A Conversation With Les Edgerton, Part Two

Welcome back for Part Two of my conversation with Les Edgerton.

OBAAT: I’m not a fan of a lot of neo-noir, where I think some writers like to revel in their characters’ depravity. To me, Jake is the classic noir protagonist. Someone who makes a bad decision for what might seem like a good—or at least excusable—reason to him at the time, after which everything turns to shit. It’s not that he makes bad choices as the book progresses. He makes the best choices available to him at the time. Damn right I rooted for him. What makes you pull for a character when you’re reading?

LE: I didn’t know what neo-noir was before your explanation, but I’m with you in not being a fan of that, Dana. A few years ago, I was sent a novel by a newer writer for me to blurb and there was no frickin’ way. It read like this guy just picked up on all the salacious and stereotypical elements of bad guys and gave them all to his character and his story. It was clear he hadn’t read much and mostly it looked like he’d read a lot of so-called noir that had lately sprung up and thought that was his secret to success—just have his guy do every nasty thing in the world and that’s what noir was. I turned him down and told him why. I also told him that I thought he had some talent and that if he ever wanted to I’d be happy to read a new work if it wasn’t like that first one. To his credit, he did just that and the next novel he sent me was much better and very unlike that first piece of crap he sent. Nowadays, he’s a regular member of the “noir community” and shows up at the bar at B-Cons and has even served as a co-publisher with another writer for a small indie press. He’s not the best writer in the world, but he does pen a craftsman-like novel these days and I like most of his work.

Now, to your question—what makes me pull for a character I’m reading. First, that he has a story problem I feel is both interesting as well as compelling. If his story problem is some bullshit thing, I’m out of there quickly. If it looks like something that could happen to any of us then I’m in. I want to see him make intelligent choices. Those choices may turn out badly (and probably will), but the first time he makes a dumb decision, I’m outta there. Like I preach to my students, “Your protagonist should always make the decision or choice a person of at least average intelligence would make.” Amen. Someone who makes a choice that no logical person would make will have to carry on without me. That’s just a lazy, unimaginative writer behind that character.

There’s a movie I use to illustrate this. This was an actual movie that opened in theaters and later made the late-night TV circuit. I saw it in the theater and walked out halfway through it and asked for my money back. I didn’t get it, but did see the rest of it on TV a few years later and saw concrete proof that I was right.

The setup of this godawful movie was that there was this new-fangled office building in town that had a unique security system. The entire building was shut down on Friday evening and didn’t open back up until Monday morning. That established, the movie begins with this couple trapped inside this building with a bad guy after them. Why he’s after them I forget but it doesn’t matter. He is and that’s all that counts. The first half of the movie is mostly what my wife calls a “chasey-fighty” movie. This couple is all over this building—up and down staircases, elevator shafts, whatever. They keep barely escaping his evil clutches each time until—halfway through the movie—they run into this large office space that’s being remodeled. There are stacks of lumber all over, building supplies and tools everywhere they look. The guy finds a nail hammer and they hide behind a pile of lumber to wait and bushwack the bad guy. Which he does. It works out perfectly. The bad guy walks around the lumber pile and the good guy whacks him on the head with the nail hammer and he’s knocked out. The couple kiss and embrace, clearly with tongues and at this point one assumes the movie’s over. But, it’s only been going on for less than an hour! What the heck?

Here’s where the movie completely falls apart and where I walked out and asked for my money back. (Note to younger, less-experienced readers: Theaters never give refunds, no matter how pathetic the product they just sold you is.)

I use this movie in my classes to illustrate just how stupid Hollywood can be at times. I simply ask them if this was you and your significant other, what would you do at this point? You know this guy is out to kill you both and you know you’ve got the drop on him and he’s clearly knocked out. It’s only Saturday so you know you’ve got another day and a half before the building can release you. So, what do you do?

I get the same answers every time.

1. I’d kill him.

2. I’d find something to tie him up with (clearly possible as they’re in a room with all kinds of building supplies and tools and plenty of things to tie him up with.

3. I’d take turns with my partner in watching him, and every time he begins to stir whoever is watching him would bop him on the head again and knock him out.

That’s about the extent of the suggestions. All of these answers represent what a person of at least average intelligence would do. The litmus test of what to base your protagonist’s actions on. Never does anyone suggest what these movie geniuses actually do. Which is to throw the nail gun down and run away to hide again.

This is when I made my way to the lobby. That I was the only one to do so was discouraging. It kind of told me where our educational system was and where our country was headed…

The rest of the movie is the resumed chase which they “miraculously” win at the very end. Too late for me. My fear is that these mesomorphs will mate and it’s for sure their progeny is going to emerge from the shallow end of the gene pool and probably end up running our educational systems. Anyone who sat through the end of this if they have any active gray matter left, simply has to begin rooting for the bad guy. He’s the only one with any living brain cells left.

