Perfect or good enough?

Patty here…

“The perfect is the enemy of the good.” French writer and philosopher François-Marie Arouet (1694 – 1778), better known by his pen name Voltaire wrote these words. Many people interpret the sentiment to mean that perfection is difficult if not impossible to achieve so at some point are forced to view our efforts as being good enough. My only question is how do we know when we’ve reached that point?

I’ve been thinking a lot about this concept lately and it was brought to mind again this past Saturday at a screening of the movie “That Evening Sun.” It’s the story of Abner Meecham, an elderly Tennessee farmer who escapes the nursing home where he’s been living for the past three months and returns to the family farm only to discover that his son has leased the property to an old enemy without informing him.



The film was followed by a Q&A. Ed Harris interviewed the film’s star, Hal Holbrook.



At eighty-four and with over fifty years in show biz, Holbrook talked about how meaningful it was to shoot the movie in Tennessee, the setting in the book and also the home state of his wife, Dixie Carter.



Toward the end of the interview, Harris asked for questions from the audience. The last one of the evening went something like this: “Mr. Holbrook what inspires you to keep going after all these years?”

Holbrook had been charming and informative throughout the interview, but his face lit up and his passion bubbled to the surface. In a strong, clear voice, he said: “What keeps me inspired? That’s easy. All I ever wanted to be was a good actor."

This Oscar-nominated, Emmy and Tony award-winning thespian is certainly much more than a “good” actor to his legions of fans, but I noted with particular interest that he hadn’t said he wanted to be a legend, or an actor whose publicist booked him on a thirty-two city tour to promote the film, or even a rich actor.

In a recent Los Angeles Times article, Holbrook reiterated this point of view:

"… I have never thought of myself as being a star. I just wanted to be the best actor I could possibly be."

I was impressed that Holbrook is still working on his craft. He said thanks to Sean Penn’s direction in the film “Into the Wild,” something inside him became unplugged and he was able to use that newfound awareness for his role in “That Evening Sun.”

Even after I left the theatre, Holbrook’s words continued rumbling around in my head. Every day we all face the perfection versus good enough dilemma. A business executive wonders if she has time to tinker with a report due on her boss’s desk by ten. The artist adds brushstrokes to a painting that will never be finished. A writer massages her manuscript, sometimes to its detriment, before she is willing to send it out into the world, because she worries that “good enough” gives her premature permission to quit. If perfection is unattainable but we continue reaching for it, we end up unsatisfied. Worse yet, we never finish.

For writers, actors and others, as well, it’s easy to get caught up in the white noise surrounding our work—the reviews, the fans, the awards. It takes somebody like Hal Holbrook to talk us down, to remind us that it's really about the acting or the writing. At least it should be. Thanks, Hal. You unplugged something in me, so here goes, “All I want is to be the best writer I can possibly be.”

And by the way, you were way more than good in this film. You were perfect.



Happy Monday!

Joseph Wambaugh Hollywood Moon

James O. Born

First, happy Thanksgiving.

I like to write about completely different themes each week. I throw in a few columns on writing and books and occasionally like to mention writers I know. This week’s column shows what good taste I have. Oline Cogdill, widely considered the best critic on the scene today, agrees with my assessment of Joseph Wambaugh’s great new book Hollywood Moon.

Joe Wambaugh is one of the few people who I listen to in publishing and police work. He’s the king of all cops-turned-writers and has achieved a place in the literary world that few have attained. But enough of my hero worship.

This is what Oline Cogdill said in the Sun Sentinel about Hollywood Moon.


Veteran author Joseph Wambaugh weaves together several seemingly unrelated vignettes for a darkly comic, gritty look at street cops and identity thieves in Los Angeles.

In the last of his trilogy chronicling the goings-on in a Hollywood police station, Wambaugh balances Hollywood Moon's absurd situations with the horrible behavior of people who have little regard for others. But each scene – whether outlandish or poignant – has a sense of authenticity. Wambaugh's keen scenes of life on the streets permeate Hollywood Moon.

The cops who patrol the Hollywood streets are a mixed bag who, despite their quirks, are united in their respect for their job. Surfer cops Flotsam and Jetsam know the ocean as well as they do the streets; they can carry on a conversation in surfer-speak while collaring a suspect. Nate "Hollywood" Weiss would rather be in films but has found his greatest acting role as a cop. Wambaugh takes special care with his female cops – Dana Vaughn, Sheila Montez, Mindy Lang and Sgt. Miriam Hermann – to show how they cope with sexism among their colleagues and criminals. Each cop knows "there are real monsters out there" on the streets.

