By Neal Bailey
The novel in progress is a dangerous thing. When I wrote my first novel, I took a concept, an idea, and I spent a good three months planning it out. After all, I’d written myself a good ten, twenty short stories, and the natural progression hence is to crank out the great American novel.
The reason my first novel failed in miserable fashion (despite being a wellspring
of good ideas for a re-write now) is that I did what most first-time authors
do. I paid so much attention to how good the writing and the work was that
I forgot the process of creation. It probably didn’t help that I was
18 at the time, either, but most people working on a novel don’t have
that problem, so let’s leave it out of there. Suffice it to say, it doesn’t
matter when you write your first novel, 18 or 90, but for me, it hindered things.
I needed more experience to fill the book with, and I lacked it. A novel is
a profoundly emptying experience, one which takes from your brain, your soul,
whatever you want to call it, and leaves you a sucked out shell for a while.
At least, it does with me. Then the editing begins, ha-ho!
What I mean by paying too much attention to the writing and the work are several
symptoms that I’ve seen in other people, over time, who have come to
me, knowing I’ve written three novels, and asked for advice.
The novel is already plotted out in your head.
The main character’s name is Joseph of Montingham, he has five daughters,
three Grandparents, he’s seeking enlightenment through battle, his villain’s
name is Monkeyforth, and Monkeyforth lives in Muckingbuck palace on the edge
of Battletrot. In Battletrot, they...blah, blah, blah... The conversation eventually
turns to the piece itself, which is invariably two to three pages (so far,
but he or she promises more) of badly written story:
Montingham regarded the cascading legions headed straight for him coolly. The
legions of Battletrot were about to overrun his village. Cursed Monkeyforth
had attacked him again.
And so on.
The problem with this is not the overactive imagination. In fact, when confronting
this sort of creative block, I’m usually quite envious of the forty planned
novels already choreographed to the letter with ideas and characters...heck,
if you look, Monkeyforth is about the best name for a character I can come
up with. I deal in situations, and often end up searching weeks for something
so decent as a name.
But really, this creativity needs to be applied, and the way to do it is neither
to tell all your best friends about it or write it in a thick outline. The
trick is to work with the thing on a basic level, pouncing on the words for
a hundred, two hundred, three hundred pages, finish the thing (or get to a
reasonable stopping point), then go back and realize that Monkeyforth is now
Bogford the Vile, and Montingham, though a seeming good guy, is really in league
with the futz.
You’ve written it all, and it’s very long, but there is no editing.
Some people harness that outline of literature in just the way I’ve mentioned,
then write the piece, then they realize that editing is, well, hard, man. It
takes about four times as much time as it took to write that novel if you’ve
got SNAPPY style, and, well, that thing took a LONG time to write!
So they send out their literature to a bunch of friends and ask them to review
it. The friends, being friends, nod rather happily and say it was great after
skimming about five of the 400 pages. And not really getting the names of all
characters, throwing in a word of lip service or two to an event on one of
the five pages that maybe kept their attention for a minute.
I cannot stress more the importance, in the process of writing a novel, to
realize that it is NOT finished when you have THE END in gold. So many make
this mistake I say it twice. THE END is not THE END on a novel.
For advice on improving style, see “On Writing” by Steve King
or my last article, for my personal take.
You write like recursive music.
Well, okay, you’ve got the first three chapters, but for some reason,
you’re stuck. You’re just unimpressed with the first few pages,
or the last few, and you don’t know where to go after you killed Monkeyforth’s
pet witch. Well, okay. So what do you do? You start thinking about the book,
thinking about the book, thinking about the book.
No.
See, then you start rewriting the first three chapters to adapt to that outline,
that story in your head that hasn’t even happened yet. I did it myself.
My first book went from having 20 mapped out, principle main characters (most
of which I had no idea how to characterize, as is typical with first books)
to having 5, and they were all very, well, described, to put it mildly. Everything
they did was epic. They didn’t just get up to use the bathroom,
Gerald rose, looked to the front of the bus and saw Tina, Steve, and Jerome,
stepped with caution towards the bathroom, put a hand to the door, opened the
door, stepped in, did his grabbing then launched the business.
And it wasn’t even that interesting.
Point? The original sentence was Gerald went to take a leak, and it worked
just fine for a rough draft.
The book had three great chapters, and no matter how much I edited the rest,
it had trouble catching up. Or even feeling like the same book.
