Lunatic Writer's Blog

DREAMER: More Confessions from an Unpublished Novelist

4/15/2014

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.

MOVIE MAKER: More Confessions from an Unpublished Novelist

4/8/2014

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).

REPRIEVE: Confessions of an Unpublished Novelist

4/3/2014

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?

Confessions of an Unpublished Novelist: THE GUILLOTINE DROPS

3/27/2014

JAN. 22

My mentor has a great deal to say about the next submission I send him. He starts off on a note that is not too devastating by saying “Overall I still have good feelings about the potential of the book.” Which I translate to mean, he hasn’t given up on me completely. He goes on to say “I would say though that as a reader I’m feeling a little scattered.”

My mentor is just warming up. He becomes very critical of how the time frame and POV switch so frequently in the story. He has no sense of where the story is headed. He goes on to state that my central character, Wernher von Braun, feels more like an archetype than a real flesh and blood character.

My mentor also laments how Lyndon Johnson, whom he calls the “most grounded and relatable character” in the story, is now dead and gone and, with his departure, “one of the sturdy legs of the story.”

Wernher does not compare favourably. According to my mentor he and all my major characters need more immediate motivations and conflicts to move the story forward.

Conflict… it has been the most difficult concept for me to embrace as a writer. I instinctively shy away from it. I have to force it into the story. I don’t seem to handle it especially well. It could well be that this weakness disqualifies me as a novel writer right from the start (playwright as well). Sigh…

Well… I was looking for specific, no-holds barred criticism. I am certainly getting it.

It might not hurt so much if my mentor wasn’t fairly impressed with the first segment I sent, lulling me into a very false sense of security. My mentor’s earlier words “you are clearly a skilled writer,” seem pretty hollow now and I’m sure he would take them back if he could.

I am left feeling deflated and fraudulent. I can almost tangibly feel my confidence wasting away. So MANY things to fix, and I’m not sure I have the skill to fix them.

I do not dispute any of the mentor’s comments. He is a pro; I am an amateur. He sees with clarity far in excess of my own. But I am left with the great fear that the entire manuscript is irredeemable, that no amount of editing can fix a story without a solid structure which might be a fair description of Lunatics at this point.

Nevertheless I have paid my money and I all shall forge on: making corrections and edits where I can, restoring chronological order, and trying to make my characters more believable.

Confessions of an Unpublished Novelist: FALSE HOPES

3/26/2014

JANUARY 7

“Wow, I’m very intrigued. You’re clearly a skilled writer. Reading these pages was entirely pleasurable.” These were among the first words emailed to me by mentor, after reading the first 30 pages of Lunatics.

Needless to say, I was thrilled, flattered, feeling pretty good about myself. Maybe, I was thinking, this correspondence course was going to be a piece of cake—no deep editing required, just a tinkering with what was already a strong manuscript. I could easily endure thirty weeks of compliments and back-patting from a knowledgeable and appreciative mentor…

How do you spell "fool's paradise"?

Besides very much enjoying the compliments, I was very impressed at the level of detail my mentor was reading my work. He noted many small inconsistencies that I had glossed over. Perhaps, I thought, my readers would simply give me the benefit of the doubt. After all, it was with such an attitude that I read many other authors—a bit of a softie that way, I suppose.

But no, that was not how this process was going to play out. My mentor was not going to allow get me away with anything. If something wasn’t entirely clear to him, if it struck him as an unlikely action for the character, or an unconvincing choice of words, he was going to let me know right away and expect me to fix it.

Good, I thought. Bring it on. I have been in a writing group for several years. It has been a valuable experience in many ways, but no member of the group has ever been prepared to challenge my writing with such vigour.

And finally my mentor brought up the question of Point of View (POV), professing he was a stickler about keeping it absolutely consistent. He had found at least one instance where I had strayed in this matter.

Okay, okay, little things… I would happily fix them up. No problem. The important thing was the mentor liked my work.

Alas… the honeymoon was to be short-lived…

Confessions of an Unpublished Novelist: the Preamble

3/25/2014

So why write a novel? I have written plenty of short stories; some have won prizes. I have also written a great many stage and radio plays which have met with some small success. Occasionally I have even dabbled in poetry.

But the novel, for better or worse, is the format by which a writer’s worth is measured. It is THE format of our century, and many centuries before. It seems impossible to escape this fact. This is not to take away from the accomplishments of Alice Munro and many other extraordinary masters of short fiction. Yet even they would admit, I think, that the easiest way to make a name for yourself as a writer, is to write a good novel. It is the form that the modern reader best knows, loves, and will pay money to read.