The myriad scenarios eventually come together in a plot about a credit-card scam run by a husband and wife – the domineering Eunice and her scheming husband, Dewey Gleason. Dewey uses the various teams of scam artists he employs as a chance to hone his acting skills, appearing as a different person to each set of criminals. Despite his prowess working with the low-level criminals, Dewey has not been able to find out where Eunice has stashed their money. Dewey's management skills begin to slip when two of his meth-addicted employees decide they want more money. Dewey and Eunice's enterprise takes another turn when he decides to bring in Malcolm Rojas, a teenager whose good looks help him cover up his seething anger.

Wambaugh pulls together Hollywood Moon's non-lineal plot in a believable story that also packs an emotional wallop at its finale.

In his 19th novel, Wambaugh continues to show how the job of being a cop affects each aspect of an officer's life, a track he has followed since The New Centurions in 1971.


Nicely said.

Here's a photo of me and Joe at Bouchercon in 2007.

Have you read any good books lately?

Giving Guide

Since this is the eve of Thanksgiving, and since there are headlines (Tuesday) about Homeless programs that pass along nothing to the homeless, how about a thoughtful, well-researched group of articles by the Christian Science Monitor? Here's their ...

Giving Guide

... which is worth a look and bears consideration. The CSMonitor is an example of an award-winning newspaper learning to survive in the brutal world of journalism (a topic off-discussed here at Naked Authors). The Monitor, as I understand it, suspended the daily paper, but not daily reporting. It maintains the daily reporting at its website, and publishes a (nicely formated and meaty) weekly for subscribers. I don't know the paper's finances, but I respect its heritage of fine reporting and hope the new system allows it to stay in business. If a worthy business model, maybe other city papers and local papers could adopt something similar.

One thing is for sure (after spending two weeks in a car with Dave Barry, I learned a lot about this) unbiased journalism is in deep trouble. We are moving toward a society that gets its news from either "yellow" sources, or editorial-slanted reporting, ie Fox or MSNBC. Neutral, free-minded reporting is moving toward a non-profit business model -- NPR, PBS -- as corporations use their newpapers to push economic and political agendas. And that brings us back to the top of this blog: if you run your finger down the column on "% of donation reaches need," you'll see NPR is one of the highest in this category. "Let freedom ring," may come down to keeping non-profits like NPR alive and thriving.

Happy Thanksgiving.
Ridley

Signposts: Looking Back at the Newspaper Business

I had a short, undistinguished career as a reporter at The Miami Herald and still have a warm spot in my heart for newspapers. You remember newspapers, right? One of my fellow journalism students at Penn State was today's guest blogger, Bill Epstein. Bill has worked in journalism, public relations, government affairs, and higher education. Currently, he is Director of Communications for the 23,000-member United Food and Commercial Workers Local 1776 in Pennsylvania. -- Paul Levine

By Bill Epstein...

Signposts. You can see them and know what they mean. Or you don’t know what they mean. Sometimes you don’t see them at all.

Just out of school in 1969, I started as a reporter at the Philadelphia Bulletin. The first signpost I saw but didn’t understand was when I sat down to a typewriter that was three times as old as I was.

I remember thinking, wow, we had electric typewriters at the Penn State Daily Collegian. What’s wrong with this place?

My enlightenment came within a couple of weeks. I noticed a memo on the newsroom bulletin board that compared the monthly circulation figures of the Bulletin to those of its local rival, the Inquirer. Both newspapers had lost many thousands in circulation. But since the Inquirer had lost more, the Bulletin’s managers had titled the memo “We Won!”
Some victory.

Next month, new memo from the managers. Again, both newspapers lost circulation, but the Bulletin lost less. “Good News,” read the conclusion. “We won.” And so on for a third month.
By now I’m thinking that I’ve nailed this signpost. This is no strategy for long-term business success.

Within a short time I found myself with an opportunity for a different way to earn a paycheck. Having little in the way of financial responsibilities and it being the right time in life to take a risk, I put my journalism career on hold in favor of joining a political campaign. I remember my green-eyeshaded city editor saying to me as he puffed on his cigarette, “You shouldn’t do this, kid. You have a future here at the paper.”

