Category Archives: Writing Advice

Calling All Doctoral Candidates: Some Great Dissertation Writing Advice

Writing your dissertation? Been there, done that.

Feeling like you’re jumping through hoops of fire? Swimming in a shark tank? Or flying with eagles?

It can be great one day and horrible the next. Sometimes it’s gratifying and exhilarating. At other times, it’s humbling, frustrating, and discouraging.

That’s where we come in. We have a wealth of information, advice, and experience to share with you.

At edit911.com, we edit 50-75 doctoral dissertations every month. Our Blog & Advice pages are full of helpful articles about writing dissertations, as well as all other topics germane to the graduate student experience.

We’re continuously writing and publishing new articles. Very soon, we’ll be publishing a few white papers and books as well.

I’m also constantly surfing the net for good resources for our clients.

Today, I found a great site at UNC that’s devoted to dissertation advice, as well as many other subjects important to doctoral candidates: http://bit.ly/oxoHle.  Check it out. I hope it helps you.

 

Marc D. Baldwin, PhD
Founder & CEO, Edit911, Inc.
&
Tenured Professor of English
Hillsborough Community College
Tampa, Florida
www.edit911.com
drmarcdbaldwin.com
www.anuprisingofangels.com

Think First, Write Later: Why Brainstorming Will Take Your Writing to the Next Level

I love to brainstorm … really! There is something about letting my mind run free, moving away from the task list to dream a little. There is a benefit to brainstorming that will add creativity and life to your writing. Whether you are brainstorming titles, plot points, character names, direction for your paper, resources to reference, or topics for your dissertation, brainstorming can generate ideas that will benefit your writing greatly. Consider these tactics for generating creative ideas.

1. The Opposite Game – Yes, try to think of the worst-case answers for what you are trying to generate. They can be stupid, crazy, off the wall, or just plain bad. But there is a funny thing about this approach. Starting with the wild and crazy ideas can lead to creative and innovative ideas that move you forward.

2. Rapid fire – Jot down everything that comes to mind as fast as you can. Or even better record ideas on your phone or other device that can record. Work on quantity and you can evaluate for quality later. Quantity often leads to quality in brainstorming. Just don’t give up too quickly. Some estimate that it takes 20 or so bad ideas before the really creative ones emerge.

3. Group Brainstorming – Ask a couple friends to help you brainstorm, whether they know your topic of writing or not. You will play off each other’s answers and generate better ideas. There is something about having numbers when brainstorming that helps build creative energy.

4. Change Your Environment – Go somewhere you never write or research and see what ideas bubble to the surface in a brand new setting. Take inspiration from people and places you don’t normally consider as inspirational for you writing.

5. Sleep Brainstorming – It works. I don’t know how, but it does! The students in our psychology class kept a dream journal – Freudian theory of course! Before that class I thought that I did not dream anymore. At least I never remembered dreaming. But with a notebook by my bed, and the intent to write down anything I could immediately upon waking, I had success. Oftentimes I woke continuing to think about items from the day. You might just awake to a great idea!

6. Draw It! – Try to pictorially communicate your message. See what new connections you make because of communicating through pictures. Picturing your argument in a different way will help you communicate it better.

7. Summary Statement – Summarize your writing in one word. Then give yourself five words. Then write a one-sentence thesis statement. See how this exercise focuses your thinking and takes it in different directions.

8. Reader List – Make a list of 25 adjectives or words that describe or name your reader. Then brainstorm with the reader in mind.

9. End Game – Pretend you are your reader and project what you want the reader to think or feel when reading your writing. Brainstorm how to get to the final state. Think of it as an action plan for your reader.

— Dr. William, www.edit911.com/staff

Authorship and Marketing

As a start-up entrepreneur, one of the many lessons I’ve learned in business is to start marketing your product as soon as possible, even before it is ready for customers. Marketing creates demand and you should start building awareness early.

When a few of my colleagues mentioned I should write a book, I had no idea what I would write about. I just knew it would be about start-up companies because that’s what I’ve done for years and the stories always seem to fascinate people over lunch.  So instead of starting with the book, I started a blog and shortly afterwards, I started article marketing.

I wrote about a lot of different aspects of start-up companies, everything from product development to humor about employee antics to advertising. I watched what attracted readers, and there seemed to be three topics that were the most appealing to them – funding, marketing, and customer engagement.

