The next book

As I approach the end of my second book, I find myself looking ahead to my third with great excitement.  A couple days ago, I mentioned some of my ideas to my wife, and over dinner, we hashed out a few specific themes of the next story and a possible protagonist. 

I like it a lot.  I will probably allow the idea to percolate in my head a while and talk to my agent about it, but I may have settled on something, which is both a thrill and a relief.   

There is a document that is almost always open on my laptop that contains a running list of potential writing ideas, and I am constantly adding to this list, stealing from it, and refining it.  This includes ideas for future characters and settings, potential Op-Ed and poetry topics, an idea for a coffee table book, and much more.  Also included on this list was the idea for my next book, or more accurately, the three ideas that I intend to combine in order to craft my next story.

One idea comes from a conversation that I had with a student a couple years ago.  My student said something amusing, and it led to an idea for a unique business model that I thought would serve well as the basis of a story. 

Another idea originated while driving through rural Connecticut on a Sunday afternoon.  I drove past a general store set high upon a hill, and before I had crossed into the next town, I had the idea for a story.

The third comes from a documentary that I saw last year on HBO.  I found a specific individual in the film quite compelling and thought that I could one day base a character around her life story. 

These three elements will likely form the basis of my next book, though things are always subject to change.  I had the first three chapters of my current book written before realizing that the only thing that was working was the protagonist, Milo.  I scrapped the idea, abandoned the twenty pages of text, rescued Milo, and placed him in an entirely different story. 

This is the book that I am in the process of completing.  Can't wait!

My actual office

Having mentioned that I have an office that I retreat to on occasion, I thought I'd give you a peek of what it looked like.  Surrounded on three sides by five ancient, drafty windows, the room is full of natural light and offers a great view of the backyard and our quiet, little neighborhood. 

My office

A couple years ago, Elysha bought me a book by Kurt Vonnegut’s widow, Jill Krementz, entitled The Writer’s Desk. The book contains a collection of photographs of the work spaces of well known authors and a short description of the author’s writing process, written by the author. It’s essentially a glimpse into the offices, studios and other locales where writers like Amy Tan, John Updike and Joyce Carol Oats hone their craft.

In the front of the book, Elysha wrote a note expressing her assurance that the next edition of the book would include my own office, but I’m not so sure that she is correct. With the advent of the laptop, my office has become the last place that I write, despite its charm. The living room, the dining room table, the lunch room at school, the back seat of a car, and anywhere else that I can find fifteen minutes of quiet is where most of my writing is done. I’m writing this post inside Tiffany Nails, the nail salon where my wife gets her manicures. This is our first outing with the baby, and though Judge Judy is babbling away from the television in the corner, I’m managing to get a little work done nonetheless.

For writers like me, the world has become our office. And this shift in the way that writing is done has resulted in some interesting benefits.

Scientific American recently reported on the means by which the brain files information so that things that happen at the same time are forever linked in our minds. This is the reason why people remember where they were when news of 9/11, the Challenger disaster, or Kennedy’s assassination reached them.

For me, I heard that the World Trade Center had been hit while teaching writing to third graders and watched the towers fall in my principal’s office while my students were in music class.

I was in Mr. Offen’s eighth grade algebra class when the vice principal brought us news of the Challenger disaster.

I was not alive when Kennedy was shot, but those who are old enough to remember can surely tell you where they were on that day. But I do remember standing in Lisa Pinto’s living room when news of the Operation Desert Storm was first announced on CNN, and I was in a Dunkin Donuts drive-thru when I heard about the loss of the Columbia over Texas over the radio.

Events linked forever in my mind.

The same holds true for writing. As I reread sections of SOMETHING MISSING, I am instantly transported to the location and time that I wrote those parts.

The first three chapters, written at the counter in the kitchen of my wife’s grandmother’s home in Boca Raton.

Martin’s entrance and eventual escape from Laura’s Green’s home, written poolside in Bermuda during our honeymoon. In fact, the little girl who Martin meets in Laura’s backyard was modeled after a little girl who I met while swimming one day.

Martin’s encounter with the Claytons, written while alone in a Denver hotel.

Martin’s encounter with his father, written during a series of lunch breaks at school.

The last four chapters of the book, written at the dining room table in our old apartment during an unexpected three day holiday from work.

