(via ‘Treme’ Writer and Detective Novelist George Pelecanos: How I Write - The Daily Beast)
More George everywhere, please and thanks.
Last Friday, Alexandra posted a call to the barricades titled Two Books a Year, in which she referenced a recent and already infamous New York Times article noting that, in the era of ebooks, anything less than two books a year is slacking. (Note: The Times article singled out genre fiction for this rate of productivity.)
I decided to spare my response for today’s post, because I think it’s a very important topic, and one that deserves real consideration by everyone who writes.
I agree with Alex that to write well one must write often. Daily’s not a bad regimen -- some might say it's de rigueur. An ambitious word count is great if you can manage it: say, 1,000 words.
I don’t agree, however, that: “Successful writers write a LOT of books. Tons. Staggering numbers.”
This is no doubt true of many authors, but I know a great number of superb writers for whom this simply isn’t the case. Junot Diaz is one. It took him ten years to write The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. I think it was time well spent, and do not mourn the nineteen other books that were hypothetically aborted by his not keeping up a two-book-per-year pace.
I tend to shy away from the phrase “successful writer” because I consider the term loaded. In a letter to H.G. Wells, William James famously remarked:
The moral flabbiness born of the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess SUCCESS. That — with the squalid cash interpretation put on the word success — is our national disease.
I could write a great deal more efficiently, and part of my modest output is due no doubt to an obsession with revision that is perhaps, well, obsessive. Charlie Stella, in our recent dialog here, referred to me as a “stone polisher.”
It may well be that this obsession with rewriting speaks not to artisitic excellence but a neurotic fear of being found imperfect. Shame has paralyzed artists far greater than me. On some level, however, I've accepted my imperfections and released my ambitious failures into the world. They've been four in number, fewer than I perhaps should have written in the same time period.
Am I therefore something less than a success?
I’m sure there are many who think so. And on some days, I’m one of them. Fortunately, those are just the bad days. (Or, as some folks call them: weekdays.)
There are writers who can crank out voluminous material without becoming stale, formulaic, or unintentional self-parodies. I marvel at Ed McBain’s output, for example, to name just one.
But there are others who focus not on overall output but on making each book a great book.
I was perhaps cursed early on in this regard by working with Tom Jenks, who among other notable accomplishments edited the unfinished Hemingway manuscript that became Garden of Eden, and who runs the online literary zine Narrative with his wife, the novelist Carol Edgarian (only two novels, both brilliant).
Tom asked a simple question: “If you’re going to write a book, why not make it a masterpiece?”
This question paralyzed another of Tom’s students, the thriller writer Andrew Gross, and it was only by putting this daunting measure aside that Andrew could write the books he knew he could write. And he is, by many measures, a success.
For whatever reason, I bought in to Tom’s point. And with each book, I’ve tried to write, if not a masterpiece, a book that at least tries to measure up to the greatest books about crime that I’ve read: The Long Goodbye, Cutter & Bone, Bellman & True, Nightmare Alley, Dog Soldiers, God’s Pocket, Clockers, The Long Firm, to name a scant few.
George Pelecanos, after reading The Devil’s Redhead, wrote: “Is this a classic? Maybe not, but I bet Corbett has one in him.”
I’ve tried to live up to that challenge with every book. Perhaps I’ve failed. It may well be that I cannot write a classic, and never will, and trying has simply slowed down my output to the point I’ve crippled my own chances for—pause for emphasis—success.
But I’ve put my heart and soul into each effort in a way I never could have if I were cranking them out at two per year. I simply don’t and can’t write well at that pace. I have and will continue to suffer the consequences.
I need time to sink into my material, to discover, as filmmaker Leslie Schwerin puts it, “The thing beneath the thing.” I need time to catch the clichés in what I at first blush thought was a stellar idea, whether it was a bit of dialog, a description, a premise, a plot turn, whatever.