Fourteen months later, I held my first book in my hands.

I knew marketing and promoting my book would not be easy and quick.  I reached out to all sorts of people, investigated many different types of marketing approaches, and I have tried a few different ones. You’ll find authors who swear by one or two methods, but no two authors do the same.

Virtual Book Tours

These are online book promoters. They use their network of contacts to get you placement in blogs, in online magazines, and on blog talk radio shows. They may even do Facebook advertising and press releases too.  Some are specific to different geographic locations across the globe. I engaged several of these services and I found each one to be quite good. Each one has their own set of contacts. You can exhaust their contacts within a couple of months and so I needed to use more than one. These services suit my personal schedule as they do all the leg work, and I just need to be available or provide the content.

Traditional Public Relations and Publicists

This is one of the more expensive options and many of these firms have gone to a la carte service model, so some part of their services is affordable.  The trick is going to the right firm, one that deals in your subject matter.  These firms have contacts into the mainstream media from news organizations to television to radio to magazine. In six months, my firm secured more than 25 placements and they focus on media engagements with large audiences.

Guest Blogging

I hired a guest blogging consultant, who recommended doing four guest posts per week. In his experience, this really builds an audience like nothing else. He recommended researching the blogoshere to find the appropriate blogs, spending 2 to 4 hours getting to know each blog and its audience, and then proposing a guest post. Finally, he suggested spending 8 to 10 hours writing each guest post. It didn’t take more than a minute to figure out that this would consume more than 40 hours per week of my time, and it just didn’t fit into my personal schedule.

Article Marketing

Next I met a highly successful Internet guru, who swore article marketing works to build an audience. This is how she built an audience of millions. I was already doing some articles, but not with structured intent. Steve Shaw, the founder of SubmitYourArticle, said it takes 6 months before you can see noticeable results from article marketing and recommends at least 8 articles per month for each article website that you use.

Email and Internet Marketing Campaigns

One of the techniques many authors swear by is joint venture marketing campaigns. The trick bestselling authors use is to concentrate all the promotion is a short time period such a one day and to build a group of authors that all cross-promote to each other’s fans. In brief, you contact bloggers, social influencers, website owners, newsletters providers, bestselling authors, and anyone with a substantial online presence and ask them to promote your book to their audience. These are your joint partners. They suggest gobbling together an email list of at least 500,000 people and a million person list is preferable. I tried this for about six weeks before I gave up, it was consuming all my time. I know authors who have done this method and it took them months to organize all the necessary joint partners.  You can hire services to do this on your behalf, but as I found out, these services are specific to a particular genre and reader demographics.

Book Reviews and Book Contests

I have reached out to podcasters and other authors with complimentary books to review my book. I search Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Lulu for possible authors to contact.  iTunes is a great place to find podcast candidates.  I have also paid for sponsored book reviews and entered independent book contests. I got the most traction from those that I contacted and secured their help for free. One day I may win one of those book contests, but the winners (at least in my non-fiction business category) tend to be serial authors from the smaller publishing houses.

Social Platforms

The Internet is full of advice about authors building social platforms. This includes a website, a blog, a Facebook page, a YouTube channel, Twitter and LinkedIn.  There are services that will offer to build this platform for an author, but that’s the mechanics. The real work is in generating the content, interacting with the audience, and building your fan base – and I have not seen a service yet that will do this part. You may ask yourself why building a fan base is important. What I’ve learned is the media will check you out online before committing to having you appear in their publication or on their show. Even joint partners will search for you online.

For Facebook, I set aside a small monthly budget to advertise my fan page. On LinkedIn, I share links to my blog posts in groups that are related to me topic. This brings readers back to my website. For Twitter, I use the free version of socialoomph to queue up tips that I tweet to my followers.  I also send out links to my blog posts to send readers back to my website.

 

Closing Remarks

My advice to authors is not to take on more than two marketing services or efforts at a time. I find I can’t handle too many requests. I may have to spend 20 to 60 hours setting up of a new marketing service.  One week I had to write 15 guest posts and articles, and everyone wanted unique and different topics.

The lead time to just get into the line-up for many of these marketing services can be four months. The shortest lead time I’ve experienced was 8 weeks.

