FOREWORD magazine

Loren W. Christensen talks about his book Riot, and writing in general

Loren Christensen began his law enforcement career in 1967 when he served in the army as a military policeman in the United States and in Vietnam. He joined the Portland, Oregon, Police Bureau in 1972 and retired in 1997. During those years, he specialized in street gangs, defensive tactics, dignitary protection, and patrolling the bizarre streets of skid row.

He began writing professionally in 1976 and over the years has written 40 published books, dozens of magazine articles and edited a small newspaper for nearly eight years. Loren has written extensively on post-traumatic stress disorder as it relates to police officers and combat soldiers, various subcultures, such as life on skid row, prostitution and street gangs, and all aspects of the martial arts. His book On Combat, coauthored with Pulitzer Prize nominated author LT. Col. Dave Grossman, is a best seller.

Loren has studied the martial arts since 1965 and has earned a total of 10 black belts in three fighting systems. He has starred in six instructional DVDs.

Loren can be contacted through his website www.lwcbooks.com

When did you start reading, and what did you like to read as a kid? When you were growing up did you have books in your home?

My mother read novels and my dad collected Popular Science and Popular Mechanics magazines. Bodybuilding was my passion in my early teens and then the martial arts beginning when I was 19. So I read a lot of magazines and books on those subjects. It wasn’t until I got into the Army that I turned into a hardcore reader of anything and everything.

When did you think about becoming a writer? Was there someone who got you interested in writing?

You won’t find my photo next to “good student” in the dictionary. I was that obnoxious kid who would raise his hand the first of the school year and ask the teacher what I had to do to get a C. I was rarely inspired to do well throughout my schooling. But it was in grade school that I realized that I could get positive attention from my writing. My teachers read my sentences, paragraphs and stories in front of the class and I loved how my work made everyone laugh or be moved in some way.

In my teens, I would go to a movie or watch something on television and then write the story as if I had made it up. My parents gave me lots of accolades for my “originality” and again I would bask in the positive attention.

While in the Army, I took a correspondence course in writing fillers for magazines. The idea was to write an interesting paragraph on anything that a magazine could use to fill the blank space when an article concluded part way down the last column.

It was a good course and I sold a filler to Reader’s Digest in 1975. I took the money, $80.00 as I recall, bought a cheap typewriter, and wrote my first book on it.

How do you write? Do you have a daily routine? What’s good about it? What do you hate about it?

I write Monday through Friday from 8 am to about 4 pm. I always have two books going so I bounce back and forth depending on my mood or how badly a publisher is “encouraging” me to wrap a project. Having at least two works in progress keeps me sane. That said, there was a two month period last fall where I had seven books and one magazine article all in various stages of production, all needing something: photos, editing, last minute fixes before the publisher sent it to the printer, and so on. Those two months were most stressful. I give credit to my daily meditation for keeping me from going postal.

What’s good about it? Everything. My dog sleeps on the heat vent a few feet away, my cat sprawls on her window perch over my PC, mellow New Age music wafts softly from my computer speakers, I dress in sloppy sweats, I’m unshaven, and I’m barefoot.

What’s bad about it? There is little contact with other humanoids. Most of the time that’s fine with me, but occasionally I miss exchanging barbs with buddies. I do have lots of fellow writers, martial artists, cops and soldiers I communicate with online, so that helps.

Any particular story to tell concerning the writing Riot?

What amazed me during the many months it took to write it was how many riots were going on around the world every week. Several times I was writing about a particular type of violent unrest and one would occur just like it somewhere in the world. In fact, I was plugging in anecdotes and sidebars right up to the last edit. I even slipped in one about a week before the book went to the printer.

What some good advice that you’ve received concerning writing?

One of my writing teachers from years ago used to say, “Say what you got to say, then shut-up.” One of my editor friends today says, “Fewer words are always better.” In other words, write succinctly. My first experience at this was back in the 1980s when I wrote a thousand word piece for a magazine. They liked it, but they had space for only 500 words. I whined and complained for a week that there was just no way I could do that and still have something readable. Well, I trimmed it to 500 and it worked just fine. In fact, I got lots of positive feedback and letters to the editor regarding that piece.

A few months ago a magazine wanted to run a 4,300-word chapter from one of my books, but they had space for only 2000 words. It was tough and it took three days to do it, but I brought it in at 2000. It lacked some of the personality of the original, but the meat and potatoes were there, which is what the magazine’s readership wants.

I find editing a first draft fun. I like the trimming, rearranging, rephrasing, tiding this, adding punch to that, deleting the funny comment I wrote months ago that really isn’t that funny today, adding more examples, sidebars, pull quotes, and so on. I like this process for the first three or four passes through a completed manuscript. But the 10^th time? The 15^th time? By then I don’t like it one tiny bit. It’s excruciating. I’m sick of it. In fact, my sanity begins to unravel and it’s all I can do to keep from plunging my face into a Chinese cooking wok full of boiling oil.

What’s some advice that you could offer young writers?

As a rookie cop back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, I learned to observe. Observe everything. Cops learn to look for that thing that is out of the norm. See how that guy on the corner holds his arm behind his back? Why is he doing that? After a moment, he brings his hand around and up to scratch his forehead with a folded dollar. Then he steps over to the curb as a bus pulls up. Look over there. That car is too expensive for the neighborhood. Or, that one is too beat-up for the neighborhood. That woman on the corner is dressed for a nightclub but it’s 9am. In each case, something occurs that makes that out-of-the-norm thing okay so your eyes move on, sweeping, alerting, dismissing and alerting again.