This was a for-real movie and what’s sad, this kind of thing isn’t that rare in movies or in novels. Too often a writer isn’t really much of a writer and opts for manipulating a plot like this guy did instead of doing the hard work of actually writing. Life’s too short to waste on these clowns.

OBAAT: More than most writers, you’re someone whose next book might be about anything. Crime, comic crime, memoir, writing instruction. (Note to aspiring writers: If you haven’t read Hooked, stop reading right now and get thee a copy. It’s not Les’s only instructional book, but it starts at the beginning, where all books should start.) How do decide which of the ideas that are pushing for attention gets written next?

LE: That’s easy, Dana. It’s the book that I’m most interested in at the time. Just about all of my agents have thrown up their hands at the way I work. More than one have begged me to create a series and I could never do that. I know it hurts my so-called career as that’s the way you build an audience, but I just can’t work like that. Writing to me isn’t just my “job”—it’s my life, and I have the rare opportunity to do what I enjoy doing in life. Writing the same character over and over just seems… what’s the word?... oh, yeah… boring. That’s just me and I don’t have anything against those writers who write series. It’s just something that’s alien to my world.

For one thing, if you write a series based on a character, it’s very difficult to create a character arc for the protagonist and that’s important to me. A novel series is more like a TV series than anything else. The protagonist in a television series remains largely unchanged. They’re more akin to short stories than novels. A contemporary short story only reveals a small truth, unlike the structure of former eras. The same for series television. Sam, the bartender in Cheers, learns a small lesson each week and seems to be somewhat transformed, but when the next week’s episode rolls around, he’s the same old Sam. To me, that’s boring writing and while I enjoy that kind of thing somewhat, it’s all surface entertainment and not anything profound. I’d rather try for profound and fail than have as my goal a lot of readers and money. I never want to be that shallow. And, I feel that to create monetary success in writing means writing to the lowest common denominator, i.e. surface entertainment, and that’s not something that interests me in the least.

Money has never been my goal. I’ve walked out on several opportunities to make a lot of money only because it was boring and I viewed it as an artificial way of living a life. I sold life insurance at one point and walked away from a job that would have made me a millionaire. I stuck it out for a year and was at the top of the game and saw how ridiculously easy making money was if I just kept doing the same thing, but just couldn’t face another day of doing something just to make my life comfortable. After all, how many cars can one drive at once, how many houses can one live in at the same time, how many possessions are enough? None of those things have ever mattered to me. I’m sorry, but my personal opinion of those who settle for this kind of life is that they’re basically cowards. (This isn’t going to win me many friends, is it? Like I give a shit…) Nowadays, I have to confess to a bit of regret as I have no income other than Social Security and the bit I make from book royalties and from the online class I teach and if I can no longer teach I’ll probably end up homeless, but that’s not the worst fate in the world. I’ve been homeless at various times of my life and it wasn‘t all that bad and I survived. I firmly believe I’d still not trade a bit of security at the end of my days for selling my soul to work at something I didn’t enjoy or believe in. And, I just don’t believe in being Salesman of the Month. I do believe in creating a book that affects people’s lives. And, not just “people’s” lives, but intelligent people’s lives. I confess to not have much interest in the average person. The average person is largely boring and I think that most are average by choice. Often, they simply don’t want to take any chances in their lives so their averageness isn’t being average at all, but being a coward. Who needs people like that? Other than politicians and ministers…  I’ve been blessed to have impacted the thinking of extraordinary people with a few of my books and that means far more to me than any pension plan or late-model car. And I realize that’s a rare philosophy and one that most would be unable to follow, but that’s all right. I never want to be like most people. Most people I think aren’t all that happy and have a bunch of regrets. I don’t have many regrets at all.

My next book is always going to be the one that interests me the most.

I’ve consistently enjoyed the new format of these interviews, but none has made me want to sit down with an adult beverage and discuss writing and the world more than this one. I hope you’ve enjoyed this time with les Edgerton as much as I have. Thanks, Les. You’re The Man. 

A Conversation With Les Edgerton

I first encountered Les Edgerton at the Albany Bouchercon, where he read a brief poem at a Down & Out Books event. It was my first encounter with Down & Out, too, so that may have been the most fortuitous half hour of my life. (Certainly of my writing life.) Since then we’ve gotten to know each other and spend some time together, notably in Long Beach, where he joined me (along with Tim Hallinan and John McFetridge) in a reading.

