Category Archives: Writing the first book

A Meeting of the Mind 2

Creative non-fiction, Humor, Ink Spatterings, Writing, Writing process, Writing the first book

Sequels Are Always Better Than the Original, Right?

ME: Good morning, Every Part of My Brain. Welcome to this second and highly improbable gathering of the committee. Let’s welcome Dragon to the team. He gnaws on my free time like chicken bones.

DRAGON: Cease! There’s no time for kissing up.

ME: We’re going to skip the icebreakers. We all know each other, as last month’s axe-throwing social made painfully clear.

(cheers erupt as Hype Man roars and grinningly points to a massive scar on his forehead. )

ME: Here are the minutes from the last meeting, which I’ve canonized as “classic literature.”

CRITIC: So it’s achieved the distinguished state of being largely unread?

HYPE MAN: YEAH! Minutes! The sizzle reel!

ME: Right. Brilliant. Perfect start. (clears throat) Time is like a soufflé: delicate, prone to collapse, and –

DRAGON: – guarded by me.

MONKEY BRAIN: I call this meeting to chaos! All in favor?

ME: Hands down. FYI, this meeting was pushed to the 3rd quarter because –

MARKETER: – because I double-booked us with a webinar on “Optimizing Your Creative Brand in Twelve Excruciating but Photogenic Steps.”

DRAGON: (snorts a puff of smoke like an offended kettle) Pathetic.

ME: Next, Old Business.

ARCHIVIST: Every Business eventually turns into Old Business.

DREAMER: New Business is just Old Business we haven’t met yet.

CRITIC: Our Old Business hangs around like a bad smell, because none of you actually take care of anything. Except, you, Me.

(MONKEY BRAIN flings unwrapped Tootsie Rolls at everyone. Snacking ensues.)

ME: (bangs gavel) Yes, very good. Moving on. I’d like to discuss role consolidation. I propose merging Critic, Worrier, and Self-Doubter into one tidy Efficiency Pod.

CRITIC: Absolutely not.

SELF-DOUBTER: I don’t think I’m pod material.

WORRIER: I’m not pod-shaped.

ME: Fine. Separate disasters you shall remain. Please fill out your timecards accordingly.

DRAGON: You people waste time like it’s your job.

ME: Can we please talk about writing?

Archivist: Ah. The novel. How goes it?

CRITIC: Probably like an axe to the skull, right, Hype Man?

HYPE MAN: Uncool, but still, high-five!

ME: It, I am happy to say, goes well.

DREAMER: (rolling in a corkboard) I took the liberty of creating a Vision Board of our progress. Behold: a vaping dolphin, a typewriter made of ice cream, and Keanu Reeves in velvet singing Elizabethan madrigals.

ME: What on earth?

CRITIC: That’s not a vision board. That’s a cry for help.

HYPE MAN: Love it! Everyone should vape out of their blowhole!

MONKEY: BLOWHOLE

WORRIER: Is Keanu singing madrigals, or is it the velvet jacket?

ARCHIVIST: Actually, that’s corduroy, not velvet.

ME: Let’s all stop –

WORRIER: Stop writing?

ME: What? No!

DREAMER: Taking a rest stop on the cosmic highway!

ME: No rest –

CRITIC: No rest?Sounds like your characters need better working conditions.

ARCHIVIST: Please be sure to log all character reassignments.

ME: I’m reverse outlining and rewriting in loops. Plot, character, theme, setting, subplot, then back around again. Everything in some sort of organized heap, then, adjusted until it works.

DREAMER: Have you considered a treasure map subplot? Or a phoenix? Or writing it in second person? Should only tack on what, 1-9 months to the process?

DRAGON: I’ve barely allowed you enough time to inhale, and you want to exhale treasure maps?

ARCHIVIST: I’ll need to research whether phoenixes and treasure maps can coexist in second person.

MARKETER: Forget all that. Pivot to a cookbook. Cookbooks sell.

MONKEY BRAIN: Iguanas!

ME: No treasure maps. No phoenixes. No second person. No cookbooks. No iguanas. No cookbooks for iguanas or (holds up a warning finger to MONKEY BRAIN) cookbooks about how to cook iguanas. I like my story and have committed to it.

DREAMER: Have you considered switching careers and becoming an organ grinder?

ME: Like in a play-the-barrel-organ way or in a Sweeney Todd way?

MONKEY BRAIN: I’m suddenly uncomfortable

CRITIC: You’re all deranged.

ME: Chair agrees.

DREAMER: [leaps to feet dramatically] I propose we devote the next month to exploring the concept of time as a sentient being.

CRITIC: Opposed. Hard no. Like, concrete-after-a-Chicago-winter hard no.

HYPE MAN: Also a no, but great idea! Imagine the tagline: What if time was alive? Boom! Bestseller! High five!

ARCHIVIST: Seconded, pending a trademark search for “sentient time.”

DRAGON: [snarls] Time is indeed sentient, and it hates you.

WORRIER: Motion for catastrophic preparedness: deadlines missed, mockery, general and specific humiliations. And typos.

HYPE MAN: Opposed! Fear is the mind-killer, baby!

MARKETER: I propose we conduct a comprehensive market analysis before finishing the draft. Demographics, comps, audience studies.

ME: Opposed!

CRITIC: Motion to stop overthinking.

WORRIER: Counter-motion to overthink harder.

HYPE MAN: Counter-counter-motion to stop thinking entirely.

ME: All right, team. The plan is simple: cooperation. If we can work together, we will finish this thing, and maybe even start other things. Right now we’re like a rickety cart pulled by twelve horses in different rodeos.

SELF-DOUBTER: This is delusional.

