I’ve read a fair amount already this year and hope to make my way through many more tomes before the end of the year. So many books so little time.

Here’s a list, by category, of the best books I’ve read so far:

Non-fiction – UNBROKEN by Laura Hillenbrand. The remarkable and unforgettable story of Louis Zamparini and his quest for survival during WWII. It’s also a very moving story of transformation and a man coming to peace with himself and his world. Can’t recommend this highly enough.

Fiction – Aside from some short stories, I haven’t read any. Unless you count the revision of my middle grade novel, which I’m sure is a terrific read…

Biography – MY READING LIFE by Pat Conroy. This is a little book that talks of Conroy’s passionate love of books. But it’s also about his life and those adults and situations that intersected with these books that helped sculpt him. Conroy’s often accused of singing too verbosely with his language but I find him attractively transparent and always compelling.

Spiritual – SPIRITUAL RHYTHM: BEING WITH JESUS EVERY SEASON OF YOUR LIFE by Mark Buchanan. Beautifully written, insightful, convicting, and affirming. Buchanan always writes with a painter’s eye and well as a tender scalpel that cuts below the surface. He’s a pastor as well as a fellow pilgrim and he makes you want to journey with him in his relentless quest to live more intimately with the Lord Jesus.

Misc. – 75 YEARS OF DC COMICS: The Art of Modern Mythmaking. A huge, and I mean HUGE, book that is literally difficult to lift. I had to sit on the floor with it spread out before me to read it. It’s an incredible survey of comics from the beginning of the DC universe and before. Illustrated with rare covers, early sketches and full color glossys that could hang in any museum, this treasure trove of all things comics can be relished for years to come.

How ’bout You? What books have got you talking?

As with any artistic endeavor (or craft, if you will) there’s a point at which one can look back and see the beginning of the adventure. For me, I always enjoyed writing, even in school. In grade school I used to write little vignettes about Dracula, Frankenstein’s Monster and The Wolfman. They were barely a page but fun to write. I was very much into monster movies at the time, even though they scared the crap out of me. But it was a safe scare and I think that’s why I liked them so much. Plus the monsters of old used to be tragic figures, cursed beyond their control. You almost felt sorry for them. Almost.

When I was just entering junior high in seventh grade, our language arts teacher, Ms. Miller, told us to write a story. Something fictional. I believe she said ‘not real.’ It could be about anything. I got very excited and before the end of the period was over I had finished what I considered to be a masterpiece; at two and one half pages long, it was epic, frightening, and action-packed. The piece was called Goke, The Body Snatcher From Hell and told the tale of a scientist on the trail of a creature who seems to be stealing bodies. A giant earthquake unearths (as it were) the stolen bodies and the scientist and his assistant must confront Goke, eventually killing him with fire. This brief summary doesn’t do the story justice. If fact, the story doesn’t do the story justice.  I remember turning the story in and as Ms. Miller began to read a smile spread across her face. Then she began to laugh and finally tears rolled down her cheeks. I didn’t know anyone could love a story so much.

She was very kind and supportive of my writing and I think she laughed more at my earnestness than at the story itself. Then again, it could simply be the story that made her howl.

But it was a beginning of taking images from my mind and making them concrete on paper. And regardless of those fledgling attempts, the exhilaration of doing so was wondrous.

And who knows, maybe there’s a sequel to Goke waiting to be written….

I’m inspired by Ray Bradbury.

Not for his prolific output, which has been prodigious over the years. Several hundred short stories, novels, screenplays, plays, poems, and still it continues.

Not for his imagination, which explores the outer reaches of imagination while at the same time turning a telling mirror on ourselves.

And not for his career which is seminal and seemingly timeless.

All of those are worth being inspired by. And I am.

But what really inspires me about his writing is his sheer joy in the act. Master Bradbury has lived ninety years and during most of those years he’s sprung out of bed each morning almost running to the typewriter because he can’t wait to fall away into the worlds of his characters.

Isn’t that wonderful?

And his legacy is one of not just literature, but of words that jump out at you, grab you by the lapels (or perhaps put a loving arm around your shoulder) and demand and entice you to journey on with them.

His is a career well-wrought and a life well-lived.

And that, my friends, is worth aiming for.

