Edison professor puts a bit of himself in his first novel

Here's just a part of Roger Forsythe's recipe for great art: tenacity, sacrifice, imagination, pragmatics and a controlled illness.

Roger Forsythe COURTESY PHOTO In the case of Mr. Forsythe, an English literature professor at Edison State College, the illness is bipolar disorder — but he's made lemonade of the lemon, he says. He recently published his first novel, "A Crucible of Innocence (A Poetic Novel)," after carrying the main character — who happens to have bipolar disorder himself — for 28 of Mr. Forsythe's 47 years.

Serious novelists, like many great artists, come equipped with some heavy baggage, apparently, and they aren't quitters.

"As I tell my students, you can't go into this lackadaisically. I gave up a wife and children because I want my to see my name on an Oscar or something," Mr. Forsythe explains, adding, "I have on my door a life-size rendering of an Oscar."

Giving up domesticity and the "normal" life (which he never pursued, he says), has allowed Mr. Forsythe to teach, read, think and write. He's known around the Collier County campus of Edison, where students recently nominated him for Teacher of the Year, as a firebrand professor who will even appear in costume as a character he's teaching.

He says he began writing "Crucible" on New Year's Day, 1996, in his native state, Missouri. "I gave myself six months to prepare," he says. "I subscribed to Writer's Digest, joined a book club, read things that talked about building better characters, got a book on literary agents and one on the day-to-day life of people in the 1860s, because I had some historical material I wanted to put in the novel."

He finished his first draft in six months, at which time he became subject to Missouri's famous motto, "Show Me," by being shown just how arduous the business of writing and publishing books can be.

Although his novel was unusual, he figured the sheer quality of the writing and thinking, at once imaginative and disciplined, would be enough to put his name in lights.

"It has three beginnings and three endings, and it's divided in half, so the book's as bipolar as the character. It's a work of art." He compares it to the tale of mathematician John Nash (the subject of the movie "A Beautiful Mind" starring Russell Crowe) and describes it as the first in a series of as many as 10 books.

Having completed the novel at the ripe old age of 34, he jumped into the job of marketing it. His first agent couldn't sell it. Neither could a second or a third, who praised it and said he'd come close, recalls Mr. Forsythe.

While he waited, Mr. Forsythe began reading Ernest Hemingway, whom he'd never liked before (he calls himself "a Keatsian," after the English romantic poet, John Keats). Now that attitude has changed, he says, and he sees Hemingway as a great teacher.

"The best way to teach adults how to write well is to read Ernest Heming- way," he says. "In active voice, active verbs, positive constructions, you rid yourself of clutter— you can achieve a clarity in your thoughts and in the expression of your thoughts. You write the way your brain thinks. If you're kind of lackadaisical, your writing will be lackadaisical."

Years went by.

"When I didn't publish it by 2001 I became bitter," he says. "I didn't write a word for the next six years."

But then one day he almost choked to death. "It was a near-death experience. I was standing there watching my face turn red in the mirror, and the only thing I could think was, 'I should have published that novel.'"

And now he has, through a publishing house, Outskirts Press, that sells copies as readers order them. Already, he's begun to achieve acclaim for the work, winning recognition and even some awards — The Reviewers Choice Award (third place for best series), a Reader Views Literary Award (honorable mention) and a Next Generation Indie Book Award, among others.

For one contest, he even had to submit the last paperback copy of his book, which he describes as painful.

But not to worry. "I'm almost finished with my second novel in the series, and I'm halfway through the third."

Note: Roger Forsythe is included in

a story about the business of books,

starting on page B1 this week.