Interview: Ed Rogers on his art of storymaking

In the flow

Interviewed by Moristotle

I’ve now edited Ed’s four self-published novels, his self-published collection of childhood stories, and dozens of his essays, poems, and fictional pieces for Moristotle & Co. And his fifth novel, which I’m editing now, is the best yet, I think. That is to say, I’ve had years now to admire his fluency in getting ideas and stories down in words. And, in the case of his novels, I’d go beyond saying I “admire” Ed’s ability to saying I “marvel” at it. For having tried my own hand at writing a novel (and not coming up with much), it’s beyond me to comprehend how Ed does it. How does he make up long, intricate, believable, satisfying stories?
    One way to find out, of course, is to ask Ed, hoping that he isn’t himself at a loss to know how he does it. My questions are in italics.

First, off, Ed, when I try to “make up” a story, I find that I’m continually second-guessing myself when it comes to having a character do or say this or that. I mostly don’t get a strong sense that he should do this rather than that, and I get bogged down and frustrated. You produce a story so quickly, I gather that that doesn’t happen to you?
    You experience that because you’re writing for an audience other than yourself. I know that’s what you’re doing, because when you edit my stuff you’re always on to me about what the reader will think. But the only reader I have when I’m drafting a story is myself. I just get in the flow and don’t concern myself with other readers.

Ha, I know about that – you leave that part to your editor! Are you familiar with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s writings about being “in the flow”? His 1997 book is titled FINDING FLOW: THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ENGAGEMENT WITH EVERYDAY LIFE. (PSYCHOLOGY TODAY excerpted it the same year.) I wonder whether Csikszentmihalyi’s ideas provide any insight into your writing process?
    I read the excerpts and agree that I normally write by merging myself into the characters I am writing about. I get into the flow, I become my characters, and I act and react within my stories to the events as they are written. To me, it’s like reading a book for the first time.
    The book that you’re editing now just flew by, and its sequel, which I’m about ten chapters into writing, is also flying by. (Or maybe I should say flowing by?) When I’m writing a book, it will normally fill my dreams at night and I can’t wait to put what happened in the dream into the story. I guess that is part of the flow.

I can tell you that, when I try to write fiction, I have a very hard time “engaging” myself in a character the way you do. But when the “character” is really just a disguise for myself, the problem goes away. Could it be that you have the ability to transform yourself into a made-up character, so that, in that sense, you, too, are “writing about yourself”?
    I guess that’s true. I know they say that the characters in your dreams are all aspects of yourself, good or bad, so, in fact, whatever you dream, it’s about you.

Since dreaming plays a central role in your work, is early morning your favorite, or best, time to write? When do you write, mostly?

    I get up before my wife, Janie – sometimes even before our dog, Del. I have two, maybe three hours to write without any movement within the house. I have a room upstairs that I share with Del. The price of entry is a belly rub. At ten o’clock, I take a break and have a cup of coffee with Janie, and at eleven I come back up and write until noon or a little after. Then I’m finished. Hopefully, I have finished a chapter; if not, it will be there tomorrow.

How do you think up a story and start writing?
    An idea sometimes comes to mind in a dream, or sometimes out of nowhere. Most of these ideas amount to nothing, but every so often one keeps coming back, usually at night, and the only way to rid myself of it is to write the story. Writing the story is not easy at first. After all, it’s a dream, and dreams are not that coherent. So I have to try to make sense of what’s happening in the dream.

Okay, so you start to write a book using an idea that you dreamed, and that kept coming back. Does dreaming continue to contribute to the writing?
    Definitely. But the “book dreaming” doesn’t start until close to the tenth chapter. After that I will dream entire chapters; this has started to happen in the book I’m currently writing. And after it starts, the writing becomes fun and more interesting. And a lot easier. But even though I dreamed a chapter, sometimes something happens during the writing, and I change direction. I never know how a book is going to end, until it does.

Please say more about the “easier” part. That really sounds like being “in the flow.”

    I’m finding that after about the tenth chapter, I can relax and just enjoy the writing. It’s always a push to get to chapter 10, but once I get there, the characters take over and drive the story. Most of the story’s characters are in place and the book starts to write itself. All of my stories do that. With the book I’m writing now – the sequel to the one you’re editing, with the same core characters – I know where I think it’s going, but I have no idea how it is going to get there or, in fact, whether that is where it will really end up. That’s the only reason I write, to see how the book ends.

