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Chapter 10A
PLAGIARISING AND DECEPTION

You go to a bookstore and buy a book. It’s an expensive book, but you don’t mind, for it is a book you have always wanted. It is a book for you to keep, to cherish. Yes, it’s yours, all yours. You take it home, settle in a comfortable chair and open the cover. That first page leaps out at you. “This book is copyright under the Berne Conventions. No part of it may be copied or used.” You suddenly realize this book is not yours at all. It might be in your possession, and legally it is yours, but the only right you have i to read it.

No, you don’t own books. The person who wrote the book is the owner. You only bought the right to read it. Or you use it for anything other than for your own reading pleasure, and you do use it, any part, even a sentence, you will find yourself in a court of law.

It might sound strange, but we can say the same thing for all property. We buy a house, our name is on the title, and we move in. We are so proud. We own a house, and it is all ours. No one can touch it. We think it is ours, but we are wrong. The state owns it. If you don’t believe it, don’t pay your taxes for a year or two. The state will take your house away from you. That’s a fact.

So what do we own that we can call our own? Fortunately, there is one thing, and that is our ideas. Intangible thing like an idea, and it is ours, all ours. If we have an idea, we can register it, and no one can take it away from us. Ideas are infinite, endless. No idea is too foolish, too outlandish. If someone approaches me with an idea, I never turn him or her away. Ideas are ours, and if someone copies our words, our ideas, without our permission, we call that plagiarism. Another term, stated more harshly, is stealing. Stealing is punishable by law, and so is plagiarism.

Writers commit plagiarism whenever they present words or ideas taken from another person as if they were their own. In our capitalistic economy, words and ideas are regarded as property. We plagiarize when we don’t give credit to the person whose idea it was. The rule is we cannot pass off someone’s ideas or thoughts as our own. The solution is to depend on other people’s words as little as possible.

I make sure when quoting someone to put what they say between quotation marks. Then, I’ve been told, it’s not plagiarizing. But I find the overuse of quotes, the over-reliance on quotations that is, can undermine an author’s writing. I get the feeling that he is unable to use his own words to articulate his own thoughts. I like to use quotes, but I attempt to use them sparingly.

Yet in spite of the law, or moral issues, we continue to steal and we try to get away with it. Often in the literary world when we do copy another’s words, we call it borrowing. Writers forever borrow from one another. They say there are no original ideas, that all ideas have all been conceived at one time or another. That belief becomes an absolute; there is no originality. I find that hard to fathom. I contend that an artist or a writer is original when he is being himself. I find that even an absolute can be affected by personal judgment, training and habit. One would think when an object is recognized as beautiful, it would contain enough merit to retain its beauty for us indefinitely. We know it doesn’t. We get tired of it. Familiarity breeds indifference.

We can say then that there are writers who have their own original thoughts regardless of whether or not someone else thought them up before. Take a look at some of the master writers. Take a look at James Michener whose list of books covers a couple of pages. He was a great writer, admired by many and some seventy-five million of his books went into print. As we know, several were made into movies-Hawaii, South Pacific, Sayonara. The one I liked most was Hawaii. He told in detail how the islands were formed, and he related the “universal savagery of the sea.” Wonderful stuff.

Then I picked up Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. It was like reading Michener again. It was all there, how islands and atolls are formed, and about the universal savagery of the sea. Melville came a hundred years before Michener. Did Michener steal from Melville? Hardly. He borrowed. And then I made another startling discovery. Melville was an avid student of the Bible, and he got much of his material and ideas from the Bible. Low and behold, Melville had found out from reading Genesis in the Bible how islands and atolls are formed and passed it on to his readers. Perhaps the Bible is where it all begins, and where it stops. You can’t get much more original than the Bible.

Jack London admits he learned to write by reading Robert Louis Stevenson. He proved that there is no better training for the would-be writer than to read a passage every day from a classic, by a noted author, but more than read it, devour it, study it, and then close the book. Without looking at it again, hours later or, best, the next day, attempted to reproduce it. Nothing can be more demanding upon our memory. Jack London followed this method by reading and studying Stevenson. He read a paragraph or two, closed the book and then tried to put down from memory on paper what he had read. Maybe it wasn’t direct plagiarism, but I do believe that somehow borrowed thoughts do become engrained in our minds and sooner or later, we find ourselves, as writer and thinkers, using them. I remember as a kid reading The Cruise of the Snark. What an inspiration that was to a farm boy who had never seen the sea. I read with abandonment how London had built his own schooner, which he called Snark, and sailed it to Hawaii. From there he continued on to Tahiti, via the Marquesas. The leg from Hawaii to the Marquesas is a near impossible passage, against fierce winds and unyielding currents. It took Snark a month of beating into the wind, but his tiny 43-foot schooner made it. When I had my own schooner and sailed to Hawaii with plans to sail to Tahiti, I had to make the same passage. I didn’t know why, but I just wanted to do it. Everyone thought it was an insane idea, but nevertheless, I drove the crew to what almost became a mutiny. But we made it in a grueling twenty-nine days. Why did I have to do it? Because Jack London had done it, and yet I had completely forgotten about London’s passage. But it was there in my subconscious mind. When I re-read The Cruise of the Snark, I realized it then.

But where do we draw the line? When does borrowed writing become plagiarism? Since words and ideas are regarded as property, as I mentioned, when are these words considered public domain? If individual knowledge is capital, a term the legal pundits use, when then is it public domain? The legal boys call it group knowledge, a suitable name. Group knowledge includes dates, events, facts, general information and those concepts that belong to the public. No individual owns the facts about geography, current events, history, physics, social behavior and society’s common culture and traditions. Here I reached the bottom line: what the public knows collectively constitutes common knowledge. Nor can I assert or claim, as an individual, even if it’s publicly, theories, opinions, studies, research projects, and the likes, to be my own. It’s Joseph Heller’s Catch-22 all over.

It always makes news when an author uses deliberate deception in his work. When discovered, the press loves to play it up. The sad part is it seems we have reached a point in our society where deception and stealing is acceptable. Take the example of James Frey. He wrote his memoir called A Million Little Pieces. Oprah Winfrey reviewed it on her talk show, and the book became an instant success. It was then discovered that some of it was fiction, made up, but Madame Winfrey didn’t care about that. She had passed judgment on it and gave it the good seal of approval. She couldn’t go back on her word, and she had to defend what she said about the book. The press went wild. Matt Liddy, a journalist, wrote: “Frey, Oprah stands by controversial memoir.”

James Frey stood by what he called the “essential truth” of his memoir. Even after accusations were leveled that significant parts of the Oprah-approved best seller were fabricated, Frey went on CNN’s ‘Larry King Live’ show to defend his memoir. At the end of the show Winfrey phoned in to say that she remained happy to recommend the book, despite the controversy. Does this mean that Oprah Winfrey believes it’s all right to lie, that she believes in Machiavelli’s “The end justifies the means.” It seems so.

Frey used the excuse the book is 432 pages long, while the page count of disputed events is a mere eighteen pages, less than five percent of the total book. “You know,” he said, “that falls comfortably within the realm of what’s appropriate for a memoir.”

That is one man’s sordid interpretation of the rules of plagiarism, but it is not the accepted norm. A lie is a lie. Frey would have been all right had he maintained, as he did in the beginning, his book was fiction. In fact, he shopped the book as a novel, and it was turned down by publisher after publisher. The publisher who did finally buy the right to the book thought the best thing to do was publish it as a memoir.

In his warped reasoning, Frey contends his book is “a long tradition of what American writers have done in the past, people like Hemingway and Fitzgerald and Kerouac and Charles Bukowski.” He argued at the time when these books were published by famous authors, the genre of memoir didn’t exist. “I mean,” he told Larry King, “the genre of memoir is one that’s very new and the boundaries of it have not been established yet.”

There is no question that Winfrey was misled. Yet she sidetracks the issue. When she includes a book in her book club, an endorsement by her, it is virtually guaranteed to become a best-seller. She admitted when she read A Million Little Pieces, it had stunned her and moved her. After hearing Frey’s interview, Winfrey told her “old friend” Larry King she would still recommend A Million Little Pieces.

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Chapter 9
HANDLING THE CRITICS

Bob Varva is a photographer, and a very fine one. Born in Glendale, California, he was living in Spam when I got to know him. His specialty was photographing animals and, in particular, the fighting bulls of Spain. When author James Michener saw his photographs, he became so impressed with Bob’s work that he commissioned him to illustrate his book-Iberia. Michener was in Spain doing research for a book he planned to write on Mexico. His research included bull fighting which resulted in his meeting a number of matadors, including the American matador John Fulton Short and the greatest of all master matadors Juan Belmonte. Michener became so enamored with Spain, and with the people that he met, he decided to write Iberia instead, and he put Mexico on hold. In lberia, published two years later, he wrote about meeting John Fulton and his photographer friend Bob Varva.

One day when I went to Bob’s apartment on Colon Street in Seville, he was rather distraught. A critic had attacked him, saying his photos were too sanguinary to illustrate a book by Michener. We were discussing the matter when Michener arrived to go over details in the book. Introductions were made. This was the first time I had met Michener. There were other times, many, but this was the first. My immediate thought when he entered the room was that he too had read the critic’s remark. Was he going to be sympathetic and sick: with Bob, or would he agree with the critic? I soon found out. Michener looked at Bob, put a hand on his shoulder, and said, “Forget it.” That was it-forget it. Michener then explained his reason. He told how critics had panned his first book and it was almost enough to make him give up writing. He was concerned that the first printing, only a few thousand copies, might not sell.

