Put Your Novel in the Microwave
I know that book length fiction behaves badly at times, punishing the author with subversive side trips, falling plot points, strange interludes of cross-genre heaving, the sinking feeling that Miss Snark is looking over your shoulder consulting the crapometer. Action verbs, gerunds, entire passages from Kaavya Viswanathan, Bibilcal references, and global warming riddle the page while you wonder if your career as a hod carrier will ever blossom the way Chairman Mao envisioned?
I cry uncle: much-loved manuscript FLAMINGO DAWN is home from the wars. Only two years old, it has encountered schoolyard bullies, lost of few pints of blood, dislocated a few bones. So, it is now in Bay Three where a crack team of mechanics tore it apart and I have their estimate. Major rewrite. The little fellow needs new structure.
Step one: Weeping. I’ve hired a team of professional mourners. They shriek as I dissect the manuscript. Unlike dead frogs this experiment yields no tactile results, no cries from the faint of heart. Structure? I’ll give you structure…okay all the scenes from the protagonists point of view? Line up. This is gym class for the soul.
January 17th, 2007 at 12:44 pm
Why do we do this thing we do? I feel your pain or my pain through your pain. Struggle on!
January 17th, 2007 at 1:52 pm
Having “Flamingo Dawn” fly back to its nest is truly upsetting; I was confident your book was going to be published, and I became even more certain the longer the publisher sat on it (and the more levels of review it underwent).
Coming within a micrometer of publication is an awful experience, and while I’m not a professional mourner (though I am a highly regarded amateur), I’ll mourn for free. (But rending my garments will cost you).
On the admittedly limited upside, the publisher hung on to your manuscript for so long that the book ought to be quite cold by now. And there IS a certain morbid joy in tearing apart a cold manuscript (I’m just starting in on an old one of mine).
Revising when the book’s been sitting for a couple of years iss kind of like a medieval dining experience–you can rip off whole haunches and wave them about, and don’t even need to worry about the grease dribbling down your chin and on to your tunic.
(You do write in a tunic, don’t you?)
January 17th, 2007 at 2:04 pm
David, my tunic went to the dry cleaners, but I do like the medieval dining experience even if it’s only Applebees.
Steve, I never minded gym class. Once while running laps I found a four leaf clover made of Astroturf.
January 17th, 2007 at 3:59 pm
Damn!
January 17th, 2007 at 5:55 pm
When you run does it make the sound of two boards being beaten together in an empty concert hall? et tu Brute:)
January 18th, 2007 at 7:30 am
Steve, are you channeling your inner Vollman?
January 18th, 2007 at 12:05 pm
Ah if there were only an inner Vollman and no outer Vollman to contend with.