How Tex Avery's gag man taught me how to write a novel

Seriously.

When I was in my early twenties and just getting started out trying to write a “real” novel – as opposed to the rather short porn novels I’d been writing – I found I had no idea what it felt like to write a full-length novel.

Forget the awful challenge of a blank page. This was the awful challenge of a whole blank book.

That may strike you as strange or funny. Unless you’ve actually seriously sat down and tried to write a whole freakin’ book.

Am I right? You quickly find yourself asking, “Holy cow! How will I know where I am, writing this damned thing? How will I know when I’m done/finished? What am I doing here?”

Anybody? Just me? All right. Moving on…

The novel I was bent on writing was a Western, set in New Mexico Territory in the 1880s. Its hero was a Virginia-born veteran of the French Foreign Legion who went by the name of Random.

Now, I’d come to love the Western novels of a writer who went by the name Will Henry. They were exquisitely researched and beautifully written. They feature well-drawn characters in crisply-written action against well-described backdrops.

Which is what I’d devoted my professional life to writing. They also quite well captured the feel of the American Southwest. Something I know a certain amount about, having lived in it since I was seven. And yeah, I used to be an actual cowboy.

So I found a solution to get a feel of what it was like to write a full novel. And what it felt like to write a good novel – a Western, to boot (so to speak.)

I simply picked my favorite Will Henry novel, Chiricahua, and sat down to retype it. Every one of about 85,000 words, if I remember aright.

On my handy little portable manual typewriter.

And I did.

Now, this is not a “walked twelve miles to school every day, uphill both ways in blinding snow” yarn. I chose to do this. It was my own idea. I didn’t consult with anybody. Just decided, and did it.

I wasn’t trying to copy Henry’s style – although I figured anything I absorbed via osmosis would only help me become a better writer. I just reckoned the best way to know what a full-length novel felt like to write was to copy one out.

And … it worked.

In fact I did come out of it knowing what 85,000 words felt like. I believe I also did pick up a better feel for how to write a good novel. Only you can decide how well the latter succeeded.

Would I recommend it? No.

I mean, it’s not like my rapid weight-loss program where the answer to the question, Would I recommend it? is, Not just no: Hell no. I don’t think it’ll harm you or anything. It just, in retrospect, seems a trifle … drastic.

Do I regret doing it? Not at all.

The Western – my Western – was written, sold, and published originally by Doubleday as The Night Riders, under the pseudonym Keith Jarrod. It was subsequently reprinted in paperback by Dell. It got me an agent. It broke me into “legitimate” publishing.

Flash forward decades. Enter the Internet. (No, not that way. Eww.)

As I believe I’ve mentioned, I recently joined Facebook. Early on a freind mentioned she’d just rewatched a movie called MacKenna’s Gold. Which I’ve never seen, but knew was adapted from Will Henry’s novel of the same name, which I’d read. It wasn’t one of his best, but that’s still better than most.

Naturally, I headed promptly over the scope out the movie’s imdb page. (I have no power over imdb.) And right away I saw something puzzling: it’s first credit for Writers was “Heck Allen (novel).”

Wait, what? I knew Will Henry wrote MacKenna’s freaking Gold. The aftereffects of anesthetics and whatnot may still be playing tricks with my memories, but some things a man does not forget.

So I hit the link. First thing I see was how “Heck Allen was ‘Story Man’ (or ‘Gag Man’) for most of Tex Avery‘s best MGM cartoons from 1944 through 1955…” That’s, yes, Tex Avery the cartoon god. Heck Allen, it seems, also worked for Walter Lantz, the Woody Woodpecker guy.

When I was a kid I loved Woody Woodpecker, goony laugh and all. There were no flies on ol’ Tex, either. Can we possibly be talking about the same guy?

Yes. Yes we can.

Wikipedia reveals all: Heck Allen is Will Henry is a dude whose real name was Henry Wilson Allen.

(I need to reread Will Henry’s books one of these days, not to mention catch up on all the ones I’ve missed. Among other things I’ve been contemplating writing some more Westerns – possibly under the rubric of Steampunk, possibly as straight Westerns.)

And that, boys and girls, is the true story of how Tex Avery’s gag man taught me how to write a novel!