We bow at your gift, Papa, and say a heartfelt thanks.

So how many of you out there have Kindles, Nooks, I-Pads or Sony Readers? Do you use them a lot?

I’ve been a pretty die-hard fan of books and have hundreds around the house. One of my favorite things to do is to peruse dusty old bookstores. But I have to admit when I got a Kindle for Christmas last year, I wasn’t sure how much I’d use it.

Oh, baby.

I’m burning through E-Books. I’m a pretty tactile person so even I was caught off-guard by how much I’m enjoying my Kindle. Almost obsessively so. But I digress..

Of those of you who download books now, what kind of books are you reading? Do you try new authors? Is price an issue for you? Would you read someone you’d never heard of at a lower price than some of the more familiar authors? At $5.99? $2.99? $.99?

I’d really like to hear your thoughts on E-Books and if the coming E-Revolution has made its way into your reading lifestyle yet. 

JJ Abrams new film, Super 8, opens in a few days. It’s a film I’ve been waiting to come out for some time. Steven Spielberg is the producer and Mr. Abrams has said that Spielberg’s early films like Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, ET, and others were an inspiration for this coming-of-age science fiction film. He’s even said it’s more Stand By Me than ET, which makes me want to see it even more. And it’s a fairly autobiographical account of Mr. Abrams formative years, which includes film, friendships, film, love, film, monster magazines and more film. I can most sincerely relate.

My dear friend, Michael Hull, and I grew up similarly to JJ. We, too, shot Super 8 films in junior high and high school. Then also in college , where they got more sophisticated (or the blood simply looked more real) and finally we find ourselves still working in the medium of sorts. We’ve just completed our first professional short film together, having come full circle and shooting the piece in a small town in Oregon, very much like the one we grew up in.

Here is a snippet from a (ironically) recently completed article on those first cinematic adventures. I hope you get a kick out of it… 

            “I can’t really see…”

            I adjusted the gold metallic motorcycle helmet on my head, its huge size sliding down over my head and brow and threatening to cut off my line of sight. On top of the helmet, screwed in securely, was a small 8mm camera with an auto switch Mike had rigged. He was good at that kind of thing.

            “Well, maybe hold the helmet up on each side with you hands,” Mike said looking up at me.

            I was on their roof, on a slight pitch, trying to keep my balance while not falling off the side. Well, at least until it was time to purposely fall off the side. Below me was a thick collection of juniper bushes that I was to land in.

            “Yeah, but if I do that, how am I gonna push off and land on my feet?”

            “Just step out. But remember to keep looking up. We need the camera to see the sky.”

            “Okay.”

            I felt like I was five stories up when in reality I was only about twelve to fifteen feet up.

            We wanted to get a shot of someone taking off, super hero-like, and we would use the footage we were shooting now and reverse it. So instead of landing, it would actually look like someone was taking off in flight. At least that was the plan. Ah, yes, the best laid plans…

            “Here goes…”

            I remember taking a couple of steps and actually jumping up a little, looking up and then gravity tossed me like a rag down into the center of juniper branches. It must have taken all of three seconds. And something else wasn’t quite right.

            I’d landed head first.

            Mike rushed over to me and everything was black. At first I thought I’d suffered a concussion, but when Mike yanked me out of the center of the bush and pulled the helmet off me, I realized the impact had smashed the helmet completely down around my face.

            “Are you—are you okay,” Mike said, astonished and laughing at the same time.

            I stood up and checked myself. Besides a few scratches from the prickly juniper, I felt okay. But I couldn’t figure out what happened and my quizzical look only made Mike laugh harder.

            “What happened…?

            “—-you…you stepped off the roof and proceeded to follow your head down directly into the center of the juniper. Not too many points for keeping your head up like we wanted but if this was a diving competition, I’d say you did quite well…”

            “My head was so heavy, I couldn’t hold it up.”

            “Did you switch the camera on?”

            “Yep.”

