My new fiction hero: Jimmy Trumbo

 On the Way Out series

Vol. 5

Part 6

This one will take some time.

How does one put a lifetime of ups and downs into print?

How does a struggling writer -- an average Joe that lived a life under the radar for over seventy years put the words together and make sense of it all?

We arrived in this world naked and we will leave the same way. In between we are clothed and we add on the accessories as we go: we add on kindness, hatefulness, pain, agony, humility...love, tenderness, meanness...well the list goes on. Take your pick. It doesn't take us long to get bogged down with some of those traits mentioned. Some of us are overweight in that respect. Some of us may be lacking in many of those traits...underweight, if you will. Some need to change their wardrobe from time to time...regroup, try again and begin to love ourselves first, before we can walk that fine line through life.

As I have said many times, to those willing to listen, I love to sit down with all the characters I have come into contact with in my little world...my narrow pathway through time. I'm not worldly. Far from it. Being an average Joe is pretty cool in my book. I've spent years in direct contact with men and women that battle through life, work hard, provide for their family and simply make a difference to their loved ones and to their friends around them. The average Joe and the average Jolene are not average by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, they are the cornerstone of it all...the brick and the mortar that carries this world forward. Without them there is no nation, no congress...no president and no governor. Without the so-called average Joe and the average Jolene, the world just couldn't exist.

In those so-called books I put into print -- in what seems like decades ago -- my hero in each of them had obstacles to overcome. Will my hero in my next offering, a work in progress entitled: One Man's Endless Journey offer any insight, make any difference to the reader who grabs my fiction book off the shelf?

I mean this is not John Grisham talking, certainly not Hemingway...and it is certainly not a how to fix it  book -- the stuff that actually sells at bookstores nowadays.

I've been told many times: "I don't read fiction."

Too bad. Heck, does anyone read anymore. It takes time. Following the news doesn't. The news channels repeat and repeat the same daily news all day long. Take your pick...tune in and gather the information in a five-minute burst and then hit the road... finish your day and get your job done.

And remember you are supposedly the average Joe and the average Jolene that makes the difference in the lives of many.

No! You are a lot more. Young or old -- you have been the difference maker all along.

We will see where Jimmy Trumbo goes. 

It's a long process. Fiction? Yes. But the characters are real in my eyes.

My next character: Who will I meet? What path will he or she take?

That alone keeps me alive.