Jeff LeJeune

Hurricane Ike

We have all used experiences in our lives as fodder for our stories, often times using a situation exactly how we remember it. More often than not, however, we have to trim some edges and add some of our own to make the scene fit.

There is a temptation in this use of real life in our fiction, and Hurricanes Gustav and Ike reminded me of it. When I was a freshman in high school, our principal Mr. Wayne Coleman got on the intercom at the end of one school day and announced that, because of Hurricane Andrew, the school would be shut down for the next day or so. Our P.E. locker room erupted with joy. We were a bunch of near-sighted teenagers who apparently hadn’t heard the hurricane part of his announcement. And we certainly hadn’t anticipated having to miss three weeks of school. All we heard was that we were off. Our precious time could now be spent doing something we actually wanted to do.

How foolish and in need of guidance we were. We got that guidance not one minute after the announcement. Mr. Coleman, a tall, imposing figure of a man, walked into that locker room and needed to say absolutely nothing to quiet us down. Looking back, I suspect we knew before our principal spoke why we were in trouble.

Mr. Coleman was angry, but it was not uncontrolled rage. I remember his firm tone even today, and I can see him in my mind teaching us young, foolish teenagers a lesson about being human: People should never find joy in the misfortunes and sufferings of others, no matter what days we got to spend in front of a television instead of in the classroom.

Hurricane Andrew crushed my hometown, leaving us without power for several weeks and making us all wish we were back in school. We would have gladly gone to school those days if it meant we could have our comfort of living back. I have tried to teach my own classes this valuable lesson, and I know that it has reached some, especially many of the seniors I taught as 11th graders last year. But I was disappointed when just the other day, after I had told my classes the story about my high school principal and his lesson, that many of the student body erupted much like we did in that locker room sixteen years ago this month when it was announced at a Wednesday night football game that we would be missing school on Friday. It stirred up my own selfishness and what I would have been capable of had Mr. Coleman not addressed our mistake that day.

I wonder what a Cameron or Galveston resident would say if shown a video of our community’s collective cry of joy that Wednesday night.

I wonder if all of those students who were cheering at the football game, who got several feet of water in their homes, would go back and take on the terrible burden of an 8 a.m.-2:40 p.m. day if they could have their homes and sense of stability back.

I wonder if that local family who met a fatal tragedy on the highway while evacuating for Ike would have sacrificed just one day of school to have their family members alive and well.
I agree with my old principal. I think it is important that people not rejoice nor capitalize on the misfortune of others. These real-life happenings give us a glimpse of the temptation we fiction writers face. Sure, one of the gifts we writers have is the ability to recognize the creative potential in any real-life situation. But with that gift comes a responsibility. In order to keep our work noble, we must not openly capitalize on others’ suffering and misfortune, else we run the risk of selling our souls just to write a story.

The Hurricane Series: Part 1 - Whispers in the Storm

Jeff LeJeune is the author of The Final Chase and Postmarked Baltimore. After a deadly disease during college redirected the course of his life, Jeff became a teacher at St. Louis Catholic High School in Lake Charles, LA where he was recently named a Claes Nobel Educator of Distinction.

Hurricane Gustav

On Saturday night, my wife and I left Lake Charles and drove six hours to Austin, TX as Hurricane Gustav set its sights on our Louisiana coast. At that point, I had no plan to write a column this week, much less invest the time necessary to come up with a topic which always takes me more time than the actual writing.

As it turns out, the inspiration came through the back door, so to speak. While vigilantly monitoring the storm, not even aggressively pursuing a column topic, it dawned on me how much a writer can learn from a hurricane and all the peripheral aspects of it, including the experts who forecast it. More on them and their predictions in the coming weeks.

Perhaps that is the first lesson learned from the storm—that inspiration often comes to writers when we least expect it, and that we have to be alert to those moments and follow their lead. Sometimes it’s not the assertive pursuit of an idea that gets your pen or keyboard in motion, but the patience and the alertness to see when even the tiniest moments in life whisper inspiration to you.

There is an Old Testament verse in the Book of Kings that reads:

“The Lord said, ‘Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the Lord, for the Lord is about to pass by.’ Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.” 1 Kings 19:11-14

Elijah “went out and stood at the mouth of the cave” because he was coming out of hiding, out of his place of frustration with God. Regardless of your religious beliefs or affiliation, this story and so many others in Scripture provide us with such stimulating models for our lives and the stories we write. Elijah’s frustration had made him temperamental, a man thirsting for a great sign from above to legitimize his faith. But that great sign did not come, not as he expected anyway. Once he moved out of the cave and into a position of vulnerability and patience with God, God spoke to him, quietly in a whisper so that his child could hear amongst the noise.