I’ve been told many times that police officers are easy to spot because their eyes are constantly watching, constantly moving and constantly analyzing. Many of these same people say that makes them uncomfortable around police officers. (Perhaps that says as much about them as it does about the person who is a police officer.)

The young writer as well as the veteran must also be an observer of people, places, things and events. They must see everything and note how everything interconnects. Or how it doesn’t connect. Watch the way people move, how they relate to each other, dress, speak and so on. See how she flips her hair every time a man walks by? Remember that gesture. See how that skinny, pimply-face 16-year-old dresses to boost his self-esteem with his fashionably untied high-top running shoes, oversized 49ers coat and his stocking cap pulled down to his eyebrows? Make up a quick story about him. It doesn’t matter that you will never know whether your story is accurate; it’s the process of analyzing him that’s important and valuable to you as a writer.

I’ve been told that I’m good at dialogue. I’ve never taken a writing class on the subject but I am a careful listener as to how people speak - cadence, phraseology, word choice - and how they use these things to argue, convince, sweet-talk, defend, bully and feel sorry for themselves. I listen, analyze and use it.

Say you watch a horrible news story on television. How would describe it on paper? What fresh words would you use to explain the devastation of a flood, hurricane and a riot? Next, read about the incident in the newspaper or on your favorite web news site. How did that writer describe it? Then read about the same event in a weekly news magazine where they have greater space and time to flesh in the event. What words did these professional writers use to give the story life and clarity?

A word on the business aspect of writing and on getting a publisher: Author Dean Koontz once told me to remember that writing is first a business and then an art form. I’ve always tried to keep that in mind as I look for writing projects, reject requests to write books, decided on the best publisher to query, decide whether to use an agent, and consider the content of a given writing project.

Get a publisher before you write a book. I have received so many emails from people over the years who have written a book and now they want to know how to get a publisher. I feel bad for them because I know how much work a book is. But they should have queried a publisher first and if they didn’t get a contract for the work, at least get one to say that they will look at the manuscript upon completion.

How did you find the publisher for this book? What has you experience as a publisher been like?

I work with four book publishers. Paladin Press published an early book of mine in 1987 and over the years I’ve written several for them and become good friends with many on their staff. The idea of writing a book on riots came from my son, Dan, a minister in Salem, Oregon. I thought about the subject for maybe 30 minutes after our conversation and then emailed my friend/editor at Paladin. He laughed when I mentioned the book idea because they were just then editing a technical book on riot control for police agencies. But they wanted a mainstream book on the subject for readers not in law enforcement, readers who want to understand the incredible dynamics of a riot. He said he was about to call me to see if I was interested in writing it. So this time the effort of convincing a publisher on a topic was, well, effortless. They already wanted the book and they were thinking of me since I had considerable experience on the subject.

Paladin Press is a wonderful publisher and has been so since I first published with them in 1987. In fact, my other publishers – Turtle Press, PPCT and Delta Press have all been great, too. I’ve been lucky because unlike many writers, I don’t have a horror story to tell about a book publisher. Now, early on I wasn’t always treated kindly by magazines – some would take a year to accept or not accept a piece, one never paid me, one was unkind in their rejection – but I always took comfort in knowing I could beat the tar out of them. Seriously, although rejection is never a feel-good moment, it’s part of the business. You need a thick skin as a writer. Wait until you read your first negative review!

What are you working on at the moment?

I’m working on two non-fiction books and a novel. One non-fiction is for parents, teachers and students on how to prepare for and survive a school shooting. The other is a collaborative effort with a police psychologist and an Army Ranger psychology instructor on how to develop and use various mental skills for soldiers and police officers in combat. The novel is about a policeman who accidentally kills a hostage, a child. The incident is similar to one that happened to three police officers I know.

What are you reading?

Everything you put in front of me. I have stacks of magazines and books all over the house. I recently read several books written by soldiers and reporters about their experiences in Iraq. As we speak, I’m finishing a wonderful book called Fourth Uncle on the Mountain, by Marjorie Pivar and Quang Van Nguyen.

A word on reading words: If you want to write you have to read, anything and everything. Read for content but also read to see why something works or why it doesn’t. That was funny. Why? Was it the author’s choice of words, their visual presentation on the page, or the setup before the punch line? That chapter made you sad. Why? What technique did the author use to make you feel that way? That anecdote wasn’t as shocking as it could have been. What did the author do or not do?

I like bullets, the big black dot kind. Here are a few in closing:

· Read everything that passes your path.

· Write every day. Write on your lunch bag, on napkins, on the back of reports and on the back of your hand if that’s all you have.

· Watch the news and read the news.

· Read everything in your field of interest.

· Observe and analyze everything and everyone.

· Don’t write a book on something in your field if there is already one or more out there like it. Look for a void in the subject, an aspect that hasn’t been covered. Publishers want to fill voids.

· Anecdotal reads don’t sell, if you can even get a publisher to publish one. To be harsh, no one cares but your family that your quirky granny was a coal miner. Now that doesn’t mean you can’t use a couple of anecdotes about her life in the tunnels to support a point in a book on an entirely different subject, but no one wants to read an entire book on her.

· Writing is fun, boring, exhilarating, maddening, ego stroking, ego destroying and in the end – worth the blood, sweat and tears. Hey, I should write a song with that title. What? It’s already been done? Dang!