Many of you have heard my backstory about Hardscrabble Road: I spent ten years writing down the brutal, often horrifying, but always compelling childhood stories of my former father-in-law—who was “Bud,” if you’ve read the book and the sequel Return to Hardscrabble Road—and his two older brothers and older sister. When I approached Bud about helping me shape those stories into a novel by sharing his sensory memories of those bygone days, he told me not to waste my time because no one would care. That opinion was an informed one:
No one cared enough to stop his psychopathic father from beating and terrorizing Bud and his brothers.
No one cared when Papa tried to murder Bud’s mother (even the court barely cared, sentencing the horrible man to just a few years in prison).
No one cared (except for Bud’s favorite teacher) when he and his brothers dropped out of school one by one to work in a sawmill and do predawn bread deliveries to feed their family and keep a rented roof over their heads.
I cared, though, and I finally convinced him to help me. I finished writing Hardscrabble Road twenty years ago and sent it to my agent, who was excited to have something new of mine to send to the big publishers. She couldn’t get anyone to care about my first novel, The Five Destinies of Carlos Moreno, but thought this one would resonate.
But Bud was right: no one cared. We didn’t get a publishing contract for Hardscrabble, Five Destinies, or my domestic drama The Caretaker. I eventually fired that agent and focused on helping other writers on their journeys.
A chance meeting with a small, local publisher resulted in Hardscrabble Road being published in 2012. And you know what? Individual readers cared. Book clubs cared. Most of the 5,000+ people who’ve left reviews online for the book since then cared. Bud didn’t survive long enough to see the book in print (that’s him on the cover in 1936, holding out a can of worms to his middle brother), but I hope he knows that people cared.
And somehow, twelve years, six more books, and two more publishers since then, Hardscrabble continues to be the one that outsells all my other titles combined. My wife, author Kim Conrey, and I just did a signing at the beautiful Poe & Co. Bookstore in Milton, GA, which displayed all my books, but which one did I sell? You guessed it. We’ll go to DragonCon in a few weeks, where sci-fi and fantasy rule, but my satirical pre-apocalyptic comedy Offlining tailored for that audience probably won’t sell as well as the Southern, historical gothic Hardscrabble.
What’s the moral of all this? If you have a story in you and you’re telling yourself not to bother writing it because no one will care, think again. If you want to tell stories from your own life to family or friends so they’ll understand you better, but you haven’t done so because you don’t think they’ll care, think again. If you haven’t shared your views or your news on social media because who would care, think again.
Bud was a brilliant man and, I imagine, the most resilient, optimistic child who ever picked cotton and hoed peanuts from dark-thirty to dark-thirty. He once told me, “There’s nothing stranger than people, and you’ll never understand them,” because of the terrible man and disinterested woman who raised him and the various odd characters he encountered in his adult life. Clearly, though, he didn’t understand readers and couldn’t imagine their affinity for his childhood tale, but I’ve witnessed it first-hand for a dozen years and counting. And readers are now telling me they enjoy Return to Hardscrabble Road even more because Bud is coming into his own and has agency (he’s on the far right on that cover).
So, tell or write your story. Don’t be afraid to share it. You just might be surprised who will care.
Buzz Bernard
August 11, 2024 at 4:12 pm (4 months ago)Well said, George. Thanks for telling us “the rest of the story,”
George Weinstein
August 11, 2024 at 11:08 pm (4 months ago)Thank you very much, Buzz–I knew you’d “get it”!
Looking forward to the launch of your new book.
Regards,
George
George Weinstein
August 14, 2024 at 5:08 pm (4 months ago)Thank you, Buzz–I knew you’d “get it”!
Looking forward to the launch of your new book.
Regards,
George
Jan
August 11, 2024 at 4:23 pm (4 months ago)Love this, George. You are so right. Someone (a lot of someones, in fact) cared. So glad you persevered so that your readers could find this story.
George Weinstein
August 11, 2024 at 11:08 pm (4 months ago)Thank you very much, Jan!
