Wizard of Ads Monday Morning Memo

I was talking to an old friend. He asked the usual questions.“Family okay?”“Everyone is great.”“Business good?”“Busier than ever.”“But are you having fun?”He asked the question as any child of the ‘60s would ask it. The anthem we sang as young men was, “If It Feels Good, Do It.” Live fast, die young, leave a beautiful corpse. Life is kicks, fun, adrenaline: Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Dylan Thomas, Anna Nicole, Paris Hilton.I wasn’t sure how to answer his question.At the root of every misunderstanding is a lack of definition of terms.“Fun” is a term that screams for definition:Late at night, ask a weary mother nursing a sick child, “Are you having any fun?”Ask Mohandas Gandhi on the 20th day of a hunger strike, “Are you having any fun?”Ask Martin Luther King in Birmingham City Jail, “Are you having any fun?”Each of these saw a change that was needed and happily paid the price to bring that change to pass. But change never happens quickly.“The North Americans’ sense of time is very special. They are short on patience. Everything must be quick, including food and sex, which the rest of the world treats ceremoniously. Gringos invented two terms that are untranslatable into most languages: ‘snack’ and ‘quickie,’ to refer to eating standing up and loving on the run … that, too, sometimes standing up. The most popular books are manuals: how to become a millionaire in ten easy lessons, how to lose fifteen pounds a week, how to recover from your divorce, and so on. People always go around looking for shortcuts and ways to escape anything they consider unpleasant: ugliness, old age, weight, illness, poverty, and failure in any of its aspects.”– Isabel Allende, My Invented CountryMy friend Don Kuhl is one of the world’s leading experts on how change happens. A couple of weeks ago Don said something on the telephone that I hastily scribbled down: “Change is not an event. It’s a tiny decision made over and over again. Change isn’t once. It’s daily.”I recorded Don’s words because I heard in them an echo of the note my father scribbled to my sister and I as he struggled for one last breath in his final 60 seconds: “All the little things in life add up to your life. If you don’t get it right, nothing else matters.”If you define fun as reckless, heady abandon spiraling upwards to climax in an intoxicating sense of personal freedom and power, then no, I’m not having any.But if you define fun as the little things in life that add up to your life, nursing a child, doing without, paying the price for what you believe, then I would have to say that I’m having quite a time.The time of my life.Roy H. Williams

“Numbers don’t lie” is what people say when they defend their faulty logic. Their math is always flawless. The problem is that they gathered the wrong numbers. But the wrong numbers always look so right. Wizard Academy teaches its students to gather different information and use it to make different decisions. This is what we mean when we say Wizard Academy is a nontraditional business school. Let me give you an example:Half the people in town live north of the river. The other half live south. People rarely drive across the river to go to a restaurant. Everyone stays on their own side. The people north of the river are better-educated and own higher value homes. In fact, 64 percent of all discretionary income resides in the pockets of people north of the river. Only 36 percent of discretionary income is to be found down south. You’re planning to open a cloth-napkin restaurant. Where will you put it? If you said, “North of the river,” you instinctively used traditional logic to come to the same conclusion as the previous 99 people who opened a new restaurant in this city. As a result, you’re 1 of 100 restaurants fighting over 64 percent of the cloth-napkin dinner dollars.If you get your fair share of the market potential, you’ll be forced to subsist on 0.64 percent of the cloth-napkin dinner dollars. Meanwhile, the 9 upscale restaurants south of the river enjoy long lines and are making huge profits. You could have been number 10 but you were seduced by the wrong information. So now you’re living on 0.64 percent of the dinner dollars in this city when you could have had a waddling 3.6 percent if you had only opened your restaurant down south. (A “waddling” profit is so fat it walks like a duck.) You assumed higher-income people buy cloth-napkin dinners more often. But you were wrong. Those people live in more expensive houses, drive