There are consultants and services for just about everything for authors.  You need to pick and choose what you want to do and how much you want to spend. I’ve been quoted fees from $500 to $50,000.  There are service firms who arrange for speaking engagements, virtual conference events, Facebook parties, and just about everything imaginable.

For me, it is a matter of how much time I can spend promoting my book.  Yes, you can do-it-yourself, and on my own I’ve managed to land articles in such publications as Entrepreneur magazine.  But my time is limited and I need others to help me promote my book.

About the Author

Cynthia Kocialski is the founder of three tech start-ups companies. Cynthia writes the popular Start-up Entrepreneurs’ Blog and has written the book, ““Startup From The Ground Up – Practical Insights for Entrepreneurs, How to Go from an Idea to New Business”.

 

 

 

 

Review of Launch

In his innovative new book Launch, Michael Stelzner offers business owners and marketers some counterintuitive advice: forego traditional marketing messages in favor of valuable—and free—content. In fact, if you’re looking for marketing how-to’s, you’re going to have to wait until the final chapter of the book. Stelzner, the founder of SocialMediaExaminer.com—the number-one small business blog according to Technorati—calls this concept the “elevation principle,” and he argues it’s the best way to reach people who have grown deaf to the overabundance of marketing messages bombarding them on a daily basis. Stelzner offers step-by-step instructions based on his real-world experiences, as well as examples and analogies from daily life.

As a mom and a marketing professional, one analogy that resonated with me was when Stelzner compared marketing to busy customers to trying to brush a child’s hair: “There are two ways to get their hair brushed. Yelling, ‘Get your behind over here, right now!’ is one option. The other is to walk alongside them, brushing as they go on their merry way.” This brought back memories of working in direct mail years ago, dealing with low response rates as ads with hard sells were disposed of as “junk mail.” Stelzner reveals there is a better way. By offering real information that people actually want, you build trust and bring people to you—instead of ending up in the wastebasket.

Insights like these fill the book, making the message easy to apply to any business venture. Today I’m working with authors, and I encourage them to create blogs, share content, and contribute useful information in online communities, without pushing their books. Because, as Stelzner says, “by giving genuine gifts to your base and experts—without expecting anything in return—you’ll draw people to you in droves… and some will become loyal customers for life.”

–by Meredith Hale, Marketing Manager for Baldwin Book Publishing

4 Crucial Tips in Writing Your Dissertation

DR. WILLIAM SAYS:

Cover as much ground as possible up front with your proposal.
• Build a detailed outline for every chapter.
• Get approval from your committee on sources you will review for your literature review.
• Talk through your hypotheses with your professors.
• Find out where to bracket the conversation so that your topic does not get too broad.
• Gain all institutional approvals needed for research studies.
• Don’t assume anything!

Lay the foundation correctly up front and your dissertation writing will go much more smoothly, with greater focus, and with an understanding of where the problem spots are.
…………………………………..
DR. GORDON SAYS:

Always cover your back: ensure that you can back up everything you say with documentary or experimental evidence, and ensure that your evidence supports your thesis and does not undermine it. You should also make sure that everything is properly documented, namely that every quotation is referenced, and that every citation in the text matches an entry in the Bibliography (this very rarely happens in practice). Look for possible alternative readings of what you write, and ensure you have answers to obvious objections to your positions. In short, be ready to answer almost any foreseeable challenge to your case.

Remember that your examiners will not have read all your sources or performed your experiments, so you will know your material better than they will. Your job is to lead them through the material and to show them how it supports your thesis. The more clearly and precisely you write, the less likely it is that they will misunderstand you.

Provided you can bring this off, and anticipate the major objections your examiners may raise, you should be well prepared for a successful defence of your dissertation.