            “Well of the two or three seconds that we got, I’m sure it’s spectacular…”           

            We should probably rewind a bit, or in the proper nomenclature, reverse the projector. Mike and I met in junior high when we discovered a mutual love of Bruce Lee and his films. Filmmaking, The Marx brothers, Johnny Carson and Magic also tied us at the hip. We had similar senses of humor and from the very beginning, forged a like-minded creative fire that would have us in my room or his dad’s in-home office into the wee hours of a Friday or Saturday might, drawing story boards, spit-balling film ideas or trying to figure out how Lucas blue screened those cool Tie fighters. We breathed celluloid then, thumbing through the latest issue of Starlog or sparring in his yard, trying out a technique we’d seen Bruce use.

So I’m anxious to see JJ’s foray in autobiography because I know it will not only bring back wonderful memories but also make we remember why I love film so much and how it really did feel like magic when we first picked up that kodak super 8 camera and created movement on that crooked projector screen in the Hulll’s den.

Many of us (most?) don’t write letters anymore. E-mails suffice. And not that you can’t correspond via e-mails. I just wonder if e-mails create the same connection that letters do. I think of the letters of Robert and Elizabeth Browning; letters suffused with love and life. Or the correspondence between Ulysses Grant and Mark Twain, which are filled with insight and a growing friendship. I even think of the letters between my mom and I written in the last couple years of her life. I lived a state away and when we weren’t visiting, we’d talk on the phone, of course. But I remember writing her a letter once and having her write back. We both got a kick out of it so we started writing more regularly. She seemed to reveal more of herself. A keen sense-of-humor that wasn’t obvious. . .things that occupied her day that weren’t conveyed over the phone. . .and a surprising vulnerability that seemed to be safer on stationary. I treasure those letters and am so thankful we indulged in writing to each other.

I’ve also written letters of admiration to some of my favorite authors. I have a wonderful card written back to me from the early nineties from Robert McCammon when I’d written him of my love of Boys Life. His letter, like his writing, was personal, gracious and lyrical. I have a letter from David Morrell, most famous for his action thriller novels and the creator of Rambo. I wrote him after finishing his memoir on the death of his 17 year old son, Matt, to cancer. It was an incredibly moving book and I couldn’t help but sit down and write him immediately upon finishing. He wrote me back a sensitive and candid reply, expressing thanks for reaching out to him and in return honoring his son. And I have a letter from Ray Bradbury after a friend met him and handed him a sheet of paper I wanted him to have. It said: Thank you for being my ‘Papa.’ Thank you also for giving me back my hometown in literary form through Green Town. This was a reference to the tradition that all those influenced by Bradbury called him ‘Papa’ and how many of his stories were influenced by his Illinois roots and his fictional home of Green Town, which reminded me so much of the little town where I grew up. After reading it Ray chuckled apparently, took the sheet of paper from my friend and wrote, “Dear John —THANK YOU!!”  It’s hanging above the desk where I write this.

There’s something deeply connecting when corresponding with others. Especially when they have moved you in some fashion.

Is there someone you need to reach out to and tell them how they’ve moved or influenced you?

Remember the scene in Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade where Indy is at the edge of the cliff and there is an abyss between him and where he needs to be? He keeps repeating to himself “Only the penitent man shall pass,” knowing he has to walk across air to get to the other side, but trying desperately to muster the faith to believe that somehow, someway, he’ll make it across. . . in spite of what his eyes tell him.

Writing’s a little like that (but without the whip and fedora). The very act of putting words on paper means you believe at some level that what you’re writing is worth reading. It’s an act of faith. It’s driven by passion and belief but at the end of the day, you don’t have proof that your words will resonate. But you believe. Even when the rejections come. You rewrite, you keep striving to get better and you keep believing the words and the story will move people and make them forget that they’re reading just words and be magically transported (as only good writing can) into the world of the story where everything else falls away.

It’s a great feeling, both as a reader and writer.

Writing’s not just about usage, sentence structure and that dangling participle. It’s about faith. And belief.

And the joy of acting on that belief.

Revealing.

Vulnerable.

Transparent.

So, just how much of ourselves do we reveal when writing? Some say writing a memoir can put you out there as far as one can go but I’ve also seen (and written) fiction that is incredible personal, only it’s somewhat disguised.

To the degree one reveals personal aspects changes from writer to writer. However, for a reader to be drawn into any story, non-fiction or fiction, there has to be some drawing back of the curtain.

