January in the Rockies

It being Jan­u­ary here in the rur­al Rocky Moun­tains at almost nine thou­sand feet up, it was cold: minus two degrees. Pure white snow lay upon the land at least three/five feet deep every­where. Skies were crys­tal clear and blue. All the same, my wife and I were dri­ving to town for our week­ly run (60 miles roundtrip) for gro­ceries. This is ranch­ing coun­try and, on the ranch­es we passed, herds of cat­tle were lin­ing them­selves up wait­ing for their farmer to deliv­er their morn­ing feed.

Then we saw it: A farmer on his/her wag­on, the wag­on loaded with green hay mov­ing slow­ly toward the cat­tle. A team of black hors­es was pulling that wag­on. And short­ly after­wards, on anoth­er ranch, two men on horse­back were round­ing up oth­er cat­tle, prob­a­bly also for their feed. 

There are few places left in Amer­i­ca, I thought, where one could see hors­es used in this old-fash­ioned way, so slow and deliberate. 

And because I had been writ­ing ear­li­er in the morning—working on the begin­ning of a book—I men­tal­ly changed the sub­ject and thought about nar­ra­tive style, and its evo­lu­tion, how say, Vic­to­ri­an nov­els start slow­ly, com­pared to nov­els writ­ten today. I sus­pect that the great­est influ­ence is con­tem­po­rary movies, (and tele­vi­sion) with their fast, volatile open­ing action. I used to tease my youngest by say­ing that his idea of a good plot was “Five explo­sions con­nect­ed by a chase.” 

And I once received a let­ter from a girl which told me: “I read The True Con­fes­sions of Char­lotte Doyle. It was bor­ing at first but by the sec­ond page it got good.” 

All art evolves, and in the mod­ern world it seems to evolve faster. The nov­el is no excep­tion. But I am struck with the need—I feel it myself—to inject stress, action, cri­sis, into the open­ing para­graph of a book. Even the First line. It’s not as if old­er works of fic­tion did not have urgency—consider the first chap­ter of Dick­ens’ Great Expec­ta­tions. It sure­ly has all of that.

Speak­ing for myself, Ham­mett, Hem­ing­way, Chan­dler, Gra­hame, which I read as an ado­les­cent (and still do), had a great impact on me. If I would cite the two most vital influ­ences on my work, I would offer the con­tra­dic­to­ry pair­ing of the Vic­to­ri­an nov­el (for plot) and noir fic­tion (for dialogue).

What writ­ers read they write. While I would urge would-be writ­ers to read as wide­ly as pos­si­ble, I would urge them to write what they most enjoy read­ing. Nev­er write what you think will sell. Always write what the heart loves. Iron­i­cal­ly, that way you will be most self-crit­i­cal of what you set down. You will be a bet­ter writer.

And if it is horses—so to speak—that pulls your nov­el into life—so be it. You will get there.