more expensive cars, shop in more expensive furniture stores and pay higher taxes but they don’t buy cloth-napkin dinners any more often than we “poor” people down south. You focused on an illusory target customer when you should have been gathering data on the actual competitive environment. Instead of asking, “Where do the people with money live?” you should have asked, “Where in this city are restaurants like mine doing far more business than they should?” The answer would have rung like a bell: “Down south. Down south. Down south. Down south.”Your choice of Competitive Environment is at least 20 times more important than your selection of Target Customer.That example wasn’t imaginary, by the way. The city is Austin, Texas.  Measurement and the Mind – Oct. 12-13 – is going to be a fabulous class. Take a look at the course description and you’ll immediately see why I’m the lightweight speaker in the group. During my short session I’ll explain in detail the dangers of using traditional cost-based accounting to make decisions about marketing. Calculating the purchases of your “average” customer is always a mistake but most people do it instinctively. Come to this class and I’ll give you a much better metric to monitor. Likewise, I’ll show you the hidden dangers of calculating Gross Impressions, Gross Rating Points, Cost Per Point, and Cost Per Thousand when making marketing decisions. And no, I’m not advocating a psychographic “target customer” approach to choosing your media. I’m simply going to give you a different equation for calculating the most efficient media plan. Like I said, I’m the lightweight in this group. The other 4 speakers are power hitters who can whack the ball over the centerfield wall, completely out of the ballpark, where it will roll across the parking lot and finally come to rest under a black Buick on row L-17. Change your plans. Come to Measurement and the Mind. You’ll learn things that will make a monster difference in your business.Whack! There it goes…waddle-waddle-waddle. Roy H. Williams

Two young people are given the same directive by their boss. One of them, palms upward, says, “But I don’t know how.” The second one doesn’t know how, either, but quietly thinks, “I’ll figure it out.” The first one grows up to become a manager who believes training to be the key to success. “Go to college. Learn to do things correctly. Get a good job.” The employee who won’t ask for help frustrates the manager. The second person grows up to be a leader who believes initiative to be the key to success. “Start a business. Innovate. Stay a step ahead of the pack.” The employee who won’t make an independent decision frustrates the leader. Most of us tend to think of ourselves as both manager and leader, exhibiting the qualities of each at the appropriate time. But the worldview of a manager is antithetical to the worldview of a leader. You lean one way more than you lean the other. Which is your natural inclination? Managers believe in bringing the best of the past forward. They talk about best practices and agree with Blackie Sherrod who said, “The reason history must repeat itself is because we pay too little attention the first time.” Managers believe in compliance, conformity and steady evolution. Franchises exist because the mind of a manager says, “Why reinvent the wheel?” Managers believe in “tweaking” things to reach “the next level.” They say, “One step at a time and with each step taken, move the finish line one step further away.” Managers make money. Leaders make memories and sometimes, history. They talk about sweeping change and a new day and agree with Albert Einstein who said, “It is, in fact, nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curiosity of inquiry; for this delicate little plant – aside from stimulation – stands mainly in need of freedom; without this it goes to rack and ruin without fail. It is a very grave mistake to think that the engagement of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.” Leaders believe in vision, innovation and revolution. They say, “Set your sight on your goal and never give up.” Possibilities are the currency of a leader.Realities are the currency of a manager.Leaders create things from nothing. And then managers slowly improve those things. Which are you, leader or manager? More importantly, which are you not? It doesn’t really matter because both are equally valuable. The keys to success are: 1. to know exactly when each perspective is needed and2. to skillfully ask for help from your opposite when your own perspective isn’t paying off. Has your own perspective been paying off? Evolution and revolution are cyclical. In what part of the cycle is your business right now? Have you just completed a revolution? Is it now time to slowly evolve? Or have you been evolving too long already? Has the time come to reinvent your business for a new generation? RevoLUtion! These are just a few thoughts to think as summer gives way to autumn and cotton sweater season blusters in from the North and Santa winks a twinkling eye at us from the distant, snowy horizon. Or is that a star?Roy H. Williams  

