Writing What Hurts Part 2

Welcome back, whoever is actually reading along. First some updates, then the book sponsoring this post that I dearly hope you will read. So many years, and so little feedback, despite having sold hundreds of thousands of books. This is the first bit of chapter one of Writing What Hurts, my memoir / book on writing. Some of it is memories, some of it will be about specific aspects of writing… all of it is about me. I brew up in the 60s and 70s. In those days the world was bigger. There was more time to fill with things like Saturday morning cartoons and reading. I read everything I could get my hands on, and at some point I knew… this is what I want to do. Let’s get this started.

Quick writing update. I am very close to putting a nail in the end of “When You Leave, I disappear,” which sits just under 36k words. I have someone reading / helping to get the novel Tattered Remnants back on track and complete, and have several other projects in various states of completion I am dying to get back to. Stories upcoming in Deathrealm: Spirits from Shortwave Publishing. If you have not seen how they present the books, beautiful covers, swag, even special packaging, you have missed out - and some amazing books, starting with Alan Latufka’s Face the Night (which I read and very much enjoyed). Also have a story coming up in a yet-to-be announced project. Onward.

The book for this week is “On the Third Day,” one of several of my novels that was born from a short story that felt incomplete. I wrote this many, many years ago. My first collection, The Fall of the House of Escher & Other Illusions (Still available) came out in 1996. This story was first published there and was not republished afterward because it became a screenplay (also available to producers) and then that screenplay became the outline for a novel. Just up front… my favorite review of this book contains a negative reference to a “miracle” I describe that Father Prescott witnessed. The reader found it to be too unbelievable. It was the only miracle in the book I did not make up - my better half, Patricial Lee Macomber (Wilson) found it for me while I was writing. Go read the book and then I’ll tell you which one it was.

Available wherever eBooks are sold for $3.99. Available from Amazon in Trade Paperback for $12.99. Also available in Unabridged Audio performed by Chet Williamson. (I am particuliarly irritated at the low reviews on the audio because they are of the sort like “I am not a Catholic, so I didn’t like it.” And then some people who always rate low, rated low. On Amazon it is 4.4 out of 5 Stars… Amazon B&N Apple Kobo Smashwords Google Audible

1 – High School Years

Back in high school I had some unique individuals as teachers.  One, for instance, was Mr. Monts.  I may be botching the spelling of his name, it doesn't matter.  Mr. Monts was famed throughout the school, both for being the best and the strangest history professor in the school's history.  He began each new class by listing Monts's Laws on the blackboard.  I don't remember all of them, but there are a few that stuck with me.  A Student is one who studies.  An instructor presents information.  A Teacher is one who teaches.

And Mr. Monts was a teacher.  Some of his students were allowed to skip class completely.  He made the deal first day that if you came to class on the day of exams and maintained an "A" average you did not have to come to class.  Everyone came anyway.  You never knew whether he would be talking about the American Revolution, or reading to the class from the Just-So stories by Rudyard Kipling.  He had the perfect voice for it – and I'll never forget hearing him read about the Great, gray, green, greasy Limpopo River.  I'll also never forget what I learned in his class – that experiences like he provided were what education should be about.  Not a list of deadlines, some memorized facts that sift in and out of the brain and disappear.  Lessons – some about history, others about life.  He was a great teacher.

I was probably blessed when it came to teachers.  My creative writing teacher, Nell Wiseman, recently retired,  I believe, has won acclaim for her work in Illinois education.  I wrote a great number of poems in her class – that is what I remember best.  We had to complete a poetry notebook that was turned in to an Illinois women's literary society (don't recall which one).  First prize was something like $10 – more money then than it is now.  I wrote what I thought was a very creative poetry notebook, and one of my poems – the Ballad of Daniel Dunn (notice the alliteration?) won second prize.  What I remember best is that my poem about a bear caught in a forest fire due to a careless smoker won first prize.

Except I never got that prize.  I had sold the poem (and an entire second poetry notebook) to a friend.  He won first prize, and he didn't even share the money.  That was the down side.  The upside is that at that moment in time, I knew I could write.  I was certain of it.  I had competed against all of the kids in my school who thought they might be interested in creative writing, and I'd taken first and second place.  Of course, I had a lot to learn about what it meant to be able to write. That knowledge came years later, but that was the start.

I also had a teacher named Mrs. Plath.  She was a very strict disciplinarian, but she truly seemed to love books.  In her class I discovered Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (I had to go to the desk and ask her, after reading most of the book, if she was aware of all that happened in that book because I was afraid I'd get in trouble for writing about it).  I also wrote a long poem called “The Torture Chamber,” (lost to history) as an extra credit assignment, and a short story titled "The Thing at the Top of the Stairs."  That story, years later, was rewritten and actually published in 365 Scary Stories.  Even at that age I was writing the sort of thing that would draw my creative attention later in life – and fairly well, I think.  Still…I didn't take it as seriously as I needed to.  Later in this book I'll talk about turning points, and how I think my career would be different if I'd applied myself even a little bit sooner than I did, but that is digression.