…………………………….
DR. DAN SAYS:

Recognize that the dissertation is there to get you your degree.
This is probably not the tip that your dissertation committee will want you to pay attention to. Very often dissertation advisors see dissertations as vanity projects or even as proxy research projects, so they try to push their grad students into directions of research that apply to their interests, not to the study.
This, by the way, is often the cause behind the Miltonic Satan vs. Death grudge match that advisory committees can degenerate into. Faculty can often sense how the dissertation begins to reflect one prof’s influence and this can cause others to react. Again, they may want to see you as their proxy, so keep a low profile.
While your research may be ground-breaking and change the future of Horace Walpole studies forevermore, causing all the other scholars to immediately close up their laptops and leave the field to you, it’s more likely that it won’t. And that’s fine.
In other words, accept that the dissertation is a small first step in your academic career. Mine it for articles later, find a small press looking for quality texts from up-and-coming scholars, or be content that it will be indexed and available for scholars coming after you.
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DR. CHRISTINE SAYS:

You may have heard the frequent refrain when opening a business: location, location, location. Just like your business wouldn’t exist in a void, neither does your dissertation. The #1 tip for writing a good dissertation is simple: audience, audience, audience. Audience is to writing what location is to commerce. How can you best reach the people you want to interest in your project?

The first thing NOT to do is assume the only people interested in your work are your department chair and dissertation committee. Such an assumption almost guarantees your dissertation will be dry, and more importantly, difficult to write. When you are able to imagine a curious and compassionate reader, who may not be the expert that you now are after years of graduate school, you can make writing decisions that will enhance your work.

Even within the constraints of the typical dissertation framework – introduction, literature review, study design, results, conclusions – your work can still be unique and compelling at the prose level. Think of yourself as someone teaching the material, which in many cases, you will be soon. How do you keep the students from nodding off? How do you keep your colleagues’ attention? The same things that interested you initially about the research will most likely interest your audience. What were they?

Audience consideration can solve many common writing issues. If you are consistently aware of your reader, you will not repeat information with no elaboration or contextualization because you will know the reader already has that information. If you consider your reader as someone who is not as knowledgeable as you are, you will take the time to explain concepts and provide illuminating examples. If you think of your project as a narrative that you are walking your reader through, you will be able ensure you keep her attention and organize your ideas in the most logical way possible.

–by the Staff of Edit911,Inc. & Baldwin Book Publishing

Launch: The Elevation Principle for Business & Life

Michael Stelzner’s new book Launch: How to Quickly Propel Your Business Beyond the Competition has fired me up and helped me launch a couple of my own new ventures.

How? Because Mike’s been there, done that.
 

Mike’s Got Street Cred

I always like to know who’s doing the work. If I’m building a new house, who’s my contractor? As a baseball fan, I love to check out the players’ stats. And I never miss a new U2 or Newsboys CD because I know they always do good work.

In the case of a book, I like to know something about the author.

Mainly, is he an authority in his field?

 

 

In 2007, Mike authored a white paper entitled Writing White Papers that landed him universal acclaim and assignments writing white papers and consulting for over 100 corporations. His work launched his career into the stratosphere.

Not one to rest on his laurels, in 2009 Mike launched Social Media Examiner, which in less than 5 months was declared the #1 small business blog in the world by Technorati.

I read SME faithfully because its articles and resources are always a big help to me and my businesses.

So Mike writing a book about launching is like Ted Williams writing about hitting, F.L. Wright writing about architecture, or Picasso about painting. Mike knows launching.


A Book of Principles

The principles in Launch will give you and your ventures more

  • clarity and direction (what to do);
  • efficiency (how to do it better);
  • synergy (how the steps and ingredients can complement one another); and
  • joy (how putting other people’s needs before your own ends up making everyone happier—both others and you yourself).

How can this claim be true and why is it essential to your success?  Simple, really.

Being principled works—both in your business life and your personal life. Good, honest, generous, selfless principles make people successful and happy.

What a concept, right?


The Elevation Principle

Mike’s main marketing principle is counter-intuitive: don’t market and don’t sell. Instead, meet “the core desires of prospects and customers by helping them solve their basic problems at no cost.”

Talk about a principle.

His EP formula is Einsteinian elegant:  GC + OP – MM = G. That is, great content + other people – marketing messages = growth.

 

Makes such beautiful sense.

  • Write great stuff that people can use. Inform and teach them. Show them you know what you’re talking about. And give it to them for free.
  • Get other people involved. Welcome them into your world, your sphere of knowledge. Help them.  “If you lift people up, they’ll lift you up.”
  • Don’t sell! Don’t be pushy! Shift your emphasis from “What can we sell you?” to “How can we help you?”
  • That formula will result in growth. Not just for your business, but for you too—growth as a person of principles.


