35th birthday gives advice to ‘Be Cool’

I’m writing from the morning of my 35th year.

My wife booked us an Airbnb in Bentonville. It’s been a while since we’ve been up to Northwest Arkansas. Long enough that I was surprised by the sprawl.

Bentonville has turned into a mountain-bike Mecca. They even have a six-story bikeable building now. Last night, we hiked up its switchback ramps to catch the sunset, but Walmart got in the way, construction sites and cranes for miles.

The view made me think of my 34th year. How drastically my world has changed over the last 12 months.

I published a novel. Moved out to the lake.

Got a new job.

In other words, my life has been a construction site, a fun one, nonetheless, much like all those bike trails weaving their way through Bentonville, but messy all the same.

The messy portions are nothing new. I made most of the same mistakes when I was first starting out as a football coach. I pushed too hard, worked too much, and burned out at a 7-on-7 tournament in the summer of my fifth year.

I don’t want that to happen with writing.

So, over the course of the last couple of weeks, I’ve made calls to writers who’ve been in the game much longer than I. I talked with them about the rollercoaster. The best advice I got came from Newberry Award-winning author, Jerry Spinelli.

Jerry is in his 80s now. He has been around the block enough to know a thing or two, which is why he told me, “Write what makes you happy, Eli. The rest is in the stars.”

We corresponded over a number of emails. So many, they took hours to compose. The simple fact that Jerry was willing to give me that much of his time was a lesson all its own. He didn’t have to do that — he has his own projects to tend to, his next book, 16 grandkids — but he did.

When my wife and I first took off on our weekend getaway, I was still pondering Jerry’s advice. Kept mulling it over until I was reminded of a novel by another favorite author of mine.

The author’s name is Elmore Leonard, and the book is titled “Be Cool.”

“That’s it!” I said as we entered the Bobby Hopper Tunnel. “That’s all I have to do.”

My wife was driving. I’m a horrible driver. Bad with directions. Distracted constantly. So, yeah, my wife stays behind the wheel, which is where she was when she said, “What?”

“I think that’s the secret,” I said. She sighed. “Eli, what are you talking about?”

“Be cool.”

My wife wears these slick,

green-tinted aviator shades when she’s driving. I watched her eyes scrunch at the edges. The makings of a smile, maybe? I wasn’t sure.

I didn’t dwell on it long, either. We went about our day, visiting Dickson Street Bookshop, Underbrush Books, Brick Lane and Once Upon a Time Books, before collecting a few pieces of local art and retiring to our Airbnb for the night.

The big birthday adventure had cleansed my mind of the writing world for the day. I was finally ready to settle in with my wife (who’d planned and organized the whole weekend), when she slipped a present up from her purse.

Not sure what to expect, I began carefully unwrapping the gift. I knew it was a book just from feeling it, but I never could’ve guessed the title I saw printed across the cover.

“Be Cool?” I said, looking up from the book into my wife’s smiling eyes, that same expression I’d noticed in the car, fully formed now, practically beaming.

“But …” I stammered. “How’d you know?”

“I didn’t,” she said and shrugged. “Sometimes, things just work out.”

Eli Cranor is an Arkansas author whose debut novel,“Don’t Know Tough”, is available wherever books are sold. He can be reached using the“Contact” page at elicranor.com and found on Twitter @elicranor.