1. No man is an island. 2. Every man is an island. John Donne famously wrote, “No man is an island” in 1624. The entire passage reads, “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less… Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.” – Meditation XVII But Anne Morrow Lindbergh expressed the opposite idea, “I feel we are all islands – in a common sea.” I agree with both statements even though they’re mutually exclusive, don’t you? Niels Bohr once said, “The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. But the opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.” Interesting bit of trivia: Niels Bohr wasn’t a pantywaist philosopher; he was a physicist who won the Nobel Prize.  There are Laws of Reality, it seems, that are reliable across all disciplines and specialties. I believe this equal-but-opposite Law of Duality to be among them. Actio et Reactio. “If a force acts upon a body, then an equal and opposite force must act upon another body.” – Isaac Newton The bodies involved in today’s discussion are (1.) you, and (2.) the people around you. Each of us is an island surrounded by land; an individual within a society. To the degree that you align yourself with Groupthink you trap yourself “inside the box” of Traditional Wisdom. To the degree that you isolate yourself from Groupthink you trap yourself within your own limitations as you ignore the experience of others. Wisdom is to bring the best of the past forward. Why reinvent the wheel? Wisdom is to escape the shackles of the past and embrace an entirely new perspective. “Think outside the box.” Actio et Reactio. Male and Female. Proton and electron. Left and Right. Which of these is wrong? If you can wrap your mind around this Law of Duality, you will have a gained a priceless tool in problem solving: we too often trap ourselves by labeling things as either “good” or “bad,” refusing to consider that the opposite might also be true. Few things are good or bad of themselves.In the words of Buckminster Fuller, “Don’t fight forces, use them.”What “bad” forces are you facing today? Aim them for your good.Roy H. Williams

A brief summary of this episode

I’m going to explain a sophisticated ad-writing technique to you today, but I have confidence you’ll understand it perfectly.Learn to incorporate it into your writing and your ads will produce better results, generate more comments and make people smile.Tight-asses will criticize you, of course, but hey, they’re tight-asses.We’ll begin with a couple of examples from a flyer I edited recently for a fish market that donated $500 to help finish the tower at Wizard Academy. The flyer offered a complete fish dinner for 4 for just 39.95, including gourmet salads and side dishes. When I finished my revision, the last 2 points made at the end of the meal description were these: Fresh-baked homemade bread.(Be sure you’re sitting down when you take your first bite. This bread is so amazing that people have been known to pass out from the sheer wonderfulness of it.) You got questions? We got Answers,and much better fish than you’ll find at the grocery store. No pesticides, No growth hormones, No color added. Fish so healthy you’ll live forever. The left hemisphere of the brain wants facts, details, descriptions and benefits. Lefty is all about sequential logic and deductive reasoning. Lefty looks for loopholes and discrepancies and is full of doubt. But the right hemisphere cares for none of that. The right half of the brain is where fantasy lives. And Righty doesn’t know fact from fiction.If you merely exaggerate, your customer’s left brain will shoot your claims full of holes. But if you go beyond mere exaggeration – so far beyond it that the left brain knows you’re just clowning – the right brain will happily embrace your glowing fantasy in all its positive glory. This is the technique:Open with 2 or 3 quick jabs of fact: 1. “fresh-baked” 2. “homemade bread” Then hit the right brain with everything you’ve got: “Be sure you’re sitting down when you take your first bite. This bread is so amazing that people have been known to pass out from the sheer wonderfulness of it.”Again, 2 or 3 quick jabs of fact:1. No pesticides, 2. No growth hormones, 3. No color added. Then electrify Righty with an impossible dream: “Fish so healthy you’ll live forever.” Yes, we’re speaking to the unconscious. We don’t need the customer to believe our silly, over-the-top promise. They don’t even have to think it’s cute. All they have to do is hear it. