-- is the title of one of the novels for which, as yet, I haven't come up with much more than the title. It could refer to residents of Brazil, to the fashionable style of womanscaping, to the Brazilian real, the country's currency, or perhaps in indirect ways to all of the above as well as to other things. The title of another novel I haven't written yet is You Magnificent Bastards. As with A Bazillion Brazilians, I haven't moved very far in the actual writing of the novel past liking the way the title sounds.
Then there's Because It's There. I've actually written 3 figures of pages' worth of various drafts of this one. Its protagonist is a man in his late 20's who's appeared rather unremarkable and lazy in his life so far, until, one night, he suddenly stands up in his usual dive bar, sets down his longneck Bud, announces to his drinking buddies that he's going to walk and swim all of the way around the world, with no motor vehicles, no boats, no life jackets, no nuthin', and walks out into the Ohio night and proceeds to do exactly that. The Key West-to-Cuba scene will now have to be rewritten with a reference to Diana Nyad. This swim will be perhaps the greatest challenge of the entire journey for my young hero, because until now he has not been a good swimmer by anyone's standards. Fortunately, the walk from Ohio to Florida has both gotten him into much better physical shape, and given him a lot of alone time in which to mentally steel himself for the long swim. Still, it's not as accurate to say that he swims up onto the beach in Cuba 6 days after leaving Florida, as that he washes up on shore, half-dead. Luckily, he's discovered before he actually dies and rushed to a hospital where he receives excellent medical care free of charge. Staying true to the rule he set for himself, he backtracks on foot to the beach he landed on before continuing the trip.
Then there's the novel about angels I started to write on this blog a couple of years ago.
So why don't I ever finish a novel, you ask? I have. I've finished two of them, Salvation and Independents. How many have YOU finished? Yeah, that's what I thought! You want to be helpful, don't stand there complaining, go scare me up an agent so I can publish some of this stuff, kay thanx.
Showing posts with label novel-writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label novel-writing. Show all posts
Sunday, November 24, 2013
Friday, June 19, 2009
An Amazing True-Life Adventure
Around Christmastime 1995-96 I was homeless in Manhattan. Don't think obviously homeless, with a thick outer layer of funk and begging for change: I was able, though it took a lot of strenuous effort, to stay pretty clean, and instead of constantly asking for handouts I was constantly asking for work. I read a story in the Village Voice at the time about "club kids," young people hanging around dance clubs pretty much full time, who had no homes of their own but who were still managing to sustain a somewhat luxurious lifestyle. My life wasn't quite that glamourous, byt then again I was doing a lot better than a lot of other people one could see on the streets every day. I was also writing a novel.
Some nights someone offered me a couch to sleep on, some nights I didn't sleep. I never got into a shelter: there were more homeless in the city than there were beds for them, and I imagine that hasn't changed. Between various charitable organizations, doing odd jobs, and individuals giving me a meal or some money, I was able to keep myself more or less well-fed, and in more-or-less clenaly-laundered clothes. Eventually I found full-time work and an apartment, and I haven't been homeless since.
The worst part was the fatigue. Even if some kind soul offered me a couch for the night, it seemed I never quite got caught up on sleep, and I was still really tired the next day. I still feel really tired just thinking about that time.
Most of the people around me didn't realize that I was homeless. Someone advised me not to mention it to everyone, that people would avoid me if they knew too much about my troubles. Maybe that was sound advice. One morning I found myself with a group of people mostly my age or younger (I was 34), yuppie-artistic types, attractive and successful, having brunch at a nice place in the West Village. I'd met most of this group through a mutual friend just this morning, and I had enough money that day for a fancy brunch, and although I would usually be more frugal, something told me to hang out that morning, and act as if I were another yuppie.
I was glad I did, because one of the group mentioned at brunch that he had recently switched careers, from attorney to literary agent. I mentioned my novel-in-progress and asked if he'd like to see the chapters I'd completed. He said yes, if I could get them neatly typed up. This was complicated by my being homeless, as everything is more difficult when you're homeless, but a friend let me come to his office and use a typewriter. By the time everything I'd completed was typed up, a couple of weeks, the agent knew that I was homeless. In the meantime I'd researched him a little bit and found out that he was a very good agent. His clients sold a lot of books. And he liked the pages I gave him, and was definitely interested in representing me, once the entire novel was finished.
The problem was, I never finished that novel. I've written two complete novels since then, as yet unpublished. I'm a little hazy about when I actually wrote them. I think it was 2004 and 2005. I wrote them quite quickly. I was determined to write at least 5 days a week and at least 1 page a day, and did exactly that, and most days I wrote closer to 5 pages than 1, and most of the material in the finished novels is pretty close to the first draft. In the same couple of years I also wrote 15 essays, 3 of which I've recently posted on this blog: the one on Tom Paine, the one entitled "Words, Words, Words," and the one on Peter Sloterdijk. The problem with the novel I was working on in 1995-96, and for several years after that, was that I didn't really want to complete it. The problem was subconscious at the time. In retrospect, with the benefit of a decade's worth of hindsight and a grasp of the basics of psychotherapy and self-analysis, the problem is clear: it was an autobiographical roman-a-clef, based on an episode in my life from 1990, and I didn't want to finish the story because I didn't want to let go of that part of my life. In real life, what had happened was that I fell in love with a woman, and we were happy together for a short time, but then she wanted to have some space and time to sort out what she wanted to do, whether she wanted to stay with me or not, and I didn't give her enough space, and so she dumped me. End of story.
