 OWAA Legends
Words for at Least a Thousand Years
By Gary Lantz
John Madson came into my life out of a filing cabinet on the first day of a job
that I’d applied for without the slightest expectation of advancing much further
than the receptionist. Yet, somehow fate and my rudimentary writing skills had
creased the cranky armor of a boss that was notoriously hard to impress.
Following a whirlwind sequence of events, a 22-year-old newspaper reporter
suddenly found himself writing releases for the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife
Conservation and articles for Outdoor Oklahoma magazine.
I stayed late that first night to rummage through the magazine files. He was
hiding out in the “A” file, where I found his words in the pages of Audubon
magazine. The writer’s name was Madson, and he could make a story sing.
For days thereafter I read another John Madson story, and another. About the
cottonwood trees that shaded Western rivers, the big hollow sycamores that
sheltered wilderness travelers, about a little park down in Oklahoma where
farmers came after harvest to divest themselves of a summer’s layer of dust and
grit in the cool waters of a dozen gushing springs.
No matter what he depicted through his magical way with words, from ducklings in
a cattail marsh to the carnivorous advance of a prairie fire, Madson used words
like brush strokes, played them like chamber music. His facts and science were
sound and sturdy, no doubt about it. But it was the poetry, the sheer artistry
of his work that made all those facts and all that science so delightfully
palatable. Madson carried nature to the typewriter in both his notebook and his
heart. There, with the help of the English language, he brought it back to life
one keystroke at a time.
From the moment I first read his work, Madson became, and remained, my hero.
I’ve never been very sentimental in that sort of way, but on my desk remains a
photo of me and this man I grew to admire. In the background is a broad expanse
of native grass, a fitting stage for the prairie’s finest chronicler. Every time
I look at that photograph, I remember the vow I made before the altar of the
filing cabinet, under “A” for Audubon: “Someday I want to write like John Madson.”
More than a quarter century has passed and I still haven’t made the mark. But
there are a few years left, a few more rivers to sit beside and a few more
sunsets to watch the crows fly to roost. Still time for the words to connect
just right. Still time to strive, even if it should prove to be an unattainable
vow.
The first time I met Madson I was as flustered as a teen-ager in the presence of
a rock star. But later, over the years, I came to know him as a very warm,
sharing and caring man, as well as a writer of letters who could sit down at a
keyboard and pour out personal correspondence with the same flair and poetry
that flourished in his books and magazine articles.
I truly believe that Madson put more work into his personal correspondence than
many of us inject into our work for hire. His words of encouragement could cure
the blues better than a daily dose of Prozac, especially for a young writer lost
in the despondent, lingering professional fog of queries returned unread, junior
editors who can’t seem to grasp that the difference between good writing and
today’s average television fare are those transitional sentences they routinely
chop off, and of course the daily drill of burrowing through the bills in search
of that check that never comes.
Madson could, with a deft phrase or two, make it all seem worthwhile, and I
still return to his letters like some sort of writer’s aspirin when the checks
are late and some smug editor butchers another perfect sentence in my precious
prose.
The reason why, of course, is that Madson’s letters remain good medicine. What
follows are just a few gems gleaned from among several personal pages of
priceless Madson at his best – good advice for young writers struggling up that
slick wet bank towards professional accountability, and also wise words still
for some of us slovenly old buzzards to remember as we rant and rave, fume and
froth at the mouth while working at a job we’re supposed to love.
Madson on writing how-to articles: “Don’t knock how-to or where-to quickies. As
an old friend used to say, ‘It all depends on the execution thereof.’ ”
“Years ago, when I was hacking away on the little Iowa Conservationist for Fish
& Game, I had the job of doing a profile of a state park every month. This was
supposed to replace a very dull series on state park geology that was being done
by a geology professor. I fought the job to begin with, much preferring to do
fish and game stuff. But when it became apparent that I had no choice, I began
hyping myself with such as ‘Godammit, Madson, there’s . . . to be more there
than meets the eye! I wonder what it is. . . .’ I started poking under the
obvious, down in the roots of the park, and all sorts of things began coming to
light. It was just a matter of adding some color to an otherwise black-and-white
subject. Hard thing to explain – but there’s always a helluva lot more to a
subject than first meets the eye. Even a fishhook or a night crawler.”