Don’t go back. Just keep going. Go back when you’re done. Even if Monkeforth turns into Bogford. That’s what editing’s for.
And you WILL have to do editing. Sorry. I know you got into writing because you couldn’t play guitar and you still wanted to be an artist, or maybe you didn’t want the 9-5, all of these are valid, but really, it’s work. Hard to believe, the way your parents and peers will laugh when you tell them it is, but when you start hitting your stride, when you start writing well instead of writing for an audience, when you start writing because you wake in the morning thinking about it and go to bed lamenting not getting more done, THEN you’ll understand.
4) Time gaps.
I think it was Stephen King who made a big deal out of this, but it’s
worth repeating. If you’re writing a book, you know your characters.
They’re your friends. Often, they’re you, in some controlled and
malleable form of artistic schizophrenia. If you lose touch with them, much
like long-term relationships, you forget who they are, and you won’t
remember their quirks. You need to work on a semi-constant basis with the characters
and your novel, or even if problems 1-3 don’t get you, you will not succeed.
Most people complain when they’re told this. But I have a JOB!
Okay. That’s fine. Don’t write a novel. Less competition for me.
And I hate to be a crude SOB about it, but that’s the way it is. I dropped
out of college, quit my job, and spend 12-16 hours a day at the computer so
I can write well, and in my arrogance, I like to assume it works. I have fans
now, where I didn’t when I had a job, and I have put out 8,000 pages
in the last 8 months, whereas previously I’d pump out 1,500 pages a YEAR.
Don’t tell ME you can’t spend 2 hours a day on a novel, or I’ll
laugh, or, barring that, get very angry. If you have kids, raise your kids.
That was your choice. If you have 2 hours, use them on a book, but put your
kids first. Noveling takes a certain degree of time. GREAT certain degrees
of time. If you can’t sacrifice that, it’s like trying to get a
degree which requires a six hour day on only two. Doogie Howser did it; you’ll
likely be selling sandwiches within the week wishing you could be a doctor.
And that’s why a lot of people want to be writers, say they are writers,
but in actuality, fail. It’s sad. But it’s the nature of art, really.
The most devoted, not the most popular, tend to be the best at efficacy. Though
I will admit, sometimes the most popular make money…but that’s
a pratfall I’d like to think I don’t even have to mention. If you’re
writing for money, get out. You will fail or it will take longer than you have
patience. Go invest in a lottery or something else wiser. At least, that’s
the way it’s been for me, and I’ve earned 4-10 thousand daily readers,
a small cult following, and multiple publications. No money, but it’s
all about the work. A word from a fan is worth a hundred dollars to me, and
that’s the way it HAS to be. Art is not oil. Art is not McDonald’s.
It’s ART. Writing is a passion. Plumbing pays the bills. Be a plumber.
Characters being forced to do what they don’t want to do.
Now you undoubtedly believe me mad. Well, good. I am.
Your characters, while being you, are also an expression of some of the things
you want to do in life. For instance, I had a character in my second novel,
Mike, he was a good guy, really, never would hurt a fly, but confronting the
possibility of an apocalypse, and given that there was a gun around, right
in the middle of talking to my main character Noah, he picked up that gun and
killed their mutual enemy, consequences regardless.
So I had to put Mike in prison and take him out of the main narrative. He
popped up, of course, a good character always does, but if he HADN’T done what
he wanted to do, we’d have a problem. Mike would have regrets, and wouldn’t
move forward as a character. He would have become character baggage.
See my first novel for that. I had a character that didn’t want to die,
but I had it down that he was going to crash into a mountain in an obscure
Heller reference. Now, granted, it was a good homage, but the man didn’t
want to die, he wanted to disappear. When I rewrite, and I’m in process,
the ending will go as HE wants it, not as my outline wanted it. I followed
that law in my last three books, and so far, it’s served me well. Thankfully,
this failure occurred towards the end, but added nearly five pages of explanation
at the end of the book, and lead to an odd, unnecessary postlude.
6) Don’t listen to teachers or writing circles, save their mean (meaning
harsh, because it’s usually brutally honest) advice and advice from the
ones who have much experience. Meaning, they’ve written a single book.
(You’d be surprised how many writing teachers don’t even have anything
published. They just went to school.) And even if they have experience, make
sure you like their stuff.
