Lunatic Writer's Blog

The Draper Catalogue

7/13/2016

After more than a year of writing, the first draft of my novel, The Draper Catalogue, is done. (No one seems to like the title, by the way . . . I'm open to alternate suggestions.)
The genre is a departure for me. This time I've delved into the world of Sci-Fi/ Young Adult. Every part of the plot is driven by imagination--no historical facts to consider at all--well, just a few . . . .

Before starting serious work on the second draft, I would very much like to have some beta-readers have a look, give me their general impressions, what works, what doesn't, what the story still needs . . .
If you have it in your heart to tackle such a project, I would be ever grateful.

Please have a look at the first chapter and see if you're inspired to read more.

Entallay

The protagonist of my story, Henrietta Draper, spends part of her time on Earth, and part, on the planet Entallay which orbits the star HD 10307 in the constellation Andromeda. This is a real star by the way, and one very much like our sun, so that it should possess a habitable planet is quite possible.

I've used the landscape rendering program Vista Pro to create my alien landscape, a world of great oceans and multiple mountainous islands. An overhead view is shown above. Below is a view from one of the mountain tops.

Interested in reading more? Send me a comment.

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Confessions of an Unpublished Novelist: the Preamble

3/25/2014

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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.

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Nostalgia Binge Continues: My Second Novel

6/3/2013

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My next novel, The Charioteer, was completed during my second year of university (I did this rather than playing bridge). It follows the adventures of a young man traveling throughout Greece (as I myself had done the year before) and his encounter with one very unusual man who may be a reincarnation of a Bronze-Age warrior. This manuscript was sent to a couple of publishers and read by author Gwendolyn McEwan who, like myself, was something of a Hellenophile. She said my writing reminded her of Gerald Durrell's. I had never read any of his books, but I figured this comment couldn't be all bad. The writer in residence at the U-of-T at this time was Josef Skvorecky. I'm pretty sure he read over a bit of the manuscript too and, in the end, I believe I sent it out to a few publishers.

The title refers to a magnificent bronze sculpture found in the museum of Delfi, in Greece--for me, it was the very epitome of lightness and grace. No photo really does it justice.

I suppose, at this point, had I sufficient courage, I might seriously have considered writing as a career. Instead I went into teaching where I thought I might safely indulge my many and diverse interests. (But please, no jokes about "those who can't, teach…")

Seems I've done a bit of name dropping in this blog... My bad.

Gwendolyn

Gerald

Josef

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Looking Back: My First Novel

6/1/2013

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I have written four novels, none as yet published. The first, Tangents, (I still think that's a pretty good title) was written as a teenager, still in high school. This angst-ridden tome follows the day-to-day tribulations of (wait for it...) a high school student, making his way through the hypocritical world of secondary education. If the novel has a theme, it would be how difficult it is to "connect" and find meaning. Hence, the title. I'm not sure where the manuscript is today--perhaps buried in a box in my basement. It was never sent to a publisher.
Most memorable about Tangents is how it provided me with the best excuse EVER for not having my homework done. I remember the morning vividly. I was in French class. I don't know why but all the high school French teachers I ever had were small, yet fierce, women. This particular one would walk down the rows as class began and check the status of each student's homework. Finally my turn came. "Is your homework done?" she asked, fire in her eyes, her high heels clicking threateningly on the linoleum flooring. Bleary-eyed I replied. "I'm sorry, Madame, I was up really late last night, finishing my novel." This was not the answer she was expecting. She paused for a moment, decided she would say nothing, then moved on to interrogate the next student.

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The Draper Catalogue

Entallay

Interested in reading more? Send me a comment.

Confessions of an Unpublished Novelist: the Preamble

Nostalgia Binge Continues: My Second Novel

Looking Back: My First Novel

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