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is deep branding. One last benefit of this technique is that Right Hooks often become “word flags” that are repeated by smiling customers. As they place their orders, they’re likely to say, “Make sure you give me some of that bread that makes you pass out!” And as they lift their fish dinners off the counter and turn to leave the store, they’re likely to smile again and say, “Fish so healthy you’ll live forever.” You gotta love it when customers quote memorable lines from your ads.Anyone who has been in advertising longer than 10 minutes knows that saying, “Mention this ad and receive 10 percent off,” doesn’t work. My theories are: 1. It makes people feel like Oliver Twist asking for another bowl of porridge. 2. Customers fear they’re going to mention the ad and some mouth-breathing employee is going to say, “What ad?” If they answer, “The ad that says I get ten percent off for mentioning it,” they risk Mouth Breather saying with a snort and a sneer, “Nice try.” Or worse, MB throws his head back and shouts across the store, “Ralphy! Do you know anything about an ad that says this guy gets ten percent off?”Play it safe. Plant a word flag with a Right Hook. Customers mention word flags because it’s fun; a moment of friendly connection that’s guaranteed to make 3 people smile: 1. The witty customer who repeats the line.2. The happy advertiser who hears it, and3. The above-average writer who wrote it. Be that above-average writer. Roy H. Williams

Life is a journey on water. We spend our lives floating between the sunlit scenery of the conscious mind and the shadowy depths of the unconscious below. Dr. Richard D. Grant tells us our relationship to the unconscious is exactly our relationship to water.1. We need it by the cupful to survive.2. A plunge into it is refreshing. (Art speaks to the unconscious.)3. Stay under too long and we’ll drown. (A psychotic break.)4. There are monsters in the deep.When we talked about How to Spot a Wiener Dog a couple of weeks ago, you may recall that I said every product, service or idea has:1. Limiting Factors – (factors that limit it. Impediments.)2. Defining Characteristics – (characteristics that define it. Brand essence.)The same is true of you and me. You and I have Limiting Factors and Defining Characteristics.Drifters on the ocean of life define themselves by their circumstances. Pushed here and there by the winds and waves of chance, their mantra is, “whatever.”Surfers on the ocean of life define themselves by their activities. Riding the swells this way and that, they dream of the perfect wave.Drowners in the ocean of life define themselves by their limiting factors. Sad and mournful, they are professional victims, the walking wounded, an army that never heals.Navigators sailing happily on the ocean of life define themselves by their commitments. Navigators know exactly what they’re trying to make happen and they’re willing to pay the price.Do you know what you’re trying to make happen? Are you willing to pay the price?Lorian Hemingway chose not to drown in life’s ocean. In her marvelous book, Walk on Water, she speaks of childhood loneliness and a hollow stepfather who abused her alcoholic mother. But Lorian chose not to let these limiting factors become her defining characteristics. She chose instead to admire the toothless but resilient old black woman, Catfish, who cooked hamburgers at the café. Lorian was also shaped by encounters with her mother’s sister, Freda:“At the age of thirty-five Freda had had a mastectomy. The bow and arrow was her therapy, to strengthen what was left of her chest muscles. Her body had been perfect, a sculptor’s model, and she’d worn her summer shirts tied up high under her breasts, braless most of the time. She still wore her shirts knotted at the rib cage, but now they were men’s cotton pajama tops, the material thicker so you could not see through; but often when she bent forward I could see the