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Writing Experience

April 11, 2018 by Jim Potter 2 Comments

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·  When Did You Start Writing?  ·

Think back for a moment at your desire to write or to be published. Do you recall the first book that moved you? Did an author, parent, or teacher encourage you?

Think of all the experience you’ve already had writing, living, and learning.

  • Maybe you’ve traveled a lot or have had job experiences that are worth writing about.
  • Maybe you’ve fought battles, internal or external, that are worth sharing so that others can benefit from your struggles.
  • Or maybe you just want to create an imaginary world, with fascinating characters, to thrill and entertain, to give the reader that opportunity to relax and dream.

In today’s blog I’m going to look back at my writing experience.

I was a late bloomer. The idea of being an author may have occurred to me prior to high school, but I lacked two major elements: confidence and skill.

When I read authors Samuel Clemens and Ernest Hemingway, they gave me hope. They were artists, masters at telling stories without using confusing words demanding a dictionary. 

My writing really blossomed in college with courses requiring significant research. At Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, my graduate thesis was on a Civil War regiment.

I traveled to Springfield, Illinois, to examine original documents from the era, especially the regiment’s muster roll. It was there I was introduced to individual soldiers with details of their enlistment, age, occupation, rank, illness, injury, death, or desertion.

I also researched at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., and found my men or their spouses writing letters to the government about pension problems. The letters were kept in accordion cardboard files tied with red ribbon or “red tape.”

Even though studying history is non-fiction, the truth is, it requires a healthy imagination to put yourself in a different time and place. I constantly conjured up my men.

If you want to be a writer, you need to practice. I did a lot of practicing when I was hired as a deputy sheriff at the Reno County Sheriff’s Office. Every day on patrol I was writing reports about this or that. People would contact us to report their property stolen or about some disturbance or fight that may have led to personal injury. We investigated car wrecks, drug use, and domestic violence.

As deputies, we were required to ask questions in order to understand the series of events which had led to the crime. And the reports required skill, patience, and accuracy.

  • We knew the reports were at least being read by our supervisor, and when crimes had been committed, then the county attorney’s office studied them for legal strengths and weaknesses.
  • We also understood that if the case went to trial, our transcribed report would be our point of reference.
  • It had better make sense or we would be hung out to dry. (And it better not be fiction!)

Early in my career at the sheriff’s office, I started a departmental newsletter called the Good News Blues. I was the reporter, writer, editor (with help from my wife), publisher, printer, and delivery boy. It was a labor of love. That means I loved it so much that I didn’t need to get paid to do it, and I wasn’t.

But it provided me freedom and flexibility in my writing. The highlight each month was an article I wrote on a current employee after a sit-down, face-to-face interview. 

A lot of my information gathering was on-duty, but all the writing was off-duty. The total experience showed me the steps it took to put out a newspaper. It was a training ground for being an indie author and self-publisher. 

During my law enforcement career, I also regularly submitted crime prevention advice in the form of articles to local newspapers. This was another writing experience that kept me practicing. It required me to come up with ideas, do research, be creative in my column, and to work against the clock with a deadline.

Finally, my experience as a school resource officer led me to write and publish my police memoir, Cop in the Classroom: Lessons I’ve Learned, Tales I’ve Told. It would have never been written if the thousands of students I encountered hadn’t asked me a countless number of questions. When I walked into a classroom, often the first question I was asked was, “Is your gun loaded?”

As a result of the curious children, my memoir is filled with answers to their queries. A sample of other chapter titles include:

  • “Have you ever shot someone?”
  • “Can I try on your handcuffs?”
  • “Have you ever saved someone’s life?”
  • “Will you sit by me at lunch?”
  • “Are you going to recess?”

If you are considering writing a story or a book, then I recommend you ask yourself questions. If you’ll write down your answers, then you’re writing, and you’re taking a step forward.

Maybe its practice, or maybe you’re on your way to a first draft of something bigger, something you’ve been wanting to do for a long time.

Until next time, happy writing and reading!

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Filed Under: Blog posts Tagged With: ask questions, be curious, Cop in the Classroom, Good News Blues, How can I use this?, What is your favorite book?, When did you start writing?, who encouraged you?

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Najiyah Diana Maxfield says

    April 11, 2018 at 11:02 am

    Great advice! Thanks, Jim!

    Reply
    • Jim Potter says

      April 11, 2018 at 6:41 pm

      Najiyah, Great hearing from you! Are you always working on your next book?

      Reply

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What People Are Saying

Denise Low, author of Jackalope (Red Mountain Press)

Jim Potter is a cop, retired, but he brings deep understanding of this job to his novel Taking Back the Bullet: Trajectories of Self-Discovery. This layered novel has literary dimensions as characters explore crisis situations. Congratulations to this fine writer for his debut novel.

Rebecca from Proud Police Wife

Taking Back the Bullet is an emotional, yet captivating novel. Jim Potter does a superb job of intertwining each character and putting their individual identities on display. All law enforcement storylines are a true reflection of Potter’s years as a police officer because they are realistic and relatable. This is a book I highly recommend.

Dennis Perrin, educator

Masterful storytelling, exquisite character development, so real as to HURT and HOPE, a real page turner. Begs for stage, screenwriters, and visual episodic development a.k.a. TV series . . . Thanks Jim Potter for telling it like it is AND providing us visions of how it could be. Well done!

