MAKE USE OF THE GOLD: DUSTY RICHARDS' WRITING THE WEST BY JEREMY L.C. JONES

I've never met Dusty Richards. But I feel like I have. I know that's a common feeling for readers and I've read a fair number of Richards' novels. My sense of knowing Mr. Richards--that intimacy beyond the storyteller/audience relationship—comes, though, not so much from his dozens of novels so much as from his “real how-to book”Writing the West with Dusty Richards: A Western Novel Roundup (High Hill Press, 2010).

This "other" relationship, is sort of a cross between the teacher/student and the editor/writer relationship.

Writing the West contains sixteen chapters by Richards followed by five written by friends of his who, as the cover puts it, are "folks who sell the sagebrush scented pages," including John Duncklee , Mike Kearby, John Nesbitt, Jory Sherman, and Jodi Thomas. The book is illustrated with artwork by Michael Andrews.

The first 141 pages from Richards alone would've been enough to satisfy even the most persnickety consumer. The roundup of experts at the end is a drink on the house just because... well, just because. It feels like Richards saying, "I've said my piece, now my friends here are going to pitch in on romance, young adults, mountain men, traditional westerns, and some mistakes you want to avoid. Don't get fidgety, you're in good hands."

As I indicated above, I haven't met Mr. Richards, so I don't know if that's how he talks. I'm merely speaking to the effect.

I'm get ahead of myself, though. Let's take a step back and look at Writing the West from the beginning-approach it in the order Mr. Richards intended.

"Between this book's covers is how to write a western novel," he writes in the introduction. "This isn't your usual how-to-write book. You can buy books all day long that will instruct you in writing basics. What I intend to show you are the things I've learned in the process of writing close to one hundred books. These are the little details that make the difference and bring your book to life."

You "may have to read this book two or three times," Mr. Richards warns, and that is the appeal, here—both the need to read and re-read, to dig for those nuggets of gold, to sift for a little color in your pan.

But I don't mean that the way it sounds. You don't have to take a pick axe to the worthless rock and dirt or spend hours crouching by a stream with numb hands, aching back, and high hopes that you'll strike it rich. You will strike it rich. The claim will pay out. It's all valuable. The gold is there--everywhere.

All the reader needs to do is persist, focus, put in the time. And be willing to notice the color, the vein of yellow or the flakes in the top layer of pay dirt. And to make use of it.

"If you want to be a selling writer, that's what you must do," says Richards. "Write and read all the time. Your fingers need to be spilling things on that screen or, if you don't have a computer handy, writing in a log or diary. Carry a notebook and make notes about people, their dialogue, how they look, so you can steal parts of them for your characters."

I'm not sure why I wrote those sentences in here. Not, yet, anyway. Perhaps, they illustrate and reinforce Mr. Richards’ belief in the seemingly little things and the fact that you need to be aware. Watch. Sift. Notice. Read. Write. Steal from life for your writing. Be ready to see the value of the world around you.

Reading through my now ragged copy of Writing the West, I’m struck by how much of my own ink is splattered all over the pages. I’ve underline and made notes, gone away, and returned to do more of the same.

Of all the chapters in all the writing books I own, Chapter Four of Writing the West just might be the one I've returned to the most often since the book came out. "Novels Must Take a Path or Tack" seems like a straightforward enough title and, indeed, the chapter's discussion of "laying out your book" is just shy of overly simplified.

And that's exactly where it should be: just shy of. It teeters on the edge. Perfectly balanced. Glorious.

"A book comes in four sections," says Mr. Richards, "so quarter your book as you write it."

This idea--a novel as having four sections--isn't revolutionary unless you've never heard of it before.

The four sections of a book are, according to Mr. Richards: "Your main POV character is LOST", "Your hero is an ORPHAN", "He becomes an emerging HERO", and "He becomes a HERO/MARTYR". He explains what he means, but I’ll leave a little to your imagination and also not spoil the fun when you get your own copy and flip straight to Chapter Four and Mr. Richards’ Four Quarters plotting strategy.

"This," he says, "is the simplest way to write a book."

Yep. You can say that again.

"A simple guide," Mr. Richards reiterates, "without much restraint, yet it makes a book flow."

Exactly how I like it. Structure without restraint. Guidelines without shackles. A nice room with windows and a view.

And a book that flows.

Because when the book flows, the writer finishes it and the reader reads it, and gold surfaces.

I don't know Mr. Richards, but I am pretty sure that he was thinking of me--a guy with a whole lot of technical training in creative writing, but an inability to contain all those ideas into a coherent novel--when he wrote Chapter Four.