Les is a fine man, a wonderful writer, and someone I’m proud to call a friend. When I heard he had a book coming out and realized how it’s been since we chatted, I hit him up right away. As always, he graciously agreed.

One Bite at a Time: Les, I can’t decide which is the bigger treat: having you on the blog or hearing you have a new book out. Let’s start with the book. Tell us a little about Just Like That.

Les Edgerton: Good question, Dana. The reason I wrote Just Like That was that I just got tired of watching movies and reading novels that without fail got the criminal mindset wrong. I know it’s not their fault; they just aren’t criminals themselves and like a lot of people, many novelists and filmmakers are perhaps a bit lazy. By that, I mean many don’t bother to do the work of research and therefore depend on their idea of the criminal from the books and movies they themselves have experienced. In other words, they simply keep perpetuating the same inaccuracies and myths and stereotypes over and over. And, today’s authors as a group are lazier than in any other era in literary history, in my opinion. It’s not just about criminals. Here’s an example of what I see as a universal reluctance to do much research. Just yesterday I was reading a novel from a bestselling author who had his character smelling cordite. This is the eighth novel I’ve read this year that has character smelling cordite. Jesus! Each time, I think the same thing: Moron. And, each one was from a well-known author and most were from legacy publishers with supposedly quality editing. It’s just a case of writers who seem to believe everything they read to be true or accurate and never questioning anything. Research today is infinitely easier than at any time in history with the Intergnat, and yet none of these writers could spend ten seconds Googling “cordite?” If they had, they would have learned that the manufacture of cordite ceased shortly after WWII and that it was a component of British ammo, not U.S. And, what editor worth his or her title doesn’t do the research these writers couldn’t be bothered with? The answer is the same kind of editor who is just as lazy as the writer they’re editing… We simply live in an age of lowered expectations and quality.

I’m just using cordite as a good example of how many contemporary writers are either lazy or just plain sloppy in their writing. When I began writing, it was considered a terrible thing when a writer made a factual mistake in their novels. The consensus was that once a fact was wrongly presented, the reader couldn’t believe anything else in the novel. Nowadays, that mindset of quality seems to have largely disappeared.

I’ve only been approached by a handful of writers who wanted to know the truth of the criminal mindset or the veracity of their jail or prison scenes. The first was Ray Banks and the other one who springs to mind is Anthony Neil Smith. I seem to remember another writer who bothered to ask me about the veracity of a criminal action or setting but can’t recall who it was. Probably Paul Brazill—that’s the kind of thing Paul would do.

And, that’s it. That’s kind of sad, I think, that so many writers writing crime novels never do any actual research about the characters or the milieu they’re creating. It seems to be common for most writers to research how cops work and all that, but it seems to be okay with most to base their characterizations of criminals and outlaws along the same flawed characterizations in previous flawed books and movies.

So, that’s my long-winded answer to the question you posed, as to what was “the point of the book and how I approached it.” Simply put, the average outlaw or criminal often doesn’t expend a lot of time or energy in pondering a crime, but more often than not just does it on the spur of the moment. Just like that…

Cathy Johns, then the assistant warden of The Farm (the state prison at Angola, La.) read the book and told me that it was “the truest depiction of the criminal mind she’d ever heard.” That meant more to me than any other comment about the book. It told me that I’d succeeded in what I set out to do with it.

OBAAT: You saved me from myself when you read the ARC of my next book and pointed out a mistake I made regarding handwriting analysis, for which I’m grateful. You do quite a bit of teaching. What’s the toughest thing to get through to a fledgling writer?

LE: Another easy question, Dana. Without fail, it’s the lack of knowledge of story structure. Most beginning writers seem to be at least basically proficient in things like description, characterization, dialog, and those bits and pieces of the craft, but are often clueless as to what a story consists of. They know the pieces of writing, but not the structure and how to apply those pieces properly. Think about it—you don’t get to Carnegie Hall with your name on the marquee by knowing how to play the oboe only—you get to Carnegie by creating a symphony. In writing, that symphony is a novel.

In our class, we require everyone to create a short outline for their novel, consisting of five statements and 15-20 words. None of those Roman numeral monstrosities that go on for page after page. The reason I insist on this is that past experience tells me that if they don’t have a basic plan for their book and don’t begin in the right place, we’re all going to end up wasting our time. Their “novel” is most likely going to peter out after 60-80 pages and from that point on they’re going to be desperately trying to resuscitate a corpse. The first week of class they can only send in their outline and the first five pages of their novel. Two things I’ll look for. That their outline clearly begins with the inciting incident and that their first five pages are on one thing only—the inciting incident they’ve described in their outline. If clear evidence of that isn’t there, they’ve just begun what students have termed our “Inciting incident hell.” I’ve only had one student in over ten years of these classes ever escape inc inc hell. And that was a person in our present class.