scarred bony place where the breast had been. I never knew if she was bitter for the loss, if she stared at the deformity in the mirror and wished for a time when she’d been whole. She never said. I never asked. She was not a woman martyred by tragedy, nor was she at all acquainted with self-pity…”“Freda was a dazzle, a virtual watercolor of a woman whose moods and mannerisms were as electric as her wild black hair. Her grin alone, a flash of Ipana-white teeth, head tossed back, stopped men in their tracks, delayed them in traffic, and threatened their wives so completely even the milkman was not allowed to deliver at Freda’s house…”“She’d tried once to kill my stepfather, whom she’d always referred to by his first and last names, Bill McClain, the two words run together in her odd accent so it came out ‘Bimicain,’ sounding like a fungal cream.”– Lorian Hemingway, Walk on Water, p. 38-39Limiting factors are outside you.Defining characteristics are within.Catfish and Freda taught Lorian Hemingway not to swallow her limiting factors.Has your self-image been damaged by things you did not choose? Have you internalized your limiting factors? Spit them out. Ceremoniously and with contempt. Spit them out. Limiting factors can be fought or ignored but they should never be accepted. To accept them is to move them inside you.I’m not uneducated. Uneducated people are dull. I simply chose not to go to college.I’m not a bald guy. Bald guys are pitiable. I’m just a guy who has no hair.And I’m certainly not scruffy and poorly dressed. I’m a man whose mind is filled with things other than his personal appearance. The fact that this makes me look like a homeless beggar is nothing more than a meaningless coincidence.I am deeply committed to my wife, astoundingly loyal to my friends and surprisingly dangerous to my enemies. See how easy it is to choose your identity?You alone decide who you will be.What have you decided?Roy H. Williams

There’snot a lot you can learn from the Road Runner, but the Coyote knows the secret of wealth. In September, 1949, the Coyote – Carnivorous vulgaris – built a catapult. But instead of launching him toward the Road Runner, it launched him straight up into a stone outcropping. The Coyote crawled out of the hole and went back to work. In December, 1955, the Coyote – Eatibus almost anythingus – waited anxiously for the Road Runner to come around a corner, then lit the fuse of a cannon. But instead of firing the cannonball, the entire cannon – with the Coyote behind it – fired backwards into a mountain wall. Again the Coyote crawled out of the hole and went back to work. In May, 1980, the Coyote – Nemesis ridiculii– climbed aboard a rocket, aimed it toward the Road Runner on the opposite side of the canyon and lit the fuse. The fuel and nosecone of the rocket launched out of the rocket hull, leaving the Coyote sitting aboard that empty cylinder. He fell, annoyed, to the canyon floor.  The Coyote climbed out of the canyon and went back to work. Are you beginning to see a trend here?The Coyote – Inevitablius Succeedus – never gives up. The Coyote is Santiago in The Old Man and the Sea. After 84 consecutive days of not catching a fish, the old man rises before dawn and pulls steadily on the oars until he is far beyond the sight of land. The Coyote is Rowan of A Message to Garcia. Alone behind enemy lines, outnumbered thousands to one, Rowan never considers the impossibility of his mission, but doggedly attempts the ridiculous until he casually accomplishes the miraculous.The Coyote is Quixote, foolishly committed to a questionable quest, paying his pint of blood daily without complaint, never wavering in his enthusiasm, never doubting he will ultimately succeed. When we were young and fast and invincible, the Road Runner was our hero. Impervious to danger, the Road Runner ran without tiring, scooted without fear and beep-beeped coolly like a blue James Bond. But as I look down now from this creaking tower of years, I see it was the Coyote who deserved my admiration. That TV show was never about the Road Runner. It was always about the Coyote. The Coyote was determined.“Determined” is a word much misunderstood. Obstinate people are not determined. They merely suffer from too much pride. Stubborn people are not determined. Stubbornness is willful ignorance.Determination is an unblinking willingness to pay the price as often as it must be paid. Determination is never losing sight of your objective, no matter what comes along to distract you. Determination is endurance.How about you? If Failure appears without warning and throws you onto the rocks below, will you happily crawl out of that smoking crater and go back to work? Roy H. Williams 

