05/06/2006: "Novel Done (Basically)"

Hi All,

Well, I may be finished THE FIGHTER. Maybe. Can't say for sure. I had until Monday to get my finalized draft to my editor, but she will undoubtedly have a few minor suggestions, probably not more than a day's worth of work. So I'm finally ready---almost---to become a productive member of society again; of course, my other editors will want to take a look, but since it's set to be pubbed in Canada come October, there is not much time for big changes, and quite honestly I don't know that I'm up to making them. So, almost done. Maybe...maybe...all done.

This novel has been, by far, the most difficult thing I've ever done. I can't say that makes it a good piece of work, but I'm oddly proud of how it turned out. It's amazing, I went through earlier drafts of it---I'm technically on draft 7!---and it's changed so much: characters killed off and new ones added (I had to kill a handicapped character named Michael; that was sort of rough), whole new chapters, new sequences, shifts in character personality, new prologue, new epilogue, changed prologue, cut epilogue, etc, etc, etc. It comes in at a fighting trim of 72,000 words, down from its balloonish off-season weight of 95,000; when I added up all the drafts, the bits I wrote and ditched, I ended up writing close to 150,000 words; so basically, two novels, but I only kept the one. It's not a perfect book; in all honesty, it's messy and aggressive and nasty and gross and I'm sure some people will lambaste it and they have every right to (I mean, screw them, but they still have the right).

I see it like this: next fall, there will be hundreds of sleek aerodynamic books on the literary runway, all clamoring to catch one of those wonderful thermal updrafts that lift some books to success while others crash in the cattails just beyond the runway. Then there will be THE FIGHTER. Where I envision these other books as sleek airplanes---Learjets and 757s and the like---I see my book as this crazy abomination: one wing shorter than the other, no windows at all, no landing gear, the engine unaccountably on the outside of the plane...no, no, I see it like that flying contraption you sometimes see in grainy old pre-Wright Brothers footage, that wacky flying machine that looked like a giant beach parasol attached to the guts of a Model T Ford, bouncing up and down going nowhere.

And while it may be a crazy looking contraption, and while others will frown upon it and thumb their noses, I, the architect of said abomination, will be standing at the edge of the runway in those silly old biplane pilot goggles and a bomber jacker, maybe even a rakish scarf, smoking a pencil-thin cigarillo beaming proudly at what I have wrought. I will point to it and say, "I made that." And others will look away or treat me as though I bear some tropical flesh-eating disease, yet still will I say, "I made that."

Because even if it's not your father's Oldsmobile, it's mine, and I love it. Quite often I hated it; quite often I wanted to erase my computer's hard drive and kill it; quite often I woke up in the morning and stared into the yawning black pit of my monitor and considered all the other things I could have put my sizeble energies into such as pyramid scams and bilking senile retirees; quite often I went to war with the damn thing and racked up as many brutal defeats as I did hard-won victories.

Someone the other day asked me about my mindest regarding this novel, and I told them that I was glad---and sincerely, I am---that it was such a prolonged and difficult process and that, basically by attrition, I pulled it out. I was happy, I said, that I ended up putting so much extra work into it because now I can deal with the following scenarios: (a) if it does moderately well, at least well enough so that publishers will take a chance on me again down the line, I can say, "Well, I deserve some of that, because I worked my ass off for this damn book. And (b) if it piss-tanks, which is a distinct possibility, I'll be able to say, "Listen, I wrote this to the best of my talents at the time, [CUE OVERDRAMATIC BREAST-BEATING] I gave the best years of my LIFE to that book!" Okay, seriously, I can say that I worked as hard as I've ever worked, and if it does poorly, I am in a pretty decent mental headspace to accept that---which, before the publication of RUST AND BONE, I wouldn't have thought terribly important; now I feel it's crucial. And if I hadn't put in those extra hours, then maybe I would've had regrets...okay, listen, you're always going to have regrets, but my regrets won't be about me not pushing myself to give this book the best shot I could.

And I'd like to thank my agent, Sarah, and my editor, Helen, for their edits and suggestions along the way. I've often thought over these last nine months of on-and-off editing, that it might have been the best thing that the first two people to read the book were women---who, as I've said before, have very little reason to read my writing. All the other editors who've bought the book are, unsuprisingly, men; I think what if one of them had read it first---what would their sense of it have been, and would the edits have been totally different? It's interesting, because Sarah and Helen's stamp is on the book in major ways; I made every effort to include their edits, as I trust their opinions and think it made the book better. I have had lots of luck along the way in my writing life, and sometimes I've thought that's been part of it---though at the time, when I was having to absorb their edits, I may not have thought so.

Well, anyway, this all sounds rather maudlin or angst-y, which is not really the point, nor is it really the sum total truth. I wrote a book. No big whoop. Stephen King's written what, hundreds? But I'll say that this, my third novel, was by far the hardest---not just the hardest book to write, but probably the hardest thing I've ever done. Mostly it was the wrestling with my own self-doubt, which honestly, has never been a problem for me before, at least when it came to writing. It was actually a lot easier, I think, when I was unpublished, or little published; then it was just a matter of me convincing myself, as you need to, that anyone who rejected my stuff, "Didn't see where I was coming from" or whatever. Which was as much self-deceit as anything, but still, it got me through. I don't know what's changed in the interceding time, but certainly something. The mind is a subtle organ, and it goes wrong in subtle ways. Not to say that my mind's gone wrong; at least, I don't think so.

I just turned angst-y again, didn't I? What the hell! My excuse is that my bursitis is acting up (I'm lying; I don't have burcitis; I don't even know what it is). Anyway, listen, this post was generally to get across the point that my novel is done (basically) and that, yeah, I'm going to take a break for a bit and do some research, then start writing a new novel.

All best, Craig.