Occasionally, I’ll get a new student who seems proud that they’re a “pantser.” That seems to mean to them that they’re the captain of their destiny and that creating an outline somehow makes them less creative or something. Often, they’ll quote someone like Hemingway who also claimed to never outline. Only… he did. He didn’t call them outlines. He called them “Draft 1” and “Draft 2” and “Draft 9” but in truth, they were all outlines. Just kind of longish ones, at around a hundred thousand words…

Our outlines consist of five statements. The first describes the inciting incident. The next three describe the three major turns almost all novels go through. The fifth describes the resolution. Personally, I wouldn’t start driving to Adak, Alaska without a map, having never driven there before. With my sense of direction I’d probably end up in L.A, and…no thank you… I like flavor in food too much to want to join the ruminants in California…The outline we use is the barebones but it accomplishes several things. It gives us a roadmap for a lengthy novel. If the novel decides to take a major turn as they sometimes do, no problem. We just take ten minutes and adjust the outline and we still have a good map. It used to take me a year to two years to write a novel—with this kind of outline I can write a better one in three months. I’m not wasting time driving down back roads…

And, it works for all forms. I used the same outline to write a short story, a novel, and a screenplay all on the same story—The Genuine, Imitation, Plastic Kidnapping. Didn’t have to change a word of the outline and all three are very different in many ways. However, they all share the same skeleton. (Editor’s Note: This book is laugh-out-loud funny. I shit you not.)

I had a student come to us years ago with an already-completed 400-page novel. (Not uncommon). She ended up spending ten weeks in inc inc hell before I’d allow her to be passed into writing beyond that. This was when our class was twelve weeks and I was teaching it as an accredited class for Phoenix College. She had two weeks left to go in the class and was still trying to get her first five pages written. She finally nailed it in the eleventh week. She went on in subsequent classes to finish that novel and when done, I helped her land an agent and that agent helped her get a three-book contract. That 400-page book she’d come to class with was long-ago buried in her back yard where it belonged. It was one of those episodic messes that beginning writers often create. She’s currently penning her fifth and sixth novels for Midnight Ink and you may have read her. Her name is Maegan Beaumont. We have many similar stories in our class—more than two dozen of our students have ended up publishing their books and publishing legitimately—not via some vanity or self-publishing venue, but with real publishers.

So, understanding what the inciting incident is and how important it is to a novel’s success is the single toughest thing to get across to a beginning writer. And, often to a writer further along in the process.

OBAAT: I tend to roll my eyes when people talk about “important books,” or “books that had an influence on your life.” Your novel The Bitch is one of two exceptions that come to mind. (David Simon’s The Corner is the other.) In your context The Bitch refers to habitual offender statutes, better known as “three strikes and you’re out” laws. I could go into this at length but I’d rather you give everyone the point of the book and how you approached it.

LE: Another great question. I wrote The Bitch for the same reasons I wrote Just Like That. And, I’d like to include The Rapist in that group. I couldn’t find a book that accurately portrayed the criminal or outlaw realistically. The closest I found was Charles Bukowski’s short story, “The Fiend.” Just about all other writers I’ve read who write about criminals I can’t see as really knowing or understanding the criminal mind. When I was getting my MFA, one of my advisors, Diane Lefer, asked me what I thought about the writer Denis Johnson. My reply was that I thought he was a fine writer but didn’t have a clue how criminals thought or their motivations. His writing made me think this was a college guy who spent a couple of nights in the drunk tank and now thought he understood outlaws. And, sorry, but that’s how I see a lot of writers who write about crime. It’s not a crime not to understand the criminal mind, but I think it is a crime not to try to find out how we think and why we act in the ways we do. Most writers, if they’re not cops themselves, take the time to research police procedures and cops’ mores, but seldom do they bother to do the same with the criminals in their books or films.

Most seem to approach crime the way most social workers do. They try to fit statistical observations into a picture of the criminal mind. That’s why you get these cockamamie theories like “poverty creates criminals.” And, create programs to do away with poverty and then wonder why the criminal rates don’t go down that much. Or, they see abusive parents and how some of their offspring end up being outlaws and assume that’s the cause and feel if they take the kids away that’ll solve the problem. The problem with that is that it only accounts for a portion of the reason some turn to criminal activities. They don’t seem to wonder much why others from the same backgrounds of experiences turn out not to be criminals.