His words came back to me 10 years later when the Bulletin folded and put 2,000 people out of work. I was glad and lucky that I wasn’t one of them. His words came back to me again, just weeks ago, when my son, Matthew, got married. At the wedding I was talking to one of his 30-something friends and former colleagues who works for a western Pennsylvania newspaper. Yes, eight years ago my son did the same thing I did. He came out of school and went into the newspaper business. Go figure. Four years ago he again did the same thing, leaving the business in favor of law school.

So Matt’s friend tells me that conditions at his newspaper are no different than at just about every other newspaper, magazine or radio and television station in the country. Advertising down. Staff being laid off. People being asked to do more with less. Lots of new, uncomfortable realities, and no certainty of survival.

Here’s a guy in an industry that’s not likely to offer jobs at the Harrisburg Patriot News or Pittsburgh Post-Gazette for people at smaller newspapers anytime soon. Big difference from the day 40 years ago when I finished a paid summer internship at the Bulletin and that same city editor told me that I had job as soon as I graduated in 10 months.

I felt badly that I couldn’t offer my son’s friend some good advice. Fortunately, he’s smart enough to understand the signposts, and, sadly, they’re a lot easier to read now.
Any signposts you’ve missed, or, better yet, saw and understood?

--Bill Epstein

Ever have one of those days?

Patty here…

I should have known that spontaneity sometimes ends in disaster. Last Wednesday was a crazy day. I had a physical therapy appointment at 10:00 a.m. After that, I raced to my volunteer job at the local police station where I worked for an hour or so before rushing to Marina del Rey to have lunch with a friend who was passing through the area. Later, back at the station, one of the officers asked me if, due to a shortage of contestants, I could participate in a chili cook off the following day.

I vaguely remembered making chili once before. It wasn’t brain surgery, just meat and beans, so what could go wrong? I had to be at a meeting in the Fairfax district that night from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m., but surely I had enough time to do the chili fandango before ten the next morning.

However, later when I looked through my cookbooks, the chili recipes seemed more complicated than I remembered. Nevertheless, if I was going to be up all night cooking, so be it. After all, my word is my bond.

First, I zipped to the grocery store to buy the ingredients, a page and a half of exotic stuff like pasilla chilies, which I’d never heard of before. The recipe called for Eureka beer with an asterisk that said if Eureka wasn’t available, any dark beer would do.

Not surprising, Joe Albertson didn’t have Eureka beer, so I scanned the refrigerated cases for an alternative. I’m not that familiar with dark beers so I grabbed a six-pack of Guinness and flew to the checkout counter.

At home, I began to chop and dice in a race against the clock. So much food was flying, I’m still finding remnants of Serrano chilies ground into the grout of my kitchen tiles. The dried beans were supposed to soak overnight, but who had time for that? I threw them in a pan with water and willed them to soften because, rain or shine, those babies were going on the stove when I got home from my meeting at nine.

By 5:15, I had poached, pureed, and pounded according to directions. I threw the first phase ingredients, including three bottles of the Guinness beer, in the pot to simmer for a couple of hours. I hate to leave anything cooking on the stove when I’m not at home but duty called. I had to make that meeting.

It took me forty-five minutes to creep through rush hour traffic to the Farmer’s Market. I arrived five minutes early, just in time to jog into World Market to buy some soap I didn’t need in order to get a break on the parking fee. I plopped the soap in my purse—no time for a bag—and bolted for the meeting room, arriving just as the clock struck six.

No one was there.

I waited ten minutes before searching the lower level to see if the group had moved the meeting downstairs. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Where were they? Finally I thought, Screw it. Chili waits for no man or meeting. If I darted through traffic, I could get home in time to start the next phase of the recipe and maybe get some sleep before the roosters crowed. (The next day I learned they had changed the meeting date without telling me.)

Decision made, I ran back to my car. In another forty-five minutes, I was home and ready to begin part two of the recipe. There were some questionable instructions, such as add a “bunch” of cilantro. A cup I understand, but how much is a bunch? The “bunch” I’d purchased at the market was a lot of cilantro, but was it too much? Yes. I opted for a “hand full” instead of a “bunch.” I put the beans on the stove to cook for two hours, poured myself a Guinness, and sat down for a little R&R while watching “Glee.” Glee was great. The Guinness was—how can I say this without betraying my Irish roots?—a little bitter.

