One Bullet At A Time

 Writing one bullet at a time.

—Caleb Pirtle III

In this age of hyper-narcissism, Caleb Pirtle was that most rare of human beings: a selfless man.

His passing has left a huge hole in the writing community. Yet, he continues to speak to us. He does so through his books.

And what you find in his books is a man with an incredibly deep well.

He knew life. He knew people. He knew the nastiness and he knew the sublime. His years of talking to people and observing them comes through when he tells his stories. They are always about people and what they do and don’t do. The lies they tell and don’t tell.

Caleb’s writing was always centered around the human factor. Fiction, or non-fiction. Didn’t matter. People were at the center.

He used to say he was writing one bullet at a time. That bullet could be literal or metaphorical. And its impact depended on where it hit. And how hard. Literally or metaphorically.

He was an incredibly optimistic man. If you talked with him, as the song goes, never was heard a discouraging word, and the skies were not cloudy all day.

Yet, Caleb was no Pollyanna. There is a darkness to his Magnolia Bluff books that is not present in any of the other books I’ve read. And that might be due to the Magnolia Bluff stories being told in the first person. They are told by a person who has seen a lot of life. And a lot of it wasn’t good. Or especially nice.

I have found that third person puts distance between writer and reader. First person erases that distance. The first person story is intensely intimate.

And it is that intimacy that gives his Magnolia Bluff books such incredibly deep insights into human nature.

I find the last five lines of Death in the Absence of Rain enigmatic. I’m not sure what they mean, and I didn’t get a chance to ask Caleb. 

Graham Huston, the narrator of the story, says:

We as a people are what we bury inside of us. 

I believe it with all my heart. 

Don’t know about you. 

But, frankly, I’ve buried about all I can bury. 

I’m running out of room.

There’s an observation about people in general. Then there is the application by Graham to himself.

That is one doggone penetrating bullet.

We are what we bury inside of us.

Death in the Absence of Rain is a book about lies. Lies we tell others and lies we tell ourselves.

It’s a theme Caleb explored in Last Deadly Lie. 

There is a darkness that surrounds us. All of us. Even so, Caleb chose to see what was good and positive — even if he had to rummage around in that darkness for a while to find it.

Caleb was a pantser. Pull up a blank Word doc — and start typing. The story will flow from the subconscience, through the fingers, and onto the page.

The downside to being a pantser is that there are usually no notes or outlines lying around. Which means we will never know if Graham found a way to make more room, or somehow stopped burying.

We are what we bury inside of us. 

Graham was burying a lot of crap. Most of us are.

I don’t think Caleb was.

Just a day or two before he went into the hospital, I spoke with him on the phone. He was optimistic as ever, even though he was in great pain. He was looking forward to conquering whatever the heck was the problem and getting back into the saddle.

We are what we bury inside of us.

Unlike Graham Huston, but very much like Caleb Pirtle, I hope I’m burying good stuff.

I want to end my days looking to get back into the saddle.

If you missed the Underground Authors tribute to Caleb, take a watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trjgrs0Qkwk

May we all take a life lesson from Caleb Pirtle. Write one bullet at a time. And do our darnedest to get back into the saddle.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!

CW Hawes is a playwright; award-winning poet; and a fictioneer, with a bestselling novel. He’s also an armchair philosopher, political theorist, social commentator, and traveler. He loves a good cup of tea and agrees that everything’s better with pizza.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider buying me a cup of tea. Thanks! PayPal.me/CWHawes

Whither Music and Media?

Several years ago, I participated in Brian Fatah Steele’s 7Q interview. You can read the entire interview on his website.

Question #4 was “How does music and media factor into your writing? Do you feel it plays as much an inspirational role as literature?”

Time has moved on a fair bit since I answered the question for Brian. So, I thought I’d revisit and see if anything has changed.

Music

There’s no doubt about it. I love music. One of my major disappointments is that my parents did not encourage my interest in music. Nothing I can do about that now. That’s 60+ years in the past.

