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WRITER’S FATIGUE

We are all subject to writer’s fatigue. In the beginning, I used to get stuck on a writing project in which, after time, I lost interest. That’s when writing becomes boring. My solution is to write a number of things at the same time. When one gets boring, I switch to another. I am usually writing two or three books at once. I keep adding thoughts to each one. It’s surprising how rapidly the pages can fill up. The same is true for magazine articles. I always have half a dozen in the mill at one time. When I go back and re-read the material, I can readily see my mistakes or what needs to be changed and re-written.

It was difficult, but I had to learn not be afraid to scrap material no matter how many hours, days or months that I spent on it. Novice writers usually think what they write is great. Consider what Miguel de Cervantes, the author of Don Quixote, had to say about it. “No fathers or mothers think their own children are ugly; and this self-deceit is yet stronger with respect to the offspring of the mind.” Rarely does a fledgling writer think that his or her writing is bad. Criticize the work of a novice, and the first thing he will say to you is, “But you don’t understand; let me explain.” If I have to explain in spoken words what my writing means, then I am not coming across. I attempt to write so the written word is understood and does not need an oral explanation.

Sometimes, distasteful as it may be, it’s mandatory that I start all over from the beginning, for no amount of rewriting will do. It happens to the best of writers. Imagine what happened to Hemingway when he was struggling with his first novel. He was living in Paris and had been befriended by literary guru Gertrude Stein, as had so many other writers of his time-F. Scott Fitzgerald. Dos Passos, Sherwood Anderson and many others. Hemingway had completed the draft of his first novel and gave it to Stein to comment on. She read it with care and told him it was good and then said for him to start over. He didn’t agree with her and probably would not have done so except for the misfortune that while on a train to Italy he lost his suitcase which contained the manuscript. It was a misfortune that turned into a fortune. He was compelled to start over. We may never have seen The Sun Also Rises had he tried to salvage the old script. In fact, he might not have written another thing had it failed, although somehow I doubt it.

I got into the early habit of writing every day, even if it was only jotting down notes. I did this by keeping a journal. How often that journal came in handy. How well I remember the time I lived in Tahiti, struggling to become a writer, and no one was buying my stories. But I didn’t stop writing. I spent much time writing in my journal. The journal was detailed, and what I wrote was confidential, not intended for publication. It contained information on people I had met and included our conversations-some• times word for word. It was raw and honest. I considered the journal as a kind of training exercise. I wrote in it each day about all the people I had met, what I had seen and experienced and what I had felt. I treated my journal as an artist would treat a sketchpad.

A few years later, still in my lean years, I took a summer job teaching in a school in Washington, D.C. One of my students was the secretary for the travel editor of the Washington Post. She mentioned that they were doing a write up on New Zealand, but at the last minute, the writer assigned to the project hadn’t produced. I said that I had taken notes on New Zealand and could write a story. I did the story, gave it to her, and it was printed the following Sunday in the travel section. How thrilled l was to be published in the Washington Post. The following week, the Post was covering Central America and was short on material. l wrote a piece “Through the Paper Curtain to Panama.” I had taken notes on the trip when I came up from Panama to New York. The story was published and others followed-“Harry’s New York Bar in Paris,” “Across the Australian Outback,” “Cheap Dining in Tokyo” and a raft of others, a story every week. The editor became suspicious and wanted to know where I was get• ting all my material. According to his secretary, who was our go-between, the editor had a strong suspicion that I might be plagiarizing the material. But from where was I getting it? He couldn’t figure it out, and it was driving him crazy. I explained to his secretary that my material came from a journal I kept. The editor became convinced my journal was fictitious, that it didn’t exist. One Friday evening, I had a surprise when he came to the school, walked right up to my desk and asked to see my journal. Of course, I had to tum it over to him. If l refused, as they say in Asia, I’d lose face. He not only wanted to look at it, but he asked if he could take it home with him over the weekend. He agreed to return it the following Monday.