HYPE MAN: Delusional? This is destiny! Cooperation! Teamwork! No rickety carts!

DRAGON: I know I’m new here, but this sounds like a waste of time. Considering…(gestures at the group, chews a charcoal briquette, then belches).

ME: We’ll continue to work calmly, one voice at a time.

MONKEY BRAIN: (waves squished Tootsie Roll) Guess what this looks like! Guess! Wrong answer, it’s poo!

ME: Why do I bother?

CRITIC: That’s the real question, isn’t it?

HYPE MAN: Because you love it! Because this draft is fire! Because we’re unstoppable!

SELF-DOUBTER: Or because she doesn’t know how to quit.

ME: One of you has got to be right. All right, meeting adjourned. Spirit Halloween wants this space.

Chop Shop

Inspiration, Things that smell, Writing, Writing process, Writing the first book,

For the discerning ne’er-do-well wordsmith

For four coffee-stained years, I devoted myself to my novel. It was to be a cautionary tale: perceptive, tender, yet wildly satirical and entertaining — a stark look at the world made bearable through presentation.

The book became a crucible for all I cherish in craft and in belief. My identity and my claim to legitimacy. Who I am and what I believe. My reason for getting out of bed.

Yet, it unraveled despite all efforts. Effort, whether redoubled or relaxed, seemed only to push the work further from my vision.

So I am stopping.

A pen rests atop an open notebook that has a coffee stain on its otherwise blank page.

The moment of realization was unceremonious, arriving via movie preview. There on the screen flashed my book, but better. This wasn’t the sole reason for halting — I am familiar with “there are only so many stories” and “my voice is unique” — but it was a signpost.

Despite being armed with skill and passion, envisioning a battle of wits I could win, I found myself at odds with my work for nearly the entire four years. I believed that with enough precision, focus, energy, and writing ability, I could make it work. As the pages accumulated, so did the work’s inadequacy. Sentences, then pages, then characters, plot, and message — all crumpled. But questions of capability haunt every writer, yes? Isn’t a book nothing more than countless decisions? Just fix it.

“Fix it” was my daily mantra for the last three years. With each attempted fix, new problems emerged. I mistook determination to patch up cascading disasters as a well-defined writing process. Let it sit, come back, remember why I started writing, more research, less research. Keep it to myself. Share it. Writing courses. Different times, places, ways. Illustrations. Iterations. Incantations.

It was a relentless test of artistic endurance. More, harder, better. Any progress was never binding.

There is a quiet and small kind of madness in continuing to write a book that fails to thrive.

The book remains as far from being satisfying, cohesive, substantive — most precisely, good — as it was three years into its drafting. And almost as far from The End.

This is a mercy killing.

With a thimbleful of courage, I acknowledge the end of this story’s journey.

This is a hard thing.

The once robust potential of the “Shitty 1st Draft” withered into the “Shitty 18th Draft.” A failure of sorts, but the greater failure would be to persist in futility.

This is a demoralizing thing.

The novel was like that okay-ish boyfriend from when you were 27 — the relationship you stick with because the alternative seems worse. Both the ex-boyfriend and this book offer harsh truths: the impossibility of manufacturing something good with only jaw-clenched sheer will, the futility of persisting with the untenable. Lessons in limits and misalignments of perceptions, and whatnot.

In the aftermath, I strive for equanimity, grappling with the singular shame of abandoning a four-year project, a project that, in my stubborn moments, I contend I should have been able to complete. I also seek to embrace the dizzying liberation that accompanies this loss.

Shockingly, this good and right decision does not come unencumbered by pesky human emotion.

There were good enough parts: some great passages, some solid scenes peopled with strange and familiar characters and their strange and familiar delights and horrors. Yet, a few bright sparks could not ignite the whole.

Still, oh, the legitimacy of writing a novel! Claiming space among the revered, the excellent, the mighty. Those with stick-to-itness like oatmeal that’s overstayed its welcome. But I’ve gotten this far without being outrightly dismissed as a dum-dum, so perhaps my place among novelists remains waiting. For now, I can only plant my flag in other places where I have already staked a claim.

The task now is to reset the board and pulverize the “If I stop writing a novel will I just…disappear?” and the “Am I nothing but a wordsmithing ne’er-do-well?” and the brief isolation this moment brings.

My early writing thrived on humor, political, and cultural essays. It’s also an election year, and the world isn’t getting less nutty. A visit to those realms is in order, but I’m wary of committing too quickly even though I expect my first (rebound) piece will be smoother, better, and fun. And likely shorter.

Some people might urge me to revisit the unfinished book. It’s tempting to romanticize a future reunion in 5–10 years, that I’m just exiling it to the hinterlands, or letting it hang out in the transporter’s pattern buffer. But I’m a realist. I can learn a great deal from my novel’s absence and gain much from its years-long presence.

In other words, I’m chopping it up for parts.

Say what you will, but I never did that to my ex-boyfriends.

How the Book Is Coming (Giddyup Rampage Edition)

Writing, Writing process, Writing the first book,

How the Book is Coming (Giddyup Rampage Edition)

“How’s the book coming?” asks no one, because let’s face it, the world’s too busy spinning off its axis for this to be anyone’s big concern at the moment. Also, folks may fear the question would be met with gnashing of teeth, rending of garments, and technicolor expletives.

Understandable.

But hey, surprise, it’s going fairly freakin’ well. Tomorrow I cannonball into the final round of revisions, loaded with an arsenal of edits and fix-em-ups. Revisions will be followed immediately by final edits to make sure my commas are behaving and my participles are tucked in with hospital corners. 

Continue reading How the Book Is Coming (Giddyup Rampage Edition) →