The same is often true in our writing. We read the Romantics of old and how great the Muse is, and we expect the same sweep up into the clouds. It’s part of the ego-centricity that a writer must have to even pursue this career or hobby, but sometimes we take ourselves a little too seriously. Much like Elijah. We have to come out of our caves and open ourselves up to the possibility that the next great scene may not be in our immediate grasp. Oftentimes the inspiration will not come in the obvious, but instead from those moments where perhaps writing is the furthest thing from our minds. That is why it is just as important to work on our habits and character away from the pen or keyboard as it is when we are actually there, seeing the words spray across the page. Doing so will form inside us the stable environment necessary to hear the whispers amongst the storm.

Even when the whisper is a storm itself, shattering rocks in its path.

The Hurricane Series: Part 2 - When Real Life Meets Fiction

Jeff LeJeune is the author of The Final Chase and Postmarked Baltimore. After a deadly disease during college redirected the course of his life, Jeff became a teacher at St. Louis Catholic High School in Lake Charles, LA where he was recently named a Claes Nobel Educator of Distinction.

In my last column, I encouraged all writers to really assess their work and make sure to remove passages and lines that don’t fit before the publishing process is complete. I discussed the difficulty in this and how the work a creator creates is never very easily exiled to the trash bin of our computers.

Today, I’m going to contradict myself a bit.

Well, maybe not a blatant contradiction, however I will raise the question of timing in deleting such work. In 1984, Thomas Green wrote a non-fiction book titled Weeds Among the Wheat: Where Prayer and Action Meet. The book argues that human beings' deficiencies are sometimes like weeds; If plucked to soon, the good stuff, or the identity we are destined to live by, would be plucked as well, damaging and destroying the potential harvest inside us. To alter the metaphor, it’s like the training of a horse; though a young one may be overly energetic and zealous, it is actually the beginnings of the very spirit that we will one day look upon with wonderment. Be patient through the youthful enthusiasm, and you’ll have a spectacular steed soon enough. Rush nature’s course and over-train in order to control, and you’ll lose the spirit.

Whether one considers a harvest or a horse, the philosophy is an interesting one. It is in direct conflict with many adults' manner of raising children, which often involves a litany of do’s and don’ts. The more patient philosophy of leaving the weeds, or letting the young horse break things while he grows to maturity, could be used as an excuse by less responsible people to do the wrong thing. Admittedly, it takes a special relationship between mentor and pupil to be able to trust this type of rearing. The same tenderness must be applied to a crop if a farmer expects a rich reward at the end of his toils.

To think of harvests and horses can be healthy when a writer is working on a manuscript. The writer must be totally invested in his work in order to recognize not only the weeds and the wheat, but more importantly when to pluck the one in order to enjoy the other; when to exact harsher discipline on the wayward horse.

When is the perfect time to delete unnecessary passages? I would suggest delaying it as much as possible. Put a text box around it as a reminder and wait. Then keep writing. Something is going on there. As good as it is and as proud as you are of it, the least you owe yourself is to wait and let the natural progression of revisions run its course. Oftentimes, passages are there to lead you to something else you haven’t quite thought of yet. Pluck those passages too early, and you’ve lost the connection. You’ve lost that which would have inspired a more spirited and rich exchange between you and your readers.

Jeff LeJeune is the author of The Final Chase and Postmarked Baltimore. After a deadly disease during college redirected the course of his life, Jeff became a teacher at St. Louis Catholic High School in Lake Charles, LA where he was recently named a Claes Nobel Educator of Distinction.

I just couldn’t get rid of them. I insisted that it would be like carving out a part of my youth. I just knew I was going to listen to every song in my collection and read the words from the pamphlets one day. I swore that to myself for years.

As those years passed and I listened to music less and less, the urge to just pitch the whole set got stronger and stronger. I looked at them on that top shelf and kept looking at them. I moved three times to different homes and kept them scratch-free. I might just want to look at the colorful pictures enclosed in them one day. Might be ten years from now, but you never know.

But that day never came.

The connection is unbalanced, but my attachment to the things in my closet was like the “things” in “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien. In the book, O’Brien explores the attachments soldiers make, and how the new identities formed through those attachments can be difficult to overcome. The underlying theme throughout the book is that the emotional “things” soldiers carry with themselves to the warfront and back is a burden that is often heavier on the heart and mind than any gun or helmet.

The same idea can be applied to our lives. We hold on to things so tightly that we inherit a dependence on them. We think that discarding these things will erase our memories of a time and a place that once was, and we’re scared of that. It’s the unknown. It’s the uncertainty. And with each passing year it gets worse, for age disconnects us more and more from youth. What we perceive as a hallowed time in our lives makes the need to hold on even more desperate. Alas, it is a trait I have worked hard to remove but still sometimes fail at, my understanding of O’Brien’s universal message notwithstanding.