I felt terrible all weekend. A total stranger was reading my most intimate writing. I phoned him the first thing Monday morning. He wasn’t in. I phoned Tuesday, he was in New York. On Thursday, he phoned me. He had news for me. I couldn’t believe it, but he had taken my journal, all 400,000 words, to Random House in New York, and the editors were interested in publishing it. Would I go to New York? Would I! I was on the next train. It was my big break, the kind you always hear about: “local writer makes good.” Random House would publish my book, and they offered a hefty advance. I was at the top of the world. The chief editor explained his staff would work closely with me. Would I agree? How could I tum down such an offer? I agreed. “I’ll need time to go over the manuscript,” I said. “You know-name changes, cut some of the stuff out.”

There was silence. Finally the editor spoke up. He wanted the manuscript exactly as it was, with no changes.

That was not possible. What I had written was confidential. I had written about people I got to know, like Marlon Brando. I wrote about a Tahitian girl on the movie set of Mutiny on the Bounty whom Brando had gotten pregnant. I told how the girl quit the movie and had run off with an Australian surfer. I couldn’t destroy the girl and the Australian guy she had married. There were others that I had come to know and wrote about in my journal-Gardner McKay from the TV series “Adventures in Paradise,” actors James Mason and Richard Harris and writers who I won’t name. I had to tum down the offer. That was a tough decision. I was doomed before I started. I feel I can talk about it now as all the people mentioned above have passed away.

I started keeping a journal when I was a young Marine in China. It was dreadful, filled with clichés, misspellings, and the grammar was deplorable. I put it away and forgot about it until a few years ago. Like most other Marines who had fought in the Pacific, I wanted to forget the war. We had new lives to begin, and the past was the past. Not until the Japanese began turning history around did I decide to write my version of the war. The result was Take China, The Last of the China Marines. Among the comments I received after its publication was how could I possibly remember everything I wrote in the book? I must have a good memory. No, I had a good journal that I kept, as badly written as it was. What really hurt was not “what” I put down but “how” I put it down. In China, I was studying Chinese and kept some of my journal in Chinese, phonetic Chinese, and these were usually the juicy bits that I didn’t want others to read. Today, I can’t read these sections and I wonder what it was that I actually wrote. As they say, “It’s all Greek to me.” Also with Take China, although it is mostly fact, I called it fiction. did it to save face for the families of the Marines who may read the book. While gathering information, I corresponded with many of the Marines who fought in the Pacific and served as China Marines. When they learned was publishing a book, they became concerned. They didn’t want their children and grandchildren to know they were killers and frequent visitors to brothels in China. I changed their names, and thus, they can say to their off- spring – ‘What an imagination that Stephens has.” It’s interesting to note, however, after the publication of Take China some Marines recognized themselves and asked why I changed their names. You can’t win all the time.

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Right Contents

What is important is to get my facts straight. If I print false or incorrect information, I will find myself at loggerheads with both my publishers and my readers. Passing on inaccurate or false information creates a disservice. Unfortunately, history is replete with such falsehoods. Checking facts is time consuming. I had to take such precautions when I was making the motor trip around the world that I mentioned. I was told I could not drive through Burma. What this meant was upon my arrival in East Pakistan, which is Bangladesh today, I would have to ship the vehicles and equipment by freighter around Burma to Thailand. That’s what I was told. But what if the information I had was not factual? What if there was a road that was open across Burma? What a terrible mistake it would be if I by-passed Burma only to discover later the route was not closed or, worse, that someone else had successfully driven across the country? That wouldn’t do. I simply couldn’t take for granted the road through Burma was closed. I had to drive to the Burma/East Pakistan border to discover for myself whether it was closed or not. It was closed. It had been closed just after the war. The same was true when I arrived at the Thailand border. I had to drive through northern Thailand to the Burma/Thailand border at Chiang Rai to find if the road was blocked. It, too, was closed to international travel. It was troublesome, but I knew for certain the road across Burma was closed, and there was no denying it.

For the writer, misadventures can make good copy. Consider Joseph Conrad. He was in Singapore, an out-of-work seaman looking for work aboard a ship, when he heard the sad tale about the officers of a passenger ship who had abandoned the vessel when the thought the ship was sinking. The ship was carrying Muslim pilgrims to Mecca. But the ship didn’t sink. From this information, Conrad, when he gave up the sea and took up a pen, wrote Lord Jim, the novel that became a classic in English literature.