I concluded a recent Monday Morning Memo entitled “Melvin the Lion” by saying,“We won the game when we picked the wiener dogs. This is the dirty little secret of advertising: you determine the success of the campaign when you pick what you’re going to promote. Have you been settling for precision lawn chairs and lawnmowers? Repent of your sin. Demand the wiener dogs. You’ll be amazed how much better your ads work.” An old friend emailed me the next day to say, “Please forgive me for being grumpy… but in the memo you gave no explanation on how to distinguish between wiener dogs and lawnmowers.” My friend makes a good point. Not every idea is a wiener dog. Sometimes it’s just a dog. Each of us has 2 kinds of blind spots. The first blind spot is a negative trait of which you are unaware. Everyone around you sees it, but you don’t. The second blind spot is a talent or gift you assume to be common to everyone, but it isn’t. It’s your gift and yours alone. I’ve always been able to spot a wiener dog. My ability to pick the winning idea from a shuffled deck of mediocre ideas is so completely intuitive and effortless that it annoys me when other people can’t do it. Even more annoying is when they ask me to explain how I do it. “It’s a wiener dog! Can’t you see it? Open your eyes, man! It’s a freakin’ wiener dog!” The bottom line on the home page of the Wizard Academy website says,“The faculty of Wizard Academy studies what gifted people do when they’re feeling inspired so we can reverse engineer their unconscious methods. We teach you how to do consciously what a gifted person does unconsciously.” I’ve spent decades studying other people’s gifts but I never once considered I might have a gift of my own. The day after I received that email from my friend, I met Ray Bard, my publisher, for lunch. Ray immediately bopped me with the same question. “Roy, when I read the memo this week I couldn’t help but notice that you never told us how to spot the wiener dog. Why did you leave that part out?” Part of me stood up, clenched my fists and screamed in frustration. But that part of me is invisible. The visible part of me said, “Ray, you gave me the formula for spotting wiener dogs 10 years ago. Don’t you remember?” Ray looked at me quizzically, so I continued. “Puddles, Bayous, Wells and Oceans… Question 1: How widespread is the interest? Question 2: How deep is the interest?” Ray got it and smiled but I was on a roll, so I continued, “Spotting the winning idea is all about identifying(1.) Defining Characteristics and(2.) Limiting Factors.” The Defining Characteristics of the Precision Lawn Chair Drill Team idea were irrelevant because the Limiting Factor was that each team would need a talented choreographer and members who were willing to practice relentlessly. And we know that’s not gonna happen. The Precision Lawn Chair idea was a puddle. It could never trigger more than narrow, shallow interest. The Defining Characteristics of the Riding Lawnmower Races were(1.) gasoline and(2.) testosterone, so basically, it’s a poor man’s NASCAR. As such, it would trigger deep interest, but only to a narrow section of the population. Riding Lawnmower Races were a well. The Defining Characteristics of the Wiener Dog Races were(1.) Dogs. Everyone loves dogs. Kids love dogs. Families have dogs. Dogs have personalities. They’re cute. People love to show off their dogs and don’t hesitate to spend money on them.(1a.) The dog is usually considered a member of the family.(1b.) Dogs don’t have to rehearse to be dogs.(1c.) Long and skinny on short little legs, wiener dogs are funny looking and have a funny name. A bunch of wiener dogs is like a barrel of monkeys; instant, guaranteed fun. The Limiting Factor of a Wiener Dog Race would be:How many people own wiener dogs?Answer: Lots. More than enough. It’s a very popular breed.Result: Widespread interest that will be deep enough to cause large numbers of people to actually show up for the event. The wiener dog idea is an ocean idea.Question 1: How widespread is the interest?Question 2: How deep is the interest?Narrow, shallow interest is a puddle. Few people are fooled by puddles.Narrow, deep interest is a well. You can make money with “well” products because their customers are highly motivated and easily targeted. Cult brands are built on wells.Widespread, shallow interest is a bayou. Entrepreneurs and advertisers see a bayou and think it’s an ocean because they really want it to be an ocean. They lie to themselves about the depth of the public’s interest.Widespread, deep interest is an ocean. That’s why each year’s Wiener Dog Races in my little town of 2,404 people has been bigger than the year before. This year we raced more than 600 wiener dogs and raised $120,000 for the Buda Lions Club. Next year’s profits will likely be $150,000.Want to make a lot of money?Learn how to spot a wiener dog.And don’t be fooled by bayous.Roy H. Williams