Each of these scenes is indelibly linked to my locale, my mood, my personal circumstances and my surroundings at the time of the writing. Each chapter carries a vast storehouse of memories and emotions that I adore. For me, writing is a joyous occasion, and to be able to reflect back on those moments and relive the excitement that writing can bring is a blessing that the best of offices could not afford.

Clara Susan Dicks and a couple pages too

Stephen King has written about the importance of a supportive spouse to a writer, and I couldn’t agree more. While on our honeymoon two years ago, I spent hours by the pool working on SOMETHING MISSING while my wife, Elysha, basked in the Bermuda rays.

Yesterday our first child was born, a girl named Clara Susan. My wife and I arrived at the hospital around midnight and she contracted until about 8:00 AM before starting to push. Ultimately she would push for almost four hours before the doctors decided that a c-section was necessary.

Not an easy experience for my wife.

But during the eight hours of contractions, there is little to do but try to sleep and remain relaxed. With an epidural on board, Elysha felt no pain, so there was simply a lot of waiting and attempts to sleep. So I opened up the laptop and began writing. A couple of the nurses gave me an odd look when they saw that I was pecking away at the computer while my wife was being examined for dilation and effacement, but Elysha didn’t mind a bit. In fact, during one of these exams, she turned to me and asked, “What are you working on?”

“Milo,” I said, referencing the current manuscript.

“Good,” she said. “Keep working.”

I did, until it was time to push. Then I was required to hold a leg, whisper words of encouragement, and refrain from passing out.

It was quite a day. I ended up with a brand new daughter and also managed to get a few pages closer to finishing my book.

Stephen King was right. A supportive spouse makes all the difference.

The end is in sight

Exciting news. I discovered how my latest book will end. I haven’t reached the last chapter yet, but in wrapping up a crucial chapter late last night, I caught a glimpse of how things might end for Milo.

One moment I was clueless, and the next moment, I was not.

I say might because I’m never sure about anything in a book until the words are on the page. As I’ve said before, there’s no telling where these characters might eventually take me.

But I like the ending as I envisioned it last night and hope I can get there with the idea still viable and intact. Up until last night, I had no idea how things might turn out for Milo. I had a general direction in which to send him, but as for how things might actually wrap up, I only had the faith that something would eventually come to mind.

I think it finally has. Hooray for the seemingly mindless miracle of storytelling.

Pieces of me

Nicholson Baker has a new book out, a non-fiction piece about World War II entitled Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization, and I heard him speak about it and other topics on a recent New York Public Library podcast. He said something quite interesting during the talk, which I have since fallen in love with. When asked if a viewpoint in his latest book represents his own, Baker said that as a novelist, you “…take little pieces of yourself and grow them artificially.”

I couldn’t agree more.

When friends began reading the first drafts of SOMETHING MISSING, the question most often asked was if I had actually engaged in the kind of thievery that the book describes. Some of Elysha’s family members even took her aside and asked if I was a thief before meeting her.

While the answer is sadly no, there are certain parts of Martin’s character that come directly from me, though I did not realize it at the time. As I was writing the book, I was in therapy for post traumatic stress disorder, the result of an armed robbery from more than a decade before. The robbery had left me with constant, reoccurring nightmares and a host of other symptoms that I did not understand until I began speaking to a therapist.

My propensity to plan.

The ease to which I am startled.

My need to identify all exits in a building before feeling safe.

The ritual of analyzing alternatives to almost any situation.

My desire to sit facing the door of a restaurant whenever possible.

As the therapy and the book progressed, it became clear to me that Martin’s methodical, cautious, thoughtful nature was a piece of me, a part of myself that I was unconsciously expressing in words. My therapist brought this to my attention after hearing about Martin and his story in one of our session. When I finished outlining the book for him, he asked, “Where did you get the name Martin?”

“I don’t know. It just came to me.”

"You realize,” he said, “that you couldn’t have found a name closer to your own if you had tried.”

Ironically, I hadn’t.

Since then, I have come to find parts of myself in many of my characters, and this newfound awareness has helped me to empathize and embrace some of my less than savory characters. In my current manuscript, Milo, my protagonist, recently encountered a man named Louis, who is a bit of a hedonist. While Louis and I have little in common in terms of appearance, behavior or lifestyle, Louis’s hedonism comes from a belief that he and I both share in regards to the nature of individuality and normalcy as it relates to society. We share a common belief, but we choose to express that belief in divergent ways. In fact, a science fiction fan might think of Louis as a bizarre and misguided version of me from some alternate universe.

