Nostalgia Ain't What It Used To Be

"Learn to write the same way you learn to play golf. You do it and keep doing it until you get it right."
Novelist Tom Clancy.

I've hit something of a writing lull. Part of it is the natural ebb and flow. Right now, there isn't a lot to write about, unless one wants to take on Russian collusion...I don't. And part of it is that I'm reading more. Thanks to Audiobooks, I've had a chance to revisit Tom Clancy.

I began my writing efforts trying, in a certain way, to mimic Clancy and his methods. The guy has sold millions of books. So, why the hell not. Some of my favorite reading moments involved his books, back when the real thing represented the medium.

I subscribed to the Book of the Month Club, and would routinely order the latest Clancy book - spaced about a year apart. Ripping open the tough, book-sized cardboard shipping container, along half inch perforations - rarely entirely successfully - I'd relax in my Red Grandis wooden slat rocking chair. Pouring a glass of middle 90s Kendall Jackson cabernet sauvignon into an Arches Winery stem glass, I'd open the book. This wine is perfect for the occasion, I thought. By twirling it in the light of the 60 watt bulb of the portfolio barada floor lamp, I could examine the legs, denoting relative dryness. It occurred to me at that moment that some things in California are done well.

Reading was a welcome respite from the toll a law enforcement career takes. Each day, I'd look over my Gen 2 Glock 19 9mm semi-automatic pistol, ensuring that I had fifteen pristine 145 grain hollow point Federal premium duty rounds in the Glock factory magazine. I would tuck the handgun into a Safariland concealed carry holster and head for work.

But, at night, after the tiny humans were asleep in our tri-level four bedroom single family home - now warmer after our vinyl siding remake - I'd open the new book. At my feet, our diluted breed forty pound Golden Retriever, officially named Darwin. A difficult early life rendered him a somewhat bemused creature, I always thought. His nickname was "Two Dog," because no one dog could be as dumb.

The cloth binding, white pages printed in offset lithography...

I can't keep this up.

I loved the early Clancy novels. They celebrated, aside from the military hardware that commonly dressed the set, the kind of selflessness that accompanies armed service. 

In one book (I don't remember which) Secret Service agents battle an armed assailant, bent on some sort of mayhem. Several are killed. As an investigator stands over one body, he mutters "Nice job, buddy." To Clancy, the good guys were good, the bad guys bad and in the end good triumphed.

Some of Clancy's preferences found their way into my writing, at least as much as my editors would allow. In Out of Ideas, a friend of main character Karen Sorenson gets out of a BMW 3 series sedan and hands her a bag containing an H&K 417 rifle chambered in NATO 7.62, with Leopold combat optics. Some habits are hard to break.

Clancy sold a hundred million books writing the way he wrote. A new genre evolved from his novels. But, as I plug my Samsung S8 into the auxiliary jack of my gray 2010 Toyota Tacoma TRD double cab 4X4... I'll be ready for this book to end, and I can find one that allows my own imagination some elbowroom.