (Abrahams added this later.)

Abrahams revises his books chapter by chapter, printing out a chapter only after revising it. When the warning bell goes off that something isn’t working, he doesn’t let it go for later, he fixes it before printing. Thus, when the whole draft is printed out, essentially the book is done. He allowed as how a lot of writers just want to get the story down, “Get to Z, then rework,” he said. “That’s not my way, but there is no right way.”

During lunch, Abrahams followed up on a comment the FWB related from the author talk night before. “Writers who over-research under-imagine,” he said. “Their stories are often dead on the page. You only need the telling detail.”

Indeed, Lehane had said as much in New Canaan. The chapter he read was set in the mid-1920s at Boston’s Charlestown State Prison, which opened in 1805 and closed in 1955. The site is now occupied by a community college. Lehane did not turn up a lot of information about the penal facility, but it was enough. “Give me the basics and let me run with it,” he said. “How much research do you want to do before you let your imagination rip? My job is to sit in a room, stare at the wall and make stuff up.”

Even if you have never read a Lehane book, you may recognize his work. First came the Patrick Kenzie-Angela Gennaro novels, of which Gone, Baby, Gone was made into a movie. His three favorite books are Mystic River (Sean Penn and Tim Robbins won Oscars for their acting in the Clint Eastwood-directed film), The Given Day and the new one. “All three were the closest to what I had in my head to what I got on the page.” he said. His least favorite to write? Shutter Island, also later a movie, because he “knew 26 major beats of the story” before starting. Usually, he knows only three: “One thing from the beginning, one from the middle and one from the end.”

The protagonist of Live By Night, Joe Coughlin, was a young boy in The Given Day. The two books are part of a trilogy—Lehane is at work on the third—connected by family bloodlines. As any aspiring storyteller should be able to do for his or her own protagonist, Lehane was able to describe in one sentence the arc for Joe in Live By Night: “a character goes up a ladder [to success] and down into a moral abyss.”

At times a slow writer, Lehane found that the new book went fast because of his affinity for his protagonist. The lesson: “When a character speaks to you at high volume, you never turn him off until he stops.”

High volume refers to amount, not decibel level. For a writer, Lehane said, “The last thing to learn and the hardest thing to learn is to whisper. If you shout, the person leans away. If you whisper, the person leans in. It’s seduction.”

For any aspiring novelist, the learning curve is steep. “Here’s the thing I tell students,” Lehane said.  “. . . It takes 10 years to learn how to do this. . . .The first time you write a book, you don’t know what you’re doing. It takes a long time to learn the toolbox.” Eight years after he started, he published his first novel, a result he described as “lucky.”

Lehane offered a quick lesson on starting your story, and a longer one on point of view.

The first: “Don’t start [your story] on Wednesday if Friday is where the action begins.”

The second: “Write a scene from the point of view of the character in that scene who has something to lose.” The point of a scene is whether the character gets what he wants or doesn’t. He cited playwright David Mamet’s theory that, if a character wants so much as a loaf of bread, the audience will follow. So if you write about the beginning of your character’s day, don’t have him waking up, Lehane advised.  “Have him opening his fridge and being out of milk.”

With two young children, these days Lehane only has time to write for four hours in the morning. “That has made me a better writer,” he said. “You give someone all the time in the world and they’ll take all the time in the world. If you compress their time, they’ll use it—if they really want it.” He also advised that writing early or late in the day is the quickest way to connect to the dream world—an alternate universe, the world of your characters.

Lehane was asked whether he thinks about his audience as he writes. “I don’t,” he admitted. “I love you, but I don’t owe you the book that you expect. I owe you everything I’ve got.”

Finally, how does a writer assess how well he or she has written? Lehane said, “At the end of the day, is it honest?”

Class dismissed.—Alex McNab

Why hire an editor? Here’s why

When Gabi Coatsworth (right), a former workshop colleague of mine, spoke to our Library writers’ group a couple of months ago, she gave us five commandments on how to go from being a regular workshopper to a regularly published writer. Over the past several years, Gabi has made that successful transition. Her credits include short stories, personal essays, poems and, currently, a compelling series—“Bipolar Planet”—at the online magazine The Good Men Project.

The first four of her commandments: Write every day, if only for 10 minutes so you can say you achieved your goal; be unafraid to write badly because at the least you’ll get a first draft done; expect rejections, lots of them; and continue to revise and submit your work. Gabi’s feel-good tale exemplifying the last concerned “Making Peace,” which began, in March 2001, as a 500-word homework response to a workshop prompt to write about posting a letter. She revised it many times over the years in different writing groups. “Making Peace” was published, as a short story of more than 1,900 words, in the Fall 2008 issue of Rio Grande Review.

Employ a professional editor to read your work is Gabi’s last commandment. Do it after your piece has been workshopped, but before you submit it.

Why take that extra step, one that will cost you money? Gabi says that in a workshop, your colleagues know you and know what you are trying to say in your story. They are reading what you want to say even if you haven’t really said it. The same drawback applies when you ask a friend to edit your work, even if she or he hasn’t seen it before. The friend will read between the lines about what you are trying to say. As Gabi puts it, if the value of professional editing rates a score of 100, the value of a friend editing your work rates about a 20.

A disinterested, professional editor will be reading your work fresh. The editor will point out holes in your story that you must fill, rough or muddy passages of writing and storytelling that you must smooth and clarify, and unnecessary words and scenes that you must cut. At a minimum, the editor will spot typographical and grammatical mistakes, and instances of discontinuity, such as inadvertently using the wrong character’s name. Gabi advises agreeing on a price before you have something edited. In the end, whether you pay a flat fee or an hourly rate, it will be money well spent.—Alex McNab

Stop Writing, Go to Author Talks

Adair Heitmann here writing to you on this Spring day about getting out of your office. As writers we need to take breaks from our writing routines. I feel lucky today. It’s not that I can smell the lilacs, nor have I been picked yet for Oprah’s Book Club or won a MacArthur Fellowship. I’m thinking about how lucky we are as writers to live in an area with a plethora of libraries, all of which host visiting authors.

Recently two very different authors came to Connecticut. The fact that I hadn’t read their books didn’t stop me from leaving my writing studio and learning from them. As writers we need to study how other writers present their material. It’s professional research. Observing how much or how little an author reveals personal information, hearing if they read a passage from their recently published books or not, hones my skills as a presenting author.

Phyllis Theroux, author of The Journal Keeper, spoke about memoir writing at Fairfield Public Library. Her focus was the art of journal writing. My literary take-away was being reminded that any life can be filled with dark parts, yet “journal writing is a place to remember where the light is.” Theroux went on to say, “The more personal your writing is the more universal your application.”

Author of Sacred Hearts, Sarah Dunant, came to neighboring Pequot Library. Dunant is really a scholar of Renaissance history wearing fiction writer’s clothing. She is passionate about her subject matter and I heard how she can still get trapped within the book she is writing. While it is a difficult place for any writer to be in, Dunant knows that she has to write her way out. If she doesn’t allow herself to be boxed in, she can’t authentically experience the resolution that her characters need to feel.

After hearing an author speak, I come back to my own essays, articles, books and blogs with a bounce in my step and a gleam in eye. Armored with new knowledge about the art and craft of writing and speaking about writing.  Until next time, after you return from an Author Talk, keep on writing.