But the fact remains: Louis, Martin, Milo, and most of my characters are pieces of me, grown artificially, as Nicholson Baker so eloquently stated.

Punctuation matters

It's always so nice to find someone who shares the same pet peeves as me.

This is why I was thrilled to find the "blog" of "unnecessary" quotation marks, a site dedicated to the excessive and pointless use quotation marks in the world.

The posts, almost all including a photo, are quite amusing. 

My favorite example of this blatant act of stupidity, which I've written about before, is the national chain:

   

Please note that they even took to time to register their trademark stupidity. 

The unexpected

I’m often questioned as to how I can be surprised by something that happens in the book that I am writing when I am the one doing the writing.

“Don’t you know what’s going to happen next?” Oftentimes the answer is no, and this is one of my favorite parts about writing. Here’s a great example:

In my current manuscript, my protagonist, Milo, is attempting to check out of a hotel. There are several stumbling blocks in this process that I won’t get into now, but eventually Milo must interact with the desk clerk in order to settle his bill and leave. Standard hotel procedure, if you will.

But here’s the surprise. It turns out that the desk clerk, a woman named Lily, has a role in my book. In fact, she’s the central figure in the longest chapter that I’ve written so far. But until Milo began speaking to Lily, I had no idea who this woman was and never expected her to play anything more than a bit role in the story. In fact, I expected Milo and Lily’s conversation to last no more than three to four sentences.

But as Milo began talking, Lily responded, and before I knew it, a new chapter was born.

This is what I mean by being surprised. In my mind, Milo should’ve been in North Carolina by now, attempting to complete his self-assigned mission. But along the way, Lily appeared. And this chapter involving her seemed to almost write itself.

At least two characters in SOMETHING MISSING were also surprises to me, and both play pivotal roles in the novel. 

I know it sounds strange that a writer can be surprised about the words that he writes, but this is why I urge reluctant, lazy writers or writers who have big plans but no pages yet to just sit down and start pecking away at the keys.

You never knew what might happen.

My beginning

In the acknowledgements of SOMETHING MISSING, I thank Mark Compopiano, my high school English teacher, for teaching me that “words can change minds.” When I entered Mr. Compo’s English class, I thought of myself of a good writer. Though I couldn’t type or spell to save my life and nothing I submitted was ever on time, the words and sentences came easily to me, and I had a lot to say. I wrote for the school newspaper and kept a diary off and on during my high school career, and I wrote lots of notes to girls.

Though I never thought that writing could become a career for me, I also managed to make a little money with my ability. For a short period of time, I went into the business of writing and selling term papers for my fellow students. Charging between $25-$100 depending on the topic and length of the paper, I managed to buy my first car, a 1976 Chevy Malibu, with the profits of this covert operation.

The day that changed life as a writer was November 29, 1988. On that day, I handed in an assignment in which I was asked to write a satirical piece that expressed humor. I wrote a piece on how America claims to be the land of the free, yet young men can be forcibly sent to foreign countries in order to kill strangers. I also noted that it is illegal to engage in prostitution and commit suicide, both seemingly personal decisions, and that many states restricted the rights of homosexuals.

In reading this piece today, I cringe. It is not well written. It is not funny. It is barely satirical. But on that November morning, I was certain that I was handing in a masterpiece, so three days later, December 2, 1988, when Mr. Compo handed back the assignment with a grade of B-, I was confounded. Scrawled across the paper were the words "Not satire" (as well as "Many spelling errors!"). At the top of the page, Mr. Compo had written:

Some of this is not satire. It’s too obvious.

I disagreed. Despite his years of experience, I had decided in that moment that Mr. Compo was wrong. He had no clue what satire was and had missed the whole point of my piece. Emboldened by overconfidence and teenage bravado, I approached his desk and protested my grade. We debated the merits of my piece for a while, and finally, he offered a solution:

Read the piece to the class. If a majority believes that it is satire, I will increase your score by one letter grade. But if a majority agrees with me, we decrease your score by one letter grade.

Basking in self-assurance and unable to resist a challenge, I agreed. Though this was a serious English class filled with many serious-minded, teaching-pleasing girls, I was also certain that I was right and that they would side with me.

They did.

By a unanimous vote, the class declared my work as satire and my B- was instantly transformed into an A-. I still have the assignment upon which the change in score is noted.