I don't know why other people write romans-a-clef, or how true-to-life those novels are, but I was writing this one in order to obsess about this past relationship, to immerse myself in memory, and also in fantasy: I changed the story in order to make it happier, and more flattering to myself. It was not as destructive as actually stalking the woman who'd dumped me, but it was also not wholly unrelated to obsessive stalking behavior. It was not healthy.
I wrote thousands of pages, draft after draft and revision after revision of a book which I intended, consciously at least, eventually to be complete at around 500 pages at most. When I first met the agent I told him I expected to complete the book within a few months, and consciously, at the time, I intended exactly that. After two years had passed and I admitted to the agent that I had no idea when I'd be done, he had lost interest. I can't say I blame him. And he's since gone on to bigger and better things, writing and publishing books himself, and handling book-to-movie deals, and good for him. He's very talented, very dedicated to his clients and very good at his job. I can't blame him for deciding he's too busy to look at the books I've completed. That's what literary agents mostly do: turn writers down, turn down the vast majority after reading a few pages, or just a one-page summary, saving their attention mainly for those few writers whom they think they can represent well. I still haven't gotten that big book deal, any book deal, but I returned from homelessness to the lower middle class, I didn't die on the street, and a lot of homeless people do. And I learned from the episode: I don't see myself ever ruining another relationship by crowding a woman who's asking me for space and time to think things over.
Things aren't so bad. But I sure would love a big lucrative book deal or three, of course.
Some nights someone offered me a couch to sleep on, some nights I didn't sleep. I never got into a shelter: there were more homeless in the city than there were beds for them, and I imagine that hasn't changed. Between various charitable organizations, doing odd jobs, and individuals giving me a meal or some money, I was able to keep myself more or less well-fed, and in more-or-less clenaly-laundered clothes. Eventually I found full-time work and an apartment, and I haven't been homeless since.
The worst part was the fatigue. Even if some kind soul offered me a couch for the night, it seemed I never quite got caught up on sleep, and I was still really tired the next day. I still feel really tired just thinking about that time.
Most of the people around me didn't realize that I was homeless. Someone advised me not to mention it to everyone, that people would avoid me if they knew too much about my troubles. Maybe that was sound advice. One morning I found myself with a group of people mostly my age or younger (I was 34), yuppie-artistic types, attractive and successful, having brunch at a nice place in the West Village. I'd met most of this group through a mutual friend just this morning, and I had enough money that day for a fancy brunch, and although I would usually be more frugal, something told me to hang out that morning, and act as if I were another yuppie.
I was glad I did, because one of the group mentioned at brunch that he had recently switched careers, from attorney to literary agent. I mentioned my novel-in-progress and asked if he'd like to see the chapters I'd completed. He said yes, if I could get them neatly typed up. This was complicated by my being homeless, as everything is more difficult when you're homeless, but a friend let me come to his office and use a typewriter. By the time everything I'd completed was typed up, a couple of weeks, the agent knew that I was homeless. In the meantime I'd researched him a little bit and found out that he was a very good agent. His clients sold a lot of books. And he liked the pages I gave him, and was definitely interested in representing me, once the entire novel was finished.
The problem was, I never finished that novel. I've written two complete novels since then, as yet unpublished. I'm a little hazy about when I actually wrote them. I think it was 2004 and 2005. I wrote them quite quickly. I was determined to write at least 5 days a week and at least 1 page a day, and did exactly that, and most days I wrote closer to 5 pages than 1, and most of the material in the finished novels is pretty close to the first draft. In the same couple of years I also wrote 15 essays, 3 of which I've recently posted on this blog: the one on Tom Paine, the one entitled "Words, Words, Words," and the one on Peter Sloterdijk. The problem with the novel I was working on in 1995-96, and for several years after that, was that I didn't really want to complete it. The problem was subconscious at the time. In retrospect, with the benefit of a decade's worth of hindsight and a grasp of the basics of psychotherapy and self-analysis, the problem is clear: it was an autobiographical roman-a-clef, based on an episode in my life from 1990, and I didn't want to finish the story because I didn't want to let go of that part of my life. In real life, what had happened was that I fell in love with a woman, and we were happy together for a short time, but then she wanted to have some space and time to sort out what she wanted to do, whether she wanted to stay with me or not, and I didn't give her enough space, and so she dumped me. End of story.
I don't know why other people write romans-a-clef, or how true-to-life those novels are, but I was writing this one in order to obsess about this past relationship, to immerse myself in memory, and also in fantasy: I changed the story in order to make it happier, and more flattering to myself. It was not as destructive as actually stalking the woman who'd dumped me, but it was also not wholly unrelated to obsessive stalking behavior. It was not healthy.
I wrote thousands of pages, draft after draft and revision after revision of a book which I intended, consciously at least, eventually to be complete at around 500 pages at most. When I first met the agent I told him I expected to complete the book within a few months, and consciously, at the time, I intended exactly that. After two years had passed and I admitted to the agent that I had no idea when I'd be done, he had lost interest. I can't say I blame him. And he's since gone on to bigger and better things, writing and publishing books himself, and handling book-to-movie deals, and good for him. He's very talented, very dedicated to his clients and very good at his job. I can't blame him for deciding he's too busy to look at the books I've completed. That's what literary agents mostly do: turn writers down, turn down the vast majority after reading a few pages, or just a one-page summary, saving their attention mainly for those few writers whom they think they can represent well. I still haven't gotten that big book deal, any book deal, but I returned from homelessness to the lower middle class, I didn't die on the street, and a lot of homeless people do. And I learned from the episode: I don't see myself ever ruining another relationship by crowding a woman who's asking me for space and time to think things over.
Things aren't so bad. But I sure would love a big lucrative book deal or three, of course.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)