Attached below is an article that was published last year in Notre Dame Magazine. I got a lot of positive response on it. I also received some negative views. From friends. Did I go to far? Did I not go far enough? In the end, you reveal as much as necessary to tell the story.

http://magazine.nd.edu/news/11874-their-final-duet/

Most everyone has heard by now JK Rowling’s story of being on welfare and having her little story about wizards rejected many times until a small publisher picked her up…and then her books ended up supporting them! Dune was apparently rejected 17 times before landing on the sweet acceptance spot. Stephen King wrote several novels before publishing Carrie (and he nearly abandoned that until his wife Tabby rescued the first few pages from the garbage and encouraged him to keep going) and creating a monstrous publishing empire.

So what if these folks had quit before that last effort where the tumblers fell into place, the key opened the magic lock and the doors to publishing opened wide? How do you know if you’re pursuing a path that will prove ‘successful’ or tilting at windmills with our good friend Master Quixote? It’s a question I’ve asked myself from time to time on this writing journey. I’ve had stories rejected time and again. One short story was rejected 18 times before being accepted by American Airlines Magazine for a magnificent sum. Truly, I about fell out of my chair when the editor made the offer. And all I could think was, ‘thank goodness it wasn’t accepted until now.’ Just these past couple months I had a short story picked up that is over ten years old and I thought was headed for the fabled writer’s trunk. I’ve tried to reason and analyze why some editors pass and others say come on in. The only thing I’ve come up with is that the reasons are vast and unpredictable. Better not think too hard on it and start the next writing project.

I’m reminded of Joe Konrath’s famous quote: “You know what you call writers who don’t give up? Published.” And he’s right, of course. But then again not everything I’ve written has been published. And thank goodness for that. Not all ink spilled across the ivory landscape coalesces into a transporting story. No, sometimes the words don’t work quite the way you want them to. Ideas are easy. Really good ideas are not so easy but are all around. It’s not screwing them up as you try to get them down that is the real trick.

So what’s this philosophic blathering all about? I’m not sure. I guess I’d like to hear from you, whether you’re a writer or not. I’m pretty sure you’re pursuing something that you’d call a dream, or certainly a passion. What are your thoughts on perseverance? When it gets hard, what makes you keep going? When you hit a point of success, what does that look like for you? And how does it make you feel?

I’ll leave you with a couple of quotes that resonant with the topic, I think. Oh, and for what it’s worth, in whatever you’re pursuing, don’t give up. There’s gold to be had if you keep digging. More importantly, there’s joy in having pushed through in both the work and belief in yourself. :-)

“Experience is one thing you can’t get for nothing.” ~Oscar Wilde

“Beginning writers must appreciate the prerequisites if they hope to become writers. You pay your dues—which takes years.” ~Alex Haley

“You must want to enough. Enough to take all the rejections, enough to pay the price of disappointment and discouragement while you are learning. Like any other artist you must learn your craft—then you can add all the genius you like.” ~Phyllis A. Whitney

As some of you know, one of my favorite books of all time is Robert McCammon’s Boy’s Life. Aside from To Kill A Mockingbird, I think it captures childhood and the magical, frightening, and wondrous conduit to adulthood as well as any novel I’ve ever read.

Mr. McCammon is also very articulate on the writing process. Here is an excerpt from a quote on the experience of writing Boy’s Life:

This is the thing about writing. The thing. When the writing isn’t going well, there’s nobody on God’s earth who can help you. Not spouse, not brother or sister, not best friend, not editor. Nobody. Because no one understands the work as you do. If there’s a problem, you have to deal with it, and you alone.

Conversely, when the work is going well … what can I say? That you hear angels singing? Or you hear the music of the spheres or something? That every fortune you get in your cookie says “Great Success Is Ahead, If You Don’t Mess It Up”?

Something like that, I suppose. But when the work is going well, and you see the painting coming to life, and the people are real and you know them and see their faces and realize you are creating Life, in a way, then … I don’t think there’s any better satisfaction in the world.

I have never had the satisfaction of publishing a novel, let alone one as indelible as his. But I have written and published enough to strongly identify with his feelings on this most unique, frustrating and glorious of crafts; the art of keeping one’s butt in one’s chair.

Thank you, Mr. McCammon, for the privilege of sharing in the journey of Boy’s Life. It’s a trip worth taking again and again.