Where I’m Writing From eli.cranor@gmail.com December 18, 2022 Eli Cranor is an Arkansas novelist whose debut novel, Don’t Know Tough, is available wherever books are sold. Don’t Know Tough made @USATODAYBooks’s “Best of 2022” list and the @nytimes “Best Crime Fiction” for 2022 Cranor can be reached using the “Contact” page at elicranor.com and found on Twitter @elicranor

I’m writing on a rollercoaster of triumph and disaster.

In his poem, “If,” Rudyard Kipling urges us to “meet with triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same.”

I first came across that poem while coaching high school football in Arkadelphia. I’d just gotten back from playing ball in Sweden. I’d graduated from Ouachita Baptist University the year before where I majored in English Literature. But somehow, despite a healthy dose of travel and study, I’d never encountered Kipling’s “If”.

Not until I came to coach for J.R. Eldridge.

Coach Eldridge was the defensive coordinator during my time at OBU. He recruited me. Called multiple times a week. Built up a great rapport, a real relationship. And then, on the weekend before Signing Day, I called from Miami International Airport to tell him I planned to continue my career at Florida Atlantic University.

Turns out, the beach is a powerful recruiting tool, especially if you’re a high school senior with hair down past your shoulders and a head full of Jimmy Buffett tunes.

Coach Eldridge was still surprised. A tad upset, even. He said, “Yeah? Okay, man. When you realize you’ll never start down there, give me a call.” And then he hung up.

A year later, I fulfilled Coach E’s prophecy by transferring to OBU.

As ironic as that whole episode was, I don’t think me or Coach E ever would’ve predicted I’d come work for him after my playing days were over. But that’s just what I did.

Coach E had just become the head coach of the Arkadelphia Badgers. He hired me to help with the offense. I called plays from the sideline and took notes from my boss, notes on manhood and life.

Football is a magnifying glass. It amplifies emotions. There are few greater feelings than winning a high school football game. There’s nothing worse than the sting of defeat. We didn’t lose many games during the two years I spent with Coach E, but when we did, he always returned to Kipling.

He kept the poem in a gold frame on a bookshelf beside his desk. He recited different lines at points throughout each season. The line about triumph and disaster being “imposters” always surprised me.

Disaster, I could understand. But triumph? How could triumph be an imposter? That’s what we were chasing, wasn’t it? Wins. Trophies. Post-season awards.

Wrong.

What we were chasing — what Coach E and I are still after, although we’re now in two very different fields — is proper execution.

The results don’t matter. They’re too unpredictable. Too fleeting. But the process, the daily grind of coaching or writing 1,000 words before the sun comes up — those things don’t lie.

I’ve held tight to that lesson as I’ve ventured into my first year as a published novelist. There are fewer markers for success in publishing than there are in football, fewer ways to gauge whether what you’re doing is actually working. Heck, I didn’t even know how many books I’d sold until earlier this month.

The end of the year can be especially hard for novelists. “Best-of-the-year” lists are released every day. For the better part of December, none of the lists mentioned my debut novel, Don’t Know Tough. I’m not going to lie, it stung, the same way losing a playoff game stings.

Luckily, I had Coach Eldridge and Rudyard Kipling to guide me down the narrow road flanked by triumph and disaster.

And then a list came out that included my book. A big list. Maybe the biggest of them all.

Last week, the New York Times listed Don’t Know Tough as one of the “Best Crime Novels” of 2022.

Surprise. Elation. Disbelief. Every emotion flooded my mind and body as I rushed off into town, trying to find a copy of the newspaper.

No luck at Kroger or the local bookstore. Walmart didn’t even carry the Times. In a last-ditch effort, I went to a PDQ gas station, hoping to see my name in print, but alas, my name was not in print at the gas station.

On my way back out to the truck, all the joy I’d felt from earlier was gone. The same way the high of winning a football game on Friday night fades by Monday morning, the next opponent already looming at the end of the week.

There is no opponent in writing. There is only the blank page and the words I use to fill it, each one a weapon, warding off the imposters waiting beyond my office door.