I can understand when I hear writers say they have a hard time getting started, but what really baffles me is when I hear people who want to write say-“I wish I could write.” To me, it’s like listening to someone say, “I wish I could swim,” or, “I wish I could play golf.” Stop wishing and learn how to swim or learn how to play golf. Stop wishing and do it. The same goes for writing. Just do it. There is no easy road; it doesn’t come naturally. There’s no such a thing as writing being a gift. A person is a gifted writer not because someone gave the talent to him but because he developed it himself. It’s a craft we have to learn, like bricklaying or doctoring.

When one becomes successful at anything, there’s a great temptation to think, “Hey, that wasn’t so difficult,” or “I wonder why more folks don’t do this,” or “All it takes is some hard work and dedication and anyone can do it” or any number of similar scenarios. Because we don’t really know bow our brains get to be “wired” like they are, we’re tempted to ascribe our accomplishments to our “smart” decisions and/or our tireless dedication, or whatever, rather than to what some might call the whims of Lady Luck.

Luck! I can’t believe it when a person says he is lucky, or isn’t lucky. When I told a friend about my encounter with Mr. Sullivan, the editor at Life, he remarked how lucky I was for had I departed a few seconds earlier or had I not memorized Mr. Sullivan’s address correctly, who knows what the subsequent scenario may have led to. That was not luck. It was circumstance. Had I not seen Mr. Sullivan, and had he not discouraged me, I would have looked for another avenue of action to follow. The incident with Mr. Sullivan gave me the tenacity to strive even harder to become the writer I wanted to be. I wasn’t about to give up. What comes to mind is the quote by Ernest K. Gann: “Even the most carefully contrived plan can be outraged by just a trivial event.” In the real world, only a few get to see their “carefully contrived plan” carried to fruition; many more get to see theirs “outraged,” and the vast majority never even get so far as a “carefully contrived plan.” To even get to the point of carefully contriving a plan, several talents are required and then several more are needed to put a plan into action. Really “successful” people are the ones who have, somehow, been able to call on the required talents and then have had the right circumstances smile on their efforts. Then, there are the untold numbers of ones who had the required talents to put together plans, many that would have been superior to those of the “successful” folks, but inexplicably their circumstances, not Lady Luck, changed. The only time luck comes into play is at the dice table.

Luck should not be confused with Cause and Effect. The Law of Cause and Effect says that everything happens for a reason. For every effect in our life, there is a cause, or series of specific, measurable, definable, identifiable causes.

This law says that if there is anything we want in life, an effect that we desire, we can find someone else that has achieved the same result or effect, and that by doing the same things that they have done over and over we can eventually enjoy the same results and rewards. This is why we look for mentor, or role models if you wish, that we can look up to. Good literature and great writers did this for me.

It took me a long time to discover that success is not an accident. It is not the case of good luck versus bad luck. There are a series of specific steps we take that bring us to where we are. We are where we are, and what we are because of ourselves. It has been our choices and our decisions over the span of time that has inevitably determined the condition of our life at this moment.

If we read the recorded writings of the earliest great thinkers of all time, the philosophers and the metaphysicians we find they have all emphasized the power of the human mind to shape individual destinies.

The key to my learning to write, and it was not luck, was for me to engage in more of the actions that were more likely to bring about the consequences that I desired. And that was to travel, to break away from the humdrum, the nine-to-five so to speak. I had to conscientiously avoid those actions that did not bring about the consequences that I desired. I looked for the positive and not the negative. I listened not to critics.

Writing, of course, is much easier when one’s heart is really in it. I love to write, and that is a step forward. But it’s only a step, one step. I hear it often from those who want to write-“It’s easy for you. You are a writer.” What they mean, or believe, is that once a writer becomes established, it’s no longer a struggle. That is not so. Most folks don’t realize the discipline it takes to sit down and write. You need space to write; it’s not only important, it’s vital. A painter can set up his easel on a busy street comer and paint. A writer needs to concentrate, and that usually requires being alone. You can imagine how hard it can be to write in places like Tahiti that I mentioned earlier. That requires real discipline. I don’t know how Nordoff and Hall managed to complete The Bounty Trilogy with all the temptations they faced.

