Gene Lancour

I’m a Chicago transplant living on the America Riviera in So-Cal, with a wife of some thirty years who ignores my flagrant idiosyncrasies with a tolerance that verges on incipient deafness. Like most of my generation I volunteered for the military; in my case heavy weapons infantry, where I learned to expeditiously eliminate my fellow human beings in the name of democracy. Obviously college came as something of a relief. A BA in English/History, and an MA and subsequent doctoral work in History prepared me for everything but the real world, although I can quote Chaucer, Lincoln, Shakespeare and Tolkien (and numerous others) with disgusting facility. I wrote my first short story and subsequent novels as an undergraduate using an old Royal manual upright, which I still have, though the ribbons are no longer available. I refuse to tote around new media machines on the grounds that if you really need to contact me 24 hours a day you have OCD. I am simply not that interesting.

Philosophy

I taught at a university once where the department head was obsessed with the concept of voice. That is to say, before you can effectively write anything you have to develop a distinctive way of conveying it that is natural to you. This always struck me as a version of the phrase “Inside every heavy person is a skinny one fighting to get out.” Experience has taught me that it works better if you possess half a dozen or more ‘voices’ that can be adapted to the task at hand. In my career I’ve tried to do this and discovered that you will soon know exactly how to approach a given writing task. Writing is a trade best learned through practice. Practice long enough and they will pay you real money.

When I taught fiction I used to ask students: How many of you have told a good bullshit story in the last month? If you can’t answer yes, you have no business writing fiction, which is essentially telling lies. Objective reality dictates that you should know the difference.

Non-fiction is organization and reality. If you are unable to verbally describe a coherent set of steps for a simple task, you will either need to learn how to do so or hire a damn good editor. Having done the latter both freelance and as a dancing corporate bear I can, with some confidence, declare that every author of non-fiction you edit will talk about your mother and your probable antecedents in an unflattering way. Learning how to write non-fiction well is a learnable skill that improves with practice.

Lastly, writing is a business. There seems to be a developing narrative that providing content for the web or social media gets you exposure, with some obscure underlying idea that this ‘exposure’ is of social benefit. The only benefit this conveys is providing free content and information to the service, while occupying your time and talent to their advantage as they collect the cash. If one writes well you will be paid for it. I always have, and continue to expect same