SLC on writing process

"I’ve tried a lot of different processes. I first tried an output schedule with a target of five-hundred words a day. That didn’t work very well. Then I moved to the time schedule, putting in about three hours a day writing. That didn’t work very well, either. Finally, I ditched thinking about process, too. Now I do what I’ve done with most of my stories or books, I generally sit down with my laptop in my recliner and start working on whatever story I have going that draws my interest at that time. I usually have about five stories going at once, and there’s always something about one of them that is catching my eye. I dip in and start exploring around, trusting my instincts to lead me in the right direction. That sense of discovery is one of the biggest things for me as a writer. If I don’t have things to discover for myself while writing a story, then there’s nothing there for me. Any time I’ve every plotted a story out and then sat down to write it, I’ve never had a bit of luck with it. The story was already told. Doesn’t matter if it was in outline form. The story has been told and is over."

~~ from "To Be Perfectly Honest," an Interview with Sheldon Lee Compton at Cowboy Jamboree Press

Uncle Sam's Decline

“Young Zak, no clinchpoop, returned home each summer full of the best shit one might retain at school. None of that ordinary preprofessional crap, Zak studied the old school—its literatures, philosophies, and histories—the best bathroom reading found in America. He went to one of those cold New England colleges somewhere between the city and the country, where somewhere between two and three thousand potty-trained youth take more cups of coffee than classes each day. They wore holed if holistic clothes, smoked cloves, ruined lungs, fondled loves—suburban doves desperately searching for soul in Nineteenth-Century Russian Lit or Contemporary Jazz Music Crit. Up North, Zak learned to privilege the other, signify the Mother, and love not thy Father so much as thy brother. But of course, rhyme was forbidden, and by sophomore year, while his virginity pledged to remain on hand, his eyesight left without even a word of goodbye.”

Night Shift

“Once upon a time, in some summer hiatus away from secondary school, I worked my first slave. It was the graveyard stint at the Gas N Grub convenience shop. From nine at night to seven in the morning, I bagged first, rang second cashier, cashed in on $3.35 per hour—at the time, I was thinkin’ it’s all for four future years of school. Man, I see now my ass was probably worth five, six, or seven times as much. Brotha, I toiled sedulously, often fatigued, through those convenient sixty-six minute hours—boss was payin’ nine hours of cash money dough for a ten-hour shift! What with low pay, jammed register, broken slushee machine, and all them complaining coed bitties—I was an adolescent poet-to-be who’d already found his inferno.”

Sheldon Lee Compton

Sheldon Lee Compton passed on April 13, 2026. He was an author of the memoir The Orchard Is Full of Sound as well as many novels, short stories, and newspaper articles; he helped and published a wide range of writers from Ketucky and beyond. I'm grateful that he published two excerpts from the as yet unpublished Spark Park, "Night Shift" and "Uncle Sam's Decline."

Growing up

"Growing up [Kenneth] slept with Bryan on the bottom bunk. The oldest of the three of us, I slept on the top bunk. Comfortable, plenty of room. Those were the perks. The morning I woke up to get ready for my wedding, the two of them were there, huddled against each other's backs. Bryan was fifteen. I remember one full year he was so fed up sharing a bottom bunk he slept on the floor, making a pallet out of two or three thick blankets. He probably couldn't figure out what took him so long to figure that one out.

"It was like that a lot. We were a family of seven barely making it. Food stamps. Reduced or free school lunches. School shopping once every year in July. Three to four outfits a piece, a pair of shoes, and then nothing until the following July. I side-stepped this a few times by asking for shoes for Christmas. Always Jordans, except the very last pair just before I was married. Those were Shaqs, blue and black. I'll never forget it, because when they got too small for me, my stepdad wore them another four years."

~~ from The Orchard Is Full of Sound by Sheldon Lee Compton

stationed in South Korea

In Sheldon Lee Compton's The Orchard Is Full of Sound, the author's father was stationed in South Korea during the Vietnam War and would later spend time living under a bridge back home in Kentucky.

 

I'm not good enough

"I'm not good enough to work or marry, but I am good enough to write."

~~ Breece D'J Pancake as quoted in The Orchard Is Full of Sound by Sheldon Lee Compton

Poverty House

"When you get older, nobody tells you things get real uncomfortable real quick. I ain’t just talking about body aches and shit like that. I mean everything. It all seems to pile up like the junk at old Fred and Lamont’s. Dishes stay piled up in the sink. There are crumbs and stains on the countertop. Dirty clothes left lying around like the rapture jerked out the folks wearing them and left the clothes to fall where they may. You just get tired. Too tired to care."

~~ from "Doctor's Orders" by Dan Russell

"Night Shift": An Excerpt from Spark Park

I was excited to see Sheldon Lee Compton's Revolution John publish "Night Shift": An Excerpt from Spark Park.

overqualified and homeless

"A guy hired me after a 3-hour interview at a coffee joint where I couldn’t afford a bland cup of coffee and said he’d call the next day. When he called, he offered me $500 a month to start. Full time."