Being a Writer

The pictures today don't really follow a theme. These are from my Saturday in Granbury. Old buildings (for Texas) that struck me. Apropos of nothing here's a quote from a very smooth writer - F.Scott Fitzgerald: The lawn started at the beach and ran toward the front door for a quarter of a mile, jumping over sun dials and brick walks and burning gardens - finally when it reached the house drifitng up the side in bright vines as though from the momentum of its run.

The Gordon House in Granbury. History, people., life. Fitzgerald wrote - Action is Character. From the Great Gatsby: They were careless people. Tom and Daisy - they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.

I'm going to be lazy today and just quote other people. My good friend, JB Harlin, sent me this quote and I truly appreciate him thinking of me:

Ernest Hemmingway: All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all of it happened to you and afterwards it belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and the sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get that so that you can give that to the people, then you are a writer.

Granbury Gambol

A rainy Saturday did not deter my friend, Candice, and me from our trek to Granbury. The historic Gordon home (Tarleton University's Langford Center) hosted a superb photo exhibit by JB and Susan Harlin. This was the perfect jumping off spot for a day of arts, laughs, good food, and window shopping. Fran Leibowitz once said that, "Teaching someone how to be a writer is like teaching someone how to be an adventurer." To some extent, that's true. I'm going to add that to be a writer, you need a sense of adventure - a willingness to explore and also observe a variety of people, things, and locations.

Author Scott Spencer said, "The initial spark that starts a novel can come anywhere, though I don't know when it has ever come when I'm sitting at my desk. Behind the wheel of a car has been a lucky place for me." (WSJ 9/10/10 p. W5)

I will say, Granbury struck me as a lovely setting for a novel or a crime mystery. Small town feel, with plenty of outside traffic flowing through the square, as the imposing clock tower ticks down the hours.

Or the old jail could prompt historical fiction. I bet there were some cattle rustlers and other hustlers corraled in this small stone fortress.

From Steve Hely's fiction, How I Became a Famous Novelist, "Writing a novel - actually picking the words and filling in paragraphs - is a tremendous pain in the ass." (p. 73) His fictional character studies popular books and then bangs out one based on his observed formula. " If you tried to fit in actual emotion, or stuff you cared about, you'd just bog your novel down. Writing was like a magic trick." (p. 70) His system proves successful and the ultimate marketing, too, snowballs into success. But he feels hollow, a charlatan. "To fail to tell a story honestly was sacrilege." (p. 231)

The Granbury trip was refreshing. New perspective on Texas travel, characters, history. A grillworked layer set against a stormy sky.