Surely you’re joking when you say that the only reason you write is “to see how the book ends.” Or do you not really mean that?
    I really mean it. I enjoy reading what I am writing as much as if I were reading a book I like. I have read a lot of books; some I like and some I don’t. Most of the time it is not the writing, or the language, but the story – what happens – that I like or don’t like. With my writing, if nobody else in the world read a word I wrote, I would still write!

This might be a good time to ask you: Why do you bother to publish your books, then?
    Because you offered to edit them and I thought maybe you were right – someone else might enjoy them as much as you and I do.

Ed, dreaming seems to play a much bigger role in your writing than it does for most other writers, so could we explore it a bit more? Could you remember back to your experiences writing each of your novels (in the order you wrote them) and tell us for each one, if you can remember, when, how, and to what extent dreaming was involved? (UNWANTED PRESIDENT might be a special case, since you wrote it in two different periods, years apart, I believe. Anything interesting there, dream-wise?)
    Instead, let me tell you how I started writing in the first place. I never wanted to write, I even hated writing letters. One night I had a dream; it was an Indian on a painted white horse. He was charging at me with his lance drawn back. I thought for sure I was going to die, but suddenly the earth opened and the warrior fell into the abyss. I woke up in a sweat. The next night I had the same dream, except that in this one I confronted the Indian and demanded to know his name. It was Konota.
    After many nights of having the dream of Konota, and his evil twin Konotahe, the story unfolded like chapters in a book. For over a year I tried to get someone to write the story, but no one would. So, I started by writing up the dream – I think I still have that someplace. Anyway, what I managed to write made little sense. But I hit on the idea of trying to write it as a book, and I started writing. In the middle of writing it, I took a break and in about three days wrote a story I titled “To Kill a President.” Years later I rewrote it and it became my third self-published novel, UNWANTED PRESIDENT. If not for that first dream, about Konota, I would never have written anything. That story still sits on my computer, never touched.

Wow, Ed, I’m glad my question brought that forth. Thanks for what has to be as pivotal a story about why someone started writing as most of us have ever heard. It sounds as though your dreams come completely on their own, without invitation. But do you ever do anything to “call on your muse” as you lie in bed at night, before falling asleep?
    They do come on their on. I had decided that FINSOUP would be my last book, but here I am at the second book later still writing.

How did the sequel to BOYSTOWN: THE COCAINE HIGHWAY come about? I think that a fairly long time went by between them, didn't it?
    I can’t remember why I wrote THE RETURN. I guess there were too many unanswered questions about what happened to the characters in the first BOYSTOWN book, and I wanted to address them. Also, the cartels were taking over areas of Mexico that I grew up in and around, so writing THE RETURN was a way of going back for a visit and seeing for myself.

Selected chapters from those two books appeared on Moristotle & Co., and I am grateful to you for permitting me to serialize your work here.
    But I have to tell you: something has bothered me for a long time – your use of “edRogers” as a pen name. That has always seemed odd to me. Why do you do that?

    Like most people who start to write, I thought about signing my name on books. “Edwin Rogers” seemed to take too long, so I shortened it to “Ed Rogers.” And I tend to write “Ed” as “ed,” but when I write “ed Rogers,” the back part of the “d” becomes the spine of the “R.” “edRogers” flows for me.

That’s actually an exciting idea; it’s as though the “by” on the cover of your books were saying “signed by.” And, given that your characters take over your dreams and your writing, it’s also as though the “by edRogers” were saying: “By the novel’s characters, who are collectively known as edRogers.”
    You are making far too much of “edRogers.” Doctors and other people who sign their name a lot do so illegibly because it’s easy. That’s all there is to “edRogers.”

You have told me that FINSOUP was a lot harder to write than your other books. Why was that?
    I never got into a flow with FINSOUP. I wrote the first 14 or 15 chapters in the first person and realized that that wasn’t working, so I went back and changed it. When I was writing in the first person the chapters flowed by, but after the change to third person it became work. I think it was because the subject was so important to me – raise awareness of the horrendous practice of shark finning; it wasn’t just make-believe. I felt I had to get it right.