Michener got his taste for writing when he was a lieutenant in the U.S. Navy during World War II, assigned to record the history of the Pacific war. During this time be wrote a few magazine articles, nothing much, and these were mostly about the war, about the men and women fighting in it. When he decided to put all stories together into a book, which he titled Tales of the South Pacific, the critics had a good laugh. They laughed but the last laugh was on them. The book became a best seller. The critics laughed again when Broadway planned to turn the book into a musical titled South Pacific. The Broadway musical was a tremendous success. “You would think they would have stopped laughing by now,” Michener said, “but they didn’t, and it got worse when Hollywood decided to make a movie from the play. The critics really went wild.” The movie, as we know, became a classic. From that time on, Michener stopped paying attention to critics. “Rely upon your own judgment,” he told Bob Varva. I made up my mind then that I too would do the same. It was a pretty wild commitment on my part, considering, at the time, I had had only one story published and that was hardly Pulitzer Prize stuff, a story for The Writers Digest.

I must say James Michener was very encouraging. He knew I was interested in writing and he wished me luck. He was not like Mr. Sullivan at Life magazine in New York. When I met Michener again, years later, he asked how my writing was doing. We met several times over the years.

A critic, I discovered, can destroy a writer, deliberately or unintentionally. We might rightfully say a critic’s opinion doesn’t really matter, but for a beginner, as I was at the time, it did matter. Unfortunately, this was before I met James Michener. When I began writing my first novel, I envisioned it making the bestseller list with reviews in Time and Newsweek. I didn’t share this thought with others, especially my wife, who was convinced I was wasting time. She particularly didn’t like it when I got up long before her every morning and put in an hour or two on my novel which I had titled The Tower & The River. I had based the book on some of my experiences when I worked for the naval Attaché in Paris, about the same time that America announced its astronaut program. The military was going to put a man into space. l decided to set my plot in Paris, a city I knew something about. Then I imagined myself as a test pi lot who successfully made the first space flight. Naturally, as a gung ho Marine, I made the protagonist in my novel a Marine fighter pilot who had his eyes on the moon. In my storyline, he was certain to be chosen for the program, especially after his short but successful flight in space. But the brass at the Pentagon had other ideas. I had them send my hero to Paris instead of space, for propaganda purposes. I was sure my novel would be a success, and I devoted much of my time and effort in the manuscript.

At the time, I was teaching at a college preparatory school in Washington, D.C. The mother of one of my students was a writer. I don’t know what type or writing she did, but her daughter thought she was the greatest writer that ever lived. She was the kind of daughter that every writer wished he bad.

One day, between classes, I had my novel on my desk when the student came into the room, saw the manuscript and asked what it was. I told her I was writing a novel. She became very interested, and it was then she said her mother was a writer.

This went on for a while, and the student kept asking how the writing was coming along. After about a month, when the student asked me again about my book and how the writing was doing, I casually mentioned that writing a novel wasn’t easy.

“If you would like,” she said, “I can have my mother look it over and give you her opinion.”

At first, I was against the idea, but then I asked myself what was I hiding from? Why not let another, an unbiased writer, make some criticisms? Of course, I had in mind the positive. Writers like to be praised, especially those who are just beginning. They have tough enough battles ahead, and any compliment is most encouraging. Compliments can make us feel good, giving us a sense of accomplishment. Approval can make us want to improve our writing even more. What I learned from that experience is disapproval is also a factor. I didn’t consider that a cold response, a critical remark, could crush my spirit. I hadn’t met Michener yet to encourage me. I discovered then what others think of us could have a profound effect on whether or not we continue our efforts at writing. I had to take the chance, and I lost. I had turned my manuscript over to my student to give to her mother. That was the toughest thing I ever had to do, but I rationalized thinking that I had nothing to lose. But I was wrong. I had a lot to lose.

It was about a week later, a week of agonizing waiting and prodding, when the mother of my student sent the manuscript back to me. Attached was a short note. It was brief, and regrettable. It said I should get someone to teach me how to write. It was the cruelest thing someone could have said to me. I was deflated. Maybe I could never write a novel. Maybe I should have given her daughter a better grade. Maybe my wife was right; it was best I quit wasting my time. I put the manuscript aside. I didn’t touch it for twenty years. I don’t know what compelled me to take it out of hiding, except it may have been that I had just read The World According to Garp. Garp wanted to be a serious writer, but his mother looked at all writing to be nothing more than lackadaisical verbiage. To prove a point to her son, she wrote a book on her own, and it became an instant success. Was this the same? Was my student’s mother laughing at me? Was she a competent critic? Had I made a mistake? I dug out my novel and looked at it. When I did, I liked it. It had merit. Of course, it needed more work. What I had shown to my student’s mother had only been a draft. That was a terrible mistake. And how wrong it was to give a manuscript to someone I didn’t even know. I never questioned who this woman was. Was she truly a writer?

I spent the next few months working on the manuscript, completed it and sent it to Wolfenden Publisher under the title The Tower & The River. It was accepted and six months later went into a second printing. I had wasted twenty years thinking I’d never make it as a novelist. I now follow the advice of Mario Puzo who said, “Never show your stuff to anybody. You can get inhibited.” He then went on to say when you become inhibited, your creativity suffers. How true that is. The point is, I learned to be careful about who I show my work to, no matter what business they’re in. Puzo had another bit of advice to writers. “Above all,” he insisted, “never try to make a publishing deal on the basis of an outline whether it’s a novel, a play or a movie script.”

What I learned from that experience is never let anyone evaluate my work until it is ready for publication. I cannot expect someone else to whip me into shape. I have to do that myself. A writer knows when it’s wrong, and to know it’s wrong and do nothing about it is shear laziness. That’s what Michener was trying to tell Bob Varva and me. You are your best critic, but you must be honest with yourself. Don’t gloss over a story or manuscript and say, “That’s good enough.” Good enough is not acceptable. It has to be the best you can do. As my papa on the farm used to tell me when I was a kid, if a horse has a loose shoe, it is never good enough; that shoe could come off and hit you in the head.

I know not to mislead myself. Writers can benefit when editors check their work. However, I must exercise good judgment in choosing whom I turn to for criticism, and I must react sensibly to their opinions. I am also aware too much praise can be destructive. “Praise shames me,” wrote Rabindranath Tagore, the Indian poet. And then be added: “For I secretly beg for it.” We are all that way, but it’s false praise that does the most harm.

I have in my latter years refrained from giving a manuscript to a non-professional to look over. Also, even the professionals, by their very nature, feel compelled to make some criticism, whether it is valid or not. I remember this so well when I accepted a government job in Washington, D.C. I had briefs and letters to write, and each and every one of them had to be checked by my immediate boss. He had to find some error, even if it was a comma out of place. If he didn’t, he felt he was not a competent boss. And on up the line it went. The guy at the very top bad to make his mark, and down it came to the bottom to begin all over again. Thus, I learned to beware of those who have to find fault just to show their own importance. In the end, I have to be my own judge.

As I mentioned, a good way to judge the weight of a story is to talk it over with friends, but don’t tell them what you are doing. You might discuss the theme of your idea to see what their reactions are, but stop there. I often do this with friends at dinner. And when I give a talk or have a book signing, I like to feel out my audience. I see what interests them. Without fail, I will be asked what is my next book, my next project, my next adventure.

People don’t like to listen to retired folk, to has-beens, no matter how knowledgeable they might be.

I constantly have to remind myself it is not possible to please everyone. I don’t even try anymore. Seasoned writers learn to ignore comments by the critics, as Michener indicated when I met him in Spain. Success comes with a lot of envy. I had to arm myself by being prepared to shun cruel and cutting comments.

What’s that adage, “When you fail, try again.” I like what Michael Crichton had to say about that-“Books aren’t written, they’re rewritten. Including your own. It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn’t quite done it.”

Perseverance is what he was saying.

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Chapter 8
MY BEST TEACHER

My best teacher is experience, and experience is what I gain by trying. I can’t learn to swim by reading books. I have to get into the water; I have to get wet. I learned a long time ago not to wait for things to happen. I learned to swim, and to write, by diving in. I have met many young writers who are held back due to the lack of confidence. It’s something we all must overcome. Confidence comes with experience. Psychologists tell us we’re born with only three fears-being crushed, falling and loud noises. All other fears we learn along the way by association with these three basic fears. A child is not born to fear the dark, but fear the dark he does. Why? The good doctors tell us that most likely when the child was put to bed, there followed a bang as the door was closed. The association leads to a fear, fear of the dark. The fear of failure, the fear of rejection or even the fear of success are developed fears and can be overcome. For the writer, the greatest enemy is fear itself, for fear keeps him from doing the very thing he wants to do most, and that is to write. The fear here is the loud noise when the postman drops a rejection slip into their mailbox.

Doubt is the first cousin of fear and precedes it. Like the fear of the dark, we weren’t born with doubt. Our habit of doubt has grown throughout our life. If we dwell on a doubt and give in to it, it then grows into fear. I remember as a young Marine recruit at Camp Pendleton we stood on a platform, with full gear, helmet and rifle included, and had to jump into a swimming pool far below. The drop was thirty feet but it appeared to be more like a thousand. That leap was real fear. We learned to overcome it by not thinking about it. “Just do it,” the drill instructor shouted.

I guess we were more fearful of the drill instructor than the thirty feet of space that separated us from the water below. I do the same when I begin a new story or another book. I just do it and get started. The beginning is the hardest part. What follows is routine.

It follows to reason, if our fears and doubts are what we developed along the way, then we can “unlearn” them by becoming masters of our thoughts. I once heard motivational speaker, Zig Ziglar, quote Mark Twain when he said, “True courage is not the absence of fear; it’s the mastery of fear.” The people who live the life of their dreams have just as many fears as those who live miserable, unfulfilled lives-they have just learned to master their fears instead of allowing their fears to master them.