Consider Others Before Yourself

Mike never preaches in this book. Never stands on a soap box. That’s not his style, thankfully.

But the subtext, the really beautiful, inspiring, implied message is this: life’s really all about living for other people.

When you get yourself out of the center of the universe and realize that your main purpose—and most enriching and rewarding strategy— in life is to live for other people, those people benefit and so will you.

Because people usually reciprocate. Especially when they sense genuine good will coming from you.


Igniting the Elevation Principle

So how can this principle be activated and used to launch you and your business? Back to the EP:

  • Help people solve their problems. Write how-to guides. Show them what you know. Show them you’re there for them.
  • Don’t push, manipulate, or pressure people into buying what you’re selling.
  • Give gifts—freely and without any expectation of getting one back. What gift can you give? Your knowledge. Your time. Your friendship and good counsel.

 

What’s the payoff for paying it forward? Business, likely. Possibly lots of business. Because people like to do business with people who are low key, caring, giving, and knowledgeable.

Your bottom line—and your life—will benefit from following this principle of putting others first.

Not many people are like that. So you’ll be different—as a business and a human being.

“Helping people ensures your business will stand out from the competition.”

 

Mike Stelzner introduces Launch from Michael A. Stelzner on Vimeo.


Sound Business Sense

Mike’s wisdom about putting people first would be enough reason to read Launch. But there’s plenty more great advice about many subjects. Such as these practical, action steps to take to launch your business and yourself:

  • Crafting and measuring “SMART” goals
  • Implementing specific social media marketing strategies
  • Inspiring yourself by “looking outward”
  • Finding role models
  • Working with experts
  • Attracting  and engaging “firestarters”—people who can help launch you

 

The Primary & Nuclear Fuel: Great Content

The first part of the EP equation is GC (good content). Why does Mike place such great emphasis upon GC?

Because great content sells. Its persuasive. It explains what you know and shows what you can do. All at once.

And, as the great French poet Jean de La Fontaine said, “By the work one knows the workman.”

As a teacher of writing and literature for 38 years, I’ve read a lot of books, poems, articles, essays, dissertations—you name it. Mike’s work contains all the elements of good writing.

For just one example, his metaphoric motif (getting literary now!) of the launch and the rocket, its fuel and trajectory, are all poetically persuasive.  Poetry persuades. Its rhyme, rhythm, figurative language, and compression unconsciously convince us.  Mike’s a poet and he may not even know it!

Launch is a living demonstration of good content: it’s clear, crisp, fun and easy to read, and packed with rocket fuel to propel you.

All you have to do is ignite its principles and watch them rocket you up, up and away!

 

We Have Lift Off: Read Launch!

Once in a while the planets align perfectly: things are happening in your life that link up magically and wonderfully with outside forces or events.

That just happened for me. Launch just launched at the same time I’m launching a novel and a new startup business.

Could the timing have been any better for me? Nope.

And the timing is right for you, too. Because there’s no time like the present.

Launch is a winner: its solid gold principles and inspirational mission plan couldn’t make more sense or work any better.

So, Launch yourself now! Get on board and take your dreams for a ride straight to the stars!

 

How to be a Scholar: Second, Love the Work

Dr. Dan Says: Be a teacher.

We all like to think of ourselves as scholars in the best tradition of those great names that dominate our respective fields.

However, we should also keep in mind that our privileged positions in higher education also give us the responsibility to share what we know and how we know it to others: students and fellow scholars alike.

In your research and in your writing, try to keep the perspective that you are trying to contribute to the scholarly conversation regarding your field.

And, keep your students in mind when doing the research and the writing, as this can help your focus.

I’m sure you’ll agree that the critics you best remember are the ones who taught you something, who inspired you to follow a particular line of thought. See yourself in that same tradition.

…………………….

Dr. Sandy Says: What does it take to be a scholar? Knowledge of your field and a passion for learning are certainly requirements. You must also be disciplined and reflective, the embodiment of “I think; therefore, I am.”  But the most important attribute is the desire to understand.

Knowing facts without understanding their significance, their interconnectivity, is essentially useless. Having a plethora of facts at your command may help you become a Jeopardy champion, but it doesn’t make you a scholar.

Facts are only puzzle pieces. As a scholar, you are either fitting the pieces together to discover the picture they comprise or looking at the picture to see where the pieces you have fit.

