I came back.
I needed to go away for a while.
When I was a kid, my parents neither wanted nor encouraged me to write shit down on paper.
I was created during the Age of Paper.
I have a number of friends who are writers struggling to be published.
I have this question for them:
What do you expect?
I'll get back to that in a while, but I want you to keep thinking about it: What do you expect?
And then what?
I bet you guys aren't even thinking two moves ahead as you toil over the positioning of your exploratory pawn.
Remember that stack of manuscripts I have sitting here in my office?
It got even bigger this week. I found another one. A version of The Marbury Lens from a while ago. I can't remember.
My office is very clean and open now. I should post a picture of it. Maybe I will, too, when I get back to that question that I want my as-yet-unpublished writer friends to keep thinking about.
I have a couple things I am obligated to turn in this year.
I have never, never, never written anything on assignment -- except for the stuff I had to do when I was a journalist.
I hated being a journalist.
I quit putting shit on paper and became a sort of bum with wanderlust because of it.
Someone -- harmlessly, I might add -- remarked something like Look at all those trees you killed! when I posted the picture of my original manuscripts (which is now bigger).
What can I say? I came out of the Age of Paper.
So, I am thinking I am going to write my next book by hand on the backs of the pages of my original manuscripts.
Somewhere out there, an agent and an editor just got a stomach ache.
My handwriting looks like it was done by a sleep-deprived seven-year-old boy on a tilt-a-whirl.
stet
My dear friend, the copy editor who is working on Passenger, said something like this: Next time you write a book, you should provide a list of words you choose to freakishly mutate ahead of time, so your editors' heads do not become troubled.
Well. She didn't say it exactly like that, but I probably should do that because I do derive some sick satisfaction creating lexical centipedes.
Are you guys still thinking about that question?
7 comments:
Since I believe that I said something along those lines, I should say that I indirectly support the death of trees. Comparing the multitude of books on my bookshelves to the relatively few e-books on my computer, trees have probably come to fear the times when I buy books.
Ha! I didn't take it in a negative way at all, Charles. But I have been in a very dark mood lately, and I was thinking What if I wrote my next book by hand on scraps of paper and then turned that in? Would the presentation diminish the content? If so, does the content even matter? What do I expect? These, and dreams of dying, are things that keep me up at night.
Hope or expectation? I expect to work for a really long time and fight to keep boots off my neck. I expect to be told that my work is too much or not enough of whatever. I expect to be whacked upside the head like the redheaded stepchild I am. I expect I will whack back in my own way. I expect to be stressed out, fed up, and pissed off. I expect I will keep writing.
What I did not expect was the joy of community with other writers who have become friends--you, Matthew, Jonathan, Helene, Amy, Sara.
I've been thinking about that note. What I remember is "writer = god. It's your universe." Language, physics, geography your choice. I think being a copy editor is like being the historian/linguist in this universe. You want a pink sun, it's yours. I'll make sure it's pink on mspp. 61 and 343 and in book 4 of the series. (The list of words ahead of time simply saves money; if the c/e gets it right in the manuscript, then there are fewer ea's in the proofs.)
No talk of nightmares today.
Yes. What Kristin said.
I have hopes that may or may not be dashed.
If I'm being totally honest, I expected to fail before I even got this far. I still think that someone is going to pop out and tell me that it's all a joke.
Or that when I go out on sub nothing will come of it, and I'll go back to saying that I'm writing for myself and that it's okay if no one ever reads a word I written. I may even believe that.
Like Kristen, I've already gained far more than I would have dreamed of in terms of the people I've connected with and the positive feedback I've gotten.
That probably sounds very naive and pollyanna-ish to you. But you asked.
I love the idea of writing on scraps, by the way. I think those pages should then be photographed and compiled like that into a book.
I have thought about the question. What do I expect? I expect to write, rewrite, and rewrite until an agent picks up my work. Perhaps, I will go through two, three, four, five, or six agents. In due course, more books will be written, rewritten, and rewritten. One of these books will be picked up by a publisher. The editor and I shall work to make it the best book we can. The book will be published.
I will keep writing.
Adam:
I'd say that's about right.
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