April 2008 Archives

...when an executive editor at Tor Books tells you in no uncertain terms that first time novelists shouldn't attempt first person narratives, after you've spent part of the afternoon writing the second chapter of your first novel... which happens to be a first person narrative?

At a panel of authors and editors at last year's WesterCon, I asked a question in response to Howard Hendrix's comment about the "polyvocal" nature of novels.  I wanted to know how you pull that off with a first person narrative.  His response was that there are always other voices in any novel--as opposed to lyric poetry, for example--and that these voices will form its polyvocal nature.  I had a follow-up question about how one deals with the fact that even though there are obviously multiple voices, they're all necessarily filtered through one voice in a first person narrative.  I wanted to know what to focus on so I could avoid a sort of vocal monotone, which is when Beth Meacham jumped in with tidings of first novel doom, saying that "you've really got to have your chops" to pull off such a thing.

So, I waited until the panel ended, and approached Howard with my follow-up.  His more detailed response was that in order to overcome the first person filter effect, your other characters really have to pop.  They must be vibrant, distinct, and interesting.

When Shelly Lowenkopf said last year that I should press on and turn my short story, Walk of the Night People, into a longer work, he specifically said it was because "We want to spend more time with these characters."  This story is a first person narrative, with (at the moment) four other prominent characters.  So I suspect that I may have the character pop I need.

After another panel, I sought out Tad Williams and asked for his opinion.  "First novel, first person narrative: do it or don't?"

His response was enlightening.  "If you're writing a story that you absolutely love, that you're passionate about, and that's the best way you can get that across, then for Christ's sake write it in the first person."  He told me about a first novel for which he had recently written one of his rarely-dispensed blurbs that had a third-person frame at the beginning but was, essentially, a first person narrative.  There are all these rules, he said, and people come to conventions looking for tips.  But beyond the basic three (try not to write crap, be passionate about your story and your craft, treat people professionally and with respect) any of those rules can be bent or broken as necessary for the telling of the tale.  "Now, you may get a publisher who says, 'This is great, but it needs to be in third person.'  So argue with them.  Make your case.  Rewrite a chapter in third person and ask them if they really think it's improved."

So, to answer the question I posed at the beginning of this post, what you do first is seek further information from People Who Know These Things.  Then, you weigh their responses against an honest assessment of your own skills.  Beth was right: I do need to have my chops to pull this off.

But I need chops to pull anything off.  So, essentially, I was right where I started: seeing whether I've really got what it takes to do this thing.

This is why it's important that those of us who are writers spend time with other writers, editors, agents...anyone who has anything to do with the business and the craft.  I had one question that required input from four people before I was satisfied with the answer.

I'm not particularly happy that, almost a year later, I am still right where I started. Oh, I've got more chapters. But it's not done, there are major problems with the material, and I still don't know whether I've got what it takes.

I believe that I do. But believing you've got what it takes, with 11 so-so chapters on your hard drive, is quite a bit different than knowing that you do, with a finished manuscript on its way to an editor who's asked to read it.

This kind of doubt, though, is necessary. It keeps you sharp. If you ever lose that doubt, that little voice that says, Jeebus, can I really do this? you're fucked. It's that doubt that keeps you honest, keeps arrogance at bay, and maintains humility in the face of whatever success comes your way.

Nobody owes you anything. Ever. Not editors, not agents, not your readers. I think it's important to remember that, especially if you've got a tendency to out-clever yourself, like I do.

Anyway: so far I've gone through the first two chapters of what I've written and, of course, it's all wrong and I hate it.

Moving on.

The Scene

It's 5:45 AM. Even if I didn't have two different clocks within easy reach--appended to my laptop and my cell phone, because apparently everything with a glowing screen on it needs a clock--I'd still know that it was 5:45 AM, or close to it. That's because I've been awake for a long time. Long enough for the sky to stop being dark and get on towards thinking about being light, and for the birds to pip about a bit more than they have been for the past several hours, and certainly long enough for my eyes to do that thing where all their tiny focusing muscles soften and droop so that I can't really see what I'm typing unless I blink frequently. I've had one too many turkey sandwiches with plastic cheese and sweet pickles.

All of which serves as an utterly adequate backdrop to make this particular statement of purpose, which will, for now, pass almost entirely unnoticed into the Intratubes, or whatever the most hipstery ironic name is for the Internet these days:

One year. One novel. One contract.

That's what this is about. Within 365 days, I intend to sell my first novel.