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GETTING STARTED

It was a tough road I went down to become a writer but I was no exception. Most writers have to go down that same road. When someone tells me they are interested in writing, and I tell them what a tough grind it is, they don’t like to hear it. They only want to hear the positive. But fact is fact. The apprenticeship is long and hard. I have always contended that by the time I learned to write-by that I mean the hours I spent mastering the trade-I could have spent the same amount of time studying law or medicine and became a lawyer or a doctor. I acknowledge, of course, that a person could become a successful writer but might make a lousy lawyer or doctor-or vice versa. But the sobering fact is that that road doesn’t end. To continue to write successfully, the learning process must not end. It must go on without end. This is especially true for travel writing.

To write about travel, naturally, I had to travel. But it was much more than arriving at a destination and writing superficial descriptions about the place. I found, if I wanted to write well, I had to study the place beforehand and do my research. For each new destination I visited, I had to learn the history of the place, its culture, its folklore and anything else that might be interesting for my readers, and that only comes from study. Travel came second to study. Had I been writing occasional travel piece for magazines and newspapers that might have been different. But when a newspaper assigned me with a weekly travel column, the picture changed. Every week I had to discover something new, something exciting that would interest my readers, and that meant traveling non-stop.

Travel writing for me was a start. It leads to magazine writing and then to books. Study, however, didn’t stop. In fact, it increased and took on a new momentum.

I went to Tahiti hoping to write about the South Pacific. To write knowledgeably about the Pacific I had to become an authority on the Pacific, which meant more reading and endless research. I read Pacific island histories, the journals of Captain James Cook, books by circumnavigators, The Bounty Trilogy by Nordoff and Hall, scientific studies and scores of biographies. The Bishop Museum in Honolulu became my second home. For some assignments, like Easter Island, it required a great deal of in-depth research, a difficult task since little was known about the history of the island. It was the same everywhere I traveled: Russia, China, Australia, and all Southeast Asia. I was doing far more reading than I ever did in college. And to think when I graduated, I thought my studies were over. They were only beginning.

Research can be exciting and it’s surprising what we can tum up. I discovered the works of obscure and forgotten writers of the South Pacific that dated back a century ago. Their stories made not only good reading but they also provided me with excellent reference material. Sources for books and references came from old book• stores and private libraries in people’s homes. In Tahiti I befriended Lula Hall, writer James Hall’s widow, and she opened up her private library to me. What a discovery this was. Here were some of the original sources that Hall used for his Bounty Trilogy. I had a tough time tearing myself away from her library.

The basement of the National Museum in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, became my Bishop Museum away from home. In dusty volumes on back shelves I delved into unpublished manuscripts that became genuine treasure troves. For example, we hear so much today about the Chinese Admiral Zheng He who sailed with an armada of hundreds of ships and explored far beyond the borders of China. One writer has even claimed Zheng He discovered America long before Columbus reached the New World.

I read about him in the basement of the National Museum in Kuala Lumpur and wrote several magazine articles about his seven voyages. No one knew him then but an interest in him soon developed. From another book on a back shelf I read that an English rubber planter had built a European castle in the jungle and abandoned it when the First World War began. It took me weeks to find the castle, completely overgrown by the forest. It was good story material and I wrote about it. Today Kellie’s Castle is in tourist brochures. Making discoveries like these is when research becomes interesting and enjoyable and reaps untold rewards.

My book, The Strange Disappearance of Jim Thompson, took years of research, and although the book has long been published, the story of Jim Thompson is not over. New information, new leads about him continue to filter in. It may end up that I need to write an entirely new book. But then the strange disappearance of Jim Thompson may end up being not so strange.

The saying is the written story ends when it is published. It cannot be changed. I find this is not true. A published work only opens doors.

When I set the record for the longest motor trip around the world in a Toyota Land Cruiser and wrote Who Needs a Road, I thought that was the end. But one never knows how a book will turn out. Letters keep coming from readers asking about the expedition and making comments. The book has endured time for the simple reason that, the world being what it is, such a motor trip around the world cannot be made today. It was unfortunate that when Bobbs-Merrill, the New York publishers, decided to publish the book, they never expected it to be a hit and printed but a few thousand copies. A magazine editor, Al Podell, who made the trip with me, thought differently. He scheduled me to appear on the “Tonight Show” and “To Tell the Truth” and a couple other TV shows. I made my appearances but Bobbs-Merrill couldn’t print copies fast enough to meet the demand. It was disappointing. I went on a book-signing tour around the U.S. but there were no books in the shops. I chalk it up to experience.