Just before midnight, I combined the two halves of the chili and tasted it. It was awful!!! Not inedible, but unpleasantly bitter. So much for Guinness as a beer substitute. Now what? I considered throwing the whole mess away but the ingredients cost $55.00. Besides, it was a lot of chili to dispose of. What if my garbage disposal overheated and caused an electrical grid failure. I’d be responsible for a blackout population explosion. I couldn’t flush the stuff down the toilet. All those jalapeño peppers surging through the underground sewer system producing heat and friction might cause nuclear winter. My brain was exploding. I decided to sleep on the decision.

Nevertheless, I didn’t sleep. I tossed and turned and considered my options:

• Starting all over, cooking through the night if necessary

• Admitting failure and bowing out of the cook off

• Buying chili from a restaurant and passing if off as mine

• Putting a mea culpa apology next to the crock pot

• Adding salt

SALT! Salt masks myriad cooking fiascos. I got up and threw some saline into the brew. The chili was better but still not good. Deflated and depressed, I went back to bed, hoping the concoction would mellow overnight.

The following morning after more hand wringing, I decided to suck it up and enter my chili in the contest. I dropped the crock pot off at the station, surrounding it with bowls of sour cream, chopped onions, and jack cheese hoping accoutrements would disguise the bitter taste. When I returned later that day, I tiptoed upstairs anticipating bodies writhing on the floor in gastrointestinal distress, moaning, “Number eight did it.” My breathing was shallow as I entered the cook-off room. It was empty. No bodies. No yellow crime scene tape. No arrest warrant with my name on it. There was lots of leftover chili in other pots but my chili was gone, which meant only one thing: Somebody must have thrown it away. I sniffed the trashcans for the co-mingled odors of Guinness and jalapeños but found no evidence to support my theory. I blew out a huge Whew! Somebody—actually lots of somebodies—ate my chili and didn’t die. There was much to be thankful for.

I didn’t win the cook-off but I have a year to find a chili recipe that works because next year I’m going to win that freakin contest. It’s the least I can do to make amends. All edible chili recipes welcomed.

So, you ever have one of those days?

Chili Monday!

Writing At The Cellular Level

from Jacqueline

As you probably all know by now, I spend a lot of time with my two horses, Oliver and Sara. They’re like chalk and cheese – Oliver is young, sturdy, happy to watch the world go by, whereas Sara is a workaholic, and having been laid off due to injury, is now dancing on her toes to get back to work. In my dressage training – kind of like ballet for horses – I look for parallels in my work as a writer. It’s not such a big leap, actually, because dressage demands a deep level of attention and communication that is mirrored in that “zone” I can go into when I am writing. So since last week, when I took that communication to another level with my horses, I have been wondering what that might mean to the creative process of writing.

It’s very easy to get into a bit of a rut with riding, especially when you get on a horse or two every day, and you’ve only so much time to spend at the barn. I’ve always made a point of spending time with my horses, just running my hands over their backs, stroking them and talking to them, so they know I’m not there to just saddle up, ride ’em and then lead them back to their stalls, or to the paddock. But sometimes I feel like a bad mother, at those times when I do have to just get in, get the job done and zoom back to the computer. I sometimes feel like that with my writing when a deadline is looming, forgetting my father’s advice that “you never push the boat out without that final coat of paint.” With all that in mind, last week I attended a five day course in “equine touch” taught by the amazing Linda Tellington-Jones. You may have heard of her – she pioneered the “Tellington Touch” a form of massage (though that’s not a completely accurate description) that can impact behavior in animals. She’s been on TV many times, and the outcome of her methods, when practiced with care, can be mind-boggling.

The course was taught on a ranch close to the small town of Bodega (The Birds was filmed there), amid the rolling hills of Sonoma County. Each day I drove out there and felt as if I were back in England, the landscape is reminiscent of Wiltshire or Dorset. Thomas Hardy would have been at home. Then the work began – and we were in at the deep end immediately, with Linda and her assistant trainers not only demonstrating, but following us as we went to work ourselves. Each horse presented us with challenges, demanding we get to know them and understand how THEY felt about what was going on, and what we were asking them to do. The learning was as deep as the touch – yet the range of “touches” were, for the most part, light, executed with grace and intention. In a short time the stubborn horse became willing, the scared became brave and that young hell-raiser became a gentleman – all as a result of intention, attention, and touch. I expected the learning curve to be significant, but what I didn’t expect was the spiritual impact of the work upon all gathered, and the way the horses seemed to move around us – and that surprises me, because I have always been aware of the “otherness” of horses, even when I am working up a sweat trying to get Oliver to canter with ease!