I just know he was thinking of me and folks just like me.

A moment ago, I cracked open Writing the West and noted the first underlined passage that caught my eye.

"High notes, then low notes," says Mr. Richards. "But I would find one thing that could be used to further the story line and use it."

Find something that furthers the story line and use it. Sounds like a good plan, Mr. Richards.

NIK MORTON'S "WRITE A WESTERN IN 30 DAYS" BY JEREMY L.C. JONES

I wish Nik Morton had published Write a Western in 30 Days with Plenty of Bullet-Points (Compass Books, 2013) 20 years ago.

In the fall of 1993, I was barely 23, newly married and living with Trina in Evanston, IL. Three months out of college I had a job in special education, for which I hadn’t been trained, and I had an idea for a Western novel.

One evening, while I sat in our dining room in Meemaw’s wingback chair, a liquid image—a half-played scene—danced up out of the yellow glare of the recently polished wood floor:

It’s night time in Kansas, and young Seamus runs downhill, terror streaking his face in tears. He’s backlit by the angry orange bonfire that his family’s barn has become, his bald scalp slick with sweat, his trouser cuffs flap-snap above his muddy brogans, one suspender droops off his shoulder, arms pumping, his loose shirt sooty and damp with fear-sweat…

I knew Seamus' family had been killed. I knew his mother had been a freed slave and his father an Irish immigrant. I could hear his sisters screaming through the final moments of their lives in the family’s house just out of Seamus’ reach. I knew Seamus would seek out Sissy and Lila’s killers and take violent revenge and that his acts of retaliation would be brutal and splashed with gore and that he would suffer deeply as a result of those actions.

But I didn’t know how to write a Western. I’d read hundreds, sure, but that’s not exactly the same. Besides, the part of me that stood at the foot of a hill clutching my degree in American lit and creative writing and staring up at a young man racing away from a burning barn, racing toward his dying sisters, careening toward violent retaliation—that part of me was, frankly, far too proud of, far too pleased with the pretty picture I’d just conjured up to really take the time to figure out how to write a Western.

Proud, and also a bit overwhelmed. For all the things I did know about Seamus, there were so many things I didn’t know.

I knew virtually nothing about Kansas. (I’ve since visited.) Nor did I know the year the story took place or the guns or horses or clothing or... As a result, I froze the moment I sat down at my IBM desktop to type up the story. There were far too many unknowns—far too many obstacles--and not the exciting kind, not the mysteries around the corner or over the horizon, not the character-building sort of challenges, but the details and facts that can be the bones of historical fiction and the bane of my brand of fuzzy headed thinking.

Ah, yes, so I’ll say it once again, “If only Nik Morton had written 30 Days 20 years sooner.”

Alright, enough about me and Seamus. Let’s take a look-see at Write a Western in 30 Days.

The first thing Morton does is clear away the obstacles by presenting just enough to silence the editor and make room for the muse, while the researcher runs out to grab a double-shot Americano and hit the library.

Morton’s introduction pistol-whips topics such as why write a western, the relevance of the western, the importance of avoiding clichés, the origin of the novel form, and whether a novel can be written in 30 days and what exactly constitutes a “day”.

Hint: a “day” is eight hours of work time, whether continuous or broken up. Feel cheated? Well, would you have bought a book entitled Write a Western in 240 Hours?

Actually, I would’ve bought the book with that title.

Moving on.

Where was I?

Oh, so here’s the beauty of Morton’s pistol-whip chapters. He has a brilliant way of condensing a great deal of information into manageable junks without sacrificing clarity or content. The resulting book works both as master course and as a refresher course.

With chapters two through six, Morton slaps a nice sturdy broom in your hand and puts you to work—preparation, research, theme, point of view, and titles. You can sweep fast and kick up a lot of dust or go slowly and run the risk of just moving the dirt around. What I mean by that is that this is not a book rife with navel-gazing. Morton isn’t selling snake oil or tincture of opium for Mr. and Mrs. Maybe I. Will and Maybe I. Won’t. This is work. Fun, but work—a nearly 200 page memo from the boss. Read it and get to work. You can always re-read it later.

And in case you didn’t catch the title, we’ve got a schedule to keep.

Chapter seven is, I suspect, the heart of the book for most readers. Morton, by this point, has referred to the “plot plan” enough that when you finally hit page 72 you feel as though you’ve finally arrived at, if not your destination, at least one heck of a fun way station.