“A while later, one of my editors on the Des Moines Register summarized it
beautifully with one of the most trenchant lessons in journalism I’ve ever had.
I was puzzling over a particular assignment (it had to do with the opening of a
new resort hotel at a northern Iowa lake) and wondering just where in the hell
the story was in this particular assignment. The editor cold-eyed me and said:
‘Young man, one of your functions on this newspaper is to make sugar out of
shit. Go do it.’ And that must always be our prime directive. To make sugar out
of shit – or, if we start with sugar, to be damned certain it isn’t the other
way around. Sometimes that’s even harder.”
Madson on the human element in outdoor stories: “I’ve learned some things about
writing during the past 35 years or so, but the trouble is, I keep forgetting
them and having to relearn them (It’s not easy, going through life being
Norwegian). And one of the things I keep forgetting and have to relearn is the
deep necessity of having people in articles and stories. People would rather
read about people than anything else, and outdoor people invariably have stories
that other people – indoor or outdoor – want to hear.”
Madson on versatility: “It pays to have more than one arrow in your quiver – and
more than one subject area in which you’re interested and involved. Variety is
the spice of life, from the writing or reading standpoint. (I have sworn to
never write another piece about pheasant hunting. Enough is enough!)”
Madson on magic formulas for success: “I gave several talks a year ago at the
University of Iowa J-School. Subject: writing in general and free-lancing in
particular. And in putting it all together, I was shocked to see how little I
really knew for sure. And there was even less that I knew for damn sure. I think
the kids and their profs were disappointed, and they had a right to be. They
wanted some magic formulae on how to write and sell marketable stuff, and I
couldn’t give them any absolutes.”
Madson on reading: “Another thing I’m sure of is that no one can be a good
writer if he doesn’t do a lot of good reading. The reading has to come first in
the cycle – the refinement of tastes, a cultivated awareness of the swing and
rhythm of good sentences. Of course, exposure to good reading is no guarantee of
being able to execute good writing – but I can’t imagine how anyone can be a
good writer without having been exposed to good reading. One of the things that
a lot of good reading will do is to refine taste and judgment, and hone the
ability to self-edit. And the first and most important editor any writer can
ever have is himself.”
Madson on when to turn off the lights: “I am also sure that it is never wise to
quit a day’s work at a hard place in the writing. I do my best to never leave
any knotty little problems until the next morning; it’s hard enough to go down
into the basement and face this computer screen each day without having to take
up some problems that I gave up on the day before.”
Madson on leads and concluding paragraphs: “I also tell the J-schools that, from
my point of view, the closing paragraph of any story is at least as important as
the lead paragraph. Hard news stories excepted, of course. But even in straight
news writing, there is room for expression. I remember an AP story from years
ago, about a gas explosion under a little Texas schoolhouse that killed the
teacher and all 12 kids. The entire lead paragraph consisted of the dateline and
one sentence: ‘A generation died here today.’ ”
Madson on his work: “Anyway, one of the few things I’m damn sure of, after 35
years in this game, is that I would rather be in it than anything else I know
of. It can be lonely, frustrating, skimpily-paid and often tedious – but always,
just around the corner, is that special flash of color, that fine piece of
information, and that just-right set of words that knits it all together.
Bringing those units into conjunction is a lifetime job. You and I are among the
luckiest writers in the world – among the luckiest of all time: we are working
in English. It has to be the broadest, most expressive, and most superbly
equipped tongue of all time. No other language can match it for the sheer depth
of vocabulary. Its potential is infinite. I just looked up above my screen to
the worn blue spine of my Webster’s Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary. The words
are all up there, within reach. If I can just put them in the right order, in
the proper sequence, the writing will be read a thousand years from now. It
won’t happen, of course. But that’s my fault, not that of my mother tongue.”
Well, a thousand years haven’t passed quite yet, but we’re still reading Madson
prose . . . over and over and over. Reading for information, for inspiration,
for instruction concerning how to craft those rhythmical sentences he preached
about so eloquently. The words were masterful, and they should linger for a
long, long time. Not only under the John Madson byline, but also in the writings
of others whom he encouraged and inspired. The Madson touch lives on there, too,
for as long as we, the people, continue to love our native land, and for as long
as somebody struggles to put that love into words – and get it right in the
process.
Gary Lantz, a new OWAA member, lives in Norman, OK. Lantz
writes for many state, regional and national publications.
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