Writers who do work at the faster clip are often known more for their entire output than a single book, though often a handful of books stand out among the others. (Dennis Lehane, when responding to questions about why he didn’t take the Kenzie-Gennaro series any further than he did, routinely said: “Have you every heard anyone say ‘The seventeenth book in the series was my favorite’?”)
In a recent Jonathan Franzen appearance I attended (you can find his remarks online here), he talked about how much Kafka influenced him, and why.
Basically, especially in The Trial (one of those non-genre crime books that has inspired not a few of us), Franzen admired Kafka’s commitment to teaching us “how to love ourselves even as we’re being merciless toward ourselves; how to remain humane in the face of the most awful truths about ourselves.” For Franzen, this engagement with the paradoxes of our existence, especially through examination of character, is what made the novel the great—and unique—art form it is.
Or, in Kafka’s own words:
A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.
To anyone who can write two such books a year, more power to them. I can’t.
I think pushing yourself to do more, to do better, is seldom if ever misbegotten. But each of us has to choose the path of our work as we see fit and as our talent provides, whether we embrace the cold hard truth of market forces or dismiss them as anti-art. (My guess is, most of us fall somewhere in the middle of that spectrum.)
Being creative requires a great deal of resilience, persevering in the face of considerable resistance, frustration, negativity, and criticism—some necessary, some inevitable, some even useful. How you withstand those countering forces while remaining true to the inspirational spark that guides you will, to my mind, go a long way toward defining your capacity for success—no matter how high or low your productivity.
* * * * *
How do you see yourself and your career—as a producer of a steady output of solid work, or someone striving for that touchstone effort that simply requires more time?
Which prolific writer astonishes you with the consistency of his or her greatness?
Which author with only a few books to his or her name do you admire?
What is more important to you, the writer’s complete oeuvre or the individual book?
* * * * *
Jukebox Hero of the Week: Linda Thompson’s production has been limited by stage fright so severe it actually paralyzes her vocal chords. But she’s an artist I cherish, and I particularly love this song, “Katy Cruel” (also a favorite of our former comrade Cornelia Read):
The paperback edition of George Pelecanos’s THE CUT hits bookstores today. THE CUT introduces Spero Lucas, an ex-Marine and Iraq vet who specializes in recovering stolen property – no questions asked – in return for forty percent of its value. Spero’s first case involves an imprisoned drug lord, and drops him dead center into the midst of the Washington, D.C., underworld which Pelecanos has chronicled so vividly in all his novels. Spero is Pelecanos’ first series character since Derek Strange, the DC PI who appeared in four novels, most recently 2004’s HARD REVOLUTION.
In a series of e-mail exchanges with Wallace Stroby, Pelecanos talked about THE CUT, his influences, and what’s next:
WALLACE STROBY: After four stand-alone novels that in some ways mirrored your TV work – multilevel stories with a broad array of characters and social concerns – THE CUT feels like a return to your early, leaner and meaner crime novels. What led to that?
GEORGE PELECANOS: On a whim I wrote a short story (“Chosen”) about a married couple who adopt a bunch of kids, and wind up with an interracial family. The story ended with a few sentences about the current status of two of the brothers: Leo Lucas, a teacher at a public high school in Washington, and Spero Lucas, a Marine fighting in Fallujah. That led to me meeting several Marine vets of Iraq and Afghanistan who had come home and were working as private investigators for criminal defense attorneys here. It hit me that some of these guys weren’t interested in desk jobs, and maybe never would be.
Then one day, when I was doing some work at a local correctional facility, I met a man who had lost a leg in Fallujah, and was picking up a relative who was being released from jail. We had a very interesting, enlightening conversation. There are a lot of stories to tell about these veterans, and I felt like I had one cooking in my head. THE CUT came forward.
I guess I was ready to write a straight-ahead crime novel. On the internet some people were making comments that I had gone soft or literary, whatever that means. It puts a chip on my shoulder when people think they have me figured out. I write the book that knocks on the door of my imagination.