As writers, we have these “things” in our work as well. For the novelist, we hold on to the elegantly written paragraph that just doesn’t fit. For the poet, its the perfect words that just doesn’t mesh in the line. For the essayist, its the crisp and commanding voice while making a point that doesn’t come close to arguing the thesis. We all encounter this problem at some point in our careers, and many times we as creators simply cannot let go of the thing which we created, even though we know without a shadow of a doubt that it belongs in the trash can.

Take my advice: Don’t attempt to publish work knowing that you could have done better had you just let go of some things. Had you just loosened the stranglehold on those precious words that you think you’ll never forget. If you are physically unable to highlight and press “Delete,” then create a “Cuts” file, throw them in there, and tell yourself that you’ll put them in another story or poem one day. Heck, if it’s really elegant tell yourself you’ll put them in a love letter for a significant other. Just get them out of there. Trust me, you will forget them within five minutes, and you will feel even more in control of your story and your work as a whole than you would’ve felt had you kept them.

What sat on my closet shelf for years was not the music, but the cases that had once held the discs. Pretty, clean, and at one time, necessary. But not anymore. My music collection had been streamlined long earlier with a book of plastic sleeves, and for the writer the revising process is no different. We streamline and make our stories better, and all of a sudden we come across a paragraph or line that just doesn’t fit anymore. But we love it. We worked so hard and so long to finish it. We remember exactly where we were and how good it felt to finally break loose and be able to write that day. Heck, we might even remember what we had for breakfast. It doesn’t matter. Get rid of the cases. Discard those stubborn passages. Do it and your story will make music. Fail to do this, and your creation might turn into a clanging gong.

Jeff LeJeune is the author of The Final Chase and Postmarked Baltimore. After a deadly disease during college redirected the course of his life, Jeff became a teacher at St. Louis Catholic High School in Lake Charles, LA where he was recently named a Claes Nobel Educator of Distinction.

If I’d have been two seconds earlier, I might be dead today. Along with the other two people that were with me.

There is an inspirational parable called “Don’t Kick the Donkey,” in which a traveler drives his foot into his donkey over and over again while the animal just stands in the road, not moving. The donkey appears impervious to the blows, until all of a sudden he begins to walk. To make a long story short, the donkey was immobile because an angel told him to stop walking. Up ahead lay in wait a band of robbers, waiting to attack the next passer-by.

Three years ago, I was leaving the Lake Charles Civic Center with two friends, and I accidentally drove straight instead of veering left to the correct exit. One friend asked me where I was going, poking fun at the latest edition of Jeff’s notoriously quirky driving mistakes. I quickly amended the mistake throwing it in reverse, then back in drive again within a couple seconds.

My friend continued to remark at my driving prowess. His wife defended me, but the joke prattled on. We were, after all, knocked off of our course a whole two seconds. I realized it was all in fun, but I have to admit the jokes can get old, even grating on the nerves, especially because the little error wasn’t a big deal in the first place. I drove forward at about 15 mph, approaching a two-way stop sign. I had the right-of-way, and we watched with shock as a car sped through the stop sign at about 50 mph. In a quiet, tree-thick neighborhood, you never approach that speed. We had a front row seat to what crash could have happened had I crossed that intersection just two seconds sooner.

It wasn’t long after I rolled through that intersection (very gingerly, I might add) that my mind recalled the little driving mistake back at the Civic Center. My friend had stopped ribbing me about it, now talking about how crazy the driver was and how you have to be so careful these days. I don’t even think he put two and two together. Everything he’d been teasing me about had to happen, or else we would have been smack-dab in the middle of that intersection when that crazy man sped through.

I said a short prayer and probably glanced up at my truck ceiling, picturing heaven above. I hadn’t yet heard the parable “Don’t Kick the Donkey,” but a year later I would, giving me an opportunity to tell the person who told it to me my own version of the tale.

Sometimes we find ourselves stuck in these little pauses in life, where it almost seems like there’s a glitch in the system and the person in charge is playing tricks on us. We love the phrase, “That’s just my luck…,” and use it to explain some new obstacle in our lives that causes catastrophic delays in our precious schedules. It can make us bitter and cynical, so short-sighted that we become unable to see the beautiful patterns of our lives.

