June 2008 Archives

The conference, that is.

No, there has been no sneaking into workshops or wine n' cheese parties. And when I say there has been no sneaking, I mean there has been a certain amount. But all in good fun. A lot of folks I met last year are there again, so I've been heading over to the hotel after work, hanging around, drinking martinis and trying not to be pretentious. My success at the latter seems to be inversely proportional to the number of empty glasses on the table.

I do have other things to tell, but I'm a bit pressed for time at the moment. The best news--for me, anyway--is this: 2,300 words' worth of shiny new short story on Sunday. This is the first new fiction I've written in months, and it's about 80% finished. So, I'm happy about that.

More later.

Oh, and read this thing Warren Ellis wrote about writing. This is what I want:

That is what has happened to me tonight. I am beaming Sex Rays across the world and my brain is all lit up with Holy Fire. If I felt like it, I could shag a million nuns and destroy their faith in Christ.

From my chair.

Yesterday saw the most visits of any day since Writebastard's recent inception. I think some of them were even made by humans with actual eyeballs.

Not a lot of visits, mind you. But the most!

Thanks for stopping by.

401 creaking, tortured words, not suitable for much of anything except existing as words that I've managed to write. However: I do feel, somewhere in my diaphragm, a kind of glimmering energy, and I recognize it. It's what I used to feel when I had a project going that I was excited about. It feels like the glow in a puff of tinder that's been sparked by the friction of a bow drill, and I'm huddled around it at the mouth of my cave, blowing gently on it lest I snuff it out. It's windy and overcast outside my hovel, and rain still spatters the earth. Must make fire big. Big fire!

A friend of mine has suggested that I'm being too hard on myself. So, in that spirit, I'll make a little list of what's happening, rather than what's not.

• Anchovies. Flash fiction. Accepted for publication, will appear in August.
• One Sunday in Kentucky. Short story. Submitted. Response pending.
  
• Deflecting Lives in Flight. Short story. Submitted twice, rejected once, response pending.
• Unrelated Incidents. Short story. Submitted. Response pending.
  
• Movement. Short story. Submitted once, rejected. Researching markets. Oh, and it really needs a new title.
  
• Prophet. Short story. Submitted once, rejected. Needs a rewrite.
• The Test. Short story. Submitted once, rejected. On its 6th rewrite.
• You Can't Go Back, Mr. Mountain. Short story. Not submitted. 1st rewrite in progress.
  
• Walk of the Night People. Novel. In progress. 23,000 words
• The Steady State Man. Novel? Fallow. 23,000 words.
  
• Boomtime. Novel? Fallow. 13,000 words.
• Carnival. Novel. Way fallow. 25,000 words.
  

So that's nine active projects, and three fallow projects, which I suppose don't really qualify as "happening." I've got other projects as well, but they're so stale at this point that they don't even qualify as fallow. The three I've listed still have some small place in my heart and mind, and thus have some potential. They represent fallback projects if I decide I need to let Walk of the Night People sit. More than it already has, I mean. It's also interesting to note that of the four longer projects, three of them seem to have stalled out at around the 25,000 word mark. Hmm. I should find out what's supposed to happen in a good tale at that point, and figure out why I can't make it so.

This weekend, I'd like to get Movement (or whatever I decide to call it) out the door, finish the rewrite on You Can't Go Back, Mr. Mountain and, if I can, find a potential home for it as well. Plus write something new, of course.

I guess I am doing some stuff, after all. Still doesn't feel like enough. I read wonderful pieces like Kent Meyers's Rudy Valen's Second Life (Georgia Review, Fall/Winter 2006) and realize how very far I have to go.

See, also:

Catherine Tudor's interview with Kent Meyers.

They can be tough to break, especially if they're negative. By that I mean, if you're in the habit of not doing something, you have to actively engage in the doing of something in order to break the habit. It seems simpler to me, somehow, to stop doing something, but maybe that's just because it's late, and hot out, and I'm all sweaty and freaky.

In my case, I've got this terrible habit of not writing. Which is kind of a problem, if you're a writer. In fact, it makes you less of a writer and more of a sitter, or a reader, or a Jai-Lai player.

In my case, I used to write when the muse struck me with her frying pan. And I came across a wonderful quote about that very thing just yesterday, and failed to jot it down. It was essentially this: writing with the muse is wonderful, but she doesn't come all that often, and you've got to have a plan for the rest of the time.