John Steinbeck began writing a novel in the summer of 1957 and abandoned it the day after Christmas.I was born 93 days later.Those two events were unconnected before today.Steinbeck wrote the first 114 pages of his novel before setting it aside. He had already completed 25 novels, including The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden, Of Mice and Men and Cannery Row. He was 55 years old.Steinbeck went on to publish The Winter of Our Discontent in 1961 and then Travels With Charley in 1962 and was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature that same year.He died in 1968, having published nothing else.I was 10.“I think he got to a point where he felt he couldn’t contribute anymore. And it was too heartbreaking to try. I mean, after awhile you get tired of being under attack. You’ve got to remember this was a man who had been under attack since he was a young man. He was under attack most of his life. When he wrote The Grapes of Wrath people thought he’d betrayed his own class.”– Thom Steinbeck, (John’s son,) Sept. 2009Thom went on to say his father was “a mythologist… He could take the broad myth and reduce it down to something you could understand and were living right next door to.”The novel John Steinbeck didn’t finish was the story of an American who watched one too many westerns on television, then put on a cowboy hat and spurs and went out into the city to correct the injustices he saw all around him.In June, 2010, CBS News announced, “John Steinbeck Archive to be Auctioned. Never-Published Works Among Letters and Manuscripts from Nobel Prize Winner’s NYC Apartment.”That CBS story included the following lines:“The writer [Steinbeck] had Ingrid Bergman in mind for Vikings, a film script adaptation of a Henrik Ibsen play that he began in 1954 but later abandoned, which Larson attributed to his restless nature and busy schedule. Another project that was later abandoned was a 1957 reworking of Don Quixote, which Steinbeck titled Don Keehan – The Marshal of Manchon. Bloomsbury’s catalog says he had high hopes for it and even considered director Elia Kazan for a movie version with [Henry] Fonda in the lead.”Have you figured it out yet? I bought the unfinished manuscript.It sat a long while in a New York bank while they tried to figure out how to insure the manuscript and transport it. They already had my money so I told’em to just shove it into a UPS envelope. But they wouldn’t hear of it.It finally arrived a few minutes ago. I got 6 pages into it, then set it aside just now to write you this note because a wild and funny thought barged into my head:Are you ready?  I’m going to finish it.“You’re going to finish reading it?”No, I’m going to finish writing it.“What! Who do you think you are?”I think I’m a ridiculous, middle-aged man who believes it would be fun to write the back half of an unfinished Steinbeck novel.“Are you comparing yourself with John Steinbeck?”No. I just think it would be fun. I like to write and this is America and I bought the manuscript.“You won’t be able to publish it.”I don’t plan to publish it.“There are hundreds of writers more qualified than you to undertake such an important task.”They should have pooled their money and bought the manuscript.“People will be outraged.”Those people stay outraged anyway.“You should leave Don Keehan unfinished out of respect for John Steinbeck.”“I plan to finish it out of respect for John Steinbeck.”“Are you really going to do this?”Yes, I’m really going to do this.“Can I read it when you’re done?”No. You’re an obstructionist and a pest. Go away.Wizard Academy students and alumni will have access to Don Keehan, The Marshall of Manchon in the library tower where he will reside.Sorry, but I’ve got to run. I have more reading to do.Exactly108 more pages.Roy H. Williams Today’s Rabbit Hole is full of weird Steinbeck stuff.You can follow the rabbit by clicking the image above the titleof the Monday Morning Memo. I’m headed there now.Aroo.Indy Beagle