John Steinbeck, a Pulitzer Prize winning author (Grapes of Wrath) and Nobel laureate offers six basic tips on writing in his interview it the Fall 1975 issue of The Paris Review.

1.  Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised. (This concept of small daily incremental progress is key to long term writing success.)

2.  Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down. Rewrite in process is usually found to be an excuse for not going on. It also interferes with flow and rhythm which can only come from a kind of unconscious association with the material.  (Self-censorship and a constant reworking of material day-by-day is absolutely antithetical to finishing anything!)

3. Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person—a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one. (This helps to tell a story with real intimacy.  It’s just you and one other person.)

4.  If a scene or a section gets the better of you and you still think you want it—bypass it and go on. When you have finished the whole you can come back to it and then you may find that the reason it gave trouble is because it didn’t belong there. (Constant forward momentum is the only way anything gets done.  Don’t let any one scene, or sequence stop or stymie you.)

5.  Beware of a scene that becomes too dear to you, dearer than the rest. It will usually be found that it is out of drawing. (Kill kill kill your darlings.)

6.  If you are using dialogue—say it aloud as you write it. Only then will it have the sound of speech. (This is excellent advice even for purely narrative passages too!)

The whole interview is here– http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/4156/the-art-of-fiction-no-45-continued-john-steinbeck

The Woman in the Window tells the story of Richard Wanley (Edward G. Robinson) whose beloved wife leaves with the children for a long summer holiday in Maine.  On the way to have a drink at his club, Wanley sees the portrait of a beautiful woman in a gallery window.  His friends arrive to meet him and they too remark on the portrait as their “dream girl.”

One of Wanley’s friends at the club is District Attorney Frank Laylor (Raymond Massey).  The men bemoan the lack of adventure in their lives.  Laylor muses about middle-aged men kicking up their heels and speaks of his experience as a prosecutor:  “Trouble often starts from little things,”  he says. “Genuine actual tragedy issues directly out of pure carelessness or the merest trifle.  It results from the casual impulse, the idle  flirtation or just one drink too many.”

And of course that’s exactly what happens.  As Wanley leaves the club, just a little tipsy, he stops to admire the portrait once again and sees the actual woman’s face in the window.  He is surprised and turns to find she is very real.  The woman occasionally stops by to look at the painting herself (and it amuses her to see the reaction on men’s faces as they admire it.)

She flirts.  Wanley buys her a drink.  They end up in her apartment, where she has a portfolio of other portraits of her by the same artist.  Her jealous boyfriend bursts in and, in a struggle, Wanley kills the intruder by stabbing him in the back with a scissors.  Wanley and the woman discuss calling the police and then decide to cover up the crime instead.   Guilt, blackmail and a tightening noose of suspicion ensue.

Unfortunately an unsatisfying ending was forced on the film by the Hays Office morality code.  It’s a cheat and the easy way out.  In a strange way I suppose it is emblematic of the “easy way out” that ruins Wanley’s character.  Despite this fault, the film is an interesting early version of American film noir.

According to Wikipedia:  (The Woman in the Window is) based on J. H. Wallis’ novel Once Off Guard. The story features two surprise twists at the end. Scriptwriter Nunnally Johnson founded International Pictures (his own independent production company) after writing successful films such as The Grapes of Wrath (1940) and other John Ford films.  (His partner was William Goetz.)  Johnson chose The Woman in the Window as the production company’s premiere project.”

Johnson had an incredibly prolific career and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Screenplay in 1940 for The Grapes of Wrath and for the Directors Guild of America Best Directors Award in 1956 for The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. He also wrote How to Marry a Millionaire, The Gunfighter, My Cousin Rachel, The Three Faces of Eve and The Dirty Dozen. He wrote over 60 films over the course of his career.  That works out to a least one film a year every year from 1933 until 1967 (and often two or three films in a year).

A couple of things struck me about this film.  First of all, by  silly co-incidence, the book Wanley takes down from the library shelf to read in his club is The Song of Solomon.  That poem happens to figure prominently in a project I am working on right now.  I love those odd and slightly thrilling little “signs” that occasionally pop up as you are nursing a project along, don’t you?

The second thing that struck me is the issue of integrity. Wanley is a good a man.  He has loving family whom he adores.  He is a well-regarded professor and a generally decent guy.  He is foolish enough to follow a beautiful charming woman to her apartment.  Although he has no intention of sleeping with her, he is a bit vain and allows himself to be flattered by her attention.  He is surprised by the jealous lover and clearly kills him in self-defense.

If Wanley had called the police, he would have found himself in the center of a scandal.  He would have been embarrassed and humiliated in front of his wife and perhaps might even have lost his job at the college.  But his dilemma is one caused by simple human male stupidity.  The matter becomes criminal when he doesn’t report the death, dumps the body and lies to the police.  He then plots a second murder to cover up the first.  The simple act of picking up the phone and then putting it down strips him of his first bit of integrity.

Evil always starts with a small thing– stupid carelessness, hurtful blurted words, a harmless flirtation, a bit too much to drink, an unchecked impulse.  This quote by Edward Tufte says it all– “Evil does not have horns or breathe fire or call explosive attention to itself.  It is a force (or a fear) that slowly and imperceptibly erodes our standards, clouds our judgements, lulls (or paralyzes) us into submission and, before we realize it, has lead us down a regrettable path from which there is no return.”

We lose our integrity bit by bit, decision by decision, one small choice at a time.  Thoughts (or fears) create action. Action creates habits. Habits build (or destroy) Character. Character creates Destiny.  That’s part of the larger question I am looking at for myself.  Just how do I want to direct my own destiny? What new choices need to be made?  What new habits created?

Here’s the first nine minutes of the film–

I’ve been working on the final edit of the Power of Conscience eBook.  That particular Character Type is often confused with the Power of Idealism character.  The distinction between the two is subtle but clear. It is rather like the difference between a revolutionary and a rebel.

A revolutionary is someone who works for political or social change.  The orientation is toward changing and improving society.  The basic orientation of a Power of Conscience character is to seek moral and ethical perfection. They believe they could do better, others could improve and the world could be a better place.

A rebel is a person who resists authority, control, or tradition.  The orientation is more individualistic. The basic orientation of the Power of Idealism character is to seek aesthetic perfection.  Noteworthiness, rarity, distinctiveness, individuality and/or the unusual, idiosyncratic or eccentric are what these characters value most highly in themselves and others.

Power of Conscience characters cause revolution to conform society, as a whole, to a higher moral or ethical standard. Power of Idealism characters rebel against the status quo to resist authority or conformity and to promote or preserve their personal autonomy.

A Power of Conscience character looks at the world like this:

“Wherever there’s a fight, so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever there’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad. I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry and they know supper’s ready, and when the people are eatin’ the stuff they raise and livin’ in the houses they build– I’ll be there, too.”  Tom Joad (Henry Fonda) in The Grapes of Wrath

A  Power of Idealism character looks at the world like this:

Mildred: “What’re you rebelling against, Johnny?”
Johnny: “Whaddya got?”  Johnny Strable (Marlon Brando) in The Wild One

“And maybe there’s no peace in this world, for us or for anyone else, I don’t know. But I do know that, as long as we live, we must remain true to ourselves.”  Spartacus (Kirk Douglas) in Spartacus