“Writing a novel is much easier if you have a plot to follow,” writes Morton. “It doesn’t mean you’re in a rut. The plot is a rough-and-ready road. As the story progresses, you’ll find that characters will want to take the occasional more interesting byway. Some writers let the characters wander off at a tangent and never rejoin the original plotted road; others are hard taskmasters and bring the character back in line after a fascinating diversion.”

Uh-huh.

“A story is often about a character’s growth or change through adversity, which is brought about by facing obstacles and overcoming them,” he adds on the next page. “Though sometimes unwelcome, change is inevitable in life; in fiction, change is vitally necessary. The plot provides the means for the character to evolve.”

The plot plan, like life itself, is a “working document” and change is inevitable.

The whole chapter is like that—one beautifully rich paragraph after another.

I do think Morton is crazy not to package this chapter and appendix A: “30-day Countdown” as an e-book single. He’d make a fortune.

After the plot plan, Morton becomes more craft focused—character, dialogue, and description. He looks at form—beginning and endings—and revision—self-editing and layering—and finally offers up some very practical advice on publishers, synopsis, blurbs, and marketing. Theses final chapters on the business were certainly good and definitely up to the high standards set by the first, but I found them—personally—less interesting. Professionally, they are spot on and invaluable.

With the exception of Appendix A, which I mentioned above, the Appendices leaned toward the very practical and, frankly, I’d rather re-read his section on the Code of the West or browse his list of western fiction or western series fiction than read about manuscript formatting or agents.

Part of the reason why I think my 23 year old version of myself would’ve loved this book even more than the 43 year old version does is that by about the third chapter, Morton makes it clear that he has thought of everything. I mean, he hammer-slaps the sub-headings and makes every shot count—from animals to weaponry—and illustrates his points with examples from his own novels.

If Nik Morton taught a course based on this book I’d be the first to enroll and I’d sit up close. But he lives across the Atlantic and that’s a long way away from South Carolina. Fortunately, I have Write a Western in 30 Days, and there’s always Facebook.

One more thing, drawn from Morton’s “Code of the West.”

“If a person was in trouble, it was a man’s duty to help him—friend, stranger or enemy… And because of the great distance between neighbors and townships hospitality was generous…”

I, for one, can’t see any reason why this Code needs to be limited just to the West. I wonder what would happen if more and more writers read 30 Days and more and more readers read Westerns?

EVERY HUMAN BEING IS A STORYTELLER: JORY SHERMAN'S MASTER COURSE IN WRITING by Jeremy L.C. Jones

A student stops me in the hallway. He wants to know what writing manuals I recommend. He's about to get on an airplane and return to Germany where he feels cut off from other writers.

Three titles come to mind, immediately: Ray Bradbury's Zen in the Art of Writing, Stephen King's On Writing, and Jory Sherman's Master Course in Writing (High Hill Press, 2011).

The instructor standing next to me, a game designer and speculative fiction writer, nods at the Bradbury, nods at King, and then says, "Jory who?"

We’re at Shared Worlds, a speculative fiction writing and world-building program. The first two titles, the Bradbury and King, make a certain sense in that context. They are, essentially, predictable. But Master Course in Writing? By a Spur Award-winning writer of westerns?

Bradbury duct tapes a hand grenade to your creative bicycle, pulls the pin, and shoves you into the big, scary world of writing. King weaves his tough childhood and his relentless commitment to craft and storytelling with practical advice. And Sherman… he takes you inside the flow of the creative experience, holds your hand as you take your first tentative steps into the dark caves, stays by you as long as you need him to, and sets you free so you can see the dancing lights.

"In the cavern of my mind, there were stories that cast shadow on the wall," writes Sherman, midway through Master Course. "I could follow those shadows into the deeper recesses of my mind and discover stories lurking in the recesses and passages of that vast cave."

And in that vast cave "there was always a lamp" and that lamp "could be lit" and "its light could illuminate the stories that lurked and loomed in those dark recesses."

That’s what this book does—it takes you into the magical darkness and shows you the lights, your lights, your stories.

In Master Course, Sherman is both lamplighter and just another spelunker who's been there before and who is willing to show us how to light our own lamps.

Right now, I want to quote the book extensively. I want to write for hours and across many pages about this book. I want to hold it under your nose and point out wonderful passages.

I'll restrain myself.

But only a little.

The book is too good for too much restraint.

"Writing is writing," writes Sherman in his Introduction. "Except when it's magic."