Well, I haven't got one. Not yet. I'm working on it.

I did submit a short story this morning, which is good, and worked on revising another one this evening, which is also good. On the face of it, that's a productive day, but the bit I haven't told you yet is that both these stories were written quite some time ago. In fact, they only existed as hard copy, which I entered into the computer, revising as I went. So I'm still in the not-writing hotseat.

An interesting thing happened, though. I read through the first story a couple of nights ago, and thought, "Huh. Not bad. Not bad at all." It was, in fact, better than anything I've written recently, in terms of voice and use of language and so on. Smooth, you know? And I thought, "I used to write like that? Jesus, what the hell happened?"

I'll tell you what happened. I stopped writing except when the muse threw a lawn dart at my ass. And she did that less and less frequently. So instead of an ongoing practice, writing became a thing that happened occasionally when all the stars were aligned properly and I bloody well felt like it. It became a passive activity.

Another thing happened, as well. I got rusty. My chops, they are dull. Which is what happens. When you don't. Use. Them. Kind of a well, duh! moment, I know. But it was also galvanizing. Use it or lose it. Put up or shut up. Writers write. All of those things rolled up into a single, tightly-wrapped ball of Oh, shit!

I'm not bemoaning all the wasted years or getting pissed at myself for wasting them, because that's just so far away from productive the mere thought of it causes entire factories' worth of ideas to sit idle and smoke cigarettes.

It's such a simple thing, really. Everybody who's anybody does it, and they'll tell you so.

Write.

Every.

Day.

Idiot.

I was hung up on the novel, at first. Had to write that. Which quickly grew constricting and crazy-making. Then I got hung up on everything else. Gotta write this or that short story. Also crazy-making.

So, I'm just going to start writing any damn thing I please, whether it has a plot, a purpose, or any intelligibility whatsoever. Hell, I used to do that all the time on my old blog; it was full of random fictional bits that read like they were lifted out of some longer work. And some of those bits, despite being fragmentary, are actually not terrible, and may contain the seeds of other, better things.

It's such a simple concept, but then most truths are. You don't exercise, you get flabby. You don't practice with your language of choice, you get stiff and creaky. At this point, I'm not going to go nuts trying to discipline my output. I just need to put out.

So to speak.

It doesn't matter what it's about, or whether it sucks, or whether it's a workday or a weekend, or if I'm tired, in a foul mood, or feeling about as inspired as the scudge under the dumpsters outside my window. Gotta do it. Every day. Like lifting weights. Doing scales on the trumpet. Or any one of a dozen other examples of the routine, standard exercise that is the foundation of any practice and upon which craft is built.

Honestly, sometimes I could just smack myself. People tell me the same damn things--people I trust and love--but until some wacko switch in my brain goes off, I don't listen.

Anyway. Listening now. Firing up the laptop, and doing the literary equivalent of jogging along the beach until it's time to stop.

Then, my brothers, it came. Oh, bliss, bliss and heaven. I lay all nagoy to the ceiling, my gulliver on my rookers on the pillow, glazzies closed, rot open in bliss, slooshying the sluice of lovely sounds. Oh, it was gorgeousness and gorgeosity made flesh. The trombones crunched redgold under my bed, and behind my gulliver the trumpets threewise silverflamed, and there by the door the timps rolling through my guts and out again crunched like candy thunder. Oh, it was wonder of wonders. And then, a bird of like rarest spun heavenmetal, or like silvery wine flowing in a spaceship, gravity all nonsense now, came the violin solo above all other strings, and those strings were like a cage of silk round my bed. Then flute and oboe bored, like worms of like platinum, into the thick thick toffee gold and silver. I was in such bliss, my brothers. Pee and em in their bedroom had learnt now not to knock on the wall with complaints of what they called noise. I had taught them. Now they would take sleep-pills. Perhaps, knowing the joy I had in my night music, they had already taken them. As I slooshied, my glazzies tight shut to shut in the bliss that was better than any synthemesc Bog or God, I knew such lovely pictures. There were vecks and ptitsas, both young and starry, lying on the ground screaming for mercy, and I was smecking all over my rot and grinding my boot in their litsos. And there were devotchkas ripped and creeching against walls and I plunging like a shlaga into them, and indeed when the music rose to the top of its big highest tower, then, lying there on my bed with glazzies tight shut and rookers behind my gulliver, I broke and spattered and cried aaaaaaah with the bliss of it. And so the lovely music glided to its glowing close.