Let us not have a doubtful mind. It’s a matter of encouragement vs. discouragement. In Western society, there is a tendency to make the arts seem like some unattainable dream. University professors and teachers are no help. We are told we must try to find the motives behind an artist and his works if we want to understand him. What is it, they ask, that makes an artist stand out from all others? We put successful artists and writers on pedestals. A person writes a book, and it reaches the best seller’s list. Suddenly the author is invited to appear on Letterman and Jay Leno and the Good Morning America show. Maybe even Oprah. He is asked his opinion about the war in the Middle East, what are his thoughts about the death penalty, and should candidates for the president of the United States not be required to be born in America. This baffles many foreigners, especially Asians. For instance, the people in Asian countries are deeply rooted in the arts. A rice farmer on Bali plants rice all day long, and in the evening, he plays with the village gamelan orchestra or spends his time painting beautiful pictures. A Thai farmer in northern Thailand wins the prestigious Southeast Asia Writers Awards for his poetry, and he never attended school. In America, you never hear of a coal miner writing a great book, not because he is incapable, for certainly he, too, has deep feelings and emotion, but society prevents him from doing so. Coal miners are not expected to be intelligent. You have to have a college degree to be a successful writer or be a graduate from a school of journalism. If you have that degree, and still can’t find success at writing, then you are told you had better find another profession.

Sometimes some of the stuff I write I think is lousy. It likely is, but no matter what I write, I never throw it away. Time does something to wine, and it does it to writing too. I mentioned when I was on Tahiti, I spent days writing about anything that came to my mind, even though nothing I wrote back then sold. I did have one obsession that I pursued, which was researching old sea mysteries and shipwrecks. I gathered information and put together copy I thought would be a good story, about three unsolved sea tragedies. I spent endless hours writing the story and ended up with a solid 5,000-word story and sent it off. No editor wanted it. I threw it on the shelf and forgot about it. Not so long ago, the editor of a yachting magazine contacted me and said he was desperate. A writer didn’t come through with his assigned story. Did I have something interesting, maybe a sea mystery?

I found the old story. It wasn’t bad. The details were all there, and the facts. A new lead, a little rewriting and, in a few hours, the editor had a story, and soon after, I had a check. I could have thrown the manuscript away, but I didn’t. I have stacks of unpublished stories which one day, I might tum into something readable. Or maybe someone after me will do it for me.

I have of late concluded that I was my best teacher. I never expected others to whip me into shape. I had to do it myself. But I didn’t discount that my work needed editing. Every writer needs an editor. Thomas Wolfe, the author of You Can’t Go Home Again and Look Homeward, Angel, worked closely with his editor, Maxwell Perkins. They had some heated battles. Often, Perkins would tell Wolfe to go home and re-write a passage. Wolfe would return in a few days, not with a re-worked, cut-down version, but with another fifty pages. Instead of his books becoming shorter, they grew longer. He wrote some beautiful prose.

Given the choice, I like writing books over magazine stories because I can say what I want in a book without reservation. For memoirs and biographers, this is most important. There is a difference between the memoirs of public figures and those of private citizens. With a public figure, I have to be as accurate as possible. But with a private person’s story, it is very different. I prefer to call them autobiographical novels. I can write, for instance, page after page of dialogue, and readers are willing to accept fictionalization. Still, accuracy, even in dialogue, is important. In writing a biographical novel, For the Love of Siam, about a Greek shipwrecked sailor who became foreign minister for King Narai of Siam, I had to make certain the dialogue matched the time. How does one avoid anachronisms, placing people and their dress and their surroundings in the wrong time frame? This is most difficult and takes intense research. It can be a simple thing, like saying “he waited half an hour.” When in history did the hour become a unit of measure?

For interviews my tape recorder is my best friend. I can say that for capturing actions as well. After all, what better way is there to capture a storm at sea than when it’s happening? Or rafting down a jungle river? Or climbing a mountain? This is when a tape recorder is needed. I capture the action as it is happening, it is real. I find if I write an experience after the event, I write it not as it happened but as I thought it happened or should have happened. There is a difference.

Of course, I can’t very well capture the action by jotting down notes in a notebook, not while driving a Jeep bouncing over rutted, potholed roads. That’s when a tape recorder is indispensable. Over the years, I have made hundreds, no thousands, of tape recordings. I made a point to index the tapes immediately after making them. If I don’t index immediately I may never do it and end up with a stack of meaningless tapes. The indexing is important for it gives me easy access to the information when I need it. The tapes I prize most are those that I made of people who have long since passed away. Some were important personalities like Burt Lancaster, James Mason and Mary Martin. Others were lesser known but nevertheless they are still important.

Studs Terkel, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author, relied heavily on tape recording. His best-selling oral histories that celebrated the common people whom he called the “non-celebrated” were the results of taped interviews. In his 2007 memoir, Touch and Go, Terkel wrote: “What first comes out of an interview are tons of ore; you have to get that gold dust in your hands. Now, how does it become a necklace or a ring or a gold watch? You have to get the form; you have to mold the gold dust.”

Terkel would joke that his obsession with tape recording was equaled by only one other man, a certain former president of the United States: “Richard Nixon and I could be aptly described as neo-Cartesians. I tape, therefore I am.”

Studs Terkel died in October 2008. He was 96.

I recall one tape I made that I can never forget. Bill Frew was a South Sea Island trader who had a store on remote Fanning Island in the Line Islands that lay between the Hawaiian Islands and French Polynesia. Bill was the only white man on the island. He was in his late sixties, had an island wife and a dozen kids and was quite a raconteur. I taped away one evening as he sat upon his verandah, rolling cigarettes and spinning yams about the old days. I sailed away the next day, and it wasn’t until a year later that I learned that Bill got up from his chair on the verandah one evening just after we left and went for a walk. He was never seen again. He vanished completely. I played the tapes over and over, trying to detect something that might give a clue to his disappearance but could find nothing.

I like most to use a tape recorder when doing interviews. Without the need to jot down notes, I am free to concentrate on my questions. Of course I have to ask the person beforehand if I may use a tape recorder. I find if I use a simple recorder and not one of those professional looking devices, the person I am interviewing doesn’t seem to mind it. I set the recorder in the open between us, and then ask if l may tum it on. After a minute or two, people forget the recorder is on. It certainly avoids people coming back and saying, “I never said that.”

Rewriting is the secret. I rewrite to make it simple, as clear and easy as possible for the reader to understand. Rewrite, polish, rewrite again, that’s my obligation. These are what makes one’s writing the best it can be.

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Chapter 7
PLEASING THE EDITOR

Somewhere along the line, I learned not to try to outsmart the editor. Wasn’t it Shakespeare who you even though said in one of his plays, “I believe you even though I know you lie.” That’s the number one rule I follow; although editors lie they are always right. They, at least successful ones, know what they want, and as a writer, it is my task to give them what they want. It’s that simple. I know some writers who insist that editors don’t know what they want. That may be true, editors may be fumbling and uncertain, but they don’t like to be told that. I make a point not to disagree with an editor. Never. They are the ones who are giving the assignments, and they are the ones who tell the accountant to write the checks.

Editors don’t necessarily own or have a vested interest in the publications they work for. They are there, hired to edit. It’s a consolation when I tell myself editors can be difficult but they are not permanent. They change like magazines change covers. Here today, gone tomorrow. I have to remind myself an editor’s first duty is to please the owners, and that means for editors to bring in the money. To do this, editors must satisfy advertisers. I am referring here to magazine editors not book editors. They fall into different categories. For a magazine editor, a wrong or misleading story can cost the loss of an advertiser. In this regard, editors know what they want or what the magazine requires.

I give editors what they want, but I am leery of those editors who are also writers. It’s as certain as night follows day, the stories or articles an editor writes for the publication will be placed before mine. It doesn’t matter that my copy might be better than theirs.

Generally, my practice is to query editors about a story before I write it. The trick is to get editors involved, to get them to make suggestions, and then they feel they are part of the story. To do this, I have several choices. One, I can write and post a letter; two, I can send an e-mail; or three I can make a phone call followed by a visit in person. As for sending a letter, letters prove to be more effective than e-mail. The best way to query an editor, hands down, is to make a phone call for an appointment and then make a personal appearance. I make every attempt I can to see an editor in person. And when I do, I have something in hand to show them. I find it important not to remain silent, not to sit there like a dunce. I keep talking. I lead my ideas and don’t give up. I am insistent but not overbearing. It nearly always works. Editors are, after all, people, and some are even human. When it’s face to face, it’s difficult for an editor to say no. If l go in person, perhaps when I am just back from a trip, a small token of a gift helps. Nothing expensive. A letter opener from Thailand or a carved tiki paperweight from Tahiti. It’s always satisfying to return to the office one day and see the paperweight on the desk.

It is always a concern that editors might steal my ideas. I learned to accept it, for they do, and that is a fact. It’s a chance all writers have to take. Editors steal our work.

Query letters are a must, and they are an art. I write a query letter in such a way that I make the recipient want to read more. Let’s say I’m planning to go to Paris. Never would I contact editors and simply tell them I am going to Paris. Many countless of hundreds of such letters cross an editor’s desk each working day, letters that are tossed into the trashcan? Before ending a query to the editor, I give some thought to the place I am going. If it’s to Paris, I ask myself what would I like to read about Paris? I do my homework before sending that letter. For instance, I don’t tum to guidebooks for information. Every would-be writer does that. I take from the library all the books I can find by noted authors who wrote about Paris, How about Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises or The Moveable Feast. They are about Paris. I read them, but I read between the lines. Hemingway loved the bars and cafes of Paris. He wrote magnificently about them. But what about “The Bar that Hemingway Didn’t Like.” Anyone who reads that title would be interested. In one of his books there must be one of two bars or cafes he didn’t favor. What else on Paris? “The Day the Eiffel Tower Almost Fell Down.” You could build a story around that lead, and a little research could do it. Then “Getting Lost in the Sewers of Paris.” Paris had miles of sewers. If the editor agrees, take a sewer tour when you go to Paris.

An editor approached me one day and said he needed a story on the Bird Park in Singapore, but he wanted something fresh and different, not the general run-or-the-mill stories about how many birds there are in the park, and how big it is, and how many people visited it each year. So what does one write about a bird park that would be fresh and interesting? I sat down to a cup of coffee, came up with an idea and approached the editor. He liked it. My story appeared: “How to Treat a Sick Bird at Jurong Bird Park in Singapore.” I managed to talk to the veterinarian about treating sick animals, and in the article, I was able to work in how big the park is, how many birds it has, and how many people visit it every day. It was much the same, as I mentioned before, when I queried Argosy and said I wanted to expose the way the French were turning the Tahitian islands into an atomic testing ground. The idea was rejected, and I was told to write about the famous Quinn’s Tahitian Hut, the wildest bar in the South Seas. I wrote it and managed to tell that the French were testing super bombs, not too many miles away from Quinn’s, and the effect it was having the islands and the people. I got my point across.

