Steven Hartov
The Last of the Seven
DOSSIER: You’ve learned what to leave out in books, which is an important element to writing a tight story. Do you use the same process when you get busted doing something dumb around the house and have to explain yourself?
HARTOV: Ah, I get it, the old Ernest Hemingway rule of good writing, knowing what to delete. However, Papa also famously said, “Write drunk, edit sober,” so of course he was all over the page when under the influence of some barely distilled sour mash. I confess that I try to follow that rule, which you astutely noticed, but you also know, Jeff, that it’s impossible to delete your sins at home. I try not to “write” them in the first place, but whenever I’m busted, I just blame it on Hemingway and bourbon.
DOSSIER: Since you are a notorious outliner before you begin writing, how do you keep the Good Idea Fairy at bay when you’re 40k words in and think, “It would be really cool if my protagonist gave up his life as an assassin and decided to be a celebrity chef on a yacht in the Eastern Caribbean.” What reader wouldn’t think, “How cool is that?”
HARTOV: There is no such thing as a Good Idea Fairy. He’s a vicious little satanic prick with wings, and once I’ve settled on what I consider to be a solid outline, I pin him to the wall with feathered quills and simply ignore his screams. Now, that doesn’t mean that partway into a book I won’t decide that some character who appeared to be a survivor, should in fact get crushed by a tank, but it’s rare. It’s like tossing a rock into a cool placid pond; you can’t avoid the ripple effect.
DOSSIER: When and where do you write, and what kind of environment do you prefer? (Music/silence/airplane bathroom?)
HARTOV: For the most part, I write upstairs at the very top of my 1924 Craftsman style home, in an attic turned into my office. It’s crammed with overflowing bookshelves, various framed mementos from my multi-military services, challenge coins, stolen Indiana Jones-style statuettes, and an assortment of weapons (just in case). Silence is my preferred stimulus, but occasionally I’ll blast a John Barry soundtrack from one of his famous film scores, just to set the atmosphere before I begin bleeding out on the page.
DOSSIER: When you were working with the U.S. Navy as a Merchant Marine, or when you were running around as an American working as an Israeli Defense Force soldier, did you ever think, “I’m going to have SO much material to write about someday!”?
HARTOV: Every single day. Even when I was puking my guts out over the rail of a WWII era oiler-refueler in the North Atlantic, or flat on my face under rocket fire in Lebanon. Once or twice I even pulled out a notebook and pencil. My mates all thought I was nuts, but it made them smile.
DOSSIER: We both share the experience of working to get people out of Afghanistan during the fall. Did your experience with that impact your writing in some way, or, like life experiences helped shape Hemingway and Fleming’s works, did you consider writing a book about it? You sure did the on-site recon you like to do before jumping into a book.
HARTOV: Okay, Jeff, now we’re getting serious. First of all, brother, God bless you for joining that fight. Those of us who know what went down over there during the fall of Kabul will never forget it, or the people we managed to pull out, or those that never made it.
Just between us, there is one individual, a young Afghan woman we managed to rescue who is now essentially my adopted daughter. I doubt that I’ll ever be able to write a book about all that, but perhaps someday she will.
Website: stevenhartov.com
Jeff Circle 