Anthony Burgess
A Clockwork Orange

I want to take some space here to plug something that's new to me, and possibly to you: Small Press Distribution.

Small Press Distribution is a non-profit literary arts organization located in Berkeley, California. Our mission is to connect readers with writers by providing access to independently published literature.

SPD allows essential but underrepresented literary communities to participate fully in the marketplace and in the culture at large through book distribution, information services, and public advocacy programs. SPD nurtures an environment in which the literary arts are valued and sustained.

Founded in 1969, SPD is currently the only distributor in the country dedicated exclusively to independently published literature.

I found them because I felt the need to expand my reading net, and so I cast about the web looking for "small press fiction bestsellers."

I like them because they work with over 450 small and independent presses, because their sole purpose is to increase the availability of the titles produced by these presses, and because they're a window into the publishing world that exists beyond Amazon and two million square foot bookstores.

Today I received Saraya, the Ogre's Daughter, Songs of Insurgency, and Mopus. All three happen to be available on Amazon, and I would have gotten free shipping. But I never would have found these titles there. One of the major criticisms leveled at Amazon and the large bookselling chains is that they've crushed the independent bookstore, and I think that's probably true. Bookselling is a business with razor-thin margins, and it doesn't take much of a push for an independent to go under.

While I'm not so sure about the place of the big chains--except as colluders with the publishing houses in the bestsellers list racket--I do know that I like Amazon a lot. Generally, I go there with a specific goal in mind. SPD fills in some of the browsing void left by the decline of the small booksellers. It's like a weird little local bookstore, but online.

So: please go check them out, and poke around for awhile.

I've said it on these pages: I'm a good writer. That's not entirely a self-evaluation; other folks have said it, and I think they're probably right.

Am I successful writer? Nope. None of the people who have said that to me have then followed it up with, "...and I'd like to publish your novel/short story/chapbook/whatever." None of them were in a position to do so. There's no denying that the opinions of peers, friends, and family are of a different order than those of people who can publish you. It's the difference between the opinions of laymen and experts.

We live in a culture where the honest proclamation of one's own abilities is often perceived as arrogant. You may, in fact, be thinking that very thing of me, right now. However, that's not where I draw that particular line. For me, arrogance is somewhere around the point where you are so enamored with your own genius that you think no one else could possibly have anything to teach you.

So, yeah. While writing, I do a lot of things instinctively that I see many other people struggling with. But capability does not equal success. Ability and capacity are passive. Success is active. And I've been lazy. Because it's easy for me to knock off a well-constructed sentence, I've shied away from the parts of the craft that are difficult. That's why I've got a file cabinet full of half-finished crap. I have a lot more respect for someone of moderate talent who's in print than I do for someone with technical chops who hasn't grasped that it's not all about their supposedly self-evident brilliance.

It's easy, when you know you're good at something, to fall into the trap of arrogance. I've done it more frequently than I care to admit, and I'm not happy about it. But at the same time, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me to deny what I can do and mope around saying that I suck, because I don't. The worst part about the trap is that it's usually hidden, and I don't realize I've fallen into it until after I've said or done something thoughtless which gave the impression that I was convinced of my own vast superiority. I'm embarrassed by these failures. Fortunately, I usually learn something important from them.

Writers are a funny lot. We have to have enough confidence to believe that we might have a chance to succeed against truly daunting odds, or we wouldn't bother. Yet I don't know a single one (myself included) who isn't plagued by self-doubt and insecurity, or who doesn't experience bouts of loathing for his or her own work. My happiest moments are when I return to something that I've written, and can honestly say, "That's OK. Not bad." At the same time, I have never been so convinced of the quality of a piece that I have been angered or crushed by a rejection. I sometimes read about the accusatory letters that rejected writers have fired back to editors, dismissing their intelligence or artistic perception. I can't imagine doing such a thing. If I get a rejection with a comment on it, I'm a happy man. If I get a form rejection, I'm indifferent at best. Tack it to the cork board, and move on.