WS: Spero’s chosen profession has echoes of John D. MacDonald’s Travis McGee, in that he recovers lost goods in exchange for a cut of what he salvages. Do you see yourself going down the road with him?
GP: THE DEEP BLUE GOODBYE was on the syllabus of the University of Maryland crime fiction class that pretty much changed my life. Eventually I read all the titles in that series. I even named one of my dogs Travis, and she was a bitch.
Spero Lucas, in some respects, is me tipping my hat to Mr. MacDonald and McGee and to the physical-and-flesh spirit of those books. I’m not much for long-range plans, but I will definitely write another Lucas novel. The character stuck with me. I want to know more about him myself.
WS: The McGee books also ruminated a lot about what it meant to be a man in today’s world. That’s a major theme in your books as well – manhood and what it entails, fathers and sons, mentoring. You don’t see a lot of that in crime fiction. Is it something you felt was lacking in the genre?
GP: The subject of manhood and masculinity is underserved in all types of fiction, and when it is touched on it’s not always done with complete honesty. Meaning, it becomes wish fulfillment, giving the readers what they want to believe, rather than what’s true. You can add the subject of race and class to that, too.
Male father figures are a critical element in the shaping of young lives. When I go into a juvenile facility I can almost guarantee that nearly all of the boys I talk to had no significant male guidance when they were raised. What you see around here now are coaches, teachers and mentors stepping up and taking on that role. My last three books were about fathers and sons. We’ve raised two sons and a daughter, so I felt like I was qualified to go deep into the subject.
WS: At the same time, much of your work has to do with irrevocable choices being made at threshold moments. It’s like the finale of a Sam Peckinpah movie, where the characters have a last chance to walk away – and don’t. In some of your earlier books, especially SHOEDOG and THE BIG BLOWDOWN, the protagonists make a conscious choice to plunge headlong into the abyss. Your recent works are the antithesis of that – they’re about second chances, and characters deciding not to surrender to chaos and violence. Where does Spero fit into this?
GP: The action in the narrative has to flow organically from the character. Otherwise, the books don’t work. With the Derek Strange novels I set myself up with a conviction from the very beginning that he would never pick up a gun. It was consistent with something that had happened in his past.
If Lorenzo Brown goes in shooting at the end of DRAMA CITY, that book is a lie. Same with Chris Flynn in THE WAY HOME. Spero Lucas has a different history. Marines aren’t police or peacekeepers. They’re trained to kill the enemy and protect their brothers. The antagonists in THE CUT underestimate this guy. When he reacts, it’s fast and physical.
WS: There also seems to be a trend in your recent work toward, if not redemption, at least something close to it. The idea that tragedies – even ones that we’ve set in motion ourselves – can be, if not transcended, at least surmounted, and that our stories are ongoing ones. That seems to be a shift from some of your earlier, more fatalistic books. Would you say that’s accurate?
GP: Yeah, you hit it on the head. My worldview has changed. I know from personal experience that significant missteps can be transcended. It’s a long life, and the bus ride through town makes many stops.
WALLACE STROBY: Some of THE CUT obviously comes from the time you spent with Iraq and Afghanistan veterans, which also figured into the fifth season of THE WIRE. How did that come about, and what did you take from it?
GEORGE PELECANOS: That started with THE TURNAROUND, which was written in 2008 and published in 2009. Through the Wounded Warriors program I was granted access to Walter Reed Army Medical Center, which is a mile or so from my house. The theme of that book was redemption and starting anew, and it felt natural to have a character who was a physical therapist at the hospital. So I got to know some of the injured vets and the people who treat them. (WIRE co-creators) David Simon and Ed Burns were working on (the HBO miniseries) GENERATION KILL at the time, and between the three of us the issue made its way into Season 5 of THE WIRE.
