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some of the guilt monsters away by writing a story about Bobby, Ross, and their gang.
    The problem was what to write. In my first attempt, I tried describing the time they planned to rob the American Legion post of all its guns, only to be cheated out of the chance when the building burned down the night before the caper was to be pulled off. I say I tried writing about it, but all I came up with was a bunch of crap. I realized I didn’t know how to approach my brother and his world. He and all he’d been had flowed through my veins for so long that when I stopped to think about who and what he was, I drew a blank. I knew what colors he was, but since I couldn’t separate them, they all merged into a big white blank. Just try to describe the color white to someone beyond saying it’s all colors in one.
    I tried a first-person narrator — a girl who’d been jilted by one of the guys. That didn’t work, so I tried being one of their parents. Absolutely nothing. Next I filled three sheets of paper with Ross and Bobby stories. Some of them made me laugh; others made me guilty or sad. Remembering everything made me obsessed with the idea of getting a bit of their world down on paper. Nothing was going to stop me.
    It’s funny, but in the beginning I never once thought of making something up and using my brother and his gang as characters in my story. Ross had been such a strong presence in my life and had done so many wild things that I’d never considered upstaging him with an action or thought that came strictly from my own head. Yet that’s what happened. While driving across campus one Saturday night, I saw a bunch of tough guys strutting down Main Street, all duded up for a big night on the town.
    How many times had I watched my brother brush his long hair into a perfect shining swirl, slap on a gallon of English Leather cologne, and wink at himself in the bathroom mirror when he was done? “Looking good, Joe. Your brother is looking good!”
    I thought about it for a while and, sitting down at the typewriter one afternoon, opened the story with those same words addressed to an adoring little brother who sat on the edge of the bathtub watching him prepare for … I had no idea of where to go from there.
    It took me two weeks to write. It was about a bunch of toughs in a small town who are getting ready to go to a big party at a girl’s house. Each boy has a little section of the story, and in turn tells you about their lives and what he thinks will happen tonight when the party gets going up at Brenda’s.
    I never worked on anything so hard in my life. I loved it. I laid each story on top of the previous one as gently as if I were building a house of cards. I shifted them around and around incessantly for best effect and made my teacher mad because I turned the assignment in a week after it was due. When I was done, however, I knew I’d written something good, maybe even special. I was really proud of it.
    My teacher liked it, too, and suggested I submit it to a magazine. I did; over the months it made the rounds of all the major and minor places. Finally Timepiece — circulation 700 — took it. Payment was only two contributor’s copies, but I was overjoyed. I had the cover of that issue framed and put it up on the wall in front of my desk.
    Three months later a theatrical producer in New York called and asked if I’d be willing to sell him the world rights to the story for two thousand dollars. Amazed, I was on the verge of saying yes when I remembered stories of writers being gypped out of carloads of money by conniving producers; so I told him to call me back in a few days. I found a copy of Writer’s Market in the college library and got the names and telephone numbers of four or five literary agents. I explained the situation to the first one I called and asked her what I should do. By the end of the conversation she’d agreed to represent me, and when the man called back from New York, I told him to