Tuesday, December 13
Back at it, sort of
So I wrote for about an hour tonight -- ok, let's say I edited about five pages of Les Dempsey Tries Again -- at the Borders coffee shop while my son took his weekly percussion lesson. It felt good. But in the back of my head was bit of sadness. Here's why:
(but before I do, let's remind that the point of this blog is to capture the feelings and state of mind of a writer in real time (at least real time from my point of view; I understand you the few readers often come to it in a compressed frame of ref) and to track the progress, and to some degree spur progress by reporting back to the few regular readers on how it's going here on the edge of nowhere not far from Utopia, Colorado, that yes, in fact, I'm still working on my books and making progress, such as it is.)
What's sad is how hard this is, not from a process standpoint (which feels somewhat remarkably easy for me, what-I-was-born-to-do-easy in a way), but from a results standpoint. So my frame of mind these days is iffy due to the nature of what I try to do. I write long perhaps unpublishable fiction, and that prospect is grim. If I were a musician or an artist of some sort, I could get feedback and see where I'm at. I could play a song on my selected instrument or sing a song and watch you listen and bob your head along to the beat or smile at my clever lyrics or even get up and dance. If I made art, paintings or sculpture or photographs or acted or danced or whatever, I could lug around a portfolio or break into character and show you, make you look and in an instant or two I could see you wrinkle your nose or nod appreciatively or go pale or whatever. The process would be the same-- hours of effort and thought and practice and Pursuit of Art, but the response would be vastly different. Or so it seems.
Since I write novels that seem to exist only in a manuscript form (and draft manuscript form at that in which I can't seem to get much past second drafts before I move on to a new project), I can't just show it to you and get the feedback I'd get from nearly any other form of art. You'd have to commit ten or twenty hours spread over several days or weeks to read it, and I couldn't sit here and watch you read it. I'd have to wait for a response of some sort and likely be disappointed in the shortness of the response, because you'd say wow that's good and be polite but I'd want to know details, what worked, what didn't, who did you like who didn't you believe, what's the problems and what do you think if I did this or that, or what did you think of this choice or that?
And even then, you'd have to be someone who was interested in reading the genre I'm writing to commit that sort of time, which genre isn't mystery or horror or western or detective or chick lit or young adult or fanfict or scifi or.... but boring old ordinary run of the mill general commercial fiction with aspirations of literary fiction or great american novel 'tude (based on my huge writer's ego which will either prove to be humbly prophetic or grandly delusional), a genre that includes very few willing readers (just look at the best sellers list) particularly when the author is just another semi-over educated middle-age suburban middle class white guy. (And I'm not seeking readers, because several of you have offered (and I'm very appreciative of that) and I do have plans to dump a manuscript of a few of you one of these days).
So, anyway, long story short, I'm just kind of bumming I suppose about all this effort I can't help making in this weirdly ambitious hobby of writing long narrative fiction.
Go figure.
And now, three more hours til we go to the midnight first showing of Kong, which has been printed boldly in blue on our calendar for about six months now. It's finally arrived.
(but before I do, let's remind that the point of this blog is to capture the feelings and state of mind of a writer in real time (at least real time from my point of view; I understand you the few readers often come to it in a compressed frame of ref) and to track the progress, and to some degree spur progress by reporting back to the few regular readers on how it's going here on the edge of nowhere not far from Utopia, Colorado, that yes, in fact, I'm still working on my books and making progress, such as it is.)
What's sad is how hard this is, not from a process standpoint (which feels somewhat remarkably easy for me, what-I-was-born-to-do-easy in a way), but from a results standpoint. So my frame of mind these days is iffy due to the nature of what I try to do. I write long perhaps unpublishable fiction, and that prospect is grim. If I were a musician or an artist of some sort, I could get feedback and see where I'm at. I could play a song on my selected instrument or sing a song and watch you listen and bob your head along to the beat or smile at my clever lyrics or even get up and dance. If I made art, paintings or sculpture or photographs or acted or danced or whatever, I could lug around a portfolio or break into character and show you, make you look and in an instant or two I could see you wrinkle your nose or nod appreciatively or go pale or whatever. The process would be the same-- hours of effort and thought and practice and Pursuit of Art, but the response would be vastly different. Or so it seems.
Since I write novels that seem to exist only in a manuscript form (and draft manuscript form at that in which I can't seem to get much past second drafts before I move on to a new project), I can't just show it to you and get the feedback I'd get from nearly any other form of art. You'd have to commit ten or twenty hours spread over several days or weeks to read it, and I couldn't sit here and watch you read it. I'd have to wait for a response of some sort and likely be disappointed in the shortness of the response, because you'd say wow that's good and be polite but I'd want to know details, what worked, what didn't, who did you like who didn't you believe, what's the problems and what do you think if I did this or that, or what did you think of this choice or that?
And even then, you'd have to be someone who was interested in reading the genre I'm writing to commit that sort of time, which genre isn't mystery or horror or western or detective or chick lit or young adult or fanfict or scifi or.... but boring old ordinary run of the mill general commercial fiction with aspirations of literary fiction or great american novel 'tude (based on my huge writer's ego which will either prove to be humbly prophetic or grandly delusional), a genre that includes very few willing readers (just look at the best sellers list) particularly when the author is just another semi-over educated middle-age suburban middle class white guy. (And I'm not seeking readers, because several of you have offered (and I'm very appreciative of that) and I do have plans to dump a manuscript of a few of you one of these days).
So, anyway, long story short, I'm just kind of bumming I suppose about all this effort I can't help making in this weirdly ambitious hobby of writing long narrative fiction.
Go figure.
And now, three more hours til we go to the midnight first showing of Kong, which has been printed boldly in blue on our calendar for about six months now. It's finally arrived.