This seems to be the mindset of many crime fiction writers. That the criminal’s background is what led them to their lives of crime. Conveniently, they “forget” the other members of that criminals same family who turned out to be law-abiding citizens.

If social workers and novelists investigated further than most do, they might discover the real reason some turn to crime and others with the same backgrounds don’t.

Almost all criminal acts are the result of a sense of loss of control in some aspect of their lives. The armed robber is in control of his fate when he holds a gun on a store clerk. For that moment, he has reached a place where he’s in control. The rapist feels in control when he’s raping a girl. And, so on. The same experience affects similar people in diverse ways. The child who was sexually abused by his father as was his brother, might grow up to feel out of control in his life and discover the only way to regain control is by imitating what his father did to him. His brother, while experiencing the same abuse, may have found another way to regain control in his life.

The child who grew up in poverty might discover that by taking wealth from others, he at least momentarily regains control over his world. His sibling, undergoing the same experiences in childhood, might have discovered another means of gaining control over his life and not feel the same need to rob others as his brother does.

The thing is, it’s almost always a matter of a sense of control or the lack of control in a particular segment of their lives. This is why most social programs have limited success and why novelists writing criminals also experience limited success in creating characters. They’ve simply ignored or been unaware of the other factors creating individuals.

That’s what I was interested in showing in The Bitch. When it begins, Jake does what he does because he thinks he believes in the concept of loyalty. As events transpire, he eventually learns that what drives him and his actions isn’t his sense of loyalty, but of his sense of survival. Once he learns that about himself, he is then able to change. Which he does in the final scene. He willingly enters a situation—actually, he creates a situation in which he’ll be killed. He’s come to discover through his journey that there is something more important than survival and that he’s built his entire life on a false value. And, that’s what a novel should be about, in my opinion—a significant change in the protagonist’s life as a result of his struggle to resolve a problem. Jake’s not going to end up like Sam in Cheers, but as a completely changed person. Albeit… room temperature...

What was rewarding to me was the tremendous amount of emails and letters I received that all said the same thing. That they couldn’t help rooting for Jake throughout the story, even though at every single turn he was doing horrible things to others. While they didn’t condone the things he did, they understood that he was almost forced to do them and they understood why and all throughout the read they kept hoping he’d find a way to not only survive but end up as a good person. That the only thing that made him do bad things wasn’t that he was a bad person but that he was only given bad choices. That told me that I’d succeeded in creating a real character who was a true criminal but not a one-dimensional cardboard character. Jake wasn’t a Snidely Whiplash, but a real human being.

Come back next Wednesday for Part Two of my conversation with Les Edgerton.

Twenty Questions With Les Edgerton

Among the treats of writing crime fiction is getting to meet and become friends with people like Les Edgerton. He’s a raconteur, gentle and generous soul, and hell of a writer who always has something going on. What that is one never knows. Les has written noir (The Bitch is as good a classically-oriented noir book as I’ve read in years), comedy that’s actually funny (The Genuine, Imitation, Plastic Kidnapping), and books other writers keep near their desks for the wealth of writing advice in them (Hooked: Write Fiction That Grabs Readers at Page One and Never Lets Them Go). That list scratches the surface; there are over fifteen others listed on his Amazon author page.

These days, he's working on a memoir, a new writer's how-to, several novels, several nonfiction projects, and appearing at various workshops. He invites readers of his work to contact him. His contact info is on his blog at www.lesedgertononwriting.blogspot.com/  and he has a website at www.lesedgerton.net. His newest release, Bomb!, dropped on March 20 and is why he’s here today. (See what I did there? Bomb? Dropped? That’s two weeks in a row. Yay me.)

One Bite at a Time: Tell us about Bomb!

Les Edgerton: When criminal genius Charles "Reader" Kincaid accidentally alerts a retired

cop to the impending commission of the perfect crime, the crime becomes a lot less perfect. The plan is to wire a prominent banker with a remote control bomb and thereby capture untold millions from a dangerous drug czar. Or is the plan something else? The plot thickens as hidden family connections come to light and who is betraying who—and why—becomes a matter of life and death for perpetrators and victims alike. With wry wit and first-hand knowledge of the underworld, author Les Edgerton unleashes a cast of quirky characters and dark ambitions that collide in a tale nothing short of explosive.

OBAAT: Readers love to ask where authors get their ideas and most authors reply with something along the lines of “we’re tripping over them. The trick is to find the idea that works best for me.” What made this idea worth developing, and how much development from the original germ was required?