One advantage of being published is that I receive some very interesting letters from readers who inform me about lost cities, sunken treasures, unexplored caves, forgotten jungle tribes and just about everything imaginable. I amassed so much information, I found I had enough material to write a book, which I did, and called it Return to Adventure, Southeast Asia.

What I have learned to be careful about are those people who approach me and say they have confidential information they want to share with me. “I’ 11 tell you what,” they begin, and it’s always the same, “you are a writer. I can’t write, but I have a great story that will make an excellent book.” I try to break away from them but sometimes I can’t. They continue, “I’ll tell you what. I’ll tell it to you, you write it down, and we’ll split it down the middle.” They usually add that we will make a fortune.

I found it disheartening once when I turned a deaf ear on a scuba diver who claimed to have found a sunken Japanese submarine. He was so persistent I practically had to tell him to get lost. About a year later, the story broke. The man did know the location of a sunken Japanese submarine.

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Perfect, But with More Distractions

Another place where I was convinced that I would be able to write was aboard my schooner, Third Sea. That’s what I thought when I built the vessel in Singapore and sailed her with my five-man crew to Bangkok to be fitted out. I had everything I wanted-my own private cabin and a big saloon. Just imagine, if I didn’t like my neighbors, I could move. In waters around Southeast Asia, there are endless coves ideal for anchoring. I found coves every• where. One cove in particular that I liked was on the east coast of the Malay Peninsula. We dropped anchor, and I set up my Hermes (I had bought a new one after selling my old one in Tahiti) in the main saloon and sat down to work. But then, as it often happened in that cove, and in others as well, I’d hear a shout from above -“What’s that, look, over there!” It was one of the crew. Of course, I had to rush up on deck to see what it was all about. There might be a school of porpoises that had come into the cove and begun frolicking around the schooner. They are always a grand spectacle, fun to watch as they leap so effortlessly. Or, if it wasn’t porpoises, maybe it was a manta ray gliding along the surface. They are wonderful to watch, too. The water in those coves was so clean and crystal clear that we could look down and see the anchor resting on the bottom thirty feet below. We were also likely to see schools of fish swimming by. Now that I was up on deck, I reasoned I might as well put on fins, grab a snorkel and take a short swim. The swim would last for hours. So much for writing that day.

Then, there was the problem of the crew. It’s most difficult to tell the crew that there are chores to be done while I sit in the saloon at my typewriter. “I have some writing to catch up on, too,” they would invariably say and plop themselves down with letters to write or a journal to bring up to date. To keep a crew working, I had to set the example and work with them, or else I’d have to find a place on shore where I could escape to write.

I learned I could do very little writing aboard my schooner. For me, boats are not the ideal place to write, believe me. I found this to be true once again when I crossed the South Pacific aboard a Messageries Maritimes freighter.

I spent hours reclining in a deck chair staring out at the blue Pacific. Other than keeping a journal, I didn’t write a single word on any of those voyages but I did a lot of dreaming.

Is there such thing as the most ideal place to write?

In the end I chose Bangkok. Why Bangkok?

Chance brought me here. I was making a motor trip around the world and got caught in a war between India and East Pakistan, or Bangladesh as it is called today. The U.S. Air Force airlifted me, along with the staff of the US Embassy in Dacca to Bangkok in Thailand. A reporter at the Bangkok Post interviewed me about my motor trip and the evacuation, and through him I met his editor. When the editor learned that I didn’t know how long I had to wait for the India-East Pakistan war to end, he asked if I would like to write a few travel stories for the paper while I was detained. I accepted. Bangkok turned out to be an excellent hub for writing. It is within easy reach of tropical jungles, unexplored seabeds and exciting cities with skylines of domes of mosques, Buddhist temples, Hindu shrines and Christian churches. I wanted to write, and here was material to write about. Bangkok suited me fine. The India-East Pakistan war ended, I completed my motor trip around the world and returned to Southeast Asia where there were endless stories to write .

When I began writing for the Bangkok Post, the editor offered me a desk surrounded by a hundred other desks where journalists sat. Fortunately, as a travel writer, I had to spend more time traveling than sitting at a desk. In time, however, at the Post I learned how to close out the world around me. There could have been a shootout or a team of wild horses thundering through the office and I would not have noticed them. More important, from that experience, I found I could write anyplace. Most newspapermen can do it and so do most office workers. Hemingway wrote most in the morning sitting in La Closerie des Lilas in Paaris and drank in Cafe de Flore at night. That requires true dedication. However, I still contend the place to write is in a room without a view.

