JUST WORDS: Follow the Taxi

When the flamboyant actress, Tallulah Bankhead, began to make big bucks in London, she bought a Bentley, which she greatly enjoyed driving. However, she kept getting lost in London’s notoriously confusing street grid. She used Occam’s Razor to solve the problem: she hired a taxi to drive ahead of her as she wheeled along worry-free in her Bentley.

Occam, unlike Rube Goldberg, believed that the simplest solution is usually best.

So, in writing, I hire a taxi. I follow a simple guide through the labyrinthine ways of my writing brain. It’s as simple as ABCD…

A = action. B= background. C= conflict. D=denouement, or, if you don’t like French, decision.

Note above: I start with the action of Tallulah. I give the background of how decisions are made. The conflict is the confusion of the various ways. [With Tallulah the conflict is to give up driving or to keep getting lost.] The decision, the way to resolve the conflict, is to follow a taxi.

John Robert McFarland

My novel, VETS, will be published by Black Opal Books in late 2014 or early 2015.

I also write Christ in Winter: Reflections on Faith from a Place of Winter for the Years of Winter. http://christinwinter.blogspot.com/

In case you missed it, a Tweet Repeat: Doctors don’t know how an anus knows if you are defecating or just passing gas. Apparently anuses are smarter than doctors

I tweet as yooper1721.

           

MY OTHER BOOKS:

NOW THAT I HAVE CANCER I AM WHOLE: Reflections on Life and Healing for Cancer Patients and Those Who Love Them [AndrewsMcMeel & HarperAudio, with Czech and Japanese translations] Paul K. Hamilton, MD, the co-founder of CanSurmount, called it “The best book for cancer patients, by a cancer patient, ever.”

AN ORDINARY MAN [HarperPaperbacks] Randall MacLane just wanted to be an ordinary man. But sent with a message for Custer, he became a drifting lawman with a knack for killing, and a deep well of loneliness. Then a twist of fate brought him full circle…

THE STRANGE CALLING: Stories of Ministry [Smyth&Helwys] I didn’t want to be a preacher, but I made a deal with God to save my sister’s life. Was that really a “call,” though? I said, “I’ll try t for 50 years, and if I still don’t know, I’ll do something else.” These are stories of what happened in those years of questioning the call.

WHEN FATHER RODE THE MAIL and Other Stories of Christmas [lulu.com] ISBN 978-1-300-38566-0

If you like baseball poetry, take a look at “Frosty & the Babe” http://www.baseball-almanac.com/poetry/frosty_and_the_babe.shtml