It’s not the big picture that editors want. It’s the small interesting bits that make up the whole. This is the only case I can think of where it pay to think little rather than think big.

There was a magazine that I wrote for in Tokyo, The Far East Traveller. It was a fine magazine, and it paid very well. Over the years, I wrote over a hundred articles for the magazine. I was treated well by the editor and on several occasions when I was passing through Japan, I stopped at the office to give my regards to the staff. The editor arranged hotels at no cost to me, and obtained tickets to the kabuki theatre, sumo wrestling matches and many other events taking place in Tokyo. I felt I was part of the family. All was going well with the magazine until one day I received a letter from their new editor, a zealous man with new ideas. He wrote to say he appreciated my work, what I had done over the years, but he was developing a new policy which he believed would improve the magazine. Instead of depending solely upon freelance contributions, he was appointing stringers stationed in major cities throughout Asia. He was still interested in my work, he wrote, but only for the offbeat and unusual that I might come up with. I would need to send it in and then he would consider it.

I knew the routine, from experience. New editors always have grandiose ideas for their magazines. This editor was no exception. Rather than throw up my arms in disappointment, I wrote a nice letter to him, thanking him, and sat back and waited. Six months later, I wrote to him again with six story ideas, and he wrote back accepting five of them. It was obvious his stringers in the field were not coming up with ideas. I continued writing for the magazine until they went out of business a few years ago.

I dare say magazines, like editors, do come and go. There’s a saying, if you want to lose money, open a restaurant or start a magazine. I don’t know about restaurants, but I do know that very few magazines find success unless they are subsidized by private businesses such as airlines, credit card companies or hotel chains. Still, it’s amazing how many new magazines suddenly pop up, fired up by the enthusiasm of someone with dollars to spend and who, most likely, is on an ego trip. They open the new publication with flair: press releases and lavish cocktail parties. A year or two later they fold, leaving creditors and writers unpaid. I don’t know how many times I have been approached by editors of up-coming magazines who ask for my help by contributing article with promises that I will be paid when the magazine is solvent. Please, they ask, would I help, as a favor? Most of those editors I gave in to and did help by contributing a story along with photos went bust in a very short time-and I never saw a cent. I learned to tactfully turn down such requests.

Of course, there are exceptions. Hans Hoefer, the creator of the successful APA Insight Guides is one. He asked me to write a guidebook on Malaysia and forego payment in exchange for stock in the company. The guide I wrote was his second in the series, and I preferred to get cash rather than stock. It took me years to get paid, and I should have taken stock. Today Insight Guides have over 200 titles, and Hans sold out for what I was told to be near to ten million US dollars. I don’t even want to think of what my share might have been had I taken advantage of his offer. But I have no regrets. I am not a businessman; I am a writer. I wrote the full story about Hans in my book At Home in Asia, the book that’s in the time vault at The Oriental Hotel.

I must tell another story here about Hans. In the beginning years he had a house that was also his office on Bukit Tima Road in Singapore. We were putting together the Malaysia guide when a young Australian came up and knocked on the door. He was a very pleasant guy, a bit gaunt, and he wanted to know something about the guidebook publishing business. He and his wife had written a guidebook for backpackers called Southeast Asia on a Shoestring. A guidebook for backpackers, it was the complete opposite of the concept that Hans had for his Insight Guides. Hans was aiming for upmarket travelers, people with money to buy expensive books. Backpackers don’t have money. The young publisher-to-be wasn’t perturbed by Hans’ comments. Hans wished him well and sent him on his way. The young man published his book, and thirty years later has over six hundred titles to his credit. His name is Tony Wheeler and his books are the Lonely Planet Guidebooks. Down through the years I never forgot that incident and I often wondered if Tony would remember it. Then, at this writing, the Oriental Hotel in Bangkok announced that Tony Wheeler, the co-founder of Lonely Planet-his wife is the other founder-was having a talk and book signing in the Author’s Lounge for his latest book, authored by him-Bad Lands. Of course, I had to attend, and when I talked to Tony, he did remember the incident. Hans’ comments hadn’t deterred him one bit from his ultimate goal. In fact, it only spurred him on, he said.

The curious thing about editors is that they all feel they are indispensable. But it’s the writers, in fact, who outlast editors. Book publishers, newspapers and magazines change editors faster than hotels change general managers. If l find an editor who’s difficult to deal with, I will stay in there and bide my time. Chances are in a few years, he will be gone. I have found this to be without exception and, over the years, I have dealt with some very earnest editors. They just don’t last. Most of them move on looking for a better job. No matter how successful an editor is, perhaps even if he has turned the publication around and made it first class, the owners are never happy enough. Unless magazines are sponsored-by credit cards, airlines, hotels and the likes-they then are privately owned, and when they are, there’s always the owner’s nephew just out of Harvard Business School or from a Princeton Journalism Class who has ideas and has impressed his uncle. He gets the job. It happens all the time. I can think of a number of magazines that were successful, and then for no apparent reason, a new editor was assigned. In the next issue, the owner’s relative appears on the credit’s page. Or, in the case of airlines, an in-flight magazine will be doing well, but a new president or a member of the board of directors will have to make his mark and will decide to revamp the airline structure, and the first thing they attack is the in-flight magazine. When the publisher’s contract is up the management will put the contract up for bid and hire someone else, and it won’t necessarily be because they are better. Graft and payoffs often enter the picture, but this is getting into delicate territory, and I will refrain from making further comments.

In pleasing an editor, trust them, even though you know that they lie.

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CH6
GETTING INTO THE MOOD

How does one get into the mood to write? My reply is quite simple. When the bank balance is low, I get in the mood. That doesn’t mean I write solely to earn money. No, writing is a profession, and I made up my mind long ago to treat it as such. I concluded if l had my old office job in the government, or had I still been working in a factory, or a steel mill, or a coal mine as I once did, or I did whatever I had to do to earn a crust of bread, and I decided I didn’t want to go to work the next day because I was up late or I had a headache, I would have had to answer to the boss. If I kept it up, missing work, I’d get fired. It’s that simple. My mother-in-law needs me to help paint the kitchen is not an excuse.

The fact is, we squander valuable time, time we spend watching TV or playing video games when we could spend the time behind a word processor writing stories. Or reading. When I made up my mind to be a writer, I had to determine my priorities, and I had to stick to them. No more excuses.

It’s a fact that outsiders, those not in the writing business, never treat writing as serious stuff. In the beginning years, before I put my foot down, I was asked to do things for friends and relatives that they wouldn’t dare ask if I were sitting in an office or in the mines digging coal. “You are only sitting at a desk. Why can’t you give me a hand?” they would ask. I had to learn to be nasty. “What’s wrong with him?” now they would say. I remember watching the painters sitting at their easels in Montmartre in Paris. They seemed oblivious to the world around them, and never answered questions asked them. I then noticed many of them had earplugs. Maybe that’s what we need when we sit at our work place and someone comes in and sits down “to watch us write.” It’s most difficult to teach others to respect your writing habits. But it was something I had to do.

A writer must learn to write every day, day in and day out. That’s a tough lesson I had to teach myself I learned, from necessity, not to say “never mind, I will make up for it later.” There is no making up ever for lost time. You can never make up for lost time. Time lost is time gone forever. Developing discipline is essential. The toughest time I had teaching myself discipline was when I was living on Tahiti. I had a grass hut at Point Venus on Matavia Bay, where the original HMS Bounty anchored, and every day without fail, my Aussie friends arrived on their Vespas, with their sarong-clad vahines sitting behind them, holding on tight, their long hair blowing in the wind. They would come charging up the drive full of fun and life. From a pandanas sack, they would pull out a demijohn of red wine and put it on the table with half a dozen coconut shells for cups. The girls would take a guitar and begin strumming. The guys would go for a swim, laughing and shouting. They always called for me to join them. I couldn’t. This took discipline, real discipline. I had work to do, my writing. I sat in my front room with its open front, watching my friends frolicking in the sun, while I pounded away at my Hermes. They often asked what I was writing, but I wouldn’t tell them. I was too embarrassed. I was writing down what they were doing, playing on the beach. 1 took down their conversation, attempting to capture their way of speech and their dialect.

I copied their jesting, their jokes, their four-letter words, everything. When I looked back at my written pages, from Tahiti alone, I had over 400,000 words. It wasn’t until years later when I returned to Tahiti and met Leonie, one of the girls who had been a frequent visitor at my house, and since had married one of the Australians, that I was reminded about my work habit. “You were always at your typewriter,” she said. “You never stopped.” She brought back all the memories. No wonder everyone thought I was a bore, working all the time. I may have been a bore to them, but by no means was I bored.

It was difficult, at times, but I had to get into the habit to sit down and write. I had to get into a routine. I liked the routine Hemingway had developed. He got up at dawn, wrote until noon, had lunch at one, with wine of course, and fished all afternoon aboard his yacht Pilar. He drank with his pals in the evening.

As a travel writer it is somewhat more difficult to develop a routine. I have to travel first and write later. That means working late at night to meet deadlines. People I know often accuse me of being a workaholic when they see me burning the midnight oil. The chances are that I had been traveling all day, or else I was doing interviews, and it was at night that I had to put in my time writing. I can’t let it wait until the next day.

Getting into the mood is getting into the habit. When I started writing, I had a friend who also wanted to be a writer more than anything else in the world. He wrote every day. He never talked about it, nor did he show me what he was writing, but he worked hard at it. The only thing he admitted was that it was a novel. He knew T wanted to achieve the same goal, to be a novelist. After all, that’s what every writer wants to do, write a book. When I sold my first piece, an article on technical writing, he criticized me terribly. How could I stoop so low? I was prostituting the art of writing. I don’t know if he ever finished his novel and got it published, but I do know my writing for technical manuals and for low-paying magazines was my stepping stone to better things.