I did see a lot of good work being done by doctors and therapists at that hospital. But I think we all can agree that we haven’t done enough as a country for our Marines and soldiers who are currently at war, or for the veterans who’ve returned.
WS: Did your experiences writing for TV change the way you approached the novels at all?
GP: I still write novels the way I always have: research, dream, then get behind the desk and go to work. Seven days a week, day and night shifts, until the manuscript is done.
The mechanics have not changed, but working in television definitely had a positive effect on me as a novelist. I never attended a writing school or an MFA program. Being in the (writers’) room for THE WIRE and TREME was like going to writing school belatedly. I worked with a group of very smart writers who could articulate a process which I always thought of as instinctual. My ultimate goal is to be a better writer. I’m grateful for anything that helps me get there.
WS: Like your previous books, Spero’s adventures in THE CUT practically offer a walking tour of D.C. and environs. A reader can follow him almost street by street. My first two novels were set exclusively where I grew up – the seaside towns of New Jersey – but by my third, I found that limiting story-wise. In your novels, have you been tempted to write about someplace far removed from DC?
GP: My TV and movie work allows me to get out of DC and stretch. Often, with screenwriting, the setting is generic, for reasons of economy and form. I have a different take on my novels. I’m focused, some might say obsessed, with the details of the city I write about, because I feel like I’m leaving a record. THE CUT was “written” from the saddle of my bike, in the cockpit of my kayak, and through the windshield of my Jeep and Mustang. In terms of my books, it’s safe to say that I’ll be sticking to my home turf.
WS: Derek Strange – or at least his office – has a cameo in THE CUT. Will we be seeing him again at some point?
GP: I just completed a novel set in the summer of ‘72 (WHAT IT WAS) that features the young Derek Strange as a central protagonist. Coming to a bookstore near you.
WS: You wrote an introduction for the reissue of Don Carpenter’s brilliant novel HARD RAIN FALLING, which had been out-of-print for years. And you’ve championed Horace McCoy’s KISS TOMORROW GOODBYE as well. Name five lesser-known novels – crime or not – from any era that readers should go out and find right now. And why.
GP: NORTHLINE, by Willy Vlautin. I’ve been singing Vlautin’s praises for awhile now. His is a singular, populist voice in current fiction. NORTHLINE is simply written and emotionally charged.
TRUE CONFESSIONS, by John Gregory Dunne. Dunne elevated the crime novel with this daring, elegant, and elegiac look back.
CUTTER AND BONE, by Newton Thornburg. The novel that best captures America in the last years of the Vietnam War. Thornburg wrote many novels, but this is the one for which he will be remembered.
STONER, by John Williams. The life of a career academic does not sound like the stuff of great fiction, but this is one of the most beautifully written and gripping novels I have ever read.
DESPERADOES and THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD, by Ron Hansen. Two superior literary Westerns from the gifted Mr. Hansen.
WS: Who are the writers you go back to when you need to catch the scent again, and reconnect with why you wanted to write in the first place?
GP: Steinbeck, Hemingway, Raymond Chandler, Charles Portis, Fred Exley, James Crumley, Elmore Leonard, Jim Harrison, Robert Penn Warren, Charles Willeford, David Goodis, Edward P. Jones, and Norman Mailer are among the many authors who immediately come to mind. They’re different kinds of writers, but all of them penned books that continue to send me back to my desk.
Pelecanos was also a staff writer and producer on all five seasons of the acclaimed HBO series THE WIRE, a writer/producer on HBO’s miniseries THE PACIFIC, and is now a staff writer/producer on the network’s New Orleans-based series TREME, helmed by WIRE co-creator David Simon. A father of three, Pelecanos continues to work with troubled youths at juvenile correction facilities in the D.C. area.
Wallace Stroby is a New Jersey writer whose latest novel is COLD SHOT TO THE HEART. His fifth novel, KINGS OF MIDNIGHT, will was published by St. Martin’s Press in April 2012.