I have a very unique writing style when I’m not doing reviews for the
Superman Homepage or writing for varying freelance places. I am a minimalist
magical realist, which means I like it short and sweet, like Greg MacDonald,
but also real. So few happy endings. And magical, because I like to turn to
the reader and have the characters talk to you every now and again. It lets
you relax sometimes, and it makes your novel distinctive, at least for me.
But you likely write horror or fantasy or something to that nature. I’m
not saying what I do is better. This is a set-up for an experience.
In college and high school, most of my teachers told me my writing was horrible.
They based this largely in the fact that I wandered tangentially and that my
writing had cursing in it. Add to that, my poetry was really prosaic and didn’t
have much structure to it, it was more like a very short story with perhaps
a moral or an idea of beauty.
Most teachers like things that will sell. I mean, heck, school is supposed
to be a tool of civilizing someone, making them the perfect citizen, and training
them to make money. And if you want to make money in writing, talk to them
about style and content, but also, do me a favor like I said before, buy a
lotto ticket.
Teachers are great for the prescription, and man, do most people out there
need the prescription! You know what a gerund is? A past participle? God forbid,
a prepositional phrase? Join 90% of the rest of the fools out there who use
things...like ellipses...wrong.
Sorry. That’s my little failure there. Self-deprecation...get it?
The point being, I’ve handed novels to between ten and twenty teachers,
and their biggest critique has always been that the story isn’t accessible.
And to be honest, stories are to a degree about the reader and accessibility.
But for the most part, at least I would hope, writing a novel is a labor of
love to let out the things in your heart you can’t express in life, or
a defense mechanism to cope with the larger issues a short story or a poem
can’t cover. Like God, money, politics, perhaps the unspeakable horror
that you believe creeps outside your window. You can write about lawyers, if
you’re really passionate about lawyers, but I think a good reader can
see the difference between sincerity and falsehood to pick up readers (Went
down that road once or twice) and something from the hip, true, and on something
you know and love. Maybe you like writing about generational families in Germany.
So people don’t like reading about that, save a select group of people.
So your writing circle says, “Hey, you’d get more readers if you
wrote about a German family across generations on the run from an axe murderer.”
Well, yeah. But readers will see through the falsity of it. Readers KNOW when
something is cranked out as an exercise. It’s called the declining years,
and most writers have it. When they’re still passionate, you have...well,
The Stand.
I’ve had horrible writing circles. I’m sure you all have. They
take whatever you’ve written, and they write, (all together with me now):
Something positive.
Something negative.
Something interesting.
It’s a teaching tool called the PMI, and really, it’s about as valuable as a wet fart, because people don’t want to hurt your feelings, and generally, if they do, if they want to be honest (like I used to, to my own detriment in grades), they are punished by the teacher, so they stop. In at least three classes my comments on a paper led me to after class meetings and lowered grades.
Why?
Because I would flat out say:
Your ideas are great, but the passive and grammar stinks and totally distracts
me from the story.
Your writing is tight, but who wants to read 14 pages of description that ends
in a self-immolation? It’s depressing!
And you know what? Maybe some people DO want to read those things. And maybe
some people like the passive. That’s another problem. A writing circle
is not your target audience, even if you’re writing from the heart. A
READING circle is. Or even you. Yeah, you, sitting there with the Buffy tee-shirt.
You’re writing for YOU. Sound selfish, doesn’t it. Screw it. EVERYTHING
in this world is selfish. Books could be written about that, and I won’t
even charge you a trademark for the idea. Go on. Knock it out.
My point is that in a writing circle, every perspective is unique, and you
are writing to at least 5-20 different audiences. This means your audience
is 1) Biased, not your target demographic typically, 2) Inclined to be nice,
or 3) Inclined to be honest, but perhaps not in the way that suits you the
best. And that rarely.
Some of you will undoubtedly be shaking your heads and waving a finger at
me, saying, “But I had a GREAT experience in writing circle!”
Okay. Good. I just have yet to meet someone like you. More importantly, even
if I do, most will have issues with regarding your book beyond the approval
of others which, while potentially (like a lotto ticket) profitable, usually
leads to a dangerous and novel-in-progress killing sensitivity to praise or
condemnation.
And if they don’t kill your self-esteem, they’ll overblown it, making you feel like it’s okay not to edit to absolute DEATH anything in front of you with the concept of novel attached to it.