And so I write, and continue to write, and don’t stop. As Edward Harriman, the railroad builder once said, “Much good work is lost for the lack of a little more.” I let that be my motto.

A writer has to overcome the great capacity for procrastination. One excuse is the lack of tools. It’s so easy to do, to put the blame on something or someone else. Maybe it’s your computer. The ads tell you that you need a new computer. Yours is not fast enough. Then there’s the Internet, and you have to check to see if you’ve “Got Mail.” Maybe your chair is uncomfortable, and you think you need a better one; or the lighting above your desk is not good; and so it goes. You can find all kinds of excuses, endless excuses. With all our modem conveniences, it seems life gets more confusing, not better. Before computers and word processing, our biggest worry was that our typewriter ribbon was wearing out, or even before that, that we would run out of ink.

I have to think of the masters. Nothing stopped them. Tolstoy wrote in a freezing, unheated studio, warming his fingers with a candle. Hemingway hurt his back in a plane crash in Africa, and it pained him so much, he had to write standing up. Thomas Wolfe was much the same when he wrote You Can’t Go Home Again. He, too, had hurt his back from slipping on the ice in New York, so he placed his typewriter on top of his kitchen icebox -he was 6′ 4″-and wrote standing up. Stevenson wrote with a pencil, and the stubs were often so short, he could hardly hold onto them. They all still wrote. I staunchly believe that computers make life easier for us, but they do not make us more productive. In the past, I produced just as many stories and books every year with my little, much-battered Hermes typewriter as I do now. I spend more time logging and sorting and playing around with these new machines and systems than I need to. Perhaps for research they may come in handy, but there is nothing like going to a library with its rows of books. A library is an inducement to writing. A book in your hands feels good. Pages slowly turned are a revelation. I never hear anyone say that about a computer.

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CH5B
A Little Background on “Who Needs a Road?”

I was in Al’s office, going over the photographs for the article that the magazine had bought, when Al asked if I ever considered sponsors. “What for?” I asked.

My Willys Jeep had served me well. With a camper trailer, I drove all across Europe and through the Iron Curtain countries into Russia. Had I not been arrested in Russia and thrown into jail for a couple of months, I would have continued on to Asia. The magazine had already bought my story on Russia, and with a check in my pocket, I was off to Spain where my Jeep was awaiting me. I intended to continue on overland to Singapore.

“I think I can get you a Toyota,” Al said.

“Never heard of it,” I fired back. This was in 1965, and Toyota wasn’t well known in the U.S., nor any other place around the world for that matter. Japan back then had the reputation of manufacturing cheap Tinker toys and Playboy firecrackers. Besides, even if l had heard of it, it didn’t matter. I had my Jeep waiting in Spain.

Al is a real salesman. He can outdo a car salesman. I still am not quite sure how he did it, but I agreed to give him a few weeks while I waited at my home in California – he did a little promotion. When he phoned two weeks later, he said he had a new Toyota for me, plus products from 30 sponsors, and $25,000 in the bank. “But do I need that Toyota?” I asked. “I still have my Jeep.”

He asked me to come to New York as quickly as possible, He said I could bunk with him at his posh apartment on 55th Avenue. I did. I went to New York and moved in with him. When I woke up one morning, a brand new Toyota Land Cruiser appeared outside our door. “It is yours, all yours,” Al said, “and it’s free.” What he didn’t tell me, until later, was all I had to do was drive it around the world. What a romantic thought. Around the world! The only trouble was, I didn’t want to drive around the world. I only wanted to drive from Europe to Asia over the Asian Highway. But Al had a different idea.

That was a number of years ago. Until all these recent world troubles began, driving from Europe to Asia was not unusual. Travelers were making the trip in converted buses, Mini Mokes, Jeeps, bicycles, and two Frenchmen even tried it on skateboards. My reason for the drive was that I wanted to have my own rugged four-wheel drive vehicle in Southeast Asia and to investigate some of the out-of-the-way sites on my way there.

The plan at first seemed to work. I bought a new Willys Jeep in America and shipped it aboard across the Atlantic to France. In Paris, I found a back-alley travel agent who boasted he could arrange a visa anywhere. Which they did: a fake visa. In three weeks, with a couple hundred dollars less in my bank account, I had a visa to motor across the Soviet Union to reach Asia. Six weeks later, while making an exit from the country, I was arrested at the border. The charge was spying, but after two months, without explanation, I was freed. But now I was also broke. I had to leave my Jeep in Spain and return to America to raise more funds for my trip.

I was solvent again when Argosy bought my story on Russia. And then I met Al Podell. There was another catch, aside from driving around the world. Al wanted to go with me. Now it was a Toyota, a camper, an extra body. No, I didn’t want anyone tagging along. “But I already have a Jeep in Spain,” I explained.

“I’ve raised $24,000!” he emphasized.

The next day, I was in New York, and I was about to learn something about the promotion game.

“There’s only one catch,” Al said.

“Your mother’s coming too,” I said.

“No. I needed a peg to hitch it on.”

“Hitch what on?” There was that word again. As I said, I didn’t understand New York PR talk. Al explained. To sell the trip, it had to be more than a drive to Asia. He had us booked for a motor trip around the world-the longest motor trip, non-repetitive miles, ever to be attempted.

This wasn’t what I had in mind. “What about your job?” I said.

“Never mind that,” he answered. “I quit.” “You did what?”

“I quit,” he repeated, only louder this time.

He quit, and I was stuck with the ex-picture editor of Argosy.

So began my motor trip around the world, 42,500 miles. Such a trip today-across North Africa, through the Middle East to Afghanistan, India, Pakistan and Burma, and then from South America up through Central America to the U.S.-would be impossible.

Toyota Motors was the sponsor, along with more than a dozen other companies. For each of them, I had to prove the world was a safe place in which to live and sell their products. An idealistic dream! The tragedy was that instead of the world becoming better for the traveler, as we all believed it would, conditions have grown worse. No longer can we hop in a car and drive not only from Europe to Asia but from one country to the next. Instead of announcing a new beginning for travel, my motor trip heralded the end of overland travel.

Looking back, in spite of difficulties, the trip did have its compensations; there were humorous moments, along with trying ones. It’s sad that it was the last motor trip anyone can make around the world.

At Al’s apartment, I spent a week answering the doorbell and telephone. A new Toyota Land Cruiser appeared on the street beneath my window, followed by a tent camper on two wheels. “It sleeps eight,” Al said proudly.

The doorbell continued to ring. Delivery boys appeared. Firestone high-flotation tires, plus an extra set. Picnic boxes. Gasoline stoves. Lanterns. Vacuum bottles. Two fast-erecting pop-up tents; they made a mess out the living room when they popped up, and we couldn’t get them down.

For our wearing comfort, the sponsors said, we needed raincoats, jackets, sports shirts, knit-shirts, insulated underwear, regular underwear, socks, gloves, trousers. Hat Corporation of America came across with cowboy hats and desert hats, safari hats and rain hats, cold weather hats and tropical hats.

There was more. Shoes, fourteen pairs. Not for the expedition but fourteen for each member. Then flashlight batteries, six cases, seven flashlights. Over one hundred aerosol cans with everything from shave cream to dog repellent. An archery company, with an assignment from a magazine, sent four bows and hundreds of arrows. An insect company sent twenty-two cases-repeat, twenty-two cases-of insect repellent, insecticide, disinfectant, car wax and shoe polish.

And still more: sun glasses and suntan oils, anti-freeze and desert coolant for the radiator, floor mats and mud guards, a year’s supply of paper plates and cups, fishing rods and fishing reels, a portable car massager and cigarette lighters that worked from solar energy. And a complete assortment of Pentax cameras and all the accessories to go with them.

There was a catch, and it was not Al’s mother. We had to advertise each company’s products. This meant taking along a photographer. Then a copywriter. Another journalist was added. We now had five, which meant we would need my jeep in Spain after all.

Public relations representatives appeared with stacks of typewritten sheets of instructions. A suntan lotion PR sales woman had five hundred mimeographed questionnaires for us to hand out, to see “what the natives use along the way for suntan oil.” The press agent for a clothing company wanted photos taken at “photogenic waterholes, especially with crocodiles and elephants and interesting things like that.” Another manufacturer wanted photos of us in woolen sweaters in front of the Taj Mahal. The Bourbon Institute of America arranged for us to pick up cases of Kentucky Bourbon in major cities around the world.

Imagine trying to drive with such a load. I couldn’t put on the brakes without boxes of paper cups hitting me on the head, or one hundred flashlight batteries falling out when I opened the glove box. In desperation, when we were in Spain, I unloaded a half-ton of supplies on a band of roaming Gypsies. But then in Jerez, the wine capital of Spain, Gonzales Bodega, not wanting to be outdone by our New York sponsors, presented us with six cases of brandy and another six of sherry. Now when I threw on the brakes, I was threatened by a couple cases of brandy sailing through the windscreen.

Sponsorship for exploration and major expeditions, where costs are high, is often necessary, but one can overdo it. Since that first motor trip around the world, I decided to limit sponsors to only a few sponsors. Besides, I hate driving around with labels and logos plastered all over my vehicles, like a Formula One racecar. And how miserable it can be posing in woolen sweaters in front of the Taj Mahal in India in 110-degree heat-just to please a sponsor.

Some sponsor, however, are easier to satisfy than others. I didn’t mind the Bourbon Institute of America. They gave us six cases of whiskey, shipped ahead and waiting for us in capital cities along our route. All we had to do was drink the bourbon.

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CH5A
A WORD ABOUT SPONSORS

It might sound ideal, finding a sponsor and have someone else pay your bills. But remember, nothing is free. Travel writers are known for the freebies they get, but at the same time as it may be free, they have to be cautious. I was excited when the world famous Manila Hotel in Manila offered me a room.