Regards,
George
Bob Cairns
August 11, 2024 at 4:45 pm (4 months ago)George, having my copy of Hardscrabble Road, and having read it I now care all the more/ Thanks for not giving up—published fiction and non-fiction with St. Martin’s (when my agency of 25 years closed their doors) I have come to, with other unpublished projects, those No One Will Care thoughts.
My Oh, No, Not Another Blog makes our case FOR NOT GIVING UP. It’s a fun to write project and remains a work in progress. Should be ready to launch when we get the first of the following books out there with Amazon and Ingram.
http://www.bobsohnoblog.com
The Inn: Memoir of a “Storied” Past, where a kid grows up in a historic inn and learns to be a relentless storyteller; a basketball novel, Dear Coach, Dear Benchie, where a former coach and player relive their relationship through a series of letters; the novel, Driving Mr. Crazy, a chase story with a beautiful redhead behind the wheel of a semi-trailer and a nerd passenger holding on for dear life; and Balls of Ivy, a Kentucky horse-racing, action-packed whodunit.
Thanks for Hardscrabble Road and all you do for writing and publishing.
Bob
George Weinstein
August 11, 2024 at 11:07 pm (4 months ago)Thank you very much, Bob–I knew you’d “get it”!
Looking forward to the launch of your project.
Regards,
George
John Castellano
August 12, 2024 at 4:41 pm (4 months ago)Well said. All writers should heed your encouraging words.
Best Regards,
John
George Weinstein
August 14, 2024 at 5:07 pm (4 months ago)Thank you very much, John–I knew you’d “get it”!
Regards,
George
George Weinstein
August 14, 2024 at 5:09 pm (4 months ago)Thank you, John!
Regards,
George
Clint Smith
August 12, 2024 at 4:56 pm (4 months ago)Inspiring column. Well done. I knew some of the back story (We were both published by Deeds) but thanks for filling out the rest of it. BTW, you do a good job leading writing classes/discussions at the various events that I have attended. Keep up the good work.
George Weinstein
August 14, 2024 at 5:10 pm (4 months ago)Thank you very much, Clint!
Regards,
George
Lizbeth Jones
August 13, 2024 at 11:01 am (4 months ago)After reading this encouraging post, I was thinking about how it’s sometimes easy to believe that seemingly no one cares about real life people, let alone fictional ones. Yet Bud lives in realms both historical and imaginary, making him vitally memorable. Some of his moments of liberation and healing became my own, as a reader. Thanks for bringing him to life by making a record of how much you cared about your father-in-law and his story. What a remarkable tribute.
George Weinstein
August 14, 2024 at 5:11 pm (4 months ago)Aww, thank you very much, Lizbeth! I’m glad the book touched you so deeply, and I appreciate your kind words.
Regards,
George
Jim Ramage
August 14, 2024 at 8:40 pm (4 months ago)Thank you very much George for your comments and encouragement. We’ve missed you here in Fernandina Beach. I’ve finally made the time to start writing again. Like you, or at least like Bud, I’ve chopped cotton, lived in a house without running water and watched the farm traffic roll by the shack we lived in with their accompanying cloud of red dust. I think that now I’ll write for my Grandkids. It’ll seem like fiction and fairy tales, but what the hey, my dad never thought that a man would walk on the moon. Go Buck Rogers!
George Weinstein
August 15, 2024 at 8:51 am (4 months ago)Thank you, Jim! You absolutely should share stories of your growing-up days with your grandkids. They might not ask about those experiences, but they’ll be fascinated by how different your childhood was compared with theirs, how you not only survived it but learned to thrive, and how those skills served you as an adult. The “rest of the story” about Bud was that, while letting me interview him to help me write scenes for Hardscrabble Road, he started to write his memoirs. Before he passed, he gave each of his kids and grandkids a 3-ring binder full of stories and old photos about his hardscrabble youth and the people who, for better or for worse, raised him, educated him, etc. It’s a keepsake they treasure. All of that to say that your stories don’t have to be in a fancy book–just collected in a binder or folder or an emailed file is enough. Just start writing your stories and see how it develops.
If I can offer any other insights or advice, please let me know.
Regards,
George