The Writer I Wanted To Be

Maybe I should explore journalism again and try to follow in Michael Connelly’s footsteps

Photo by Branislav Rodman on Unsplash

I’ve always been a big fan of mystery novels and tales of cold bodies stashed away in dimly lit alleyways. It’s no coincidence that as a child I devoured Michael Connelly’s thrillers. I remember reading The Black Echo, The Last Coyote, Angels Flight, A Darkness More Than Night, City of Bones, The Narrows, The Closers, Echo Park, and Void Moon. I’m far from having read everything by the great American master of mystery, but this is a good place to start. The last time I opened a Connelly book I was a teenager. Maybe it’s time I found Detectives Renée Ballard and Harry Bosh again.

If you like crime fiction, I highly recommend reading Connelly. And if you prefer TV series, you can always immerse yourself in the author’s universe with the excellent series The Lincoln Lawyer, adapted from his novel The Brass Verdict and available on Netflix. Two seasons are available — I loved them — and the third is on the way!

If I tell you about Michael Connelly, it’s because I’m fascinated by his career. After earning his bachelor’s degree in journalism in the ’80s, he worked as a journalist before becoming a crime reporter for the Los Angeles Times. His writing career began in 1992 with The Black Echo, his first thriller, in which we discover the character of Harry Bosh, an LAPD detective. The rest of the story we all know: a novel a year, over 85 million books sold worldwide and translated into 45 languages, stories and characters brought to the big and small screen with equal success.

I currently live in a town of about 2,800 people. That’s a far cry from the population of Los Angeles and its nearly 4 million souls. So if I decide to pursue a bachelor’s degree in journalism in the not-too-distant future (I’m thinking about it), I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to tell you about the crimes committed in my town afterwards, if any.

For the time being, I could write about a cat that prowls the alley opposite my apartment late at night, sniffing the scents of its fellow creatures. Or about a turtledove that has built a nest under a gutter a few inches from my kitchen window and that I sometimes hear cooing while I’m eating lunch. Or about a pair of wood pigeons that meet on the roof of the house across the street almost every evening around 7 pm to clean each other’s feathers and, according to my interpretation, to exchange an endless series of torrid kisses. I’m not sure how many people would be interested in reading these chronicles, but it could be the start of something, right?

I spend my time reading, I spend my time writing, I love interviewing authors, I love writing newsletters, I dream of writing for a newspaper (even a local one), I even love the word newspaper. What else? I wonder why I didn’t kick myself in the butt that day in 2013 when I was a digital marketing student (although I’ve always been allergic to marketing) and one of my professors told me I wrote well and could try to pursue a career in journalism. Maybe I should explore that path again today, eleven years later. Unlike the other options I’ve explored in recent years (gardener, carpenter, optician), it would have some kind of coherence with my life journey and what I really love today.

I don’t really know if it’s feasible at my advanced age (just kidding, I’m almost 38 but that’s already a certain age in the professional world), and since I’ve tended to go off in all directions in recent years, months, weeks, even hours, I think that bringing up this idea again, which I’ve explored in the past, is perhaps a sign of immense emotional distress.

I’d just like to find something where human, emotional writing is at the heart of my work. And certainly not writing to sell in the true sense of the word. So much for copywriting and all that boring stuff about writing for advertising or any other form of marketing.

I don’t want to write with some manager looking over my shoulder to make sure my article is a hit on those hideous social networks. I don’t want to write content that serves the goals of yet another marketing strategy. I don’t want to write content at all. To hell with content. I want to tell stories and talk about others. It’s still possible, isn’t it?

Or maybe I’m completely out of touch with the real world and I should take a cold shower to clear my head. It’s 27ºC here in France and I’m suffocating in my apartment. In a few hours, the couple of wood pigeons will arrive on the opposite gable for their usual courtship display. Maybe you’d like to know more. And maybe there’ll be a murder in my town tonight after dark. A bang followed by a shrill scream, then silence. Then I can finally start my new career as a journalist. Or not.

I’m going to get some rest, thank you for reading!

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