The Difference

"Good writers borrow. Great writers steal."

Hoping Marc Dies Soon

It is not a good sign if you are hoping by page 52 that the main character, the narrator yet, is killed soon, because he is so stupid and self-destructive that he does not deserve to live even one more page.

While reading Andrew Grant's RUN.

In Praise of Multi-Author Poetry Books

JUST WORDS: A review of GOOD POEMS, Selected & Introduced by Garrison Keillor [Penguin Books, 2002]

I have several books of poems scattered throughout the house in strategic places, and I read a poem from each of them each day.

I prefer books that contain poems from many different writers, rather than a single author, although one or another of the volumes of Billy Collins is always in my rotation, and usually another individual writer or two, Ferlinghetti or cummings or Frost.

Perhaps my preference for multi-author volumes is because the first book of poetry I ever had [and I can’t remember its provenance] was The Best Loved Poems of the American People, edited by Hazel Felleman. Each day I heard a different poetic voice, got a different slant on language and the world.

Reading the same poet each day can get you into a rhythm, and that is good. However, I still appreciate getting jarred out of my own ruts each day by having to hear a new rhythm, a different voice.

I think it was Halford Luccock who told of the man who loved macaroons. He hid them all over his house. He was forgetful, so he never remembered where he had hidden them. But every once in a while, as he rummaged through a drawer or opened a cabinet, he would be delighted by the appearance of a “macaroon unaware.” That is how I feel about a book of poetry by different authors.

So one book stays in the rotation. I finished GOOD POEMS, Selected & Introduced by Garrison Keillor this morning, “Fishing in the Keep of Silence,” by Linda Gregg, but it goes back onto the shelf, back into the rotation, back tomorrow morning to “Poem in Thanks” by Thomas Lux. I look forward to encountering Jane Kenyon and Wendell Berry and all the others as they suddenly appear, “macaroons unaware.”

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

Daughter Katie Kennedy’s Learning to Swear in America will be published by J. K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Press, in 2015.

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

In case you missed it, a Tweet Repeat: You never have to reboot a yellow pad or a ballpoint pen.

I tweet as yooper1721.

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

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

Review, THE BURNING ROOM, Michael Connelly

I have often said that of the Big “C”s of crime-mystery-adventure fiction, [Crais, Coburn, Child, Cornwall, et al] Michael Connelly is the best, or my favorite, or both. THE BURNING ROOM [Little, Brown, 2014] does not really change my mind. It is, however, a little disappointing.

It is the most recent in the series featuring Los Angeles detective Harry Bosch. [A TV series called just “Bosch” is in the works.] Connelly, a former crime reporter, also writes the Lincoln Lawyer series, featuring Mickey Hatcher, Bosch’s half-brother.

The Bosch novels have always been at least partially police procedurals, but this one is almost exclusively so. That’s the reason for my disappointment. In TV terms, it’s a documentary instead of a drama. I like to read about the ways crime is solved, and, being a former trench warrior in my profession, often hampered by witless administrators, I enjoy seeing police administrators made to look foolish as they try to control their rogue cops only to have the guys and gals in the trenches proven correct. Still, I’d like a little more action that does not sound like it’s just more procedure.

Certainly it has some action, and some drama, but I just don’t think it is as interesting as the earlier Bosch novels.

Having said all that, I shall be glad to read the next Bosch, or Hatcher, knowing it will be well written good story.

Maybe I should choose Child as my new favorite, though. No, Jack Reacher is running out of steam. The last Reacher novel, PERSONAL, was even more of a documentary than THE BURING ROOM. So maybe Crais? No, Elvis Cole and Abe Glitzky are getting predictable, too. I’ll stick with Connelly as my favorite of the Cs. But there are the As, like Kate Atkinson…

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

Daughter Katie Kennedy’s Learning to Swear in America will be published by J. K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Press, in 2015.

My novel, VETS, will be published by Black Opal Books in 2015.

In case you missed it, a Tweet Repeat: You can make your own decisions, but you can’t choose your own consequences.

I tweet as yooper1721.

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

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

Writing Can be Fun, Just Like the Dutch

Writing can be satisfying, frustrating, monotonous… a whole bunch of stuff, but there are times when it is just fun. Those are usually when a character or a story take a turn the writer never expected. That happened when I started out to write a poem about the moon…

One cannot really be a poet

Without writing about the moon

Comparing it to something silvery

And luminous, like a clean plate

In a still-life by a Dutch master

Or the gleam and spark

From the blades of Hans Brinker

As he glides along a canal

Or the mushroom that sprouts

From rotten wood in the ship

Of a flying Dutchman

Who mistakes it for a beam

From the moon through the porthole

Reflecting on his mirror

The problem is that poems about the moon

So easily become poems about the Dutch.

