THIS WRITIN’ LIFE

by Mike Baron

 

 

 

 

 

 

             I remember the moment I decided to become a writer.  Thirteen years old, standing on Main Street in Mitchell, South Dakota, outside Chappy’s, a bar that had two spin racks of new paperbacks in the window.  I was holding John D. MacDonald’s second Travis McGee novel.  It wasn’t the first, because I remember looking for his name.  I liked the way the guy wrote.  There was his name on the cover.  Obviously he wasn’t doing this for free.  MacDonald was writing for a living and I was buying his stuff.  That’s what I wanted to do.  It would be years before I picked up a pen.

                 Two Main Street pharmacies had comic racks.  It was 1962, and not much was happening, except for Uncle Scrooge.  Uncle Scrooge’s intelligence shone from the comic rack like a Harley’s headlight coming through the rain.  Carl Barks’ Scrooge stories dealing with the nature of supply and demand are probably more truthful and instructive than what modern teachers call “economics.”  Scrooge teaches that the accumulation of wealth is the result of hard work, intelligence, self initiative, ethics, and luck.  All elected law makers should be required to read the complete Scrooge, or at least spend some time in the private sector before running for office.

             My parents encouraged me to read.  There were incidents, like the time I was caught with a copy of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Capricorn in Study Hall.  The principal told me, “Mike, I don’t mind if you read this stuff on your own time.  But please don’t bring it to school.”

                 Between my junior and senior year we moved to Madison, Wisconsin.  I worked that summer as a dishwasher at Camp Indianola, and was in the old bunkhouse the night a tornado took off one wing.  This was the second time in my life I had been in a building while a tornado turned the other half into kindling.

             I wrote for the high school paper at West High, on Regent Street in Madison.  I began writing as a direct result of typing class.  The instructor was a dour individual.  He expressed disapproval by snapping his fingers at you, and cutting off his words as if you weren’t worth the breath.  Many students wished him harm.

                 Not me.  I took to typing like a porpoise to warm waters.  If you want to write, you must learn to type.  Even if you just want to sell stuff on eBay, you must learn to type.  I wrote shit.  What else do you expect from a seventeen-year-old, which brings us to Mike’s Rules of Writing Number One: Each would-be writer has a million words of shit clogging up his system, and it behooves him to get it out as soon as possible.  In other words, if a writer you would be, start writing.  (For further instruction, go to www.thehud.com and click on “Writing.”)

             There are exceptions to this rule, and I would like to wring their necks.  Neil Gaiman is one.  If Neil ever wrote badly, it’s well hidden.

             I largely wasted my college education (if absorbing life can be considered waste) studying political science.  I also took some writing courses, one with Joel Gersman, founder and director of Madison’s Broom Street Theater, and another with Jerry McNeely, head writer for television’s Marcus Welby, M.D. Professor McNeely said, “You make ‘em laugh a little bit, you make ‘em cry a little bit, you SCARE THE HELL OUT OF THEM, and that’s entertainment.”

             One day I visited the offices of TakeOver, a left-wing rag, in a shotgun apartment down by the rails.  Mark Knopf was the editor and publisher.  He was awash in free records.

             “Where’d you get all these records?”

             “The record companies keep sending them.  Want some?  All you have to do is write something about them.”

             I staggered out of there with as many as I could carry.  One of them was Edgar Winter’s Entrance, which remains a favorite to this day.  More importantly, I learned a lesson.  Free records if you write about them.

             In spring of my senior year, I decided to write a paperback novel and make some fast bucks.  Thirty years later, I succeeded in publishing my first novel, WITCHBLADE: DEMONS, based on Top Cow’s comic.  Think about that.  Between the time I decided to become a novelist, and got my first novel published, three decades.  This doesn’t mean the intervening thirty years were a wash.  Far from it.  But it does attest to both my determination, and the abysmal quality of my writing.  I must have written thirty novels over the years, or one a year.  When I look back on that material, I want to crawl into a hole and curl up like a carpet worm.

             However, when I look back on recent material, not so bad.  So there is hope.  The English writer John Braine, author of Room At The Top, advises would-be novelists in his book How To Write A Novel, not to attempt the deed before the age of forty.  You simply lack the life experience.  For the most part, Braine is correct, although there are again obnoxious exceptions such as Richard Price, whose brilliant first novels, The Wanderers and Ladies’ Man were published while he was in his twenties.

             On the other hand, anyone who has tried to read Clockers can see that Price has written himself right out of the entertainment biz.  I love his film scripts, though, especially Mad Dog And Glory.

My writing these days veers in several directions.  First, comic books.  I like it, I’m good at it, and I see no reason why I shouldn’t be writing more comics.  Got some announcements coming up.

             Second, there is technical and business writing, which I do intermittently for credit unions.

             Third are novels, which take two forms.  I have two franchise novels out, courtesy of Byron Preiss and ibooks.  The first is Witchblade: Demons, a decent little police procedural with a fresh twist on the character, and Green Lantern: Sleepers, based on a plot by Christopher Priest.

             My agent trudges up and down Fifth Avenue pushing a shopping cart full of manuscripts wearing six layers of clothing, mismatched shoes, a nylon cap pulled down to just above her eyes, and fingerless cloth gloves.  If you see her, make her an offer.  She’s partial to muscatel.  She’s peddling two novels: Combustion, and Mordecai Rath.  Combustion is a science fiction thriller about spontaneous human combustion, and Mordecai Rath is a kung fu Western.

             I can no longer claim that my sole influences are Carl Barks and Philip Jose Farmer.  My major writing influence these days is a Western novelist named Pete Brandvold who lives up the street.  Pete shoots from the hip and asks questions later.  Check out his works at peterbrandvold.com.