I Really Have Something

Over five years. 

Recently, I was looking for a document in one of the files I started during the initial planning of my novel.  I couldn't believe the date on it:  March 16, 2010.

Over five years ago, I began work on my novel.  Five years already.  The time's gone fast.  A lot has happened:  We had an unfortunate and serious falling out with our next-door neighbors (they moved away this summer); I had my first colonoscopy; and I broke my arm, recovering from that over the next months.  While we create, life goes on.    

Last month, I looked up from what I was doing and realized I'd completed all the major rewrites of my novel.  I'd had eleven chapters left (22 to 32).  I'd gone through each one to identify which needed full rewrites–to bring them up to the standard of the rest I'd been working on for years–and which needed only fine-tuning.  Since then, the full rewrites are done, and I'm well on my (sometimes frustrating, but often exhilarating) way to fine-tuning those last chapters.  

And the thought occurred to me:  I REALLY HAVE SOMETHING HERE.   

When I consider where I've taken my novel so far, I'm impressed by the breadth and scope of the narrative.  I can't believe the journey my characters and I have been on, where we've been, what we've done together.  And, as I consider those final eleven chapters, I'm impressed by how the pace is picking up, building to that all-important and exciting climax.  I feel it inside me.  It propels me forward.    

This is all new to me.  

Sure, over thirty years ago, I wrote another novel, start to finish, while I worked full-time for a bank.  Sort of.  The first two hundred or so pages were more planning than anything (this character will do this; that character will do that), which I realized, later rather than sooner, was ridiculous.  Instead of planning to write, why not write?  So I turned it around, got the characters acting for themselves, took them to the end of their stories.   

But that novel, as it turned out, was more about proving I could discipline myself enough to get the job done, not about putting in all the hard work needed to complete the thing.  As luck would have it, it also prepared me, in ways I couldn't have imagined, for my experience now.   

I can't even describe how exciting it is to be where I am.  This has been a life-long dream.  Ever since I was a little boy, I've wanted to be a writer.  I've dreamed about writing a book, one that might actually be good enough to submit for publication somewhere.  With the advancements in publishing today, I don't even have to submit my novel anymore (although that's still the plan).  If I want, I can self-publish.  Lots of writers are doing that, even important ones.  There isn't the stigma around it that there used to be.  It's an option.

It's easy to get caught up in what you're doing and forget to celebrate the milestones.  But I'm not going to do that.   

Tomorrow is my fifty-sixth birthday.  Not only will I celebrate that milestone age for me, but also I plan to celebrate what I've achieved so far in writing my novel.  I deserve to.  I've stuck with it, and I've done the work–half an hour, an hour, two, three, four, five at a time, day after day, week after week, month after month, looking at the same thing over, and over, and over, sometimes soaring with exhilaration, other times thinking I'll throw up if I have to look at this again.  I've stuck with this story over the long-haul.  I've believed in it, believed how important it is, when, countless times, I could have moved on to other projects, wanted desperately to move on to new, shinier, more enticing things, in the hope one of them would stick.  Had I done that, I wouldn't be where I am now.   

With only fine-tuning left to do before my novel is finished, I feel an excitement that I hope all aspiring writers will feel.  That I hope you'll feel.  Because I don't think there's anything more fulfilling.  To think that you've done what you've done, and an end's in sight…  

Wow!  

For a writer, at least at this stage of the process, I don't think it gets better than that. 

Keep writing.  Hang in there.  Everything you're going?  It's worth it.  It's so worth it.  Believe me.

Don't give up.  NEVER give up. 

Play

When in doubt, play.

As I sat at Starbucks today, working on an extensive rewrite of Chapter 23, Scene 1, I had no idea what to do with it.  Should it be this, or should it be that?  Should I tell, or should I show?  I stared into space, watched people come and go, and left myself open to whatever happened.

Before long, I had a sentence.  And another.  And another.

At some point, the sentences no longer came.  So I went back to my first sentence–because I knew it was better than what I had before but still not right–and I played around with it.  I changed the order of items in it, that word here and that word there.  Then I moved on to the next sentence and did the same.

By the time I got to the third sentence, I sensed I should break it out into a separate paragraph and elaborate on the idea.  I wrote several more new sentences, all related to the opening one.

I kept going, this time getting not only as far as the first time, but a little further, with another sentence suggesting itself to me.  I knew it wasn't quite right, but I wrote it down anyway.  Having something down is better than having nothing down at all.  Gives me more to play with.

Once again, the new sentences stopped coming, and I went back over what I had to that point, changing what I still didn't like, the structure of what I had so far.  From past experience, I knew reviewing everything again might take me into yet more uncharted territory.

And it did.