These simple lines are emblematic of the writing throughout—simple, present tense, tip-of-the-iceberg sorta stuff.

Makes you think.

Writing is what it is. But it is also something more. Much, much more.

"I believe that every human being," says Sherman a few lines later, "is a natural born storyteller."

Sherman isn't saying, dismissively, "Meh, anyone can do that." He is saying everyone has it in him or her. There's a difference there, a big one, an open, egalitarian bent that fits with everything that follows in Master Course.

After the introduction, five lessons guide the reader from the naming of that shadowy idea in the back of her mind through to building one scene upon another scene. I’ve run through the lessons many times. The ebb and flow of Sherman’s prose, the intimate, right-there-with-you tone, has a way of opening the floodgates and sending me off on gloriously thick word floods!

Next, there are ten essays on craft with topics ranging from character to hypnotic writing to scene, two short stories, and an essay on the Ozarks. Any one of these I’d buy separately.

It’s hard to believe this book has only been out since 2011. Always fresh and new, it still feels as though it has always been there, on my shelf, on my desk, woven into my creative process. A lean 113 pages, this slim volume extends well beyond itself.

Lastly, Master Course in Writing brings us deeply into the world of one of the great literary figures of our time and into the timeless creative process of a great storyteller. Master Course is a privilege and a thrill.
http://www.amazon.com/Master-Course-Writing-Jory-Sherman/dp/1606530364/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1376599575&sr=1-1-catcorr&keywords=Master+Course+in+Writing+by+Jory+Sherman

AM I GOAT ENOUGH? BY JEREMY L.C. JONES

I love books about writing. That includes writing guides, style manuals, biographies, memoirs, craft guides, and how to write books. Anything about writing or writers. Hundreds of these books line my shelves and piles of them teeter precariously on my office floor.

For many years, before the Internet made communicating with other writers so much easier, I depended on books about writing for companionship, camaraderie, and conversations on lonely road that is writing.

I really got hooked between college and graduate school, when I was starved for craft talk. Fortunately, I was savvy enough not to believe everything I read and greedy enough to buy three and four books at a time, so that I became immediately aware that no single book or individual author had the final word on any one subject.

During the summer of 2001 while helping my father recover from a traumatic brain injury, I gorged myself on just about every title published by Writer's Digest Books. I crammed book after book onto my shelves, under-lined furiously, and day-dreamed for hours, weighing Bradbury against Maas, Kress against Bell.

At first, I bought books by writers I admired. Then I bought books by topic--character, plot, dialogue--and then by genre--fiction, poetry, and drama, as well as mystery, romance, fantasy and sci fi. Soon, I acquired indiscriminately any book about any aspect of writing. And they kept me company, inspired and informed me.

But something was missing.

I wanted to read about writing Westerns.

There are, are, very few books on how to write a Western novel, especially compared to the number of books on writing mysteries, thrillers, or romances. Sure, back then, there was Matt Braun’s How to Write Western Novels (Writer’s Digest Books, 1988) but that had already fallen out of print. (Braun has since repackaged it as How to Write Novels that $ell, stripping away the Western focus.)

These days, there just aren’t that many books on writing Westerns. There are books by writers known for their Westerns who also sling ink in other genres, such Terry Burns’ A Writer's Survival Guide To Publication (Port Yonder Press, 2010), Loren D. Estleman's now out-of-print Writing the Popular Novel: A Comprehensive Guide to Crafting Fiction That Sells (F+W Media, 2004), L. J. Martin’s Write Compelling Fiction: Tricks to the Writing Trade (Wolfpack Publishing, 2011), and Jory Sherman’s Master Course in Writing (High Hill Press, 2011).

You also can bulk up the numbers a little by including manuals for writing historical fiction. James Alexander Thom’s exceptional The Art and Craft of Writing Historical Fiction (F+W Media, 2010) comes readily to mind.

But, right now, in the heat of an e-book boom that has been very kind to the Western, there are three guides explicitly about (as Dusty Richards puts it) “writing the West”:

• Write a Western in 30 Days, by Nik Morton (Compass Books, 2013)
• Writing Westerns: How to Craft a Novel that Evokes the Spirit of the West, by Michael Newton (F+W Media, 2012)
• Writing the West with Dusty Richards, by Dusty Richards (High Hill Press, 2010)

Morton, Newton, and Richards take different approaches. Richards’ book is a collection of essays written by him and six other writers. He reveals the “little details that make the difference and bring your book to life.” Newton “examines what a Western is, while teaching you how to “research and write on.” Accordingly, he adds that research, talent, and imagination are the keys to writing a successful novel.” Morton emphasizes a “plot-plan” and adds a time limit of 30 days. By days, he means eight not necessarily continuous hours of work time.