This can be especially frustrating when a writer has writer’s block. It is inevitable that all writers face the inability to create, but the difference between average writing and the great writing that follows a pause may lie in the virtue of patience. There may be something that has to pass, some experience we have to go through, even if it’s as simple as driving six feet too far onto the wrong road, before we are ready to move on in our story. And yes, our friends will try to push us forward, to say that success comes only to the strong. And that is often times true. Sometimes, though, it’s not. Whatever the experience is may not be a sign of incompetence or weakness or even writer’s block; instead, it may be our angel-inspired donkey waiting in the middle of the road for trouble to pass. True strength comes from not forcing the issue, but in sitting back with our legs propped up and a margarita in hand, waiting for the right time. This week’s challenge is to try not to kick the keyboard, ehr, donkey, and to wait patiently while the intersection clears and to know with confidence that with the passing of just a little time, our words can come with so much more abundance and power.

Jeff LeJeune is the author of The Final Chase and Postmarked Baltimore. After a deadly disease during college redirected the course of his life, Jeff became a teacher at St. Louis Catholic High School in Lake Charles, LA where he was recently named a Claes Nobel Educator of Distinction.

My nose was the last thing on my mind. It was the last inning of the second round of the Little League All-Star baseball tournament. With just one out remaining, I had what every pitcher dreams of having intact with the game on the line; a no-hitter. Any one pitch could do so many things, could end so many things. This next pitch could be it.

I had never read The Chosen by Chaim Potok and wouldn’t until I was a teacher entering my fifth year in the classroom. In the novel’s opening chapter, Reuven Malter, an Orthodox Jew, gets hit in the face with a baseball off the bat of Danny Saunders from a rival Jewish sect. The two boys hate each other in this opening chapter because the two teams hate each other, and well, that’s just what they’re supposed to do. Potok even implies that Danny somehow has control over the direction of the baseball off his bat and that he purposely lines it at Reuven’s face, shattering his glasses and putting him in danger of going blind.

What Potok is doing in a masterful way is using the physical impairment of Reuven’s eyes to trigger the spiritual growth he’s beginning to experience and “see” as the story unfolds. He and Danny both change, becoming best friends despite their religious differences. Reuven suffers tremendous pain in the hospital because of his injury, but had it not happen, the boys would have left the baseball field that day no better off than they were. Physically intact? Yes. Spiritually enlightened? Not even close. The walls of bitterness would have been even more impenetrable.

But the ball did manage to find Reuven’s face that day. Just like the ball managed to find mine so many years ago. It was a hot July day, and I was manning my position at shortstop. We were just days away from the start of the baseball tournament, days away from my potential no-hitter on the mound. The ball was hit in the gap between me and third base, and when I dove, it took a bad hop.

My face exploded in pain, just like Reuven’s does in the book. Blood rushed from my nose and everyone scurried around me. My coach squatted down and looked at my face, and I remember him saying, “I don’t think it’s too bad. I don’t think it’s broken.”

Mama showed up. I got in the car and checked myself out in the mirror. My nose was entirely shifted over toward my eye. Coach wasn’t a very good liar.

We went to the doctor. He told us that surgery would be the day after I was scheduled to pitch, so I knew then that I’d get at least two games under my belt. That was what I was hoping for, anyway.

“So it’s broken,” my mom said. “I guess he can’t play baseball.”

The only thing I was worried about was not playing baseball. I wasn’t even scared of the surgery. I was just hoping she wouldn’t bring up not playing, so I’d have a reason to play. You know, ask forgiveness instead of permission. I knew what the answer from the doctor would be. Season over.

“What’s the worse that can happen?” the doctor replied, as dry as he’d been from the start. “He can’t break it anymore.”

His answer was yes, I could play, and yes Ms. LeJeune, even the night before the surgery. He told me to go do my best and win. He even feigned a smile. As dry and uninspired as he was, the simple simplicity of his words has stuck with me for eighteen years.

He was right. I couldn’t break the nose any worse, even if I did take another ball off the face. Likewise, Reuven Malter in The Chosen couldn’t have felt any more pain and any more fear, but the tragedy was a necessary obstacle to a new and great opportunity. The lesson here is that no matter how many baseballs explode in our face on the field, no matter how painful life gets, there is always a doctor telling us to go win and go do our best. There is always a caring coach telling us no, it’s not broken, you’re going to be just fine.

And even when he’s lying through his teeth, there is still a message in the words.

Life is rough, and when trying times happen, the dragon tries to discourage us with full force. But we have to realize that the eyeglasses can be replaced, the noses and eyes will heal, and life around the bend will place us on the pitcher’s mound with one more out to go, primed and ready for glory.

More often than not, our writing is inspired by the bad parts of our lives, for example, getting smashed in the face with a baseball. This is okay some of the time. This week, let’s focus on the coach who told us to keep going. For many writers stuck in a rut, this is often the jump start they need.

Jeff LeJeune is the author of The Final Chase and Postmarked Baltimore. After a deadly disease during college redirected the course of his life, Jeff became a teacher at St. Louis Catholic High School in Lake Charles, LA where he was recently named a Claes Nobel Educator of Distinction.