LE: I came up with the crime first and then figured out who I could get to pull it off. I sit around dreaming up perfect crimes all the time. Have a bunch of them at present—all for sale… I’ll give you an example. I have the perfect way to murder someone and not get caught. If you had someone visit you or vice versa, for a meal, and drugged them, and when they were out, injected them with the rabies disease, say with a tiny puncture between the toes or in their butt—something they wouldn’t notice when coming to, when they finally learned they had the disease it’s too late to cure. I’m using that in a book I’m currently writing…

You hit upon something that exists—that “ideas” thing. I feel the reason many writers never finish their novels is that they hadn’t thought about it for long enough. They have perhaps a glimpse of an idea, but it’s just not close to being realized. They probably have what Blake Snyder called “the smell of the road at dawn” kind of image. The start of an idea, but that’s all they may have. The thing you might tell Letterman once your novel is out and he asks where you got the idea. But, that’s all. For me, it has to germinate for years in my mind before it’s ready to become a novel. At that “smell of the road” stage, it’s just an image. A t-shirt. Just not ready to become a novel.

OBAAT: How long did it take to write Bomb! start to finish?

LE: First draft, about four to five months. But, I wrote two complete rewrites for my agent and then another three or four complete rewrites for my first publisher. Each of those took at least a couple of months to do.

OBAAT: Where did Reader Kincaid come from? In what ways is he like, and unlike, you?

LE: Reader is kind of a guy I’ve been at times. Long time ago…

OBAAT: In what time and place is Bomb! set and why was this time and place chosen?

LE: It’s set mostly in New Orleans and the surrounding countryside and the time is the early 80’s.

OBAAT: How did Bomb! come to be published?

LE: That’s a long, convoluted story! Rather than repeat it, I’ll just refer folks to the material at the beginning of the book as that tells it in detail.

OBAAT: What kinds of stories do you like to read? Who are your favorite authors, in or out of that area?

LE: I like to read… good writing. All genres. I have literally dozens and dozens of writers I love. I always hate to list any because I always leave off people I greatly admire and just forgot at the moment and I don’t want them to feel slighted.

OBAAT: What made you decide to be an author?

LE: When I was five, I read my first book and decided then I wanted to be a writer. I’ve never wavered or had any other goal or dream. At the time, I thought I could write a better story than the one I read (it was something by Guy de Maupassant) and I couldn’t then, but I think I’d come close now.

OBAAT: How do you think your life experiences have prepared you for writing crime fiction?

LE: Beautifully! Great question. As I said, I’ve wanted to be a writer my entire life and I remember thinking when I was very young that if I got lucky, I’d end up being 80 and sitting in a nursing home with that blanket over my lap… and at that point, all the money, cars, houses, possessions, in the world would mean very little, but what would have meaning would be memories, so my entire life has been a quest to attain memories. And, that’s exactly what I’ve tried to do. As far as crime fiction, I was an outlaw for a long time and did a lot of criminal things which were all an adrenaline rush. Spent a couple of years in prison and I knew I’d end up there but it never bothered me. Just more material.

OBAAT: What do you like best about being a writer?

LE: Creating stories that get people’s attention and affect their emotions. I don’t care if they laugh, cry or whatever, just so long as they have some emotion when reading my work. A stone-faced reader is not my idea of the person I want reading my work.

OBAAT: Who are your greatest influences? (Not necessarily writers. Filmmakers, other artists, whoever you think has had a major impact on your writing.)

LE: Mostly writers. A great many have influenced me and I can’t name them all, but chief among them would be Camus, Sartre, the aforementioned Du Maupassant, Honore Balzac—most of my early influences came from my grandmother’s library when I was very young and I just loved their writing. All except Dickens who I always thought was boring. Took too long to get to anything good… Camus is my biggest influence. I’ve always wanted to challenge his talent and just can’t.

Other people play a role in influencing me. Gordon Ramsey, for instance. If you watch his shows, and just pretend he’s talking to writers, he’s telling us what we’re doing wrong and how to fix it. It’s always the same. With chefs, usually the food sucks. If he was talking to writers, he’d just say the writing sucks. Or, the restaurant isn’t clean. To a writer, he’d probably say their manuscripts are sloppy and improperly formatted. I think he’s one of the truly great writing teachers.

OBAAT: Do you outline or fly by the seat of you pants?

LE: Oh, outline for sure. If I wanted to drive to Adak, Alaska, I’d grab a map and if I want to write a 350-page novel, I want a map as well. I suppose I could get there by just driving, but just seems like I’d waste a lot of time and gas. However, I don’t outline like most people probably do. None of those Comp outlines with Roman numerals and all that crap. My outlines consist of a total of 15 – 20  words and five statements. The first statement describes the inciting incident, the next three the three major turns most novels make, and the fifth, the resolution. The outline I use fits just about all forms. I used the same outline to write a short story, a novel, and a screenplay—all the same story. It gives me a sound map and a lot of latitude. When I used to be a pantser, it’d take me a year or longer to write a novel. Using my outline, I can now write a better one in a third the time. Just makes sense to me to use one.