It is no different in the small corner of the writing universe where I live. Published poets are honoured, writers whose short fiction appear in literary magazine likewise acknowledged but, if you truly want to be taken seriously, if you want to be regarded as a bona fide member of the local writing community, you need to have a published novel to your credit.

So, in part at least, writing a novel is about status. Of course, it has nothing to do with money. If you are writing a novel to become wealthy, you are almost certainly delusional.

Mostly, however, I wanted to write a novel to see if I could do it. After much mulling, I think I found a story complex and interesting enough to suit the novel form. Short stories, beautiful and poignant as they can be, necessarily restrict the writer to a smaller tale, a surgical slice in time, a close focus on a small cast of characters.

I looked forward to the "freedom" of the novel format, which would allow me to explore several thematic directions simultaneously, look for complex relationships, delve into arcane details—things like that.

In about nine months I completed the first draft of Lunatics. A very small circle of readers looked through the manuscript, proofread, left me with general impressions, helped me identify areas which needed revision and so forth. After making the appropriate revisions, “polishing” the work as writers sometimes say, I had the sense that the manuscript was ready to see the eyes of publishers.

Wrong. It wasn’t.

This I concluded after several publishers had rejected the manuscript. That being said, on two occasions, publishers did get back to me to ask to see the complete manuscript. Apparently in the opening of the work—the first thirty pages or so—I had done ‘something’ right, enough to warrant at least some initial interest, but no more.

It is no secret that it is probably harder today than ever to get a piece of fiction into print. The number of Canadian publishers of fiction has shrunk almost to nothing. Very little risk taking is going on. Breaking into the market as a new writer is a disheartening quest at best.

For many months I seriously explored the option of self-publishing or, at the very least, presenting the world with Lunatics as an e-book. Such books are all the rage now, and the cost of turning my manuscript into an e-book would not be that great. And the gratification would be nearly immediate when compared to the glacial pace of traditional print publishing. Besides, only months before, my novella, Eta Carinae, had been published by Vagabondage Press as an e-book, so I had already broken into the market, so to speak.

My present thinking however is that the fault lies less with publishers and more with the manuscript itself. In other words, Lunatics, in its present state, is simply not good enough to be published.

Along with my writer friend, Ross Klatte, last fall I presented a five-part talk on writing fiction to a local group of interested retirees. I was very hesitant about agreeing to do this. I had no formal training as a writer. What I knew about the craft was self-taught and largely instinctual. Nevertheless, with help of two very good books by writers who truly did understand the craft, I went ahead and shared what I knew with my retirees.

This was a good and maybe crucial experience for me. I certainly learned every bit as much as my audience, almost certainly more. Many of things I talked about: character, setting, voice—these were all things I felt I understood, but gradually I began to see I didn’t understand them nearly so well as I thought. The greatest boogie man of them all was the idea of STRUCTURE. Again and again I kept reading about the importance of a novel having a very clear and disciplined structure. The novelist, I was being told, if he hope for success, must follow some very specific RULES as he writes.

What was scariest of all in my research was the suggestion that revision was something much deeper than "polishing". A second draft was not just about choosing a better adjective, discarding a repetitive sentence. It was really about seeing that on every page and in every sentence your work obeyed these rules, that your structure was solid at every step. True revision, it was suggested, probably meant a complete re-write of your first draft—no tinkering. Keeping in mind all the ways in which your first draft had failed—and it was given that it would have failed—put away the draft, don’t look at it again, and rewrite from the very beginning! Yikes!

With all these new ideas in my head and filled, at the same time, with a sense of guilt and fear, I spoke to another writer friend, Eileen Pearkes. The structure woes resonated with her—she too struggled with structural problems—and she was a successful, published writer. Why don’t you consider the Humber College Correspondence Creative Writing Course, she suggested? In this course, you are linked up to an established writer who looks through your manuscript in detail and gives you a true substantive edit. [pic]

A substantive edit… a no holds barred look at my work by someone who understood structure, who obeyed rules, and would have no hesitation about telling me where I was breaking them. Well, I thought… this was something the work very likely needed. And if not now, when? Either I would forever be an ‘emerging’ writer, or I could try to take the next step.

I submitted a sample of Lunatics to Humber College. Good enough, apparently; I was accepted into the course along with a dozen or so other writers. I was linked up to my mentor. Starting in the first week of January, I could expect to hear from him and we would be underway. Laying bare my writing ego to whatever assaults awaited. All during the Christmas season of 2013 I psyched myself up for the moment.