After reading the piece aloud, Mr. Compo admitted that the tone in which I read the piece helped in delineating the satire quite a bit, and what initially sounded dry and rhetorical came to life as I spoke the words.

Some of David Sedaris’s work can be like this. Read it and you think, “That was amusing.” Listen to him read it and you’re rolling on the floor in fits of laughter.

Don’t get me wrong. I was no David Sedaris, nor am I anywhere in his league today. My piece, which was entitled Welcome to America, is amateurish, silly, and somewhat embarrassing as I read it today, but on that December morning, I learned that my words are capable of changing minds. On that morning, I had changed the mind of a man I respected a great deal, perhaps the man who I respected the most at that time, and from then on, I knew that I wanted to write.

It would be another fifteen years before I would even begin writing SOMETHING MISSING, but the short stories, the Op-Eds, the poetry, and everything else that followed can be traced back to that December morning when I read a piece of writing and changed a teacher’s mind.

Thank you, Mr. Compo.

My writing group

About six months ago, I gathered some friends who are interested in writing and formed a writing group. We meet about once every other month and discuss our work. It’s quite a varied group. We have fiction writers, poets, a singer/songwriter, essayists, and a pulp fiction writer in our ranks, and the work that we critique at each meeting is always a panoply of genres and words.

Next month I am hosting the meeting in my new home.

Our group had a less an auspicious start. About a year ago, I was forwarded information on a local fiction writer’s meeting that was looking for new members. Excited about the prospect of meeting and conversing with fellow writers, I trudged out on a cold winter night, where I found about a dozen people meeting around a table on the upper floor of a local library.

I couldn’t believe it. Writers excited about their craft, gathering on a weeknight, notebooks piled around a large, oval table, presumably filled with brilliant ideas, finely crafted sentences, and unexpected word choices.

I thought I had found heaven.

The meeting begins with a gentleman at the head of table welcoming the writers, though as far as I can tell, he's just another writer, somehow acknowledged as our moderator, though I am not sure how. Everyone seems to know one another, laughing and chit chatting like old friends. I appear to be the only new face this evening.

Presumed head honcho explains that we will begin with introductions. "Please tell us who you are, what kind of writing that you do, and any recent success that you’ve had with publishing."  People around the table tell us their names, a little bit about their current manuscripts, and news about contests entered, contests found, and in one case a contest won. Flash fiction. A prize of $10 plus the story will appear on the contest sponsor’s website next month. Light applause.

Then it’s my turn. Less than six months ago, I sold my first novel to Doubleday, but not wanting to grandstand, I try to downplay my accomplishment.

“I’m a novelist, though I write some poetry and non-fiction too.”

“Any publishing credits?” someone asks.

“Sure. A few op-ed pieces and a couple articles in some educational journals. I’m a teacher, you see.”

“Anything else?” head honcho inquires.

“Well, I sold my first novel a couple months ago, but it won’t be out for more than a year.”

At news of this, everyone sits up. The questions come fast.

Who bought the novel?

How much was the sale price?

Is it a multi-book deal?

How did you find a publisher?

I answer as many questions as I can, declining to talk finances but explaining the process by which I found an agent and eventually sold the book. As the group asks clarifying questions, two things become clear to me:

These people do not like me.

I am not in heaven.

I explain that after finding an agent, things got a lot easier, as she was able to guide me through the revisions that the manuscript needed. A woman fires back. “How the hell did you find an agent? Did you know somebody?”

“No, I didn’t know anybody.”

I explain the process, and as I do, it becomes clear that the group cannot fathom me writing the whole book before ever finding someone to represent me. Though everyone in the group seems to be writing to one degree or another, they all seem to believe that short stories and flash fiction are they way to go until they find a literary agent. All seem to loathe the idea of spending the time to write a novel before being paid by a publisher upfront.

I begin to wonder how I can leave early, as this meeting is scheduled to last three hours.

In the midst of my interrogation, a woman describes her plan for a three book project; two novels and a nonfiction compendium that would later delve into some of the nonfiction elements of her fiction. She asks me for the best way to proceed in finding an agent to represent and sell her ideas.

“How about writing the first book first?” I say.

It’s as if I have shouted blaspheme from the rooftops of the world. She actually snorts a combination of disbelief and annoyance in my general direction.

Eventually the group turns its attention to the three writers scheduled to be critiqued and their pieces: a science fiction story, a piece of flash fiction, and a cliché short story about a grieving protagonist who eventually drowns himself.