The old Manila Hotel, built in 1912 by the U.S. Corps of Engineers, is a showpiece of the Philippines. It was the meeting place for Americans during the colonial period, and became General Douglas Macarthur’s headquarters in 1935. The hotel withstood the bombing of World War II, and bounced back after the war. Walking through the front door, you can feel the opulence and wealth. That’s the feeling I had when I entered the front door with my suitcase and Hermes typewriter. An added surprise came when the management gave me the Presidential Suite. What splendor, and that even included a private swimming pool. It all sounds well and good, but let’s look at the bottom line. The chambermaid, the bellhops, the doorman, the consigners, they all didn’t know I was a travel writer on a budget and not a big spender. I don’t have big tips to hand out to all those lined up at departure time. So what do I do? I tiptoe out of my room, carrying my own luggage, and look down the long hall hoping no one is in sight. No one. I managed to make it to the front desk. I am always a bit apprehensive when I ask for my bill, even when I am told beforehand that the room is complimentary. I avoided taking items from the mini bar, as the prices are outrageous, and I want to make sure when I scan the bill that I wasn’t charged for in-house movies. I scanned the channels, but I didn’t actually request a movie. I get through that hurdle, and tell them I paid cash for my meals, while in actuality I ate in a noodle shop in town. But then comes something I never expected. This can’t be. It’s the tax.

The management can give you a free room, but they cannot disavow the government tax. So I was in a hotel room that cost US$1,500 a night, and the tax is 13%. A four-star hotel in Makati would have cost me less money. But it’s too late now, and still, it’s not over. There’s the door man and the two bellboys who grab my luggage and camera bag, and the third boy who goes to open the trunk of the hotel limousine with its white embroidered doilies on the back of the seats, and I have to tell them that I don’t want the limousine. I want a taxi. No, not a hotel taxi. A public taxi, one that they have to call up from the street. It’s all very embarrassing. It’s part of the learning experience. Nothing is free.

Freebies for travel writers are hard to come by in America and Europe; but in Asia it’s very much a barter society. Hotels, air tickets, bus and train tickets, tours, cruises, rental cars and any number of services, all in exchange for write-ups in magazines and newspapers. For ten years, I had a full travel page with the Bangkok Post every Monday. Aside from the text, I had to provide photographs. My contract with the Post paid a flat fee with no travel allowances or expenses. I could, however, solicit my own transportation and accommodation. For ten years, I traveled the world, and it didn’t cost me a cent. I not only sent back weekly travel destination stories for the newspaper, I was able to gather material and photographs or magazines stories.

There’s no doubt about it, freebies are a good deal for the writer, but what are the sponsors getting? They actually are the ones who are benefiting. Advertising costs money, a great deal of money, and for giving away a hotel room, a free car or an airline ticket, they get a page in a newspaper and two or three pages in a magazine .

.Advertisements in the media-newspapers, magazines, radio and TV-can cost them many thousands of dollars. Take, for example, The Academy Awards telecast on ABC Network. The cost for a 30-second commercial in 2007 was $80.7 million.

Editors don’t want writers to mention sponsors’ names for they feel sponsors should pay for advertisements, and that’s understandable. But there are ways that I learned to getting around this. I figure out a way to work the sponsor’s name into the text, and I use photographs that how their products. It’s easy if it’s a hotel or car rental agency. Furthermore, a plus for the advertisers is that such writing is not a commercial advertisement, and people are generally more inclined to read the story with photographs than they would read an ad.

Editors will take advantage of novice writers, and there i not much the writer can do but go along with the system until he is established and has credibility as a writer. I remember an incident when I made a pitch to the editors of National Geographic for a story I had in mind. I had met a surveyor who was working for National Geodetic Survey and was mapping the Choco Jungle in Columbia. It sounded like a marvelous story for the Geographic so I went to Washington to talk to the editors. I was surprised at how well I was received. “Yes, it sounds like a good idea for a story,” the editor said. I was elated. Now let’s see what you can do.” There was no contract; no assignment; but Geographic was giving me a chance. It was up to me. What a lark. I learned later they do that with many writers who have a possible story idea. String writers along, that’s their motto. The magazine has nothing to lose. It’s their policy-don’t tum anyone down. They have their reason, which I learned later. The story told, and it’s quite reliable, is that a young Norwegian anthropologist went to the Geographic office in Washington and wanted to see the editor. The year was 1948. The man had an idea. He wanted to build a balsa wood raft and drift from South America across the Pacific to prove that the Polynesians came from South America. The editor wondered who this nut was. Float in a raft across the vast Pacific. How insane. The man was a joke, and sent from one office to another, and each time he gave his sales pitch. He eventually realized he was being made a fool by the staff. The anthropologist went back to Norway, gathered a few other scientists who had the spirit for adventure and raised enough money to sponsor the voyage himself. They named the balsa raft Kon Tiki and the voyage became the most successful adventure of the century. Their adventure appeared in magazines around the world and a documentary for both the silver screen and television became a sensation. National Geographic had lost out on the biggest story of all time.

Thereafter, the management of National Geographic issued the order that no project, no matter how outrageous it may sound, was to be turned down. I surmised after learning the facts about National Geographic that my idea about a story on mapping the Choco jungle fell into the same category. But when I look back, I can’t blame the editors. My photography with a cheap, one-lens Retina camera was hardly National Geographic stuff. I guess they just didn’t want to discourage me. But I did experience another letdown by the magazine, and this was very unethical, I had been living on Tahiti. Back in those years, ne could get a berth aboard a copra boat and voyage to II the remote islands for a fare that was a pittance. I made one voyage to the low-lying Tuamotu Islands. There, I discovered some very courageous men-pearl divers. These remarkable men could dive down to the ocean floor some 120 feet below without the aid of scuba or compressed air. They dove with nothing more than a tiny pair of homemade goggles. Some divers, I was told, reached depths farther than 120 feet. What a story for National Geographic. I didn’t have proper underwater camera equipment, but if l could get an assignment to do the story, would get the equipment. I went to Washington and got an appointment with the picture editor. With excitement! I met the editor-I won’t mention his name-in his office and told him about the pearl divers of the Tuamotus. He wasn’t interested. He probably saw me with my Retina camera. Heart fallen, I left the office and didn’t pursue the idea any further. Then, about three of four years later, the story appeared in National Geographic. I couldn’t believe it. Of course, it was a beautiful story with some very fine photography, but still, it was my story and my idea. I went back to the Geographic office but played it cool. I went to see the picture editor with the pretense that I had some other ideas for stories. He didn’t remember me from the past. On his shelf were National Geographic magazines. Casually I asked him how they get their story ideas, and before he could reply I reached up and pulled down from the shelf the issue with the pearl diver story. I turned to the story and asked him how he came about getting the story, “Oh, that,” he said, “I had a friend who had a boat and was sailing to the Pacific and I told him about the pearl divers. I thought it would make a good story.”

What do you do?

The only salvation is to move on. Forget it. As my friend Al Podell, who was the picture editor for Argosy when I began writing for the magazine, said to me, “To get a sponsor, you need a peg.” A peg, some PR gobbledygook that I didn’t understand. But Al was my teacher. He taught me how to get sponsored, and what that peg was-merely a gimmick- that you had to hitch on to. But he also taught me sponsorship can also be overdone. You can end up with more than you want or need, and then you find yourself stuck. I found this to be true when I returned to New York from Russia, with my Willys Jeep waiting in Spain for me to continue on to Southeast Asia.

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Chapter 4
WHO NEEDS MONEY ANYWAY?

Let’s face it. Mr. Sullivan-the editor at Life who told me to give it up-was right in one respect. If I wanted to write to make money, forget it. I should have studied biochemistry or rocket engineering instead. It would have been easier, and taken less time.

If it’s not for money, why does one want to write? When someone tells me they want to write and I ask them why they do, most likely they won’t have an answer. They will hem and haw around. What they really mean, and are unwilling to admit, is that what they want is to do something, a profession that will make them happy. Happy is the key word. We want to be happy in doing what we are doing. What pleases us the most? After all, what is our goal in life? For most of us, it is to be happy. Wikipedia, the on-line encyclopedia, states, “Happiness is an emotional or affective state that feels good or pleasing.” It goes on to say that the happy or ideal life is sometimes referred to as the American dream-or anyone’s dream, I say-which can be seen as the idea that most goals can be attained through sufficient hard work and determination, birth and privilege notwithstanding. While many artists, writers, scholars, and religious leaders can and do consider their work to fall within the dream, it is usually thought of as being measured by financial success. I like what Albert Schweitzer had to say on the subject. “Success is not the key to happiness,” he said. “If you love what you are doing, you will be successful.”

If we really like what we are doing, and for me that is writing, then we can at least acquire a measure of happiness. Albert Schweitzer was right. If we base happiness on financial success, then, as writers, we are wrong. If we write because we like to write, then we may find happiness. If we write because we want to get rich or be famous, then unhappiness is likely to follow. I do not write for money. I get paid for my writing, but that is not my aim. I write because I like to write. I want to write. Friends, and even relatives, will criticize me for putting effort and time into a book that may never sell. Does it matter? I am doing what I want to do, not for the profit it will gain for me but for the desire to do it-like being able to swim the length of the pool underwater with one breath. As some people enjoy sitting in front of the TV watching soap operas and quiz shows, I like to sit in front of my computer (it used to be my Hermes) writing stories. I am not saying that I reject profits from the results of my writing when they come my way. And, unlike William Saroyan did, I would not turn down the Pulitzer Prize for believing writing should not be for profit. When money comes, well and good, but that is not altogether my motive. As it is, from my working hard at my trade, I have lived rather well from my writing-but there is no home in Malibu.

