NEW BOOK
This book may or may not be my magnum opus. It will, however, save me a lot of money I might have spent on a good shrink. This is a spill-my-guts story in which every day for over two years, I sat at my computer and either confessed to some janky behavior or tries to make myself look good.
The book can be best summed up with the two quotes I use to start the book:
“Talent is extremely common. What is rare is the willingness to endure the life of the writer.”
Kurt Vonnegut
“Larry, I don’t know why you did some of the things you did, but what I really don’t understand is…why would you write about them?”
Larry’s mom
A semi-indulgent (but gracefully brief) look around the corner
by Larry Colton
As I mentioned in one of my blogs, I have a new book coming out around January 1, 2026. It started out as a sequel to Counting Coup, but due to research difficulties, I’ve had to change it to a memoir about my life as a writer. Sharon LaForge, the main character in Counting Coup, is still a big part of this book, especially the final chapters, but it would be misleading to call it a sequel.
This new book is titled SURVIVING THE WRITER’S LIFE…true stories of love, life, loss and a smattering of applause.
Not to namedrop, but there are cameos by a few celebrities - i.e. Norman Mailer, Hank Aaron, Huey Lewis, Bill Walton, Hedy Lamarr, Phil Knight. Okay, that is namedropping, but at its core this is a book about rolling out of bed every morning and trying to fight off the steady stream of dickheads and wannabes, with an occasional trip to the victory stand to receive an award, one that usually doesn’t involve a large bag of cash, or more accurately, any cash.
Sample Scenes
Below are two scenes from Surviving the Writer’s Life:
Substitute Teaching
The last question on the Portland School District's job application formed asked: Why are you applying to the position of substitute teacher. Hmmm. Because my dream ever since I was a little child was to be a substitute teacher. I didn't think I could give the real reason - I needed the $57 a day.
Substitute teaching actually seemed like the perfect day gig to relieve the financial pressure. With no papers to correct, I could be home by 3:30, ready to hit the typewriter. Maybe even start working on the book about my long-lost fraternity brothers.
I was officially certified to the state of Oregon to teach grades 5 through 12, all subjects. Spanish, shorthand, trigonometry. All I had to do was wait for the phone to ring before sunrise and hope I'd have enough time to get there by bus or bike. Through the rain. My car was in Nova heaven.
The first call came on a Monday morning at six o'clock. Could I teach an eighth-grade class for the whole week? It was supposedly the toughest middle school in the district. Let's see. Five times 57. That's $285, enough to pay my rent and most of my utilities. I was out the door and on the bus in ten minutes. I wore a corduroy sports coat that I'd taken from Steve's closet to deliver his eulogy.
Thirty-five students were waiting at the door. As soon as they spotted me down the hall, they smelled blood in the water. I opened the door. Two boys raced to the record player in the back of the room and put on a Ted Nugent album, cranking it to full volume.
"Our regular teacher let's us do it," said the one in the AC/DC t-shirt.
There were no lesson plans and no instructions from the office. Judging from the way the kids were bouncing off the walls, my guess was that the regular teacher had woke up that morning and decided to slit her wrists. I was to have these same amped up, hormonally charged kids all day long. Math, science, spelling, p.e...the educational motherlode. A boy in the back row was choking himself to get high; the boy next to him pulled out a tin of Copenhagen and put a pinch between his cheek and gum, then spit on the back of the blouse of the girl in front of him. She didn't notice..she was too busy ratting the hair of the girl in front of her.
By the time I finished taking roll, I couldn't figure out if this was Blackboard Jungle or Lord of the Flies. Was it three o'clock yet? I told them to take out their math books. Zero for thirty-five. Nary a one budged. Okay, I never liked math, anyway. How about writing a descriptive paragraph about your family. One paper - only one - was turned in:
My mom has brown hair and likes to yell. My stepdad has black hair, green eyes and likes to drink. I might sneak into his room at night and shoot him with his .357. Don't ask me how old my real dad is because I only see him once a year. He has trouble with his back and doesn't pay child support.
l opened the top desk drawer. There was an envelope marked "Jimmy's Ritalin." Jimmy was already at Club Speedo, sitting at his desk and mainlining Milk Duds. During the writing assignment the boy next to him started pounding his desk and kicking his chair. I asked him firmly to stop. He picked up all his papers and books and flung them in the air. "Fuck you!" he said. I moved toward him, ordering him to the principal's office. "Don't touch me, motherfucker, or I'll sue your ass!" he yelled. "I know my rights." The boy couldn't read but he was a constitutional lawyer. When he threw his chair across the room, narrowly missing my head, I put him in a hammerlock and marched him to the office. Not exactly district policy, I know, but somebody was going to get hurt. It temporarily plugged the dam.
Then there was the boy who called himself Captain Fantastic. He was a cross between Fonzie and General Patton. He wore full Army fatigues, including combat boots. He was the best artist in the class. How did I know? He told me. Everything he drew looked like a shogun warrior. His favorite sport was smashing inanimate objects with his head.
