GETTING CAUGHT

by John M. Floyd

Living as I do in the hinterlands, it’s always fun when a nationally known writer comes to our area for a signing. That was the case a couple weeks ago: bestselling author Harlan Coben visited Lemuria Bookstore in Jackson. I was of course in attendance, to buy his latest novel, Caught.

Coben’s body of work, including the Myron Bolitar series, is enough for a separate column, but today I’d like to talk about how much I enjoyed, and learned from, what he had to say to his audience after the signing.

What I enjoyed

I’d met Harlan a couple of times at Bouchercons, and found him to be as personable and kind as you always hope famous authors will be. That kind of honest likability was in evidence at his appearance here; the crowd loved him, and there was a packed house for both his signing and his reading.

The “reading” turned out to be the kind that I appreciate the most: he didn’t read from his book at all. Instead he talked about his novels and his characters and the way he gets his plot ideas, and even about his writing habits and his views on the writing “life.”

What I learned

According to Coben:

• Writing is more than (as we’ve often heard) inspiration and perspiration. It’s inspiration, perspiration, and desperation. Every writer, he said, occasionally feels insecure about his or her work.

Nevada Barr once told me the same thing, in different words: one day you look at what you’ve written and say Boy that’s good; the next day you think Oh my God, I’m terrible at this; the next day you think, Hey, I actually know what I’m doing, here; the day after that you think, Who would ever want to read this crap? And so on and so on. The bottom line: self-doubt is natural.

• You know a writer’s lying when you hear him say something like “I write only for myself, not for anyone else.” That’s the same thing as saying when I talk, I talk only for myself; I don’t care if anyone else hears me. The truth is, all writers want to communicate their words to others, and to have others appreciate and enjoy them.

• Rewriting can be fun.

James Michener said, “I’m not a great writer—I’m a great re-writer.” Coben agrees, and says he actually enjoys the process of rewriting and polishing and making his fiction better.

I always feel a little funny when I tell people that, and it was good to hear a hugely successful author say he shares that opinion.

• If you CAN quit writing, you SHOULD quit writing. If you’re really a writer you’ll write, no matter what.

Conclusions and observations

I found myself agreeing with just about everything he told us in his talk to us that afternoon. I could even relate to what he said about the first questions people always ask him at booksignings. Number one is “How tall are you?” (we’re both six foot four) and number two is “Where do you get your ideas?” The first is easy to answer, the second is hard.

There are, of course, several major differences between Coben and me: (1) he’s from the northeast and I’m definitely not, (2) he writes mostly long and I write mostly short, and (3) he’s just a tad more talented and wealthy and well-known than I am.

Okay, maybe “just a tad” isn’t being quite honest . . . but what did you expect? Fiction writers are supposed to lie.

Questions and suggestions

Any other Harlan Coben fans out there? If so, what is it about his novels that you like? The fast pace? The plot twists? His ordinary, everyman protagonists? (Last night I finished Caught, by the way, and it contains all those ingredients. I loved it.)

If you’re not a fan, here’s a challenge, and a prediction: read one of his seven Bolitar novels, or his ten recent standalones.

If you do . . . you will be.