There is one dimension for the writer that reaches beyond wanting to be happy, and that is purpose. A writer will never fully be happy without a purpose. What is our purpose for wanting to write? We have a message we want to tell. We’ve heard it said that most people work a lifetime with one objective in mind-to retire. To sit back, relax and enjoy life. That’s not a writer’s aim, not a sincere writer. What did Ernest Hemingway say about writing? “As long as there is me, as long as there is pen and paper, that’s how long I will write.” Somerset Maugham was still scribbling out plot ideas when he was ninety-four.

James Clavell, the author of Tai Pan, set me straight on what is meant by purpose. I had the good fortune to meet the author through mutual friends, and we talked about the writing business. I recall his saying that book editors these days are interested in blockbusters-nothing else. He used the term “blockbuster” and gave it meaning-over-inflated productions that rely more on special effects than words and characters. The intent of a blockbuster is to distract the readers rather than engage him. Blockbusters marked the death of good writing. They are the product of market strategies. Their purpose is well defined.

Great editors like Maxwell Perkins who fostered Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and others are no more. Today there a few dozen successful authors who write what the movies want; they are the ones who hold the monopoly on writing. They follow a prescribed format. We began to see the change coming in the late 1960s and 1970s when the blockbuster fiction writers began to take over with the sole purpose to entertain and make money while doing it. Their glossy-covered books began to appear everywhere, with a name like Robert Ludlum, Sidney Sheldon, Stephen King, Ken Follett, Harold Robbins, Danielle Steel and John Le Carre appearing in print bigger than the titles of their books. Their books dominate the bestseller list. Some will say that is what the public wants, so give them what they want. I don’t go along with that at all. More likely, it’s what the public is fed, fed by paid critics, fed by paid book reviewers and fed by the media on the take. I had one critic tell me you can take a mediocre book and, after dumping enough money into it for promotion, you can make it a best seller. Good writing, he concluded, is not necessary.

Clavell felt sorry for new writers, for many writers might have good stories to tell, but the chances of finding a publisher for them is almost impossible. What options do they have? One, they might consider publishing themselves.

Of course, just mention publishing your own book and you are bound to be criticized. It’s demoralizing to have someone say to you, “So no one will publish your book, you’ll have to publish it yourself.”

Hold on! We should not let that faze us.

First, there is no denying that there’s a stigma attached to publishing one’s own book. When writers do, they have to face criticism. But self-publishing is better than not publishing a book at all. So, I say, what if the public looks down on self-publishing, does it matter? If people find that self-publishing has such a stigma, then don’t bother reading George Bernard Shaw, Charlotte Bronte, Rudyard Kipling, Virginia Wolf, Walt Whitman, and Henry David Thoreau. Why? Because all of them first appeared in print through publishing their books themselves. Apparently Tom Sawyer sold so badly in its first printing that, to get it into print the second time, Mark Twain started his own publishing company.

Literature has, in fact, quite a tradition of legendary figures being rejected time and again by the mainstream before they gained acceptance. This includes James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man which was turned down by every publisher in England. Forty-seven publishers knocked back J.P. Donleavy’s The Ginger Man. Did he give up? No! At one time, self-publishing was an honorable method of self-expression. But then something happened. By the early 20th century, as publishing firms grew, “vanity publishing” became a derogatory term, synonymous with a desperate writer. “It’s a wrong perception,” says Doug Ingold, managing Director of Wolfenden Publishers. “Self-publishing has always been a vital alternative outlet. It has its own important cultural function to perform. Today, with the frenzy of publishing house amalgamations, it is more important than before. With the advent of desktop technology, it is more accessible than ever.”

My objective is to write, to write what I want to write, and worry about having my work published when it is ompleted. I don’t need to worry about what I will feed my horse until I buy the horse.

People ask if I ever have writer’s block. Some call it the scourge of writing. I daresay, I have in late years l amed to overcome writer’s block. When writer’s block gins, I grab my notepad and go for a walk or take a drive.

I do much of my writing away from my desk. Sometimes I take my pocket tape recorder with me. People ask how I can produce so much. The reason is I write constantly . When I am on the road or soaring across the skies, I jot own notes about how I feel at the time, the sounds and smells, the other people I see. Since I write a lot of adventure stuff, I actually jot down notes when the action is happening, and that can be during a storm at sea or at a rest stop on a jungle trip. If l go mountain climbing, I take tape recorder. The grunts and groans, and the panting from being out of breath help by reminding me later of the agony I went through. I transcribe these notes when writer’s block approaches.

Other than cash rewards, writing does have perks all own. “I cannot help thinking just how good a life I have as a writer,” writer Robert Davis wrote in an e-mail to me while sitting in a beach resort on Koh Samui on the east coast of Thailand overlooking the Gulf of Siam. He was on a magazine assignment. “I still can’t believe the perks that we enjoy as travel writers-from flying business-class to being treated as a VIP at many five-star hotels around the world.” Robert enjoys the thrills from the benefits of writing as much as seeing his name on by-lines. You might say he’s a happy man. His problem is sometimes he’s too happy and forgets to write. That’s the time when he grumbles.

Those benefits Robert mentioned are the perks of travel writing. But there is also a downside. If you get a “freebie,” you must follow through with the assignment. Sometimes sponsors become impatient when they don’t see immediate results. It becomes my duty to keep sponsors informed. Sponsors have to be reminded that most magazines need at least a two-month lead time, and many editors may plan a year in advance. It is not unusual for me to have as many as ten to fifteen travel articles and features out with different magazines at the same time. I make a point not to annoy editors with questions, querying them over and over as to when their feature will run. Submit it and forget it-that’s the rule I follow. It’s important for me to keep records, where each story is and when it was submitted. For years I kept records in a bound notebook but now with computers I file them on CD.

Generally speaking, writers might not be well paid, and by some standards, it’s pathetically low, but how do you evaluate free hotel accommodation, free air tickets, free dinners and free-guided tours that come with the business? You can’t.

How many times have I heard people say they envy my job? They would like to do the same, but would they be willing to suffer through lean times when the checks are slow in coming? Writers are usually the last in line to be paid. First come editors sitting at the top, followed by sub-editors, proofreaders, clerks, receptionists, sweepers, and, most definitely, the printer. The printer is pretty high up the scale. Only then, at the very bottom is the writer. Getting that check can be most difficult. Payment varies from publication to publication. Some publishers, but very, very few, pay when the material is received and approved. Others pay upon publication, and then it might be at the end of the month or their so-called pay period. Still with others, it’s a flat thirty days, and even ninety days after publication. Of course, you have to send in a voucher, and more than one. Vouchers have the habit of getting lost. Sometimes the vouchers I had to submit and re-submit totaled in paper volume more than the story itself. It’s criminal. It’s no small wonder that The Writers Guild of America went on strike in the fall of 2007 for more benefits for their writers. It’s a pity freelance writers don’t have a union.

When I began making a living at travel writing, I enjoyed the freebies that came my way-airline tickets, hotel rooms, meals, rental cars. However, in time I learned that nothing is free. I became careful with what I accepted. But I also found, on occasion, to be grateful for a freebie. I can think of a free room I got at the Oriental as an example. The Oriental Hotel, as we know, is reputed to be the best hotel in the world, having been voted the best for ten consecutive years. It’s a splendid hotel, and you know it the moment you step through the front door. Ever since Joseph Conrad appeared on the scene, although as a seaman and not an honored guest, writers have always had a special affinity to The Oriental. Many of their names still live on in the hotel, tacked to the wall in the Author’s Lounge, and include Somerset Maugham, Noel Coward, James Michener, Alec Waugh, John Steinbeck Ernest Hemingway, Gore Vidal, Han Suyin, Peter U tinov, Barbara Cartland and many more.

Back to my story. The hotel was having a Food Summit Conference and as a writer for the Bangkok Post at the time I was invited. Being a busy weekend with heavy traffic-that was before the Skytrain-Mr. Kurt Wachtvietl, the general manager, offered me a room at the hotel, which I gladly accepted. The next day when I was leaving, I thanked him and said that one day I might be wealthy enough to pay for my stay at the hotel. “Nonsense,” he said, “most anyone who has money to spend can stay at the hotel, but not everyone can get a free room.” Not everyone gets a free room! How could I not be happy being a writer? I might also add, the hotel has placed my book At Home in Asia in a sealed time vault to be opened when the hotel celebrates its 200th birthday-some seventy years from now.

I had a heated discussion with my own son Paul about being a travel writer. It was all about money-he had applied to enter Berkeley. “That’s setting your goals pretty high,” I said. “It’s a good idea, but I don’t want you to be disappointed. Berkeley is tough to get into.” And then I made a rash statement that I could have regretted. I told him, mostly joking, that ifhe were accepted, I would take him on a trip around the world. I was sure he wouldn’t make it. He did make it and was accepted, so I had to keep my end of the bargain. But imagine the cost for two for a trip around the world. I needed two airline tickets to begin with. I approached the general manager of Scandinavian Airline System in Bangkok. I convinced him what the airline needed was a good history book of the airline’s involvement in Southeast Asia. It was not a bad idea since SAS is one of the oldest airlines to operate in that part of the world. The manager liked the idea, but he was under a tight budget. I explained that writing such a history was a major endeavor and required a great deal of research and endless interviews-but I would write it for airline tickets. I asked for three tickets around the world. Since we were at the bargaining table, I pitched high, leaving room to negotiate-three tickets, one for me, one for my son, and one for my wife. I didn’t have to bargain. The manager agreed.

We made the trip-Bangkok, Singapore, Bali, across India, to Scandinavia, Paris, New York, Washington, D.C., Chicago, St. Louis, Albuquerque, San Francisco, and back home. Hotels gave us free accommodation; AVIS provided a car to drive around Europe and another one to drive across America. We climbed to the top of the Eiffel Tower, stood in front of the Capitol in Washington, visited the Indian reservations in New Mexico, hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon and drove over the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

At the conclusion of the trip, the sponsors were happy, and I made sure they had stories in newspapers and magazines. But there was a rub. I asked my son, after he graduated from Berkeley, what he would want to do. He was very frank. “Dad, I hope you don’t mind, but I would like a job where the checks are on time. Writing and photography, you have to wait to get paid and then you never know.”