I’m sure, other than the last, writing circle tirade, you’ll
find most of the pieces of advice dead on. If not, sorry, I tried. But here’s
the second part of the article, which I’m going to throw up here as an
aid for the potential person who just has finished a first draft of their entire
novel and is thus about 10-20 percent finished with their book.
The editing process.
I am about to become a hypocrite, but as my policy is truth without discretion,
I’ll tell the truth here. I broke one of my own rules for my new novel.
The reason, however, is not that I wanted to, but that I was asked to, basically.
I send out my novels and writing to varying institutions, and after my bajillion
rejections (see the last article for more on that) I actually got a solicitation
for a novel, so I took the first three chapters, edited the heck out of them,
and sent them off. Don’t do that unless you have to. Hypocrite! Hypocrite!
I know. But take solace in the fact that it at least allows me to show you
the following, and take further solace in the fact that the above are merely
guidelines that I’ve garnered from ten years of hard writing. Take them
or leave them as they work for you, because sometimes, you’ve gotta write
with a kid in tow, and sometimes, you’ve gotta edit things for an editor.
And hey, maybe I’ll get paid some day. I’m just trying to get you
to think.
This is taken from the “version” feature of Word…I highly
recommend it. It allows you to see the process as it comes along, and gives
you a kind of diary of your work, one draft at a time as things are entered.
So here’s the original first page from my new novel, Benjamin’s
Dream (tentative title):
Very little survived the last great age of man. But his favorite thing that
survived is the song You Can’t Hurry Love, performed by a young Diana
Ross and the Supremes, on vinyl.
In the long nights of summer, he’d listen to it in the night, quiet in
the necessity of not waking the others, and always off in the barn. Safety
in isolation; a lesson he’d learned at a younger age.
They poked fun at him for his collection, but it made him proud. He had a
number of records, CDs, and even a few cassette tapes that managed to play
rarely,
if at all. And most precious of all, in a box he hid under the floorboards
so that his mother would not find them and take them to sell, a cache of batteries.
The things he’d had to do for his batteries...
He listened to Diana, let the music enter his ears. He pictured her young,
soft black skin, singing in a crowded room to a silenced number of fans...awestruck
as they were by her mere presence. That was the way it was on all albums, he
supposed...the creation of music had been such a sacred act that no one dared
speak when one was performing. Every now and again he came across albums where
people would cheer, and clap, and he could understand that, but likely they
were cheering because the music was common. He often traded these albums for
better artists.
And though it killed him to do so, though he would not have done it for the
life of him had the product not been so awe inspiringly elegant that he felt
compelled, as if by force from above, he sometimes used the sacred moments
of time offered by each battery to write. He’d scribble furiously, passages
to the moon, the world, the intolerable, infertile dust below him, spread out
like such a brand of madness. He’d ode, and the odes would ring in his
ears like the music for the days of his life when he had to participate in
that greater art, the art of work.
The volume would inch up at times, but he found that more noise only attracted
his family and wasted the batteries. Every Sunday, after church, he would creep
up into his loft and dream.
This is the story of Benjamin’s dreams.
Now, okay, that’s a start. It’s a bit choppy, and has a lot of
pronouns, a little lousy characterization making Benjamin a stereotypical poet.
Here’s the meat of edit one:
|
|
And that’s one draft, folks. Imagine 64 pages like that...
As you can tell, I don’t use the official English prescriptive proofreading
marks (in fact, for most of you it must be in some strange form of pidgin English)
but the point is, there’s a whole lotta boat rocking, a lot of thinking,
most importantly, a lot of TIME in each of those pages.
Though you can’t see it from my scans, the back of the pages are where
I re-work the sentences. On the back of the first page is five revisions of
the first paragraph, and behind the second are extrapolations...information
I change or add based on future chapters, perhaps.
For instance, in this story, society has reverted to a horrible state of the
past, so blacks are enslaved again (one of the problems for Ben to resolve),
but Ben doesn’t know this yet. In fact, he hasn’t ever seen a black
person. The point being? I found that out when Ben happened on the information
in chapter three, so here, in chapter one, he can’t know Diana Ross was
black. In fact, he doesn’t know what a black person IS at this point.
Those things, those edits happen in process and I put them on the back of the
pages as I go.
The letters you see refer to these off-page meanderings. Sometimes, if there’s
room, I put them on the front of the page.
The reason I put this on here is not really to show you exactly how to edit,
per ce (that was more the last article, in a take it or leave it fashion).