This isn't some half-assed Oh I've always wanted to write a novel because you know they say everyone's got a novel in them effort. I'm a good writer. Ask anyone who knows me, and they'll tell you so. If I was a teleological sort of person, I'd say that if there is any reason at all that I'm alive on the big blue velour marble it's because I'm supposed to write. I'm not being cocky, but I'm not a believer in false humility, either. I can write crap, and often do. But when I write crap I know it, I usually know how to fix it, and when I'm done with it, it's not so crappy anymore.

Which is why I find it curious and disturbing that I haven't actually done anything. In the early '90s, a handful of bad poems published in 'zines that no one had ever heard of. A short story in Home Planet News, published 13 years ago. Brief brushes with a larger literary world, hanging out with Dave and Ana Christy, who knew and published Bukowski and Ginsberg. A few readings, here and there, wherein I kicked a wide variety of ass. A file cabinet full of incomplete drafts.

And then, for more than a decade, nothing, other than a blog that I spent six erratic years and roughly 125,000 words on. Random snippets of fiction, some verse here and there. Nothing cohesive, nothing published. Nothing finished.

Until last year. In the space of a few months I wrote three brand-new short stories, and, finished off an old fragment. I attended the SBWC, shot my wad in a late-night pirates' workshop there by reading everything I had that was worth a squirt of piss, took a short story that I wrote in 1995 and turned it into the first chapter of a novel. I cranked out a chapter a week for eleven weeks.

Then...I stopped cold. 1,200 words into chapter 11, I quit and didn't open the files again until a couple of weeks ago. I haven't put fingertip to key in a serious way for about five months.

I won't bore you with the various circumstances of mind that surrounded this sudden flurry of doing nothing at all. The elevator pitch point is that I ceased giving a shit.

Not giving a shit is different than the dreaded and mythic writer's block. I have never experienced writer's block. There hasn't been a single time in my life when I really wanted to write that I could not.

This being the case, there really is no reason at all why I can't finish a manuscript that is worthy of publication, and then set about having its worthiness recognized. Which doesn't mean that there aren't reasons, mind you. It just means that they're the kind of reasons that are neurotic and fearful and tinged with an urping, queasy feeling that is not unlike the one that accompanies waking up in a sweat-soaked bed after a night of intimacy with the product of a Swedish distillery.

Stephen King has said that in every writer's life, there's a magic moment where you put down some book and say, "This really sucks. I can do better than this. And this got published!"

That happened to me when I was ten.

The Interesting Bit

Or, what I'm choosing to call the interesting bit. I'm going to be chronicling three intertwined processes on writebastard, each of which is necessary to achieve my goal of publication.

The first process is the completion and revision of a single novel, currently titled Walk of the Night People. I'm almost starting from the beginning, but not quite. I've got 22,000 words' worth of manuscript that stalled out about five months ago. I'll be reviewing and revising those 22,000 words to reacquaint myself with the characters and the plot and to reacquire my groove. Then, I'll be off and running with creating the new stuff, he said with cautious optimism. So I'll be talking about the nuts-and-bolts of writing: characterization, plotting, dialogue, all that nifty stuff. There will be excerpts from the novel, as well.

The second narrative will be about the process of reorganizing my entire life around writing. Writing is a practice, like playing the trumpet or sitting zazen. When talking about their work, the masters of any practice are unanimous in their description of the place that this practice occupies in their lives. They have dedicated specific hours during their days and physical space within their homes to it. At the moment, I don't even have a writing desk, let alone a writing schedule. Couple that with my natural tendency towards distractedness, there is very little in my day-to-day life that will support my writing success. That has to change, and I'll be telling you about how I accomplish that.

The final piece will about selling this monstrosity: making contacts, sending out queries and partials to agents and editors alike, the whole long practical slog that must be done. It's not enough to have a worthy tale. Unless you're going the vanity press route, at some point you've got to convince other people of its worthiness, and get them to spend the money required to publish and distribute it. This is the part that scares me the most. I know I can write a decent novel. I know I can restructure my life. But the whole people thing remains a somewhat mysterious and jittery unknown in my life. If any part of this process has the potential to send me into my bed to blubber under a hefty pile of blankets and pillows, it's this one.

Live Without A Net

This, then, is what writebastard is all about. I don't hold back when I write blog-style things, so you'll read about the highs and the lows, the the high-speed car chases and the inanity. I plan to update the site on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.

I'm not going to pretend that I've created writebastard to serve primarily as a resource for all the other struggling novelists out there who might benefit from my experience and whatever goodies I manage to dig up and post. I'm creating this site to serve as a platform for myself, and I intend to use it to reach my goal of publishing a novel. If watching me go through that process in real time turns out to be useful to someone else, that's great, but it's not the point.

I've been claiming the name writer for awhile now. It's time to put up or shut up.