“Fair enough,” I said, “but what do you want out of life?”

“Dad, I want a good job, and I want to travel. I want to see more of the world.”

I didn’t want to discourage him, and I certainly hoped, like all fathers do, that he would land a good job after graduation, with good pay. But what did concern me was how he would ever be able to squeeze all that travel he wanted to do into two-week vacations every year.

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Trivial and Insignificant, But  Important Details

Time was when the toughest part of writing was staring a blank sheet of paper in the typewriter. It’s not much different looking at a blank screen on the computer. James Allen, the English philosopher, in one of his books, devoted the entire first chapter to “beginnings.” He wrote, “Most beginnings are small, and appear trivial and insignificant, but in reality they are the most important things in life.” We could have the greatest idea and the greatest plot in the world, but unless we make a strong beginning, the idea and the plot have no meaning, and there will be no fruitage. Whereas a modest idea and even an incomplete plot often produce success when companied by even an “insignificant” beginning. Even the smallest of actions, the ones James Allen called trivial and insignificant, can lead to great success. Consider Sir Isaac Newton’s principle that a “body at rest tends to main at rest and a body in motion tends to remain in motion.” This definitely applies to the action principle in writing. Once I’ve taken the first step (even a baby step), the next step seems easier to take. When I begin writing a book, I like to compare it with my building a seventy-foot schooner, a task everyone told me was impossible. When I was working on the transom, I would never walk around to the bow of the ship, for I would certainly become disillusioned. There was so much more to do, and it might make me feel I could never complete the job. But I did complete it, even though it took me years. The same applies to writing a book, or a short story, or anything. I get started, and the rest falls into place, in time.

I have to admit, the unfortunate thing about my being a writer is that I can never turn off. There is no five o’clock quitting time. I am forever working out plots in my mind.

I did very badly in college, and I think I now know the reason. When the professor was lecturing, I was turning his words into a plot, and I would soon be lost in my own reverie. But now I question, how important is a plot?

Dictionaries tell us a plot is basically a storyline, the arrangements of events in a story. It’s what happens in the story. I find I can make a story most interesting when I introduce a subplot, and it becomes even better when I have a couple of subplots. My duty as a writer is to make the story as believable as possible, regardless of how implausible it may seem in real life. Plots can take on a wide range of subjects: tragedy, comedy, romance, satire, poem, short stories and novel. Quoting from Clifton Fadiman, author, critic and member of the Board of Editors of the Encyclopedia Britannica, plots can be plot-driven or else character-driven. In the former, the storyline itself is the main thrust, which is the opposite of the latter, the character-driven plot. I try to make my characters the focal point.

The question that arises is do histories and biographies need plots? Writers of history record real-life events. His• tory books, we conclude, do not need plots. I believe that is what makes history dull, the lack of a plot. However, if we inject a plot into history books, we can make them interesting. Instead of facts becoming isolated events, we must attempt to give them objective connections. Authors must give their history books a theme.

I attempt to do the same when I write a biography. It’s often said biographies do not need plots. I disagree. For the past ten years, I have been putting together the notes for the biography, Painted in the Tropics. It’s the story of Swiss artist, Theo Meier. Theo followed in the footsteps of Paul Gauguin and went to Tahiti to paint. Disillusioned with Tahiti (the girls were reluctant to take their clothes off), he went to Bali where he lived and painted for twenty-two years before finally settling in Chiang Mai in northern Thailand. His life is a string of events, all certainly exciting and dramatic, but in the end, my biography was lacking a plot, something to hold the events together. It dawned on me one day that Theo is the last of his kind. In this day and age, no one can do what he has done, nor achieve what he has achieved. With this in mind, I created a plot. All the events in the storyline must lead to that conclusion, there can be no other artist like Theo Meier.

As a young boy, I became fascinated with Robinson Crusoe. Here was a story about a person who was pure fiction. Clifton Fadiman, whom I mentioned previously, stated that Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe is one of the most famous books in the world. Yet, he declares, Robinson Crusoe has no plot. Why does it not need a plot? Because Defoe wrote it as a daydream, a perfect daydream, “systematic and wishful thinking” Fadiman called it. When you examine the storyline, you have to agree with him. Robinson Crusoe satisfies all those dreams of boyhood; but in reality, they affect men, as well. Look at the concept: every male dreams of being completely self-sufficient, with control of his own private domain. He likes the idea of success through the wholesome primitive use of muscle and practical good sense. And, from Fadiman, “doing all this in an exotic setting quite remote from his dull daily habitat; and finally of living in a self-made Utopia without any of the puzzling responsibilities of a wife and children.”

That, however, does not mean plots are not necessary. What would our world be if we couldn’t dream up plots?

Travel writing was my way to get started. It became my forte but I did not let it become an end in itself, only the beginning. I learned to parlay travel writing by using it as a stepping stone to other writing that I wanted to do-essays, histories, short stories, books. But the lessons I learned along the way didn’t come easy.

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Scattered But Complete Contents

Keeping a journal and writing in it eve1y day had, for me, another advantage. It taught me the habit of discipline. I made it a daily practice. I jotted down my thoughts and my feelings no matter how mundane they seemed at the time. If I didn’t have my notebook with me, I wrote on a scrap of paper, on a napkin, even a match box cover. I watched James Michener do this in Spain. He wrote notes on envelopes that he kept in his inside suit coat pocket. He wrote in a fine, minuscule writing so he could get more on a page. I often wondered if he turned the envelopes over to a secretary to transcribe. He must have, considering the volumes that he wrote.

My writing every day became a habit, which is what writing is all about. It’s a profession, and I’ve learned to treat it as such. I never let myself get bogged down in rules. Christina Jones, the popular British author of women’s contemporary fiction, comes to mind. She said in an interview, “Don’t worry about breaking the rules. Write because you love it. Write what you like reading-write for yourself as well as for your public. If you love your characters and your story, then it’ll show, and your readers will love them, too.”

I have a few principles that I follow. I like big, fancy• sounding words; they fascinate me. I collect them in a notebook and often read them over. But I do not use them, or seldom do. I may stick a big word into my text perhaps because of the way it sounds, impressive, but in the end, I cut it out. My whole idea of writing is to be understood. Why then would I use words the majority of the people don’t understand? By using such words, I am only defeating my purpose. I certainly don’t want to use big words to make myself sound erudite, as many authors do. Sometimes it’s unavoidable. It may be certain big words are the only words that describe my thoughts to the fullest. I like what William Faulkner had to say about Ernest Hemingway: “He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.”

I will emphasize the point I made earlier. When a writer says, “You don’t understand what I am saying,” then the writer has got it wrong. A writer’s duty is to make his writing understandable. To say such a thing, the reader doesn’t understand, is to admit ignorance. Also if a writer makes statements like “it’s beyond description” then he should find another profession. Nothing should be beyond description. Another no-no is “words cannot explain it.” I suggest to these people to take up painting and not writing. By the same token, I make every attempt to omit needless words. Vigorous writing is concise. Example: “He walked into the bar and the bartender put the lid back on the free lunch” bowl.” That says it all with not a single adjective or a long description. You know immediately guy who entered the bar is a bum. I endeavor to write in a way which comes naturally, and I do this with nouns and verbs, not adjectives. Paint! Draw! I draw the picture for others to see it in their minds. Above all, I avoid fancy words or hackneyed phrases: cold as ice, hot as hell, or as did above-“by the same token.” The duty of a writer is to create new expressions.

Take a look at Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn. There are not many words in the books that an eighth grader wouldn’t understand. Much of our modern literature comes from these books. A writer’s aim should be to put down on paper what he actually sees and what he actually feels, and to do this in the best and simplest way he can. This is what Mark Twain did in Tom Sawyer. He put readers there in a small town on the Mississippi River, whitewashing fences.

To get started writing each day, I have to get myself into the mood, and to do this I read a little beforehand. Maybe only a page or two, but it must be good writing, something that I find thought inspiring-not trash. I treat writing the same. I pick up a good book, a classic, and begin reading. It’s kick-starting me into action. But I make sure it’s good writing and not rubbish. When I go to a gym, I do warm-up exercises first. Writing for me is the same. If I lay off writing for a few weeks, or even a few days, I find myself out of shape, and I must go through some warm-up exercises first. Reading is that exercise.

But what constitutes good writing? The classics, perhaps? According to Carl Van Doren, critic and Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer, “A classic is a book that doesn’t have to be rewritten.” In other words, it’s a book that can stand the ravages of time.

When I was a beginner with hope of becoming published, it took courage to sit down and write. My fear was not the act of writing but the fear that someone would laugh at me. It helped when I read what Eddie Rickenbacker had to say about fear. When he was asked if he was frightened when he flew the Atlantic, he said: “Courage is doing what you are afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you are scared.”

When I ponder a new story idea, I have worked out a good testing ground to see if I am on the right track. I talk it over with friends-but I do it surreptitiously. I can gauge a story’s weight by reaction from others. This works well when I give a public talk. I can feel out the audience and determine their likes and dislikes. Friends at a dinner table can do this for me, too. My listeners become my teachers, unknown to them.

If I find it difficult developing a new story, I sit down and proceed as if I am writing a letter to a friend or a letter home. No fancy words and no questionable prose. I keep it light, and I am not afraid to make fun of myself. I write to inform not to embellish.

Writing letters can be dangerous. What does it matter with a little fib in a letter? I can think of a specific case where simple letters written home turned out to be explosive. It happened in Vietnam. I was covering the war as a correspondent, and I got many leads by listening to Gls telling their experiences. I listened to one story a couple of Gls joked about regarding a corporal who sat behind a desk in Saigon. Everyone back home felt sorry for him for risking his life at war. So as not to disappoint them, he wrote war stories in his letters home. But the tales he told were not what happened to him but what had happened to others. When he did return home, he returned as a war hero. His mother had been handing his letters over to the local newspaper, and they published them. The town even named a street after him. I wonder what he feels every time he looks into a mirror. I make sure I don’t put myself to the same situation.

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