Each day I drove home wondering about my writing process, and what I might apply. And I think it’s this – that in some ways it is easy to skim over the surface, see the deadline approaching and go for it, words on the page, as fast as you can. Or you can get stuck, and forget to keep the fingers moving, light on the keyboard as the story unfolds. We let unwanted thoughts hamper our progress, and sometimes that great demon, self-criticism. With horses there has to be an honesty in communication, and I think that goes for writing too.

I wondered how, if what I learned while working with the horses was about effecting change at the cellular level, deepening the relationship from that point (oh, and thrown in that big word “trust” from there), then how do I do that with my writing? I don’t have the answers to my own questions, but here’s where I’ve arrived at, thus far, in my deliberations. That each day it’s important for me to do some reflection before I set to work. As a professional writer, it’s my job to get to work, hit the page and get going on the next installment of the story – but I can linger a bit before I start, set my intention for the day’s work. I can reflect on what I know, what I have written, about the characters, and I can ask myself a range of questions about the authenticity of communication – how do I make all this more real for the reader? What can I bring to the page that both deepens the story, my engagement in that story, and keeps it moving (keep the fingers moving)? But I think the lesson really comes into its own in the rewriting process, when the clay is on the wheel and it’s time to get in there and lick it into shape. One little technique I started to use a couple of years ago, was to put certain words, sentences and paragraphs into boxes, outlined so that they were separated from the herd, so to speak. Then I would consider what was in the box, and how I could improve the image that my word, sentence or paragraph was communicating. I didn’t do it very often, which is surprising as it really worked well and gave me a sense of slipping under the skin of the story.

Elizabeth George says that, “Character is Plot, Plot is Character.” So how do we render our characters even more authentic? How do we get to know them a little bit better, and how do we draw in our reader with that knowledge? That’s another “cellular level” question. I think there are many more.

As you can see, I’m rolling this one around in my mind, asking how I engage with the process of writing, of crafting a story, at a deeper level? I only have a hoof-ful of answers, but I am sure that some of you have your own responses to that question. I’d love to hear them.

Murder and Mayhem - Jordan Style

James O. Born

I spent this last weekend and lovely Muskego, Wisconsin, at a library event called Murder and Mayhem in Muskego. Penny Halle organizes the event for the library system and does a great job. I had been invited almost a year ago and looked forward to the event even though I knew my flight home on Sunday would conflict with the Dolphins -- Buccaneers game. God bless my DVR.

Anyway, I got a chance to visit a place I'd never been before – Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Not surprisingly, it was about what I expected. It seemed smaller and quieter than Chicago, but still had an interesting very un-Florida vibe. The weather was quite mild, dropping to a low in the 50s, which is not what a redneck from Florida wants to see. I wanted snow. Lots and lots of snow. But I got a good taste for the area and the people.

The real reason for this blog is to talk about a couple people I know who are so important to the mystery writing community that words can't accurately express how I feel. I was met at the airport by Judy Bobalik. Judy was one of the first people I ever met in the world of crime fiction at a Sleuthfest in 2004. She lives a couple hours away from Milwaukee and managed to tote me and C.J. Box around with great skill and a few laughs. Mostly at my expense.

The couple who organize this event for the writers are legends. Jon and Ruth Jordan rock. I'm not sure really need to say anything else. Maybe I'll add their house rocks too. Floor to ceiling books, all signed to them and DVDs of virtually every interesting TV show ever to play on television. I now understand how Crimespree magazine gets published.

Ruth has a unique way of making you feel like you're the most important person in the world when you're with her. I did not want to leave their house, where they held an impromptu group breakfast on Sunday morning, despite the lure of a prerecorded Miami Dolphins football game.

Jon is a pop culture dictionary with everything from one-hit wonder rock stars from the 80s to directors of action TV shows from the 90s stored in his noggin for easy access. Jon is a smart, upbeat, fun guy who people just gravitate toward.

Put these kind of people together with a few crime writers and it is one kick ass weekend. I think the photos pretty much speak for themselves. Except for the one where I'm wearing C.J. Box’s cowboy hat on the back of my head. It is not a fashion statement. Mr. Box’s head is the approximate diameter of the Girl Scout’s head.

As a reader or writer what sort of events do you get to like to attend?