This is what I call playing.

Playing is a lot of fun–but only if you take the time, only if you're patient, and only if you have no expectations of what might come out of it.

When in doubt, play.  Be that child again.  Let what happens, happen.  Get out of your own way and, most important, have fun.  That's what it should be.

Voice

Whenever I feel insecure about my writing, I ask myself this:  How is my voice any less worth listening to than anyone else's?

All the greats took that first step.  They were not fully-formed and amazing from the start.  They believed they had something worth saying, and they had the courage to follow through on that belief. 

So too must all the rest of us.

Our voice is worth hearing.

What we have to say is worth listening to.   

A Helpful Quote

Here's a quote I hope you'll find helpful from Complete Write a Novel Course, by Will Buckingham:

A novelist's job is to raise questions, 

but there is no obligation to fully answer 

these questions [p. 162].

Thank you, Edmund White

I believe when we struggle with something, and when the time is right, we're given the information we need to overcome the struggle.  Or at least to make peace with it.

As I write my novel, I often feel inferior to those writers who are able to write something totally made up.  I don't know if it's that I don't have much of an imagination (actually, a lot of things in my novel are made up), but much of the novel I'm working on is based on my personal life, or a period of my personal life, between the late-1980s and mid-2000.  I know that I couldn't write a novel as detailed and textured as the one I am now, if I hadn't based it on what happened to me.  In fact, if I hadn't based what I'm writing on what happened to me, I wouldn't be writing a novel at all.  I'd be writing essays, which I'm far more comfortable with. 

Then I was browsing through City Boy: My Life in New York During the 1960s and '70, by Edmund White, at a local bookstore (yes, we still have a few of those), and I happened to open it to the page with this:

I didn't have writer's block, though all my failures with plays and fiction had left me feeling wounded.  I would feel sick with fear every time I'd begin to write something made-up [p. 141].

I recognized myself in that second sentence, and I can't tell you what a relief it was to know there was another writer–none other than Edmund White, writer of dozens of books, including non-fiction, biographies, and novels–who dreaded writing anything that wasn't anchored in what really happened to him or someone he knew.

I don't feel inferior anymore.  Just because I don't have a dazzling imagination doesn't mean I don't measure up to a writer who relies entirely on his imagination to weave his stories.  Or that I'm not a writer.  It's what we do with those personal experiences, how we dramatize them, turn them into fiction, that really marks our ability as writers.

Perfection

 

 

 

 

 

 

There's no soul in perfection.

-Keith Urban

The Best Damn Writer

So the other night, I'm watching one of my favorite summer shows, So You Think You Can Dance–although, with the changes this season, including the absence of the soul of the show, Mary Murphy, I'm not sure how much longer I'll continue to watch–and I'm seeing how hard many of the dancers work.  How they often started when they were two or three years old and, here they are, now in their early- or mid-twenties, working harder than ever to be the best damn dancers they can be.

Then, in the latest issue of Vanity Fair, the one about Caitlin Jenner, I read about Caitlin when she was Bruce, how he attended the Munich Olympics in 1972, competed, but didn't perform particularly well.  But, in preparation for the Montreal Olympics, four years down the road, Bruce worked eight or more hours a day, every day of the week, to be the best damn athlete he could be, which resulted in his spectacular gold medal win in the decathlon.  Talk about devotion and commitment.  That's not rare for Olympic-caliber athletes.  That's typical, the norm.   

So why should writing be any different?  Why should being the best damn writer I can be take any less time or effort or devotion or commitment–or whatever it takes from deep down in the soul–than someone working toward being the best damn dancer or athlete or anything he or she can be?  It shouldn't.  It shouldn't, at all. 

So I'll keep plugging away, because I still have a lot more hours to put in, I still have a lot more to learn, and I still have a lot more work to do.  And I may never appear on a TV show or win an award –hell, I may not even get published–but it won't be for a lack of trying.

All I can do is try.  No, all I can do is work like freakin' hell, for as long as it takes, until I reach my goals.  

It's up to me.   

Quote from Professor James Hynes

"Writing fiction is not an efficient process, and that's as it should be."

(Quote is from Professor James Hynes, in The Great Courses, "Writing Great Fiction: Storytelling Tips and Techniques," Lecture #13, "In the Beginning–How to Start a Plot.")

What Matters

Here's a tidbit I heard recently that I hope you find as inspiring as I do:

What you write may not change the world,

but it's still important.  

Yes, it is.

At those darkest times, when despair takes over, when you want to give up because you don't believe what you're doing will amount to anything, and no one will ever care, never forget:  It's still important.

Because you care.  It's important to you, for whatever reason you do it.  And, in the end, that's all that matters.