Ed, you’ve said that the next book you wrote, and its sequel, which you are writing now, are told in third person. Was it hard to get into the flow with them, in that person?
    No, it hasn’t been that hard. But I did have to change gears.

From what you’ve told me of your own life experiences, it’s pretty obvious that you have known (or yourself been) a lot of people like the characters who populate your stories – people who have flown airplanes, been involved in the drug trade, worked in security, used firearms, been shot, driven motorcycles, frequented bars, visited brothels, traveled, fished off boats, swum in the ocean, had run-ins with the police....I wonder whether your dreams grow out of your unconscious mind’s reworking the experiences of your life, maybe asking, “What if?” Could that be?
    My father was in the Air force, and we traveled a lot. From an early age I was around GIs and others who most people see only in passing. My life has continued along that course. I have found people like me. I’m not sure why, unless it’s because I’m just the person you see – I don’t pretend to be somebody else. I ran a business for over thirty years and interacted with people who were quite different from me, but I never pretended to be like them. They still think of me as their friend, but, with me retired and them having moved so far to the right politically, we have little contact anymore. I guess you could say I have had a full life.

Your driving characters stand up for themselves and don’t take offenses lying down. They banter and make rude jokes. They enjoy sex, but they’re mostly tender about it – one might say “romantic.” The good guys have high ideals and are resourceful in pursuing them. The bad guys are ruthless and unsympathetic. I guess that all of these traits – “good” and “bad” – are aspects of yourself?

    Of course, but I do try to draw a fine line between good and bad. “But for the Grace of God, there go I.”

Please elaborate on that, if you would. What do you mean by “try to draw a line”?
    You may have noticed, in FINSOUP, that Charlie does things that I’m not sure a truly good guy would do....

I did notice that, and wondered about it. But given that Charlie was somewhat ruthless, I remember suggesting that you include a chapter in which he brings his war directly against the people who demand shark fin soup, by, say, infiltrating the kitchen of a very expensive Chinese restaurant and poisoning the cauldron of shark fin soup. But you rejected that as something Charlie would never do.
    To change the subject: How do you do research when your own life experiences don’t supply all of the information you need?
    I love to google.

The characters in UNWANTED PRESIDENT travel to many foreign places, including Finland, Russia, Germany, and Vietnam – maybe more. Have you yourself been to all of those places? What additional research did you have to do?
    I’ve never been to Russia or Finland. But Google Earth can fly you anywhere you want to go.

You’ve told me that the story you’re writing now is set on a Caribbean island you have never been to. How are you acquiring the local knowledge you need to tell that story?
    I actually did go there a long time ago. It was during Christmas. We had planned to go after my last chemo treatment, because chemo and sunshine don’t mix. But it turned out that my last treatment would not be until January, and by then all of the tickets were booked. Roatán Island was and is a beautiful place, and I hope to go back.
    But for additional information about the island, I’m in touch with Dive Master Jay Mavrick, a local islander. He has been a great help.

Charlie Blankenship, in FINSOUP, goes to Costa Rica precisely in order to exploit a book possibility. Was that part of your own reason for moving to Costa Rica a few years ago? At that time you had written at least one novel already – as I believe Charlie had done also, but without the kind of success he was hoping for.
    The move had nothing to do with writing. I had recently retired and I hate cold weather. In Costa Rica, it’s in the 80s year-round.

As I was asking about “the kind of success Charlie was hoping for,” the thought flashed into my mind that maybe you, too, are hoping for more “success” than the personal enjoyment of finding out how your stories end? I, as your friend and editor, certainly hope for more for you. Your novels are as good as, or better than, a lot of novels that are being published by big firms in New York.
    I don’t believe we have control over our lives. Fate steps in and shit happens, sometimes for the good, sometimes for the bad. But all of the things that have happened to me over the years have brought me to this point in life. If there is a book deal, that would be great, but, if not, then you as my editor and me as your writer will be like a pair of cavemen who painted stories on the wall of their cave hoping that someday, long after they were dead and forgotten, someone would find their paintings and marvel at them.

Copyright © 2019 by Ed Rogers & Moristotle