I would not be disappointed.

LUNATICS: another draft

8/6/2013

Wernher von Braun, the principal "lunatic" in my novel.

Working on yet another draft on Lunatics, this time with these particular commandments in mind:

· Show, don’t tell.

· Get to the action right away. Explain later.

· Remove as many adjectives and adverbs as possible.

· Start scenes later and end them earlier.

· Raise the stakes. Every scene should be about Death (physical, professional or psychological.)

And finally, most ominous of all, the Grand Commandment

of the Holy Editor in the Sky:

KILL YOUR DARLINGS!

That is, get rid of everything that is probably only of interest to you, the writer.

DON’T BE BORING!!!

Transplants and Novel Pitches

7/10/2013

A few weeks ago, I biked along the BNR trail above Nelson and stopped to collect a few queencup plants and one False Solomon’s Seal. I dug as deeply as I could into the rocky banks, hoping to gather as much of the original root structure as possible, then placed the unsuspecting abductees into my pack and biked home.

I found a nice shady spot for the plants, beneath a huge spruce tree. I packed them in good soil, doing my best to create an environment that would seem homey for them. I am cursed by this romantic notion that nothing could more enchanting in one’s backyard than “wildflowers.”

Now, a few weeks later, five of the eight queencups have clearly bit the dust, as well as the False Solomon’s Seal. Three queencups seem to be hanging on. Their leaves, though not bright and shiny, still are more green than brown, and a single green bead tops a single stem on each plant. If all goes well, when summer ends, these green beads will transform into one of nature’s most attractive shades of blue and become known as blue bead lilies.

On the other hand... perhaps none will survive. Too early to tell… Nine transplants, nine failures. Much sadness…

Tomorrow I sit down for fifteen minutes with a literary agent to pitch my novel Lunatics. It’s a great opportunity. A chance, at least, to get my foot in the door. To create some interest. To have someone in the biz actually read the manuscript and, from there, who knows?

Strangely, I’m quite nervous about this meeting. I’ve been rehearsing my pitch for the last several days, working on it intently, just as I would for learning lines to King Lear.

Yet it’s not the same thing exactly. On stage, I become someone else. If you choose to be critical, you will be being critical of someone else. Tomorrow, however, it is only naked me, my naked ideas, my eloquence (or lack of it), attempting to impress a stranger behind a table. A little different. And no fellow actors to bounce off of. So, yes, I’m a little nervous.

Nevertheless, into the breach we go! Like a flaming lunatic!

Which, I wonder, is more likely to bear fruit? My pitch or my queencups?

Lunatics: Lost in Space (Cyber-space)

4/2/2013

Just received an email from a press which began, "Dear Patient Author". Nice... It apologized for taking so long to get back to me about my novel, Lunatics. Their editor had been dealing with a serious illness recently. All that being said, if I was receiving this message, my manuscript was still under consideration for one of three publishing slots in 2015... You never know...

Oh, how slowly turn the wheels of 21st century publishing. As slowly as reform in the Roman Catholic Church! (But even there, things can and do change. Eventually...)

Guy Consolmagno & the Vatican Observatory

3/31/2013

Brother Guy--A Jesuit and research astronomer--echoes my feelings about the relationship between science and religion very eloquently. At one point he reminds listeners that Scripture says: "God so loved the world that he gave us his Son." Brother Guy emphasizes the fact that it is the "world" that God loves, the physical, real, rational, open-for-investigation world. We are part of this world and, like God himself, are expected to love it. Hence science. Hence environmentalism. Hence all charity and love. Amen.

Br. Consolmagno and part of the Vatican meteorite collection, courtesy Kevin Nickerson

(Originally broadcast on CBC's Quirks and Quarks on April 15, 2006)

Science and religion are often seen in conflict, but that's something Brother Guy Consolmagno would like to put behind us. He's certainly put it behind him. Brother Guy is the Curator of Meteorites of the Vatican Observatory in Arizona, and an accomplished planetary scientist, and he sees no tension at all between his science and his religion. He also thinks many scientists with religious beliefs feel the same way. The conflict, he suspects, is a result of people who know too little about both science and religion.

Click BELOW for the CBC interview with Brother Guy and learn what the Roman Catholic Church really thinks about science.

qq-2013-03-30_04_guy_consolmagno.mp3
File Size:	17348 kb
File Type:	mp3

VATT--the Vatican Observatory, near Tucson, Arizona.

Ready for more? Here what the Vatican Observatory's chief astronomer, Jose Gabriel Funes has to say about the possible existence of
extra-terrestrial intelligence.