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

Daughter Katie Kennedy’s Learning to Swear in America will be published by J. K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Press, in 2015.

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

I tweet as yooper1721.

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

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

When It Is Time to Give Up on a Piece

I recycled a novel today. Well, not the novel itself. I recycled the paper, handwritten and printed pages alike, and the note cards.

I have spent a lot of time on it. I did a lot of research. I like it. It’s a good story. I like some of the characters, or am at least sympathetic to them.

But I have not worked on it in a long time. I’m never going to finish it. I have just lost interest in it, mostly because I have gotten more interested in other things. Even if I finish it, my name is not Patterson or Koryta or Crais or Connelly or Child or Grisham, so I couldn’t get anyone to publish it. There is no reason for it to take up space in my file drawers.

Writers hate to give up on a piece. We have invested so much time and energy in it.  

In fact, not only do we hate to give up on a piece, but we try to use a piece of writing over and over, in different guises and disguises. That's the kind of recycling we prefer.

I’m all in favor of getting as much mileage out of a piece as possible. The idea of getting no use at all out of something I have worked on so long and hard is abhorrent to me as a writer, just as a vacuum is to nature, and to dogs.

There comes a time, though, when we just have to admit that, like any other relationship, it’s over, through death or divorce or neglect. That’s okay. There is no use sending good time after bad.

I do still have it on the unlimited space on my hard drive, though, and I am thinking about changing my name to Connelly Grisham Patterson.

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

Daughter Katie Kennedy’s Learning to Swear in America will be published by J. K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Press, in 2015.

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

In case you missed it, a Tweet Repeat:

I tweet as yooper1721.

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

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

EDITORS-Dreaming & Waking

I’ve had a lot of correspondence with my editor, Mike, at Black Opal Books, about my novel, VETS, which BOB will publish in 2015, so I guess it’s not surprising that an editor showed up in last night’s dream. Yes, the Dream Editor, the dreaded DE.

I first learned of the DE from Kathy Roberts, when the DE showed up just as her dream was almost done and told her she was dreaming wrong and had to start over.

My dreams often occur on a college campus. The first and most frequent of those dreams is the one where you suddenly realize it is time for the final exam and you haven’t even been to class yet because you forgot you were in that class.

My final exam dream is all the more embarrassing because the professor is always my friend, political philosopher Dr. Walter Mead, who writes books with titles like Extremism and Cognition. I never took a class from Wally, even though I like books with titles like that, but because we are contemporaries. That doesn’t stop my dream writer from putting him in as a character, though.

Wally and I live a long way from each other now, but I saw him in person recently at a memorial service. Afterward I told him about his role in my dreams. “Remember,” he said, “if that happens again, I’ll give you an Incomplete so you don’t lose credit.” Now, that’s a real friend, one who has your back even in your dreams.

Last night’s dream, though, was my other campus dream, where I have been to class but now can’t find my car. I look all over, conclude it’s stolen, call the police to report it, then remember where I parked it. Each occasion of this dream, the car is in a different place. Last night it was in the lot behind my rooming house.

I go to get it, but there is a new lock on the gate, three locks to be precise. I discover the keys for the locks in my mail box and try to use them, but the emblems on the keys, to match the emblems on the locks, are all the same. But wait, they are not all the same. There are small, subtle differences. I can do this… and then I woke up.

I begged the DE for more time, so that I could figure out the locks and get my car, my way of going places, but DEs aren’t much good if you are awake.

My waking editor, Mike, did not tell me that I was writing wrong and had to start over, but he did say I needed more action along about chapter 3. I had already agreed with him. I had a great action scene in there, but an agent had told me to take it out. I did so, but the agent declined to represent VETS anyway. Now it’s back in, and I appreciate Mike for understanding it needs to be there, because it moves the story and characterizations along, just like my car would if the durn DE would ever let me get to it!

John Robert McFarland

johnrobertmcfarland@gmail.com

Daughter Katie Kennedy’s Learning to Swear in America will be published by J. K. Rowling’s publisher, Bloomsbury Press, in 2015.

In case you missed it, a Tweet Repeat: “There are no words left in the English language that can’t be used for sexual innuendo, including innuendo, if you know what I mean.

I tweet as yooper1721.

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

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