Somehow, in one of the great miracles of public education, I survived the week. The rent was paid. But my plan to come home and write after my day of subbing didn't happen. I was so wiped out by the time I got off the bus and walked in the door it was all I could do to make it to the fridge and pop a cold one, then jot down a few notes about my day at the zoo. After that I'd lay down and read about the latest unhappy and unappreciated pitcher wanting to re-negotiate his million-dollar contract.
During the entire week as a zookeeper, neither the principal nor anyone else on the staff inquired as to what I was doing. I could have had the students building neutron bombs and nobody would have known. Captain Fantastic would have loved it.
I left word with the substitute office that I would not accept any more assignments at that school. I managed to last another couple months in the substitute teaching pool before deciding that $57-a-day and all the wiener wraps I could eat wasn't worth the grief and exhaustion. I returned full-time to chasing the Literary Dream.
The Verdict on Counting Coup
After the OJ verdict, I returned home, not in a good mood. I opened my email, and there it was in my in-box, the long-awaited response from my editor at Doubleday. The subject heading read: Counting Coup.
Drumroll, please.
This was it. Three years of work about to come out from under the microscope, sliced and diced, a verdict rendered. Maybe the editor would say it was a giant piece of shit. Or maybe it was the tightest manuscript he'd ever seen and I should start packing my bags for the National Book Award ceremony.
Heart pounding, I opened it up.
Larry, I am sorry to report that your manuscript for Counting Coup does not meet Doubleday's standard for publishing.
There were several more paragraphs, but I stopped reading right there. "Does not meet Doubleday's standard for publishing." What else did I need to know? The dagger was already through me, and I was bleeding out, right there at my desk.
Marcie was at work, so I was all alone. Good thing. My dog Casey didn't even stir.
Rejected. Squashed.
I was too numb to cry or scream. That would come later. The air rushed out of me. I tried to walk away, but my legs betrayed me.
I had spent three f'ing years on the project. Full time. I literally ate, breathed and slept that book. Morning. Noon. And night. I relocated to another state for sixteen months. I thought about Sharon around the clock. I labored over every sentence. Multiple times. I talked about it constantly. With family, friends, Marcie. I'd pushed our relationship to the edge.
How embarrassing. I'd given up a grand slam or two during my baseball career, but there was always the next batter, the next game. This was three years down the tube. I wasn't a rookie writer. My previous book, Goat Brothers, was number four on the L.A. Times best seller list.
What was I going to tell Sharon? She'd been there with me all the way, albeit a little spooked at first. She'd revealed all the nooks and crannies of her life, trusting me when all she had was my word. And what about the other couple hundred people I'd interviewed and taken up their time? I'd put myself out there to the tribe, to the people of Hardin, to the students. I was Larry of the Prairie, the commencement speaker, for Christ's sake. A lot of them had sent me Christmas cards. A couple of them even spent the night with me and Marcie in Portland as they were passing through town.
I was crushed. I had nothing to compare it to. Miss Walsh's rejection of my graduation speech was nothing. Same for only getting a B on my term paper on SNCC. This was a term paper to the thousandth power. And that's a low estimate.
Those were three years I'd never get back. Same for my sense of self.
I waited a little time and then read the rest of the rejection email. It was beyond brutal, no effort to let me down easily. The book, according to the editor, had "no point of view," the main character "wasn't likeable," and the writing was "pedestrian." There was nothing about trying to rewrite it. And just when I thought he couldn't take it any lower, he wrote this: "I could read this crap in the Big Horn County News." Ouch. Quadruple ouch.
If being mean to writers was the mark of a good editor, this guy was on his way to the Editor's Hall of Fame. I wanted to call Herman and beg him to un-retire.
How was I going to break the news to Marcie? My dad? My daughters? Or all the people that I'd led to believe that I was some kind of big-time writer?
As it turned out, the editor's line about reading "this crap in the Big Horn County News" wasn't the lowest blow. It seems Doubleday wanted back the advance that they'd already paid me. $100,000. That was a hundred grand that I didn't have. Could they do that? Well, according to my agent, they could. Good luck collecting it, Mr. Doubleday. That money was long gone. As for the $50,000 I was counting on with the acceptance of the manuscript? I was more likely to pitch opening day for the Phillies than see a penny of that money.
Now what? My road going forward looked like a giant white-out. What publisher would ever take a chance on me after I bombed so thoroughly? How was I going to pay the rent?
I had planned on calling Sharon that night to congratulate her on her success at Little Big Horn Community College, but I didn't. I wasn't ready to face her, at least not yet. I did tell Marcie. As soon as she walked in the door, she could tell from my long face that something was wrong. She went into her therapist mode, reassuring me we'd be okay, and that I was a good writer. I didn't believe her.
I'd had my heart broken before - a wife leaving me for another guy, blowing my baseball career, my best friend dying in a plane crash, putting down a couple dogs. Maybe it was still too soon to put this crushing of the soul into perspective, but one thing was certain…I had no clue where to go from here.
Fuck O.J. Fuck Doubleday. Fuck my writing career.