Rebecca Schillaci

As a former law enforcement officer, I found the story very relatable as it details the life of a law enforcement officer and the struggles some face throughout their careers. . . Taking Back the Bullet is a journey of understanding, respect, and forgiveness . . .

Sheryl Remar

I enjoyed the different stories of this book because Tom, James, and Suanna, the three main characters, represent in their own way the different struggles with themselves and society’s idea of what is normal.

John & Cindy Morrill, 20 years Air Force retired, 17 years law enforcement

I enjoyed your book. When I am looking for a new read, I always read the first page, last page and choose a random page somewhere in the middle before I decide to buy it. You had me on all three pages. I also like reading a book where you can relate to the characters and the settings in which they live and work. It makes a story more realistic if you can say, I am familiar with the area; I know where that town is or I have traveled that street. It was easy to relate to the characters. In one way or another, I have met them all somewhere in my journeys.

Judy Hawk

. . . I was impressed with the Native American information as well as the depth of character development . . . .

Wynona Winn, PhD, retired school superintendent

Three main characters walk different paths but with the same destination – each coping with his or her self-discovery, self-identity, and self-realization. Much like their earlier counterparts – Huck Finn and Holden Caulfield – their journeys are often joyous, often tedious and often tragic.

Diana Dester

Good story line, building the characters along the way. Great job!

Deb Theis, LSCSW, clinical therapist/hypnotherapist

Jim Potter has done it again! After his book, Cop in the Classroom: Lessons I’ve Learned, Tales I’ve Told, Jim has written another great work. In Taking Back the Bullet: Trajectories of Self-Discovery, Jim Potter takes us on an insightful journey into the lives and relationships of numerous characters. Jim is such a talented storyteller that the reader quickly becomes immersed and has a ‘bonding experience’ with each of the characters, feeling their joy, fear, passion and pain. Jim’s novel speaks to the empowerment of persistence with the characters as they work through their trials. As a therapist, I appreciated the heartfelt struggles from each of the characters and their diversity. I also found value in the novel’s understanding of society’s misunderstanding of both mental health and other conditions in which people struggle. The novel contains rich exposure to various realities that many of us do not know about . . . but should. When I finished this captivating novel, I was wanting to read the sequel! It was an honor and a wonderful, mesmerizing experience reading this book. Congratulations, Jim!

Jane Holzrichter

I finished it last night around midnight. What a great piece of work. It kept me intrigued all the way to the end.

Sean McArdle, Winchester, England

Retired police officer Potter’s novel centres on very disparate characters and through the tried and tested means of gradually introducing each one, builds a sense of anticipation about what is going to happen to them. This often used methodology is not easy to do well but is superbly handled by Potter who knows how to give enough detail to bring the characters to life, yet not too much so as to slow down the pace of the developing story. A climactic event affects the main characters and it is at this point Potter’s deep knowledge of people and police procedures really hits home; page by page we read how a seemingly simple, though terrible occurrence, can have huge consequences. To Potter’s credit the story does not have a completely conclusive or simplistic ending. Instead it leaves the reader thinking about how the events of a single minute can affect lives forever. I would whole heartedly recommend this book not as a crime novel or even as a novel about crime but as a beautiful and positive affirmation about what it is to be human and how ultimately it is relationships which matter more than events.

Morgan Penner

Taking Back the Bullet is a novel that provides the reader with a window into the world of law enforcement. As the novel unfolds, the reader is able to see how split-second decisions alter the lives of the main characters in the story. Taking Back the Bullet also explores how humanity is impacted by mental illness. One of my favorite quotes from Taking Back the Bullet is “We’re all just a critical moment from being disabled or mentally ill, and we don’t want to think about it.” The novel also provides the reader an opportunity to gain a better understanding of how mental illness impacts the individuals, their family, friends, and society. Taking Back the Bullet is a story of forgiveness and overcoming life’s struggles and tragedies.

Steve Becker

I’m impressed. It was an excellent read. . . . I hope you continue with more projects in the future.

Larry Kruckman, anthropologist

Jim Potter displays ethnographic skills in Taking Back the Bullet: Trajectories of Self-Discovery, creating vivid scenes and fascinating characters. The Greeks had a word for subcultures and people’s behavior: ‘ethos,’ or ‘ways of being.’ In colorful, sometimes marvelous detail, this novel captures various people and settings . . . the ethos of rural Kansas: a jail, art fair, powwow, rehab center, courtroom, albinos, and even someone in the throes of postpartum depression. So detailed are the descriptions that they must be drawn from the author’s personal experience. Besides the artfully created characters such as the struggling jailer and husband Tom Jennings, local artist Jesse Thomas, and Native American Joe Morningcloud, there is a tight story line that grabs your attention and won’t let go. Human tensions, love, conflict, joys and sorrows are all there. Magically, all the many pieces come together in a final crescendo, giving hope that even when we find ourselves in big trouble we can survive. This is a novel I highly recommend!

Larry Kruckman
Anthropologist
Karleen Wilson-Moon

Terrific story relevant to today’s social issues . . . well written . . . likable characters . . . insightful perspective from an insider in law enforcement.

Karleen Wilson-Moon

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