Though I have not received copies ahead of time, the work is passed to me and I am able to read it and make some comments as the group discusses. The flash fiction, 526 words in all, is quite good, but when I make a suggestion for revision, I realize that my critical remark is the first of the evening, and it is met with scorn. Apparently this group is less interested in critical exchange and more interested in congratulatory commentary.

The science fiction is a little overdone but clever nonetheless, and when I suggest adding simulated newspaper accounts to the story, perhaps in a sidebar, to move the plot forward, I am again given the cold shoulder.

Not simply a polite rejection of the idea, but a dismissive wave.

There is no hope for the suicide by drowning story, but when I offer a joke referencing Ophelia, it’s met with bewilderment and at least one eye roll.

Thankfully, the meeting breaks half an hour early. On my way home, I decide to form my own group.

The results thus far have been pleasing. Though we don’t meet as often as I’d like, and we can’t all attend every meeting, we’ve always had at least four members present, which is fine by me. At our last meeting, the group critiqued the first four chapters of the new book, and some of their comments helped me to come closer to the heart of my protagonist and understand him much better.

And no one has snorted in my general direction yet, which is refreshing.

How to make your wife cry

I have many reasons to write, and most are of the high-minded, creative sort. But I also like to make my wife cry.

It was a Friday in May, and I was at work. My students were in art class, gone for an hour. My student-teacher and I were sitting at my desk, discussing lesson plans for the coming week.

Just another Friday in a waning school year.

Then my cellphone rang, an exceptionally rare occurrence in the middle of the school day. Though I wouldn’t have normally answered it, the absence of the students, combined with the odd timing of the call, made me check to see who was calling. Whenever my cellphone rings in the middle of the day, I expect the worst, and rarely am I mistaken.

This day I was.

It was Taryn, my agent, with news on SOMETHING MISSING, my first novel. Doubleday had made a preemptive offer. Though my book was slated to go on the market for sale the following week, Taryn had passed a copy on to an editor at Doubleday, and they were now attempting to purchase the book before anyone else had a chance to make a bid.

Their offer was for more than I could have ever dreamed.

In that one moment, my entire life changed. Wedding debt that had saddled us for two years was suddenly erased. My dog’s recent spinal surgery was suddenly paid for. Our dream of purchasing a home and starting a family, one that we thought was at least three and probably five years off, was suddenly within our grasp.

Someone in New York City wanted to pay me for something I made up in my head.

I couldn’t believe it.

Teary-eyed and trapped between laughter and genuine weeping, I thanked Taryn as much as a person can do in one minute, told her to do whatever she thought was best in the ongoing negotiations for the foreign rights, and hung up the phone, almost unable to breathe. I had one thought in mind:

Find my wife.

I stood up, hugged my student teacher, who had been sitting beside me the whole time, and headed for Elysha’s classroom up the hall in order to tell her the news. I couldn’t wait.

But her classroom was empty. Her students were in music class, meaning Elysha could be anywhere, doing anything. Prepping lessons. Trapped in a meeting. Making photocopies. Grabbing a snack. I began a frantic search of the school, looking everywhere. The copy room. The faculty room. The main office. Her colleagues’ classrooms. Even the restrooms. I bumped into friends and coworkers along the way, some of whom saw the wild-eyed look on my face and asked me if I was okay, but I did not tell anyone my news.

I wanted to tell Elysha first.

After more than fifteen frantic minutes, I finally found her walking down a hallway behind the auditorium. I grabbed her shoulders and stopped her midstride. From my appearance, she thought that something was wrong. She asked if I was alright. Then I told her the news.

I thought she would be excited. I did not expect her to collapse to the ground, crying hysterically, but that is what she did. She fell to my feet, back against the wall, cheeks red, tears rolling down her face, weeping into her hands.

Colleagues poked their heads from classrooms, certain that something terrible had just happened.

Some were convinced that I had just broken up with her.

I was so happy. In fact, it’s one of the happiest moments of my life. The phone call from Taryn, and the subsequent calls from her that afternoon, informing me of the increase in the sale price as negotiations concluded, were great, but to knock your wife off her feet with news like that was indescribable.

I’d only done it once before.

Four years earlier, I had proposed to Elysha on the top steps of Grand Central Station, her favorite place in the world. It was three days after Christmas and about a week before her birthday, so she wasn’t expecting the proposal at all. Sprinkled amidst the multitude of holiday shoppers, business people, and the like were about thirty of our friends and family who had traveled to Grand Central ahead of us to take up positions in the crowd.