I’m too old to become a good amateur instrumentalist. My hands are against me. I can still learn composition, however, and I might pursue that. I certainly enjoyed dabbling in composition 40+ years ago.

When I was a high school and college lad, I listened to music while I did my homework. I listened to a lot of music. Classical music. I love classical music. Something I have my grandmother to thank. My parents weren’t too happy with her for that.

Now, though, in my old age, I am finding that I much prefer silence to sound. It’s not that I dislike music. It’s just that I value silence more. Sound is becoming increasingly grating on my ears. Kind of like that old Simon & Garfunkel song: “Sounds of Silence”.

My last few years at work I often use earplugs because the office was just too noisy.

Today, I very rarely listen to music while writing. And without a doubt I can say music does not provide any inspiration for my stories.

I do, though, find that fiction has increased my enjoyment of music. I’m more and more listening to the structure of the music I listen to. Something I never did in my youth.

But music does feature in my fiction. It’s ubiquitous in fact. My characters like music. They listen to it. They perform it. They quote lyrics. Music is all over my fiction. It just doesn’t inspire any story ideas.

Visual Media

Visual media covers a multitude of platforms.

There is film, both large and small screen. There is digital content: YouTube, TikTok, and the like. There are video games. And let us not forget plain old static pictures.

Visual Media occupies a huge part of our lives. It is all around us. Every day and every waking hour of every day. The influence is undoubtedly profound.

While I am not into video, I do very much enjoy fine art. Paintings. Photographs. Pottery. Art glass. Architecture. 

Fine art floats my boat. Even things such as a well-designed tea pot, cup, or mug will catch my eye. Or the shape of a fine pen, or mechanical pencil. Or the color pattern.

Gazing on beauty lifts the spirits and the soul.

Art features fairly consistently in my fiction. I suppose, because like music, fine art is an expression of the human potential. A glimpse of what we can become.

My fiction, which is my art, is ultimately a voice crying in the wilderness that there is something better for us — both individually and collectively — than what we have now. And we should pursue that which is better. Never be satisfied with what we have. Because what we have is mostly not worth having. There is something better for us.

Inspiration

All in all, literature provides a large portion of my inspiration. About equal with observation of the world around me, and those gifts that come from the Muse.

Music doesn’t inspire any ideas. Nor does fine art. On rare occasions a storyline or scene from a movie or TV episode will trigger an idea.

As noted above, video is not my thing. I’d rather read a good book. Especially since political correctness and wokeness have taken over the big and small screens in such a blatant manner. Watching movies and TV just isn’t enjoyable anymore. I want to watch a good story — not propaganda.

A true artist can get his point across much more affectively with a stiletto then with a club.

The movie Little Big Man is a powerful statement regarding the collision of Native and Euro-American cultures, as well as an indictment of Euro-American culture. It is an effective use of the stiletto to get its point across.

The Graduate does the same thing with regards to societal and familial expectations, pressures, and hypocrisy. Once again, the stiletto is deadly — and for more effective than a club would’ve been.

The old DCI Tom Barnaby episodes of Midsomer Murders did the same. Tom is ordinary. Husband. Father. A good employee. Normal home life. He himself is normal. It’s the rich, the high society folk, who are sick and what’s wrong with the world. The series also took a stab at the notion of the idyllic country life versus the corrupt city. In Midsomer it’s reversed.

The stiletto is always more effective than the club. 

But today’s writers, especially those for the screen, use the club almost exclusively and are the worse for it.

I don’t know about you, but I respond better to the stiletto.

So until screenwriters and producers go back to good story writing instead of pushing propaganda, I’m reaching for a good book.

What about you? How would you answer Mr. Steele’s question? Drop your answer in the comments below.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!

CW Hawes is a playwright; award-winning poet; and a fictioneer, with a bestselling novel. He’s also an armchair philosopher, political theorist, social commentator, and traveler. He loves a good cup of tea and agrees that everything’s better with pizza.

If you enjoyed this post, please consider buying me a cup of tea. Thanks! PayPal.me/CWHawes 

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