To borrow from Stephen Covey, you must “seek first to understand.” You explore the universe through the perspective of your particular field. You question and analyze, reflect and meditate. You are the little boy on the cereal box, holding a box of the cereal. No matter how deeply you delve, there is always one more cereal box with a picture of a little boy holding a box of the cereal. Each answer leads to another question.

And that is the forte of the scholar: relentlessly searching for the next piece of the puzzle in hope of answering one more question for humankind.

–by the Staff of Edit911, Inc. & Baldwin Book Publishing

 

 

 

How to be a Scholar: First, Do the Work

Dr. William Says: The characteristic that most defines a scholar is perseverance.

There are going to be periods of writer’s block, of lack of motivation, of adversity and conflict with others, of life challenges, and numerous other obstacles.

It is important to keep yourself to the task and with your goal in mind.

In times when I had most trouble being consistent with my dissertation writing, I often had to jump start my writing again by taking a week off from work, sending the family to visit relatives, and devoting an entire week to writing.

I’ll never forget how one week in the middle of summer with nothing but my research, a laptop, and The Weather Channel for background noise propelled me forward to finishing my dissertation.

Don’t lose heart when you think you’ve finished writing but begin the long process of edits and rewrites that take time, attention, and yes—perseverance—to get to the finish line.

…………………………….

Dr. Gordon Says: The most important attribute of a scholar is thoroughness.

If possible, it is useful to read every relevant word written on your subject, at least in languages you can understand, and to analyse and digest this material before developing a thesis or designing an experiment.

This also requires a methodical approach, so that lesser-known material is not missed. In the process, you will undoubtedly discover material that seems to be relevant, but is not, but you may also turn up some hidden gem that has been long neglected.

Whether you take this brute force approach or decide to be more selective, however, it’s important to gain mastery of your material, without which it will be difficult to persuade other scholars of your case.

When writing a dissertation, depth is essential, but breadth is also necessary to develop perspective. Developing both provides a good foundation for sound scholarship.

…………………………

Dr. Robert Advises:  Write Publishable Articles and Essays!

Few, if any, graduate students in the humanities these days are unaware that the job market is “soft.” Most also realize that, in order to be competitive, their curricula vitae need to be adorned with a few publication credits beyond the completion of a doctoral dissertation. Such has been the case at least since the mid-1980s.

As a department chair at two universities for eleven years until 1998, I have read literally thousands of applications.

More often than not, what persuaded our selection committees to recommend candidates for interviews at national conventions was documented evidence of professional achievement before conferral of the Ph.D.

Although this widespread expectation is lamentable, at least in some quarters, it does attest to a brutal reality of academic hiring today.

It makes sense, therefore, to be pragmatic during one’s graduate apprenticeship. Long vanished are the days when a doctorate alone guaranteed tenurable employment.

Prospective investors in your scholarly future look for proof that you are “on the make”—in other words, grasping for the brass ring of peer recognition on the carousel of “professionalism.” Refereed publication casts a long shadow in this regard.

Herewith a humble case in point. Well before the crunch in college/university hiring of aspiring faculty, I became enamored, partly through boredom with the insularity of graduate study, of the supposedly wider world of publication-worthy scholarship.

I therefore tackled seminar papers with an eye toward that end. Happily, three of such revised productions on Sir Thomas Malory, Thomas Gray, and Lord Byron were accepted for journal publication, opening the gates for initial employment as an Assistant Professor of English at Georgia Tech.

The point is to mine your graduate-school research, even when it is not congruent with your main field of specialization, in order to enhance your qualifications for employment.

Everything will probably change after that initial appointment, but at least you then will have a basis on which to start anew and reinvent your professional persona.

–by the Staff of Edit911, Inc.

