I MIght Be Wrong

Books on tape are the coolest thing since seven-up flavored sliced bread. I finished off James David Duncan’s epic River Why last night and I am still wandering around looking for what is left of my old self. The answer is not much. The author, he also penned the equally incredible Brothers K, is said with his fishing steeped tale of man’s search for meaning, to be in the same category with Heller’s Catch-22 and Pirsig’s Zen and Motorcycle Maintenance. That is like hitting between Gehrig and Ruth for the pinstripes or singing with Lennon and McCartney. Impressive company to be certain.

Two distinctive skills separate Duncan’s writing from thousand of lesser others. He has the gift of writing:

1) Good dialogue, with
2) Outstanding description.

You can push your story along all day if your characters are likable, believable, charismatic, brave, afflicted, caring, dangerous, inventive, fearless, funny or flawed. If you can then place them in interesting, colorful, threatening, complex, outlandish, uncompromising, lethal, political, harrowing, heated or haunted locations, all you need is a plot.

A goal, point A to point B, a journey, an adventure or a mission. Here is the general plot outline for 1.6 million novels in the fiction genera:

Boy meets girl.
Shit happens.
Boy loses girl.
Boy figures shit out.
Boy gets girl back.

That’s it! Think of the great volume of literature and every one fits rather nicely into this simplistic structure, or as Orwell might say, some fit nicer than others.

Gone With the Wind
Tarzan
The Little Prince
Alice in Wonderland
Grapes of Wrath
On the Road
Slaughterhouse Five
Jitterbug Perfume
Lolita
Eat, Pray, Love
Harry Potter
The Magus
Cider House Rules
Stranger in a Strange Land
The Sun Also Rises
To Build A Fire

To be sure, there are major variations of this general theme, as demonstrated thematically by the masterworks listed above, but the general idea that I wish to illustrate, should you be sitting on the fence (as I sit) wondering where my hero is going next, what he might find there, as well as who, and how gnarly I will allow the challenge to be in testing his verve, is that: IT IS UP TO ME. If it is to be it is up to me. If she is to flee it is because of me.

It is my masterwork, my magnus opus, my short story and my graphic novella. I am the hero. I choose the goal. I decide when the time is right to meet the girl. I pick the location of the epic battles with my demons. The degree of pain encountered in my heroic journey only I can feel. There will be blood. There will be growth, insight, transgressions and transcendence. There will come that time when all hope seems lost, when I might even quit. Will I question my motives and choose the path of lesser resistance? Will I cry? What amount of suffering will prompt me to sell my soul? Will the girl even want me back?

I love reading almost as much as I like writing. Similar to listening to music or playing it. Watching football on TV or going out to run in the fall.

The moral of today’s story is simply this: IT’S YOUR STORY. If you don’t particularly like the direction your hero is heading, change the heading. Win today. Win the battle in front of you right now. Pay attention to the details, hear the wind blow and enjoy the ride.

One of my favorite endings is from Richard Bach. In Illusions he spins a beautiful story about his autobiographical messiah Donald Shimoda. After solving all the problems of the world and offering eternal solutions should, when, they next appear, he ends his work with the quizzical admission, “But I might be wrong.”

Nope.