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Killing My Darlings: Confessions of an Unpublished Novelist

4/26/2014

April 2

The good-cop, bad-cop rhythm of responses from my mentor continues. Mostly he likes what I have sent him this time. And he adds “About the decision re Marcus Parent, I applaud your willingness to deal a killing blow to characters and plot lines that don’t carry their weight. Probably a good move.”

Yep, I did the deed—got rid of that new major character (the one I personally most identify with—my heart and soul.) Leaves me with no excuse now not to delve more deeply into Wernher in particular, and the other astronauts—even at the risk of boring the reader!

The manuscript is now down to about eighty thousand words—not bad, but I predict more cuts lie ahead!

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CONFUSED: Continuing Confessions from an Unpublished Novelist

4/22/2014

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March 24

Okay, well, we’re beginning to get into a rhythm here. One time I get serious, almost devastating, criticisms from my mentor, to be followed next session by comments like “some good writing here”. March 24 is a time for devastation.

Now the way it should work is that, after each response from my mentor, I get a clearer idea of what my novel needs. Therefore my next submission should show that I have embraced his suggestions and incorporated them into my writing. This is exactly what I have been trying to do. Each time I send my mentor a section now, I very carefully edit it for POV issues, try to expunge from it unnecessary dream sequences or flashbacks, sift it for believability issues and, overall, try to give clarity a very high priority.

Much of my mentor’s objections this time do not surprise me. I have an introduced a new major character and it is not obvious to him why he’s in the story at all. I am quite attached to his character, and he has a story line that parallels the story of Wernher and the astronauts, but does not directly interact with it. My mentor states flatly this will not work. I feared as much. To remove this new character and his associated scenes will mean to cut more than fifteen thousand words from the manuscript. More importantly, it will take away thematic threads quite dear to me. In a way, it will rob the story of its soul. That’s how it seems to me at the moment, anyway.

Finally I am thrown by my mentor’s interpretation of a passage which he reads as meaning that I think the moon landing was a hoax—yikes! How could I have possibly given him that impression? Reading more carefully, I see this may be another case of me just not being careful enough about clarity. Another instance of me writing it as if my story were meant to be a movie. In a movie I could count on the actor’s intonation to let the viewer know I was being sarcastic.

I like to give credit to my readers. I like to assume they will be good at reading between the lines. For the most part however, my mentor has been pushing me the other way—make sure there is no possibility of confusion!

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DREAMER: More Confessions from an Unpublished Novelist

4/15/2014

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Feb. 27

This time my mentor’s comments are fairly brief so maybe I am doing something right at last: “Some good work here. I’ve inserted some notes, mostly minor, but a couple that I think are important, re dreams and flashback.”

My mentor has previously brought up the issue of flashbacks and I have tried to deal with it. I have so many flashbacks in the manuscript. I have tried to get rid of them where possible or write them as separate scenes chronologically in the story. Still more work to do, it seems.

The question of dreams is interesting. My mentor argues that dreams are a cop-out for a writer and a disappointment for the reader. I don’t think I agree with him about this, but this is not the first time I have heard this criticism so, yes, I am doing what I can to eliminate the dreams, though very much against my inclinations.

And maybe this issue is telling me something about the kind of writer I am. Maybe I don’t really want to write “realistic” fiction, maybe I fit more easily into the magical realism genre. And maybe this explains many of my writing problems: the fact that I just can’t decide what genre I belong in—and, proudly (foolishly probably) I have resisted being restricted to any particular genre.

There are five distinct dreams that I write about Lunatics—I suppose that’s a lot--although it does not seem a stretch to me that, for men orbiting the moon, far away from the familiar things of Earth, dreams would take on a larger importance than usual.

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MOVIE MAKER: More Confessions from an Unpublished Novelist

4/8/2014

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Feb. 17

Be more like Tolstoy. That is the most recent lesson from my writing mentor.

Like any good teacher sending home a report card, my mentor begins with a positive note: “There’s good writing here,” but quickly he delves into the critical meat. “The constant bouncing around in POV and chronology is getting hard to follow.”

The thing that hurts most about this comment is that I thought I had fixed that problem (well, improved it anyway) in the last submission I sent—not enough, obviously—not nearly enough.

Then my mentor floors me with another staggering analysis of my work: “It’s as if you’re structuring the novel like a movie or TV show that’s constantly cutting back and forth from one setting/time/character-arc to another, as if you’re afraid [my italics] the reader will get bored if you stay in one place for more than a few pages.

Well, I feel like the writer with no clothes. He has seen through me—I am constantly worried about boring the reader—and maybe just lack the courage to stick with a character long enough. Now this structuring like a movie business—it is not something I consciously do, but that’s all the more worrisome, I suppose. The visual movie format seems so engrained in my unconscious that this seems the natural way for me to tell a story. It’s never occurred to me that this might not work for a novel—oh, how little I seem to know about the craft!

Of course it’s the old story: the more you know, the more you realize how little you know.

I must credit my mentor with giving me a very constructive suggestion near the end of his comments. He suggests that if I MUST hop around in POV and setting so much (as Tolstoy does in Anna Karenina) then, like Tolstoy, I must immediately, generally within the first sentence, situate the reader.

Yes, I can do that (I think).

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REPRIEVE: Confessions of an Unpublished Novelist

4/3/2014

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Feb. 5

Certainly I have been reeling since last hearing from my mentor: full of self-doubt, wondering if I should abandon the Lunatics project all together. What has kept me from crossing the brink is probably my “cheap gene”—I’ve paid good money for this course, I’m going get whatever I can from it, no matter how painful.

Reworking the manuscript, I’ve begun to rearrange all the chapters so that they are chronological. (I know! What a radical concept!) Before my mentor had pointed it out, I didn't realize just how much I had been skipping around in time and location.

Why have I done this, my mentor asks? It just confuses the reader.

Is it because I think this is how all modern novels are structured? Well, golly, maybe that is part of it—at any rate, I didn’t think I was doing anything unusual by arranging my scenes this way. Isn’t this how memory works? People remembering key moments from their past, not necessarily in order?

Of course, this is not how Jane Austen writes, my wife would remind me. Case closed.

All that being said, my mentor begins his comments with “I think this section overall works well.. it gives us a better grounding in Wernher’s personality and interest in rockets.”

Well, some relief in hearing that.

There is no doubt that my mentor regards Wernher von Braun as the protagonist of my story and, of course, he’s right. But I see now it’s as if I’ve hedged my bets, telling the story through other prominent voices as well—as if saying to the reader—well if you don’t like this character, maybe you’ll be able to identify with this other one.

My mentor goes no to say about the Wernher I’ve portrayed: “He seems to be a really good bloke if can use a Britishism. I wonder, is his essential goodness partly an overcompensating on your part for his links to Naziism? He comes across at times as almost saintly.”

My gosh! What an insightful and challenging comment! Is this again an example of me not committing all the way, of hedging my bets—yes, he’s a Nazi, but he’s actually a pretty nice guy! And does this reflect my underlying preference to avoid thinking the worst in people? Am I once again just trying to avoid conflict?

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Killing My Darlings: Confessions of an Unpublished Novelist

CONFUSED: Continuing Confessions from an Unpublished Novelist

DREAMER: More Confessions from an Unpublished Novelist

MOVIE MAKER: More Confessions from an Unpublished Novelist

REPRIEVE: Confessions of an Unpublished Novelist

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