WILD THING, Josh Bazell’s sequel to the breakout hit BEAT THE REAPER is in bookstores now. Check out reviews from The Daily Beast, which proclaims the book “comes with the funniest footnotes and appendix (no kidding) ever written,” the National Post, which calls the book “a welcome return…with a grim and funny plot filled with a whole mess o’ violence, double-crossings, drug abuse, flamboyant lies and sexual tension.” Bazell also received a rave review in The Washington Post, which says: “Bazell’s mix of violent lunacy and social commentary should appeal to fans of Carl Hiassen…WILD THING doesn’t so much end as explode.” And don’t miss the blog reviews from the likes of BookHounds, Rhapsody in Books, The Review Broads, The IE Mommy, and more.
As for George Pelecanos’s WHAT IT WAS, The Washington Times ran a wonderful feature on Pelecanos’ career and his title of “DC’s Own.” The Philadelphia Inquirer runs a rave review for the novel, writing that “Be warned! Don’t start at 10pm if you want to get any sleep…The writing is noir: spark, dark, and evocative of time and place…more than marvelous.”
Don Mann, author of INSIDE SEAL TEAM SIX and Mulholland Books’ forthcoming HUNT THE WOLF, was recently quoted in Newsweek’s front page story on the Navy SEALs, on the importance of training for the operators that have impressed President Obama with their precision and professionalism.
The TV spot for Max Payne 3, presented by our friends at Rockstar Games, has been running prominently on different channels in the past week. Check it out below:
Did we missing something sweet? Share it in the comments! We’re always open to suggestions for next week’s post! Get in touch atmulhollandbooks@hbgusa.com or DM us on Twitter.
Duane Swierczynski’s FUN AND GAMES has been nominated for a Barry Award for Best Paperback Original! Go Duane!
Papers like the New York Times have been covering the shopping of Amanda Knox’s book proposal. What do you think?
George Pelecanos’s WHAT IT WAS continues to receive great reviews–don’t miss 
coverage from the New York Times Book Review, which called the novel “great and breathless,” and USA Today, which selected the “rip-roaring introduction to Derek Strange” as a weekend pick. And at Spinetingler, Gloria Feit agrees.
With Michael Robotham’s BLEED FOR ME soon on its way to bookstores, great blog reviews have begun popping up–don’t miss the ones at Caite’s Day at the Beach and Bestsellers World.
And Donato Carrisi’s THE WHISPERER received another great blogger review from Martha’s Bookshelf!
Did we missing something sweet? Share it in the comments! We’re always open to suggestions for next week’s post! Get in touch atmulhollandbooks@hbgusa.com or DM us on Twitter.
The below guest post originally appeared on Allison Leotta’s site and is reprinted with the permission of the author.
George Pelecanos is an author at the top of his game. When he’s not writing bestselling crime novels, he’s creating some of America’s finest TV dramas: shows like “The Wire” and “Treme.”Stephen King called him “perhaps America’s greatest living crime writer”; Esquire anointed him “the poet laureate of D.C. crime fiction”; Dennis Lehane said, “The guy’s a national treasure.” In short, George Pelecanos is a literary rock star. So how can a new writer capture a little bit of that magic?
George’s answer surprised me.
I recently sat down with him for lunch, and that question was at the top of my mind. My debut legal thriller, “Law of Attraction,” got positive reviews and some nice buzz – but no one’s calling me “a national treasure.” I’ve read George’s earliest books, written before he was nationally treasured himself. They showcase considerable raw talent, but they’re unrefined and inconsistent. Like the evolution of cell phone technology, George’s writing has developed from an interesting conversation piece to a body of work so smart and sophisticated, it makes you shake your head with wonder. I wanted to know: how do I make that happen to my own writing? Will I need a more apps and better ringtones, or just some writing seminars?
None of the above, George answered. To be a good writer, be a good person.
That’s not exactly what he said – more on the specifics below – but that’s what it boiled down to.
