Writer makes his life count

It has been said that everyone has a story. John Mutter Jr. has been working on his for several years. His book, “No Time to Count: The Life of a Small-Town Writer,” is an autobiography of his life, from birth to age 70. “The next 70 are pending,” he joked. The book chronicles his many jobs and some of his sorrows in more than 400 pages, which are in larger print to make for easier reading. “I know it’s going to be more interesting to older people,” Mutter said. He started his writing career at the former Porter Grade School when the students started a newspaper, the Porter School Tattler. Mutter had ideas, but the 10-year-old had writer’s block. “I just didn’t know how to start the darn thing,” he said. The floodgates opened when he picked a subject he was interested in — snakes, specifically Pete the Python — and he has been a writer ever since. His autobiography is Mutter’s third book. He self-published the first two, “To Slay a Giant” and “Out in the Country.” When he put together a collection of stories in “The Sinuous Path of Life” in 2011, Mutter tried unsuccessfully to find a publisher, but his cover letter about his family and the many jobs that took Mutter around the world brought a surprising answer from a publisher. “He said, ‘Your cover letter completely bowled me over,’” Mutter said. The publisher was interested in Mutter’s life. So for two years he chronicled his early years and researched some of the places he had traveled when he was in the Navy and the Merchant Marines. It was not too difficult because he kept logs about where he traveled, when and his 30-plus jobs, some of them quite dangerous. He didn’t hold back from writing about having a child out of wedlock or about the devastating effects he and his brother suffered after being molested by a cleric as children. “I got to be 45 and it bothered me,” Mutter said. “It would help if I could talk to other people.” He finished the book in 2013, but the publisher no longer had the finances to publish it. So Mutter went to Amazon, which enables writers to publish for free, but he had to do all the work, such as editing and proofing. “I was pulling my hair out,” Mutter said. He received his first copies of “No Time to Count: The Life of a Small-Town Writer” in early January. “There might be a lot of people out there who might have had a more interesting life than I have had, but they don’t want to write it,” Mutter said. “It takes a lot of time and effort.” Mutter and his wife, Karen, live in the town of Waukechon. He is retired but works part time as a bailiff and gravedigger.