It all comes down to the premise if we want to write and we are sincere about it, we can write anywhere. For the moment I like Bangkok. Tomorrow, however, is another day.

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Unusual Distractions

But that damned monkey was something else.

Keith loved animals. He was run out of Bangkok for his love of animals. He had a brown bear he called Hash. He kept Hash on a leash and took him wherever he went, on buses, trains, and taxis. Taxis were more difficult, because drivers usually didn’t want to stop for Keith and his five-foot tall bear. Then, on one Fourth of July, there was a reception at the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok. All Americans in Bangkok are invited to the annual event. Keith attended and brought Hash. There were no fireworks, as they had been outlawed, but there was food and drink. Copious stacks of food displayed on long tables in the garden, all sorts of food as well as tidbits, sandwiches and cakes and fruit. When Hash, the tame bear, saw the display of food, he was no longer tame. No leash was strong enough to hold him back. He charged at the table like a locomotive out of control with Keith attempting to hold him back-unsuccessfully. Hash upset tables, spilling food everywhere. He caused untold havoc. He and Keith were escorted out the main gate by leery security guards. A letter from the ambassador with a bill for the damages prompted Keith to move.

In Singapore, he bought an old junk and outfitted it as a disco with loud music and flashing neon signs. As an added attraction, he turned the vessel into a menagerie. The place attracted yuppies in Singapore and in time became very popular. The bumboat operators loved it. Anchored out in the harbor, a fleet of bumboats ferried passengers to and fro. The Singapore authorities became concerned and, it seemed, were about to close the place down, but in the end there was no need to do so. The junk sank. Well, it didn’t just sink, but something even more drastic happened. To re-supply the junk, Keith would motor the junk to the dock and secure it while he took on supplies. Singapore has a tidal range of about three meters, and when the tide goes out, vessels sometimes rest on the mud bottom until the tide comes in again. Unfortunately, Keith moored above a spike sticking up in the mud, and when the tide went out, the spike came up through the hull. No one noticed what had happened until the tide came in, but the junk didn’t rise. It simply filled with water and remained on the bottom. The crew and animals aboard panicked. To save the animals, the crew released them, and soon, monkeys, a brown bear, a porcupine, a couple of wallabies and even a ten-foot long python were roaming the waterfront along Clifford Pier causing panic among the pedestrians.

Keith had to surrender his animals to an animal collector in Malaysia but managed to keep his gibbon without the authorities knowing it. He kept the gibbon in his apartment. The animal was there when I agreed to watch the place while Keith was on a month’s home leave. The gibbon was a nasty creature that didn’t like me, and I didn’t like him. He would bare his fangs when I came near, and I’d do the same to him. I had to put up with our mutual dislike. The apartment was free, I had no bills to pay and here I could write. When Keith was gone, I locked the animal in the bathroom and left the window open with a small crack for air.

I never gave thought that the gibbon could work the window open wide enough to scramble out. He did but he didn’t just take refuge on the ledge or escape to the roof No, he found the bathroom window open in the apartment next door and made his way inside. The apartment happened to be owned by an elderly Chinese dowager. She was away for a few weeks visiting her sister in Canton. The lady was a collector of antiques and, I later beard, had some priceless pieces in the apartment. Keith’ monkey became more than the bull in the China shop. He took delight in knocking vases and jars off their stands, and he screamed with joy when they shattered on the floor. I could hear the calamity, but there was nothing I could do but hope for the best, and also hope the lady didn’t suddenly come home. It took me the better part of a day for me to coax the hooting beast back into Keith’s bathroom with the help of a bunch of bananas. When I got him inside again, I locked the bathroom window. There was a big investigation when the lady returned, but it was put down to vandalism. The authorities concluded that most likely one of the dowager’s enemies sent hoodlums to destroy her collection. Envy, they called it. It wasn’t envy, of course. It was Keith’s gibbon, but I never told anyone, not even Keith, even after he said I should have kept the window open for fresh air for the poor gibbon.

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