 

William Faulkner Reviews An Uprising of Angels

The unheavenly, inexorably scorching sun beat down on a more than dusty road—a road beyond dust, connecting the past and future, beyond the irrepressible earth itself, into a throat parched dryness and heart stopping swelter of an afternoon from another era, another day, like the Los Angeles slum ridden and dark secret hidden neighborhoods in the book I was reading as I sat by the side of that dusty, dusky, infernal road to hell and back, my back against a weeping willow tree and a damp rag from mopping my brow in my hands, hands gnarled and shaking, angry hands as angrily I read about a riot and the never to be ended, never should have begun struggle of the races against each other that reaches deep into the nation’s past and soil and soul, from the South I knew to the western Pacific shores I didn’t, into a huge metropolis beyond anything I ever experienced, being from a postage stamp sized county in a state swarming with hatred and despair and immutable actions, unsilent words, unspoken deeds and bitter emotions, emotions rambling through centuries and eons of human relationships and uncivilized civilizations, only to end up carrying that weight of race and flesh and skin, those battles never unfought and never finished, into a riot of universal size with gangs of great-great grandsons of slaves and slaveowners, of sharecroppers, storekeepers, and barn burners’ descendents exploding once more, uncontrollable, irreconcilably turning streets into bloody highways saturating the dust and filling the skies with smoke and flames as if nothing has ever been learned and nothing could ever be learned, for how could it, if all that I have recorded and written about men and their hatred has never been assimilated into hearts or souls but rather turned out and ignored, my words having meant nothing to these Los Angeles men and their furious undiscriminating unassailable dispatching of death and destruction all so very many years since I myself  toiled my fingers on pen and paper, ink stained to pass a message that’s been unread, unlearned, uncared for, since as Baldwin writes, this riot erupted, this cataclysmic abysmal unfathomable eruption of hell’s deep darkness onto the earth where men still walk and breathe and live yet must fight and struggle with themselves and others over what, if not their own beyond interminably terrible destinies and drives, desires and indefatigable selfishness where justice is damned and no one is safe in their homes, their skins, their lives, all lives reduced to the rubble beneath  the passing years’ feet and I, myself, in my legacious state of misfortunate fame or infamy can neither affect nor change, despite all the books, all the stories, all the writing I did, so that Baldwin now must take up the pen and once again, as I and others before him have, to record the impossible, impenetrable, unending and unfailing misery befalling the never innocent at the hands of the always guilty men who fail to get along?

 

Ernest Hemingway Reviews An Uprising of Angels

Baldwin sent me his book and I read it. I read it sitting on a verandah with cold beer and cats on my lap. I read it in one sitting as the sun crossed the grey clouded sky and faded into the horizon. The ocean turned black as the light faded and night fell. I drank 7 or 8 beers while I read it. The beers dripped their condensation on the pages of the book and now the pages have beer stains that will remind me when I read it again where I was and how I enjoyed the crisp clear beer while reading Baldwin’s book.

His writing is clean and crisp like the beer I drank while reading it. His story goes down smoothly like the beer. I started reading with little interest because I don’t like big city people who have problems they bring on themselves because of their stupidity and laziness. But something about it kept me reading. It was the danger, I suppose. The guns and the violence and the danger are all things I like in a book and in life.  I also like writing about war. It brings out a man’s true character. This book is about a war. A war in Los Angeles in 1992 between some good people and some bad people. The good people are not all good and the bad people are not all bad. That is the way with people.

I like the way Baldwin writes. He understands that life must be lived and fears faced. I have been through war and the riot of 1992 was a war. The bell tolled for many and no one came out of it without a wound. But some took the wounds and used them. They felt them and studied them and were true to them. That is life well lived. This is a book about life.

Baldwin tells me we share the same birthday. That is an interesting fact. I like facts because they are sharp and hard and cannot be denied. I don’t like it when people try to deny facts. Such people do not know themselves and do not understand life.

I would take Baldwin hunting some day if I could. I bet he’d be a good hunter because his eye is clear and sharp and his words cut fast and sharp, like hard flat stones skimmed across the surface of a calm cool lake.  His characters go out too far like Jake and Santiago and me. I like that too about his book. His characters know how to live and they know how to die.

I’d like to meet Baldwin and see how he lives. But I’m dead and my verandah and beer and cats are all far from the earth that he and all the people alive now still live on. I don’t live there anymore. I put a rifle in my mouth and pulled the trigger. But I won’t talk about that. There are many things that should not be talked about. A man and a writer must understand that what is not talked about gives a story and his life even more meaning. You have to know a lot to leave a lot out. Baldwin’s book leaves a lot out. That’s what I like about it most.

So I will never meet Baldwin and drink a beer with him and take him hunting. That is too bad.  We could have had a good time together. At least it’s pretty to think so.