The next hour was 3 hours long

Raymond Chandler was a master of the metaphor, the simile, and creating word pictures. 

Writers can learn a thing or two reading his books, so ...

Do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of The Big Sleep or The Long Goodbye or The High Window or The Little Sister or  The Lady in the Lake or Farewell, My Lovely and dive in.

Here are some lines from those books to inform and inspire your writing and to get you excited about reading (or rereading) one of Chandler's books.

“She smelled the way the Taj Mahal looks by moonlight.”

 

“I went out the kitchen to make coffee - yards of coffee. Rich, strong, bitter, boiling hot, ruthless, depraved. The life blood of tired men.”

 

“I was as empty of life as a scarecrow's pockets.”

“I’m an occasional drinker, the kind of guy who goes out for a beer and wakes up in Singapore with a full beard.” 

 

“The next hour was three hours long.”

 

“She tried to keep a cute little smile on her face but her face was too tired to be bothered.”

 

“All she did was take her hand out of her bag, with a gun in it. All she did was point it at me and smile. All I did was nothing.”

 

“The subject was as easy to spot as a kangaroo in a dinner jacket.”

 

“Her whole body shivered and her face fell apart like a bride’s pie crust. She put it together again slowly, as if lifting a great weight, by sheer will power. The smile came back, with a couple of corners badly bent.”

 

“The room was empty. It was full of silence and the memory of a nice perfume.”

 

“There are places where cops are not hated, Captain. But in those places you wouldn't be a cop.”

 

“The voice on the telephone seemed to be sharp and peremptory, but I didn't hear too well what it said, partly because I was only half awake and partly because I was holding the receiver upside down.”

 

“She poured us some more Scotch. It didn't seem to affect her any more than water affects Boulder Dam.”

 

“A occasional whiff of his personality drifted back to me.”

 

“She brought the glass over. Bubbles rose in it like false hopes.”

 

“It was a nice walk, if you like grunting.”

“I smelled of gin. Not just casually, as if I had taken four or five drinks of a winter morning to get out of bed on, but as if the Pacific Ocean was pure gin and I had nosedived off the boat deck. The gin was in my hair and eyebrows, on my chin and under my chin. It was on my shirt. I smelled like dead toads.” 

“It seemed like a nice neighborhood to have bad habit in."

 

"Hair like steel wool grew far back on his head and gave him a domed brown forehead that might at careless glance seemed a dwelling place for brains.”

"From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from 30 feet away." 

 

“He breathed like an old Ford with a leaky head gasket.”

 

“The minutes went by on tiptoe, with their fingers to their lips.”

 

“Overhead the rain still pounded, with a remote sound, as if it was somebody else's rain.”

 

“You mean something happened to him?” Her voice faded off into sort of a sad whisper, like a mortician asking for a down payment.”

"Dead men are heavier than broken hearts." 

"He looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food cake." 

 

"If I had a razor, I'd cut your throat — just to see what ran out of it."

 

"Under the thinning fog the surf curled and creamed, almost without sound, like a thought trying to form itself on the edge of consciousness."

 

"It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window."

 

“A few locks of dry white hair clung to his scalp, like wild flowers fighting for life on a bare rock.”

 

“Neither of the two people in the room paid any attention to the way I came in, although only one of them was dead."

 

"His office had the musty smell of years of routine.”

“Time makes everything mean and shabby and wrinkled. The tragedy of life, Howard, is not that the beautiful things die young, but that they grow old and mean.”

_________________________

Addendum A

When thinking about Raymond Chandler and his protagonist Philip Marlowe, I'm reminded that, according to Roger Rosenblatt, all writers are mystery writers.

All writers are mystery writers. 

We may not employ detectives in our work, but as seekers of guilty parties, we can identify with Nick Charles, Sam Spade, Lew Archer, Miss Marple and the rest. 

Like them, we muck about in a world studded with clues, neck-deep in motives. Like them, we falter in our investigations and follow wrong leads. 

We are foolhardy, preposterous, nosy, irritating. No one wants us around. We work alone, yet like Sam Spade, we operate within a tradition of our own, of which we are respectfully aware. 

Write and you are in the company of all who have written before you. Only when we have finished a piece of work do we know true shamus loneliness, realizing that the chase is over and that no one has been watching us but us.

Addendum B

Raymond Chandler's rules for writers:

The important thing is that there should be a space of time, say four hours a day at the least, when a professional writer doesn’t do anything but write. He doesn’t have to write, and if he doesn’t feel like it, he shouldn’t try. He can look out the window or stand on his head or writhe on the floor. But he is not to do any other positive thing, not read, write letters, glance at magazines, or write checks. Either write or nothing…. I find it works. 

Two very simple rules, a: you don’t have to write. b: you can’t do anything else. The rest comes of itself.

 

Career Advice

 

Oops. 

I gave the wrong advice.

A new copywriter asked me for career advice.

So I offered some sage wisdom about becoming a better copywriter. 

I felt good about the guidance I had provided, until I heard the response: "I was hoping for career advice. Not advice on how to improve my copywriting." 

Oops.

So, this was my second attempt:

Live your life, not someone else's.

Find a job you enjoy.

Do what you say you'll do.

Venture outside of your comfort zone.

If you need help, ask for it.

Be a lifelong learner.

Embrace failure.

Search for the value in feedback and criticism.

Cultivate perseverance.

Be willing to sacrifice some things to build the career you want.

Don't settle.

Learn to work with people you wouldn't socialize with.

Be a team player.  

 

Realize that planning without executing is a waste of time. 

 

Don’t confuse being busy with being productive. 