I've said it before: doubt keeps you sharp. One of the more interesting bits of psychodrama that I've experienced since starting this site is the onset of anxiety. Real, medicine-ball-in-the-chest, sweaty-palmed panic. Why?

Because in my whole life, I've never actually set out to do what I am now, finally, trying to do. I've never really had to face the fear of failure, or confronted the possibility that my self-assessment is just wrong, that my entire image of myself as a writer is an ill-constructed, neurotic phantom. This is a new level, for me. I am going to subject myself, not to the opinions of a friendly writer's group, but of people who do this sort of thing for a living. The gatekeepers. The ones to whom I have to actually prove my worth.

I'm scared out of my damn mind.

So, am I good writer? Yes.

Am I good enough? I don't know.

That, it seems to me, is the crucial difference between honest self-assessment and egotism.

As it turned out, I could pick any 30 pages I wanted. So I did. Chapters seven, eight, and nine, sealed in a Tyvek envelope and sent off to Northern California.

I never have as little confidence in something I've produced as I do the moment I put it into an envelope.

Still: it's a new and different thing I have done. We'll see what comes of it..

While comparing Joan Didion, Joyce Carol Oates, and Graham Greene, Shelly Lowenkopf observes that

It is no easy thing to decide who carries the story, whether that individual speak in the first or third person or if that individual is first conceived of as naive, reliable, duplicitous, or merely an individual trying to make sense of the heavens and hells in Horatio's philosophy.

Bloody right, innit?

One of the first things I had to do this weekend was re-read 90 pages' worth of my manuscript, which I haven't looked at since January. I'd forgotten who my characters were, lost touch with the world they lived in and, most importantly, muted the voice I was using back when I was actually being productive and cranking out a chapter a week.

After that read through, I came to a couple of conclusions.

First: the first 30 pages of the manuscript, as it stands now, simply won't do. They're not up to snuff, in terms of submitting them to the workshop, and I can't snuff them up properly between now and June 20. This is mostly because everything that's gone wrong structurally and plot-wise went wrong in those pages, and in order to fix them I'd essentially have to fix the whole book. Which I can do, but not in less than two weeks, not in a way that would give me enough confidence to pop them in an envelope as an example of my chops. It's been my experience that significant reworking of existing material tends to stifle whatever good things I've managed to pull off in terms of flow and voice and so on, and it takes a considerable amount of time and effort to restore that.

However, there was nothing in the Beat the Book submission guidelines which indicated that the 30 pages had to be chapters one and two, or even sequential. Some of the later chapters--where I hit my stride--are much more indicative of the overall style and tone of the tale than the gear-grinding that went on when I first hauled out a 13-year old unpublished short story and began bashing it into a novel. So, I wrote to Lynn Vannucci and asked her if she cared whether she got a "first" chapter or not, in addition to some other questions I had about the workshop. Maybe it will be an issue, maybe it won't. If it is, there are other such novel-pummeling opportunities out there, and I'll seek them out.

The second thing I realized was that I was butting up against the marketability vs. craft dilemma again. It was one thing to realize that I needed to up the stakes for my protagonist, and make what happened to a supporting character happen to him instead. It was quite another to go through the first chapters of the seven novels I've read over the past two weeks and realize that, with the possible exception of The Road,  every one of  them had a first chapter that grabbed, plotwise.

Granted, five of those books were by Christopher Moore, so maybe my sample was skewed. For a control I looked at the opening bit of A Clockwork Orange, because it was still on the couch from the last time I used it here, and Slaughterhouse Five, which has been on the floor next to the couch since February. They grab, too, but more in the manner of Cormac McCarthy. They do it with language and setup. Moore and Warren Ellis do it with things that happen.

Within the first three pages of Lamb, an angel raises Biff from the dead, who promptly socks the angel in the mouth. In Practical Demonkeeping, a smooth operating pot dealer on the verge of his first five-figure deal gets eaten by a demon, whole, by page ten. Similarly, the protagonist of A Dirty Job gains a daughter, loses his wife, and sees Death in the first chapter. Island of the Sequined Love Nun opens with the main character and his sidekick hanging upside-down from a breadfruit tree, apparently about to be eaten by cannibals. Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove isn't quite as punch-you-in-the-face, but the prologue presents you with three disparate events that are related in some intriguing way, one of which is a suicide. Warren Ellis's Crooked Little Vein opts to punch you in the face and then stomp on your head, opening the first chapter with a rat taking a piss in someone's coffee mug and ending it with the heroin-shooting chief of staff to the office of the President of the United States hiring a detective to find a mystical book that will stop America's descent into the depths of perversion.