Individually or added up, these three how to guides could serve not so much as a road map to writing a novel but as a conversation that might lead to your writing a Western.

Each of these authors agrees, explicitly or implicitly, that his way of writing a western isn’t the only way.

Or as Morton puts it, “There’s no right way to write a novel. There are plenty of wrong ways, of course.”

There’s no right way to write a novel. There are many.

How to books offer advice which, ultimately, is about timing, about re-considering your own perspective and being open to another writer's point of view.

As I read about writing, each bit of advice or statement about craft forces me to respond—to carry on a conversation in my head, to engage in a dialogue with the author of the book. I must choose to accept, to ignore, and to evaluate in some way or another.

Just as no two of my friends see the world in the same way, no two writers see the craft of writing in the same way. Agreement can be dull. Talking to yourself in the echo chamber of your mind can be doubly dull. Discussion, ambivalence, disagreement are far more interesting than everyone nodding and saying, "Yes, yes, that is the way, the only way."

I've learned to weigh each bit of advice or method, to experiment with and tweak various approaches. And, in my humble opinion, the best books on writing explicitly encourage you to take everything with a grain of salt.

If Mike Newton contradicts Nik Morton or Dusty Richards contradicts Jory Sherman, I'm not confused, I'm excited. Hot dang!

If Jory Sherman tells me to close my eyes, imagine a scene, and then just write it without worrying where I am headed, then I'm going to do it.

If Nik Morton warns me to sketch out a plot-plan before I start actually writing that first chapter, then I'm going to do that, too.

If Dusty Richards tells me to think of the Western in quarters--“your main POV character is lost,” “your hero is an orphan,” “he becomes an emerging hero,” and “he becomes a hero/martyr”--guess what? I'm going to try that, too.

Why wouldn't I? I respect these writers. I love their fiction. Why wouldn't I try to learn as much as I can from them?

At times in my life it has been easier to sit alone in a room and not write—to stare at a blank screen or blank page and not get started. It’s been easier to put off the novel, to toss out the half-written short story, to give up. My antidote for that has been to read books about writing.

“Strive for the best,” says Richards, “and you will find publication—if you persist like a brush-eating Billy goat.”

The first time I read those lines from Richards, I moved forward. I wrote. I persisted. I researched and outlined a novel. Richards pointed me in the direction of the brush and encouraged me to eat.

In Master Course in Writing, the great Jory Sherman calls writing “a disease,” a “magical journey,” and an addiction. These metaphors force me--and, perhaps, you--to reevaluate my chosen path, to reconsider the act of writing.

“I know that my words will open doors into your own imagination and that you will never again fear the sight of a blank sheet of paper,” writes Sherman. “You will want to fill it with words, words that come from your own heart and mind.”

Sherman promises doors swinging wide as I follow his writing exercises, and behind many of those doors I know that I will find more questions than answers. I want to open those doors. I want to find more questions, not answers.

I know a lot of writers who despise books about writing. I’ve heard people say that it’s better to write than talk or read about writing.

Me? I love the companionship, the camaraderie, the inspiration, and perhaps most of all I love the questions I am forced to ask of myself. Small questions. Big questions. Huge questions.

Questions like: Am I goat enough? Do I have the self-discipline to be a fearless, disease-ridden Billy goat on a magical, brush-eating journey? Do you? Do any of us?

Jeremy L. C. Jones is a freelance writer, editor, and lecturer living in his wife's hometown in South Carolina. He teaches part-time at Wofford College, volunteers at the Carolina Poodle Rescue's dog sanctuary, and sends Troy D. Smith regular (and often impatient) e-mails asking when the next Ford Fargo book will be available for Nook. The son of a son of a son of teachers, Jones is the founder of Living Words, a creative writing programs for seniors with dementia, and of Shared Worlds, a writing and world-building camp for teenagers. If he can ever get Ford Fargo on the phone, he's going to pitch a Western writing program. When he met Robert Randisi for the first time he "drooled on his sleeve," as Marthayn put it, and he still tells people he ate a steak with the Gunsmith. He is currently working on a series of stories for High Noon Press about a character created by one of his literary heroes, Frank Roderus. Over the coming months Jones will review books on writing written by members of the Western Fictioneers, starting with Nik Morton's Write a Western in 30 Days.