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  Lunatic Writer

Confessions of an Unpublished Novelist: the Preamble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.

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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.
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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.



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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!


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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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Lunatics: Lost in Space (Cyber-space)

4/2/2013

1 Comment

 
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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...)

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Guy Consolmagno & the Vatican Observatory

3/31/2013

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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
Download File

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

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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.

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Back to the Moon, please!

2/21/2013

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As most of you know, my novel, Lunatics, is still waiting in the wings to be picked up by some interested publisher. But the clock is ticking... Come on, guys, do you really want to lose me to the great Ba'al of Literature--Self Publishing?

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Most of the  action in Lunatics takes place inside the moon's Copernicus Crater in 1974, during the Apollo XX mission (which, alas, men with very little vision decided to cancel.) Yet all was not lost as the Apollo program ended. Several interesting probes have revisited the moon since, though no humans, of course. Presently orbiting the moon is the magnificent Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter which, for the last several years, has been taking thousands upon thousands of ultra-high resolution images of the moon, in preparation for our return there.

Below is a view of the central peak of Tycho Crater, very similar in form to the central Peak of Copernicus Crater. A geologically complex and geographically stunning location.
How could one not want to go there?
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Stunning image or what? 



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My wife and I visited the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Lab in Phoenix, Arizona a couple of years ago.  I even arranged for a guided tour.  I will never forget the sadness in the voice of the scientist who led the tour when he reflected on the fact that all this magnificent reconnaissance work, creating images with a resolution of less than one metre in some cases,  might all be for naught. 

George Bush had proposed a new and ambitious program to return astronauts to the moon, and, with that announcement, the community of lunar scientists jumped for joy.  But as Bush's administration ended, so did their lunar dreams...

Make moon landings, not war...


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Lunatics Update

11/16/2012

1 Comment

 
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Publishers who have rejected the manuscript:  7

Publishers who have not yet responded: 7



Mental health of author (/10):  7






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Still Waiting...

11/4/2012

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Submitting your work can be discouraging--enough to make one grow negligent about blogging! (Mea culpa.)  Still, it must be less stressful than the constant auditioning which actors must do (just ask my daughter) where you must stare rejection in the face on a daily basis. As an author, you can at least fantasize,  for as long as the  reading phase takes, that your work has been well received.

Over time, I am growing a little more thick-skinned. There are a hundred good reasons why a publisher may not choose your work, many of which do not reflect on your worth as a writer.  Much as it is in the actor’s world, where sometimes they’re looking for a very particular “look”, or the director has imagined a particular voice quality which you don’t have, or the producer would feel safer going with a well-known name, factors entirely out of your control are likely to decide your fate. 

Nonetheless, rejection, even the spaced-out, more distant rejections a writer must endure, do take a toll. I find I must allow myself several months between submissions—time enough to the let the echoing rings of rejection fade before I send my stuff out again.

Here's how Lunatics has so far fared: I sent off my first manuscript to a Canadian publisher in November, 2011.  To this date I have not heard back or even received an acknowledgement that the publisher has received my work.  I KNOW small publishing houses are busy, but a couple of sentences in an email? How hard can it be?  I will count this one as a rejection.

A friend suggested I might find more satisfaction from American publishers. Certainly I’ve found more courtesy. Several acknowledged the receipt of my manuscript by email, and two have since informed me that Lunatics doesn’t meet their “requirements” at this time.

(And probably not later either, I suspect.)

So far then, I’ve had three official rejections of out thirteen submissions. Six of my submissions were sent out only in October of 2012, so the wind hasn’t been taken out of my sails completely… And, in the meantime, my novella, Eta Carinae, HAS been accepted for publication. Hurrah for Vagabondage Press!

Of course, just waiting to hear back from publishers is a recipe for insanity. There can be no better remedy than to start a brand new novel, and so I have. And this time, it's a murder story. Based on a true one. Set in the mining camps of British Columbia in the 1880s.  Working title: Big Ledge.



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    ​Author

    Brian d'Eon, fiction writer: whose work modulates between speculative, historical and magical realism.

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