Me, I got nothin'.

Oh, stuff happens. But after reading through the whole project with fresh eyes, I saw that I open with a riot...which the protagonist and his buddies are walking away from. You never see it. They flee, they walk through the city streets, they have a conversation, they go home. Gak.

I also discovered that I had created a setup and a scene when I finally finished off chapter 12 after a five month hiatus that would actually work at the tail end of the first chapter. I could show more of the riot, then have the protagonist head off to Central Park to unwind with some good old-fashioned anonymous evening sex in The Ramble, whereupon an unknown sniper would pop the head of his tryst like a watermelon before he even gets his fly unbuttoned.

Off and running, chapter one.

But then I had to stop and think for a minute. Is that what the story needs? Or is that merely what the market demands these days? It'd be nice if both were true.

I used to have a knee-jerk reaction to all that "know your market" speak that you hear so frequently in workshops and at conferences. I think this is mostly because I tend to hear it in a room with a couple of people who are really good, some more people who can definitely sling words, and a bunch of people who can't write their way out of paper bags yet. "Knowing their market" isn't going to do a damn thing for them.

On the other hand, I know people who are staunchly opposed to any sort of market consideration at any point before the manuscript is completed, proofed, and ready to go. And none of them have published a novel, despite multiple attempts.

It's the Dan Brown effect. I was painfully aware of every egregious violation of the rules of style, plot, and characterization in The DaVinci Code--up to and including having two central characters look at their own reflections so that their appearance could be described to the reader--but I read it in two sittings, and that fucker has sold 40 million copies. Clearly, he did something right, and I can't just dismiss him as a hack when he's achieved fabulous success doing what I want to do with my life while I'm sitting here writing this blog post about what I need to do to finish my first novel.

I'm fairly certain that my protagonist is "merely an individual trying to make sense of the heavens and hells in Horatio's philosophy." But I know that I tend not to enjoy books or short stories where somebody just wanders around and thinks. Stuff needs to happen, and the characters need to be much more than mere vehicles for that stuff. I could never be a Didion, Oates, or Greene, but then, I don't want to be. I don't want to be a Brown, either, except insofar as I would like to own a private island. There's got to be a balance, a middle ground where I can do my thing with integrity without dooming my work to the eternal slush pile.

I'll let you know if I find it.

So, what did I accomplish this weekend? Everything I noted here, plus a short story submission and a poetry submission. This is why I didn't want to get locked into the novel!novel!novel! trap, because in point of fact I did get a lot done, even if it was spread out over a few different aspects of my writing endeavor, and I'm not going to get all bent out of shape because I didn't get where I wanted to be with the Big Project. I've actually done more with the book in the past two weeks than I've done with it in several months.

Perspective: it's important.

But it certainly is coincidental.

The day after I declared that I would not, in fact, devote this here site to the production and publication of a novel in one year's time, I got an e-mail via the folks at the SBWC. It was an about a year-long workshop, the goal of which is...to write a novel.

Not publish it, mind you. Just write it, and bring it to the point where it's ready for submission.

Lynn Vannucci, the person who's running the show, had this to say in the e-mail:

In all the years I've been working as an editor, I find the biggest roadblock for the new writers I work with is accountability. Their talent is apparent, their ideas inspired, but their projects languish because they don't yet know how to use their time like a professional writer to bring their work to fruition.

Which is exactly what I was talking about on June 2 when I referred to responsibility. To say that that I'm intrigued by this opportunity is a bit of an understatement. But I do pay attention to coincidences of this depth, and I call them by the fancy name of synchronicity.

So, I'm going to give this a shot. I need to have the first 30 pages of my project to her by June 20, which means that I need to rewrite the first chapter (it's not very good, being, as it is, an unpublished short story from 1995), and possibly create an entirely new second chapter.

I discovered, via a helpful ass-kicking by a friend of mine, many of the reasons why I stalled out on this particular book. Beyond my usual penchant for never finishing things, that is. She had me commit to producing a 500-word synopsis of the book, which is difficult enough, but even more so when the book isn't finished.

