John Vorhaus: Do What You Love, & Don’t Leave Money on the Table

The California Roll reads like Charles Willeford skirting the edge of slapstick. It’s a rollicking yarn about a lifelong grifter who suspects that he’s now on the receiving end of a con… but, at least in the opening third I read this weekend, he still can’t resist staying in to see what’s going to happen next. Kudos to John Vorhaus for creating such an effective voice: Yes, Radar Hoverlander is an unreliable narrator, but I’m still not sure whether it’s because he might be lying to me or because he’s missing a big piece of the puzzle, and I’m sticking around until I find out which it is. In the meantime, Vorhaus has a great story to tell us about making the segue from a poker handbook franchise to sunshine noir by way of Russian sitcoms…

Half a lifetime ago, I was a recreationally professional poker player trying to subsidize my writing habit with my card habit. Given that feeding one’s habits rarely makes the best business model, that worked out about as well as you’d expect. But from the detritus of my failed poker career emerged the cottage industry of writing about poker, which endeavor at least partly subsidized my other ongoing heavy addiction of the time: beating my head against Hollywood. For years I toiled in the magazine mines, pulling down double-digit paychecks often enough to keep a tar paper roof over my head and my rattletrap Chevy Citation in o-rings and oil.

In 2003, poker got hot, like flu epidemic hot, and I parlayed my magazine cred into six poker strategy books, plus one on home poker and one on strip poker. Did I really have that much to say about poker? I wasn’t sure, but I sure wasn’t going to let the opportunity slide by, for I had no illusions. Poker was a breaking wave that likely would never break so large and shapely again. I caught that bad boy and rode it for all it was worth. We poker players (even we abortive recreational professional ones) have a saying: Never leave money lying on the table. That’s why I wrote all those poker books.

The one on strip poker, too.

Do I sound savagely avaricious? I think I sound practical. By then I’d identified the habit I was really trying to support – not poker, not writing, but just pure freedom. I’d become determined to spend my days as I saw fit, and how would that happen if I didn’t seize such opportunities as come my way?

In another of my cottage industries, I’ve spent the better part of two decades traveling to foreign countries—some exotic and some Canada—to teach and train writers. I’ve washed up on some pretty strange beaches: Nicaragua. Romania. Iceland. For reasons that beggar understanding, I’ve spent the past two winters in Moscow, running the writing staff of the Russian version of Married… with Children. How is Moscow in winter? Pretty much like you’d imagine: a winter wonderland, but without the wonderland part, where English is sparse, vodka is cheap, and the streets offer the daily icy promise of slip-and-fall head trauma. Nor does it help that I speak, like, five words of Russian—rude words that I can only utter in mixed company because my accent is so atrocious as to render the words incomprehensible, or at minimum laughable. So, yeah, working the Russian winter is a bit like hazardous duty. Not Afghanistan-hazardous, but not Hollywood-hazardous either.

So why do I do it? To subsidize my habit of today, writing novels.

My latest novel , The California Roll, is the story of world-class con artist Radar Hoverlander, whose philosophy, you will not be shocked to learn, is, “Never leave money lying on the table.” Last week I was out in bookstores talking up my new baby, and the subject of this crazy Russian adventure came up. It led to a question: Am I a novelist who runs writing staffs on the side, or am I an international TV guy who writes novels on the side? Well, this is just a fabulous question, but it’s one I know I can’t answer. I do both of these things, but don’t think of either of them as “on the side.” They’re fundamental to the fabric of my life, and to my messy, multiphrenic modus vivendi.

I write novels.
I teach and train writers.
I write how-to books on poker and writing.
I work in foreign countries.
I never leave money lying on the table.

Even if I’m too busy. Even if I’m insanely too busy. Especially in these troubled times, when you don’t know where your next table is coming from.

But you know what? Almost everything I’ve written in this piece is a lie. I’m not motivated by money. I like money, sure (don’t like it enough, apparently, to succeed in getting rich, but whatever.) Mostly I like the freedom money buys—the specific freedom to do many, many different things at once. So if my typical week consists of editing scripts for Russian sitcoms, plus promoting my latest novel and writing my next one, while dashing off a few thousand words on poker and then maybe reaching out to a blog or two like this one here, I’m really not chasing the buck. What I’m really chasing is… my bliss. My blessed bliss: the thrill of having quite too much to do and not quite enough time to do it in.

“Never leave money lying on the table,” then, is ultimately just a metaphor for, “Never stop doing what you love.” Seize every opportunity to do it. Embrace those opportunities with lust and gusto. Waste not a moment wondering whether you can. Just hurl yourself headlong into the act. Go off in all directions at once. You’re bound to arrive somewhere. If that makes life messy, so what? Who said life has to be neat?

I told you I bombed as a professional recreational poker player. It’s true. I left too much of my own money lying on other people’s tables. It led me to conclude that “as a poker player, I’m a pretty good writer.” But I’ve failed at so many things (mime, ventriloquist, advertising copywriter) that it really doesn’t bother me. For I’ve succeed in one very important thing: driving my life through my passions, and applying myself fully and completely to chasing my bliss. Like the sign says, “Do what you love. If you don’t love it, you won’t do it well.” To which I would add, “If you don’t love it, why would you do it at all?”

So now here’s me, doing what I love: Not leaving money lying on the table, and lurching from adventure to adventure in hot pursuit of my many cottage industries, my various interests, (my Russian winters), and my boldly, grandly chaotic life. Every day is a workaholic’s holiday around here. Money or no money, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

9 March 2010 | guest authors, uncategorized |