 

Understand that your skills are important, but your attitude is critical. 

 

Accept that FOMO kills your ability to focus. 

 

Know that your personal brand can get you into rooms your degree can’t. 

Don’t rely on motivation, discipline is more important.

Understand that habits drive both success and failure, develop good ones 

Don't be afraid to speak up. 

Set realistic goals.

Work harder than those around you.

Let go of perfection.

Don’t be sidetracked by unexpected inconveniences.

See opportunity in chaos. 

Identify and use your strengths.

Be confident, yet humble.

Understand that your job doesn't define you. Your self-identity is about who you are as a person. What you do for work is only a piece of your life.

 

PS When opportunity presents itself, go for it. It might not work out, but maybe seeing if it does will be the best adventure ever.

. 

Why Punctuation is Important

An apology or a declaration?

I’m sorry; I love you.

I’m sorry I love you.

A fun learning activity or horrific crime?

We’re going to learn to cut and paste, kids!

We’re going to learn to cut and paste kids.

A difference of $95.

Twenty-five dollar bills. 

Twenty five-dollar bills. 

Is it all about him or her?

A woman: without her, man is nothing.

A woman without her man is nothing.

Wholesome observation or admission of odd eating habits?

I take great pleasure in eating my dog and my plants. 

I take great pleasure in eating, my dog, and my plants.

Something you expect to see in a restaurant or something you never want to see anywhere?

Man eating chicken.  

 

Man-eating chicken

Here's an Apple ad that recalls the silliness above, but uses an intentional misplacement of punctuation to masterfully focus on a key differentiator:

Dueling Turkeys - A Thanksgiving Story

On Thanksgiving, we always had two turkeys.

My mother would cook one and bring it to my grandmother’s house where my grandmother would have also cooked a turkey.

My father carved the one my mother cooked. My Uncle Allan carved the one my grandmother cooked.

During the dual carving, family members would interact restlessly in anticipation of the feast.

My grandmother’s sister Aunt Emma, an imposing white-haired woman always dressed in a plain black dress and sensible black shoes would corner someone, usually my sister Shawn, and lecture them on the merits of Christian Science faith.

Aunt Emma’s husband, Uncle Giff, would be surreptitiously knocking back my grandmother's best booze. He didn't think anybody noticed, but it would become apparent during dinner when he would slurringly expound on ultraconservative political viewpoints seemingly chosen specifically to annoy my father.

Emma and Giff's daughters Aunt Jessie and Betty Dean would be there, too. While Betty Dean was quiet, Aunt Jessie was boisterous. We kids delighted in her fun-loving style, but she was the constant the target of disapproving looks from her sister and mother. For example, Aunt Jessie would tell my cousin Bobby and me outrageous (and obviously fabricated) stories about Cousin Helen, such as various reasons for the horrifyingly large weeping sore between her right eye and the bridge of her nose.

Cousin Helen was pushing 90 years old and had been for as long as I could remember. On Thanksgiving, she dressed in her church clothes from when she was in her twenties. Even wedging her frighteningly swollen feet and ankles into shoes, that presumably fit pre-edema. The most interesting thing about Cousin Helen was that she was not related to us. 

That's a story for later.

Back to the turkeys.

My dad was a master carver. Proud of his skill. He would slice and carve with precision and arrange the impossibly thin slices of white meat and uniform pieces of dark meat on a serving platter. 

When my mother would pick up the platter, he would say with great pride, "That's just half the bird. With a sharp enough knife I could feed the crew of a destroyer with just one turkey." If my sister and I were in earshot, that was followed by a quick lecture on the importance of proper carving. They always ended with the same piece of advice: "Make sure the bird is rested after it comes out of the oven. And you need a good knife. And it has to be well sharpened before you start. With a sharp enough knife I could feed the entire roster of the New York Jets with just one turkey."

Next to my dad, Uncle Allan was in charge of the turkey my grandmother had cooked. And he approached it like he lived his life, looking for fun and sharing that fun with anybody and everybody nearby. 

So while my old man was wielding his knife with the meticulousness of a surgeon performing a liver transplant on a world leader, my uncle was hacking away to get meat separated from bone and onto a serving platter as quickly as possible so the feast could begin. Often, with a smile and a wink, he'd flip a small piece to any kid who came close. "Bobby, catch this in your mouth." 

Both platters were brought to the sideboard, one looking like an offering that would grace the cover of "Bon Apetit" magazine. The other looking almost like someone had put a small explosive charge into the poor bird and set it off. Both alluring in their own way.

When the festivities were over, we'd drive home. A totally intact half-turkey on the backseat between my sister and me. We'd stay silent as my dad grumbled about Uncle Giff's political leanings and Uncle Allan's mangling of my grandmother's turkey using language we knew we shouldn't hear much less repeat. If my mom could move him off a Giff rant, he would mutter angrily about having missed the football game on TV.

One year, the day after Thanksgiving, as my father was carving the leftover turkey for sandwiches (and telling us how, with a sharp enough knife, he could feed our entire elementary school including janitorial staff), it occurred to me that we had brought home half a turkey. And my grandmother had sent other guests home with plates piled high with turkey and side dishes. 

 "Why do we bring a second turkey to Thanksgiving? We didn't even need one," I asked my mom.

"Well," she said with a quick glance to see if the old man was in earshot, "Your father would get so upset every year watching your uncle carve the turkey. So I told your grandmother that we needed more leftovers for the family to take home and started to bring a second turkey."

She knew how to keep the peace. And my father's blood pressure under control.

I don't think she ever told my grandmother or my father the whole truth.