OBAAT: Give us an idea of your process. Do you edit as you go? Throw anything into a first draft knowing the hard work is in the revisions? Something in between?

LE: I hardly ever rewrite except when an agent or editor requests it. Dana, I’ve been doing this for so long, I can just write a novel without trying to remember hundreds of details—it’s all just there and I just have to write it down. I have to think about a novel for about ten years before I write it. When it’s ready to be written, I’ve already done all the hard work and I just have to sit down and type. That doesn’t mean when I finish a novel I have to think about one for ten years! At any given time, I’ve got six or seven novels rolling around in my head and they’ve been there for years and years. To be honest, I don’t do a lot of the things I advise my students to do. I don’t think it would work for most of them (could be wrong!), but it does for me.

OBAAT: Endings are hard and can make or break a book. Americans as a whole tend to like happy endings, and those are the books that tend to sell best. What do you look for in an ending?

LE: I don’t know if that’s a fair statement, Dana—about “Americans as a whole…” I think we’re a pretty diverse people. The folks who like happy endings I think are the same ones who like movies better than books and commercial fiction better than truly good fiction. Granted, there are a lot of those folks, but I don’t think that’s a particularly American trait. I think the same kind of people are in every culture. And, it doesn’t matter to me. I don’t write for most folks. The ending I end up with is the only ending that makes sense to me for the characters. My only requirement is that it not only be true to the character but that it has to have both a win and a loss for him/her. I like Flannery O’Connor’s description of the perfect ending—that it be a complete surprise at the time for the reader, but upon reflection, the only perfect one.

OBAAT: Who is your intended audience?

LE: My twin. Someone who’s read the same books as I have, seen the same movies, is the same age, has the same life philosophies, same life experiences, etc. My twin. If I ever approached an audience any differently, I think I’d end up not trusting the reader’s intelligence to get it because I wouldn’t be using the same shorthand I do with someone I know very well. If some get it and some don’t, I don’t care. The readers I trust will. The rest really don’t count. There are plenty of other folks they can read. My readers are extraordinarily smart. I’m very proud of my readers. Nary a one of them move their lips while reading.

OBAAT: If you could give a novice writer a single piece of advice, what would it be?

LE: Sit your ass down and write. And read everything you can get your hands on. I’ll borrow Jim Harrison’s wonderful advice for the same question. He said that if you wanted to be a good writer, to read the whole of Western literature for the past 400 years. And, then, time permitting, the same period of Eastern literature. For, if you don’t know what passed for good in the past, how can you know what passes for good today? Seems to me to be perfect advice. I read 5 – 7  novels a week and have for most of my life. I’ll never read the whole of literature but it won’t be for lack of trying.

OBAAT: Generally speaking the components of a novel are story/plot, character, setting, narrative, and tone. How would you rank these in order of their importance in your own writing, and can you add a few sentences to tell us more about how you approach each and why you rank them as you do?

LE: Really only two I much consider—character and story. There are only two rules to good writing. 1. Be interesting, and 2. Be clear. The most important is the first. Tell a good story. Everything else will fall into place if you can do that. Plot is necessary but kind of overrated, in my opinion. After all, there are only 6 – 8 plots, depending upon whom you talk to. It has to be there, but I wouldn’t waste a lot of time studying it. Plot is easy—it’s just a series of causal actions that the protagonist takes to resolve his problem against increasing obstacles. Setting can (or can not be) important. It’s secondary, in most cases, to the actual story. And narrative and tone are just the writer’s voice and my views on that are in my first craft book, Finding Your Voice. I wrote a whole book on that subject, but it all distills down into… be yourself on the page, Honey, warts and all.

OBAAT: If you could have written any book of the past hundred years, what would it be, and what is it about that book you admire most?

LE: That’s easy! Camus’ The Stranger. It’s the most perfect book ever written. In fact, I keep rereading it because I’m convinced that Camus wrote it under the influence of an Eastern philosophy—that you always include a flaw on purpose in any work of art, so that you didn’t challenge God. There’s a flaw in it somewhere, but I’ve yet to find it. If there isn’t, we might as well all give up… The primary thing about it for me is the powerful emotion it arouses in me. Camus did it better than anyone with something powerful—he didn’t elevate the prose or shout it out—he turned down the volume. It affected me deeply when I first read it and since I’ve re-read it half a dozen times each year for fifty plus years, it still affects me deeply.