It wasn’t the advice I expected from this author. If you’ve read his novels, you know George Pelecanos creates worlds that are dark, testosterone charged, and dangerous. “King Suckerman” opens with a disgruntled employee using a shotgun to blow a hole through his boss. In “The Sweet Forever,” one man proves his love for another by brutally murdering a rival. “Drama City” features a female probation officer who’s straight-laced by day and driven to risky one-night stands by night. George’s novels are full of violence and retribution, the grimmest side of humanity, and plenty of sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll.
But his advice on how to create these worlds is akin to what a thoughtful father might advise his daughter on the larger question of how to live her life. The melding of these dark worlds with more wholesome introspection may be what makes his novels so finely textured and morally complex.
Here’s George Pelecanos’ advice for becoming a great writer:
1. Be friendly. Talk to people. Get to know them, where they’re coming from, and what makes them tick. Then use what you’ve learned to create your characters and make them real.
2. Put yourself out of your comfort zone. This is related to #1. Talk to folks you wouldn’t normally approach, people who might intimidate you. Have the guts to ask questions. You’ll widen your horizons, and may be surprised by what you learn.
3. Be respectful. People are more likely to open up. It’s also the right thing to do.
4. Listen. Really listen. Don’t just be formulating your next answer for when it’s your turn.
5. Write organically. There are two schools of thought when it comes to how to write a novel: authors who outline and those who write organically. George is in the latter. He suggests knowing your characters inside and out, then putting them in tough situations, and seeing what they do. If you know your characters well enough, George suggests, they’ll do a lot of the heavy lifting themselves.
6. Exercise. You wouldn’t think this relates to writing, but George says his mind is sharper if he writes in the morning then gets some fresh air in the afternoon. He bikes, kayaks, and plays basketball with his kids. Turns out, his method is backed by scientific research, which says that people who exercise regularly have sharper minds.
7. Know your city. Not just the parts you’d see on a bus tour. Go behind the scenes. Touch the pavement and see the streets you’re writing about. George does, and the results show in his books, which are so geographically authentic that future historians might use them to map out what D.C. looked like today.
8. Be brave, you’ll be fine. This is a corollary to #7. When researching his novels, George bikes through some of the roughest neighborhoods of D.C. – places that, as a former prosecutor, I only went to with armed police officers. When I fretted about this, he shrugged it off. No one’s ever messed with him. Maybe that relates to #3.
9. Get involved in your community. George sends his books to local prisons, then goes there and talks to the inmates about them. Not only does this help steer troubled young men into better decision-making, he gets great material to work into later books.
10. Help others and be generous. Actually, George didn’t say this, but it was the very reason I got to have lunch with him in the first place. He’s well known for supporting up-and-coming novelists. Every D.C. writer I meet talks about the lunch they had with George Pelecanos and the assistance he gave them. I don’t know if this actually helps with his writing, but it has certainly enriched the community of writers around him. (He also picked up the check, and left a huge tip. Good karma can’t hurt, either.)
Allison Leotta served as a federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C. for twelve years. In 1999, she joined the Department of Justice’s Office of Consumer Litigation, where she handled consumer protection and fraud cases. In 2003, she became an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, where she specialized in prosecuting sex crimes and domestic violence. In October of 2010, Simon & Schuster published Allison’s first novel, Law of Attraction, a legal thriller about –a D.C. prosecutor specializing in sex crimes and domestic violence. Law of Attraction was praised by the Washington Post, Detroit Free Press, Providence Journal, and Minneapolis Star-Tribune, among others.Suspense Magazine named it of the best books of the year and The City Paper called Allison “one of the most notable new faces to debut in 2010.” She’s currently working on her next book, tentatively titled Discretion.
George Pelecanos’ newest novel WHAT IT WAS is available as an ebook for only 99 cents for a limited time only. A trade paperback edition is also available at $9.99, as well as a knockout of a limited edition hardcover signed by George.