This is more to show you how integral the process of editing is, to help you
realize something, assuming you’ve never written a novel.
If I find one thing holds up writers in writing a novel more than anything
else, it’s that first draft. This sample is here to tell you not to sweat
the first draft. Brother, sister, you’ve got BIGGER problems than what
happens in the book. It’s more HOW it happens in the book that’s
the real problem. So if you sweat the small things, the big things will invariably
suffer. You’ll revise early, you’ll tell the story to friends rather
than write it, you’ll rely on writing circles to suffer your own inadequacies,
your characters will not act the way they want to, and you’ll spend longer
and longer amounts of time between chapters, and it WILL show.
I don’t put this out to be high and mighty. In fact, I put it out because
I did it all, myself, as you can see, I’m STILL doing some of it, and
I just wish someone, five years ago, had told me to just have fun, not sweat
it, just create something beautiful and live with it. Hate to tell you, but
it’ll take a few novels before your style starts to swing into shape
unless you’ve written more short stories than you can count, likely,
so don’t sweat that first one. Orson Welles made Citizen Kane at 21,
but Stephen King didn’t sell Carrie until he was 26, or 27. I forget.
The point being? It’s not about speed to fame, the fame itself, or even
the money, and if it is, you will never finish that first book.
It has to be about the love. It has to be bohemian. And most important, it
has to BE. So stop talking about the plot points and make them. If they turn
out not like you expected them, ditch them, rewrite them. If it’s not
fun, STOP. Don’t worry if the story is geeky the first time through.
You’ll have PLENTY of time to ruminate and fix the stinker.
Libraries are full of people who didn’t have fun. Don’t be like
them.
Be like yourself.
And don’t let putzes like me tell you how to be you. Let yourself. Just use putzes for guidelines or ideas. Hope I’ve helped in that regard.
And just in case you’re interested, here’s the second draft of that first page. Remember, there are three hard drafts to go, yet, so this isn’t HALF finished:
SHORT PREFACE: THE AMERICAN DREAM
Of the very little that survived the last great age of man, Benjamin wrote
his best works to the song “You Can’t Hurry Love” by a youngish
Diana Ross on dusted beloved vinyl.
Through the long nights of summer, he’d listen to her in awe, afraid
to wake the others, off alone in the barn. Safety in isolation, a lesson he’d
learned at a much younger age, and people in moderation, the best thesis of
another, learned the day he understood that a minority of men lead lives of
quiet desperation. Most just wanted a plow and a silent woman.
The cruel people of the township poked fun at him for his collections, but
understanding culture made him proud and gave him a reason to live in an age
of increasing mediocrity. Besides, he didn’t have much, just a medium-sized
stack of records, two or three CDs, and a pile of degraded cassette tapes that
garbled rather than produce sound. Little treasures, but most precious of all,
next to his homemade whiskey in the box hidden under the floorboards so that
mother would not find them and take them to sell, a cache of semi-used batteries.
Forbidden and almost currency, if the family knew they drained away for music,
well, Benjamin didn’t want to think about how William might react.
Benjamin pictured Diana’s soft young skin in a dark blue dress singing
heartfelt soul music to a silenced theater of fans struck dumb by her glorious,
sexual presence, the creation of music such a sacred act that no one dared
speak when anyone of worth performed. Now and again Benjamin came across albums
where people would cheer and clap before and after the musician performed,
and he could understand that, but he believed in his heart of hearts they cheered
because of the commonality of the music, often leading him to trade these albums
for other artists when the rare random junk merchant rolled through town.
And though it killed him to do so, he sometimes used the sacred moments of
time offered by each battery to write, because what came out when he did always
looked a bit more elegant on the page, more refined, and a true man of words
valued this above all else. Benjamin would scribble in furious fervor, passages
to the moon, the world, the intolerable, infertile dust below him, spread out
like such a brand of madness. Poems to plows, plowshares, nights and word structures,
people and cruelty. Stories of loss, of grief, of station. He’d ode,
and the odes would ring through the days in his ears like music for the few
moments of his life when he participated in that greater art, art beyond work,
the nobler passions of poetry.
In mornings he rose to do his duties, all must, but in these small flights
of fancy lie his living, in this heart remained the last hopes of a once-great
nation, and in these awakenings he dreamed the lost dreams of a civilization
gone.
This is the story of Benjamin’s dreams.
Now go out there and find your dreams.
Neal.