OBAAT: Favorite activity when you’re not reading or writing.

LE: Wow. I don’t do anything except read or write these days. Well, I watch a handful of sports teams I love and follow—the I.U. Hoosier basketball team, the ND football team, and the S.F. Giants baseball team. Other than that, I read and write. Seven days a week.

OBAAT: What are you working on now?

LE: About six or seven new novels and other books. I’m blessed with ADD, which is a fantastic thing for a writer, as it allows me to compartmentalize and totally focus on each project. I get a lot done, because if I get bored or whatever with one book, I just close the file and pull up another one and there’s no wasted time. I don’t believe in that myth called “writer’s block” so I’m able to get a lot done. Writing’s a job, like any other, and I’ve never heard of a plumber getting “plumber’s block” or a brain surgeon getting “brain surgery block” and I’m pretty sure there’s no such thing for writers either. I think it can be a great excuse for not doing the work sometimes… I think that sometimes writers want to have written a book, but as far as doing the actual thing… If I feel like being lazy, I’d rather just pull out a bottle of Jack and… just be lazy… Call it what it is, rather than make up a kind of pseudo-intellectual affliction…

Just got back from four days in Iowa, researching material for a rewrite of a baseball book I wrote years ago. The market for it has just ballooned and we think it’ll be a very big seller, so working on that as well as several novels and final edits for a memoir.

Thanks so much for having me on, Dana! It’s always a gas!

OBAAT: As always, Les, the pleasure was mine.

To PC, or Not to PC?

I have had the privilege of knowing Les Edgerton for just short of two years now. He is a delightful man, whose good nature is infectious.

Lately, though, he’s pissed off, and with good reason.

For those who lack the inquisitive nature to check the link, cons often refer to “Three strikes and you’re out” laws as “The Bitch,” affecting, as they do, habitual criminals. Les wrote a book—what I consider his finest—that depicts the weaknesses of such statutes. Cutting to the core as he does so well, Les titled his book The Bitch. Now he learns there are weak-kneed, politically correct, chickenshit editors and newspapers who will not print reviews of the book because the title is offensive.

Coincidentally, J.D. Rhodes also posted about political correctness in his weekly column. In as articulate and well-reasoned an argument as I’ve read—certainly better than anything you’re likely to get from me—Dusty writes:

There’s no hard and fast answer. But one thing to consider is: In which direction are you punching? Up, down, or sideways?

Political correctness is a poorly-worded term for something we should all be aware of. At what point does malicious—or even just thoughtless—speech become offensive? Should such offense be measured by reception, or intent? Like anything else, context matters, as does the question of degree. While, on the one hand, one should not get a pass for deliberately hurtful comments by decrying the “thought police,” anyone who’s been through counseling has heard the mantra “no one can make you feel any particular way; that’s up to you.” Where’s the line?

There isn’t one. At least not a bright one. The same newspapers that refused to acknowledge The Bitch may well print a quote from a politician referring to Hillary Clinton as a bitch. Even better—or worse—if said person gets cute with the time-honored substitute “I won’t say what she is, but it rhymes with ditch/switch/witch/hitch/pitch.” Worse yet, to quote as “she’s a b***h.” Rush Limbaugh and his ilk may think they get over with their winks and nods and denials, but they’re not kidding anyone. Those who most vociferously defend them are fellow travelers down that slimy road. Their resumes put the lie to any pleas of innocence.

Louis CK said it best, as he so often does, in his routine about how he despises the N-word. No,

not nigger; the phrase, “The N-Word.” As he so deftly puts it, that’s just a way to get me to say “nigger” in my head without you having to, refusing to accept the truth of what words are: abstract things that put specific ideas or images in people’s heads.

Context is critical, damn near everything. I say “damn near” because intent must count for something. (We could argue for weeks about whether intent is part and parcel of context, but that’s a different discussion.) I was going to link to Louis CK’s bit, but there are other references there that will be viewed as offensive if you don’t watch the entire hour-long show, because he took the time to build the context into which his use of such language, while not appropriate for the whole family, is not as shockingly offensive as it might appear.

George Carlin—the most brilliant comedic wordsmith of my lifetime—said it best as part of his classic “Seven Things You Can’t Say on Television” routine. He included “cocksucker,” but not “cock,” because, in context, a cock might refer to something completely different (“It says right there in The Bible: the cock crowed.”), while there aren’t a lot of different interpretations for “cocksucker.” (Al Swearengen may differ.) Context does matter. Sometimes it’s all that matters. It’s why a newspaper that would never print a picture of a pussy, nor allow written reference to such, can still be run by one.