There are two main reasons it's not finished. First, I don't have an idea about the ending that's clear enough to keep me moving forward. I've always had a couple of major plot points that I knew were going to occur, but without at least some idea of the end point--even if it turns out to be the wrong idea--it's damnably difficult to keep things moving. There's nowhere to move towards.

Second, the major event of the book was something that happened to a friend of the protagonist, rather than the protagonist himself. I should've realized, back when I was half-heartedly asking myself why anyone should care about what happens to this secondary character, that this was an issue.

So. Because the decision to push the major event away from the protagonist was a result of events that happened in the first chapter, which was written as a short story and not a novel chapter, I need to rearrange a whole bunch of stuff. And because the second chapter flows from the plot error in the first chapter, and is in fact entirely dependent on it, I either need to write a new one, or see if one of the subsequent chapters can serve in its stead. Or I might just pick another chapter to serve as the first. Or maybe write some entirely new chapters. Or maybe, maybe write two entirely new chapters of an entirely new book I haven't even thought of yet.

I'm trying to subdue my panic. Breathe.

I have a lot of work to do, not much time to do it, and no guarantee that my offering will secure me a place in the workshop.

But it's something. At least I'm doing something different, instead of sitting at my desk with a sick heavy ball in my stomach, wondering how the hell I'm going to fix my entire life so that I can do with it what I wish.

Instead, I have a task: 30 pages by June 20. Manageable. Doable.

I'll let you know how it goes.

This site was to meant to serve, in part, as a public declaration of intention, which is why I've got an intention tag. It was also meant to be a self-wielded goad, something to motivate me and keep me going because I said on these pages that I would do this or that thing. The distillation of the declaration that I wrote on April 28 is as follows:

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

I've come to the...well, I won't call it sudden...but I've come to the realization that that's well, stupid.

Not just the practical aspect of it, I always knew that I was asking the near-impossible of myself. But: it's a stunt. Let's see how clever and good and talented I can be. More importantly, it is, quite simply, a recipe for failure.

I've gone through some sea changes over the past few months which I won't go into here. But the mere fact of writing and publishing a single novel is not enough. There's more to writing, more to a writing life, than pulling that particular rabbit out of the hat. More has to happen than simply finishing a manuscript and then shuffling it from agent to agent to agent, passively hoping that my self-evident brilliance will strike the right person at the right time.

The simple fact is, nothing in this universe happens unless you make it happen. It doesn't matter how good I am or think I am, it doesn't matter how saleable my manuscript is, how well it fits with what's going to be published in the 2010 season. What matters is whether I make the changes to my entire life that I need to make so that I can create a life of writing.

What matters is whether I take responsibility.

What matters is whether I make this happen.

Every day that I don't do something that relates to my writing is a day that I've let go by without making something happen. It doesn't matter whether I'm working on the novel, working on an old short story, jotting down thoughts for a new one or looking at markets. The idea that I was just going to pop onto the scene with my precious manuscript and watch the world open up before me was worse than stupid. It was arrogant, and short-sighted.

So, I've changed the blog's tag line, up there in the banner. The arbitrary, 365-days to publication is gone. I'm keeping the novel's word count up there, because it is a bit of a motivator, but that's all.

Back in 1995, I had my first short story published in Home Planet News. The editor professed amazement that it was my first publication, which I took as the compliment that it was. She invited me to New York to do a reading at the issue launch party, which I did. And then what happened?

Nothing, that's what.

I'm not going to go into all the psychological complexities that probably underlay that long fallow stretch of nothing. I'm tired of trying to figure out how I got where I am. I'm only interested in where I'm going and how I'm going to get there.

I also said, back in April, that I would be chronicling three separate processes here: writing the novel; reorganizing my life around writing; selling the novel. I was wrong about that, too. There's only one process. One life to live, one process.

So, that's what this place is about.

And what did I do today? Well, I rewrote the first 500 words of chapter one in third person, because I've been wedded to my first person narrative, and I'm not at all sure I need to be. I'm still not. Tomorrow? An outline. Because during the struggle to produce a 500 word synopsis of the book (which I will also write about later this week), I realized that I really have no idea where this thing is going, which makes it awfully hard to move forward.

So there's that.

Moving on.