cj Sez: When I worked in Chrysler’s Employee Communications
Department, I met an ad man who was an honest-to-gosh World War II American hero (served
with General George S. Patton in France and Germany). Fen became a dear, dear friend, and we stayed in close touch until his death at age 97 this past January. It was Fenton Ludtke who
introduced me to Elmore Leonard’s writing discipline.
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Fen had worked with Elmore Leonard at an ad agency for a
time and had great admiration for his writing and his discipline, as I came to
appreciate also. But I appreciated Fen most of all: a gentle man with great wit,
sensitivity, and quiet earnestness who unflaggingly supported and encouraged my
feeble first attempts at writing a novel.
Back to Elmore Leonard: I wish I could have begged,
borrowed, or stolen some of the man’s discipline for writing. What started as
necessity for him (his job required it) turned into habit when he became an
established writer.
“To support his family, he worked as a copywriter at an ad agency, where he developed his aversion to adverbs, and also his knack for brief, punched-up prose. He began a habit of waking at five a.m. and immediately starting to write -- not even putting the water on for coffee until he had something down on paper -- then going to work at the office, first in advertising and later writing educational films for the Encyclopedia Britannica.”
(Source: http://www.biographile.com/a-capital-crime-elmore-leonard-deserves-a-definitive-biography/22523/ )
It used to be that I worked better when I had a short-term
deadline, as was always the case in my job in Employee Communications. After I
retired and began to write novels and short stories, I thought if I gave myself
a deadline to meet, I’d knock out stories in no time flat.
Found out that’s not
true. I manage to bury any self-imposed deadline under weeks of procrastination
that I call “research.” (Elmore Leonard paid others to do his research.) It seems that
the more I research, the less creativity I have. I get lost among the fascinating
facts in those research rabbit holes, and my story suffers. I am learning a lot
of stuff, though.
Unlike Mr. Leonard, I’m not usually such an early morning
riser after I retired. Six-thirty is about all I can manage and still stay awake
the whole day. However, occasionally, as was the case a couple of mornings ago,
at four a.m., I will make a note about one of the WIPs I have in my computer
and promptly crawl back into bed. I sometimes get good ideas just before I fall
asleep or when I’m dreaming. That’s why I keep a pad of paper and a pencil on
the table next to the bed. Some ideas I use, others don’t turn out to be the
good idea I thought they were.
I’m not a believer in writer’s block. When I get stuck, I think I just need to
take a break from my WiP, and I will read some other author’s fine work. It
doesn’t make a difference the genre. It might even be a book of poetry.
I find
that an escape into someone else’s work almost always provides the nudge I need
to send one of my characters up another proverbial tree so I can throw rocks at
her in the middle of the manuscript.
How about you? When do you get your best ideas? How do you
conquer the blank page in front of you?
§§
Writerly/Readerly quote:
“My alma mater was books, a good library…. I could spend the
rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.” - Malcolm X
§§
And now a few words from my sponsor:
These anthologies make wonderful
gifts, filled with timeless stories that are wonderful reads all year long.
Bonus points: Part of the proceeds of three of them benefits charities.
THE DAWGSTAR is available as an eBook from the etailers listed here... https://books2read.com/u/3LRRG5
and as a paperback Amazon
Buy Now
DEATH ON THE YAMPA is available as an eBook from multiple etailers... https://books2read.com/u/bxe1AP
as a paperback Buy
Paperback Yampa
and as a #SCREAM, series phone app. There are a lot of
authors and their mystery/suspense stories available on #SCREAM. All you do is
load up the app and search for the author’s name.
§§
Draft2Digital tells
me that you can ask your local library to order my eBooks for you. You’ll need
to give them the ISBN number of the title you want to borrow. I’ve listed mine
below.
THE DAWGSTAR … ISBN 978-17369146-0-1
DEATH ON THE YAMPA … ISBN 978-1-7369146-1-8
§§
That’s it for
today’s post. You-all guys keep on keeping on, and I’ll try to do the same.
cj
P.S. TO ORDER any book of your choice on-line and support
an indie bookstore, contact The Haunted Bookshop here: https://www.thehauntedbookshopmobile.com/contact-us
If you’d like me to autograph or personalize one of my books
for you, be sure to tell them, and I’ll run by the shop.
The Haunted
Bookshop has re-opened to limited hours (and they have an awesome bookstore
kitty, Mr. Bingley), so if you’re in the Mobile area, you can stop and shop,
too.
➜ Follow me . . .
➜ on Amazon: Amazon
Central Author Page
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https://www.bookbub.com/authors/cj-petterson
➜ on Goodreads: https://bit.ly/3fcN3h6
What a fascinating story! How lucky you were to know him.
ReplyDeletecj Sez: Thanks for stopping by, Kaye. And I was lucky to know Fenton Ludtke. He was a very special human being. His little book of poetry, "The Importance of Being Naughty," is one of the most important books on my book shelf.
ReplyDelete