Exiting the train, we climbed the stairs, and when we reached the top, I grabbed Elysha’s hand and stopped her. The proposal went like this:

Me: I chose this place because I know it’s your favorite room in the world.

Elysha: Yeah…

Me: And I wanted a place that would always be here, so that someday we could show our kids, so…could you hold my book? (I had a book in my hand and wasn’t smooth enough to drop it to the floor. Elysha took the book and I removed the ring box from my pocket. Just then a policewoman stepped beside us.)

Policewoman: Please keep moving. You can’t block the stairway. (A second later she saw the ring box and smiled.) Oh… (stepping back)

Me: (Dropping to one knee)

Elysha: (Starting to cry)

Me: (On one knee) Elysha Green, I love you with all my heart and want to spend the rest of my life with you. (Opens the ring box) Will you marry me?

Elysha: (Starts crying and reaches out to hug me, NEVER ANSWERING THE QUESTION!)

Friends: (Screaming in the distance, immediately surrounded by National Guard Soldiers)

Me: That’s all of our friends screaming honey…

Elysha: (Continuing to cry)

Friends: After assuring the soldiers that they weren’t in some kind of distress or preparing to commit an act of terrorism, they raced up the stairs, shouting and cheering.

Elysha: Oh my God. Where did you all come from?

The rest was great. After the proposal, we all enjoyed lunch at Ruby Foos and then made our way down to Rockefeller Center to check out the tree. Snow was lightly falling, the streets were abuzz with holiday shoppers, and the day couldn’t have been more perfect.

Elysha, however, has yet to answer my question.

Nevertheless, she is crying in almost every photo taken that day. She would later cry throughout much of our wedding ceremony as well, but I can’t take full credit for those tears. The wedding was more than just me.

Which leads me back to the reason that I write, or at least one of them:

I want to make my wife cry once again. As I work on finishing my second book by the end of December, I have many goals in mind.

1.  Finish the book and discover Milo’s fate. I honestly can’t wait to find out what happens.

2.  Share my story with readers.  I can't tell you how satisfying it is to know that you've brought a little entertainment and insight into a person's life.

3.  Sell the book so we can remodel the kitchen, replace the windows, and increase our options in terms of childcare for the fall.

4.  Prove to myself that my first book wasn’t just a fluke.

But I also want to make my wife cry again, like she did that day in the hallway behind the auditorium. To bring so much joy to someone who I love so much might just be the greatest reward of all.

And so I write. With ten days of vacation in my near future, I hope to churn out the last 30,000 words of my latest manuscript.

Fingers crossed that there are more tears in my near future.

Literary and humorous

Each day, Something Missing seems to pop up on another bookselling website, and each time Google Alert informs me of this, it’s just as exciting as the first time.

Though admittedly the book’s appearance on places like Amazon and Barnes and Noble were a little more breathtaking than the others.

What I’ve found most interesting of late is the categories under which the book is listed:

Fiction- Literary; Fiction- Humorous.

The Literary tag simply implies that the book is of a serious nature, focusing more on style, psychological depth, and character, whereas mainstream commercial fiction (the page-turner) focuses more on narrative and plot (this definition from Wikipedia).

I like this distinction. Though I actually think that the book is a bit of a page turner and has strong mass appeal, the English major in me would like to think that the book is more than just a paperback suspense novel about a thief. It certainly focuses more on character than plot (I started writing with the character in mind and no plot whatsoever) and I like to think that the attention I paid to stylistic elements have been noticed and appreciated.

But it’s the Humorous tag that has me especially intrigued.

You see, I cannot remember a single moment in the writing of the book when I tried to be funny. In fact, had you asked me if the book was humorous while I was writing it, I would’ve said, “No. No way. Not a chance in the world, buster.” In my mind, I was writing a story about an unusual and quirky guy and the life that he had created for himself, but never did I think the book would be considered humorous.

Don’t get me wrong. I love the humorous tag (what writer doesn’t want to be thought of as funny?), and in rereading the book, I saw the humor in the story, discovered it really, and found myself laughing out loud at my own words from time to time. But in some vomit-inducing, artsy-granola way, it wasn’t me being funny.

It was Martin.

Martin’s life; his thoughts and ideas, the way in which he lives, and the principles that guide him turned out to be funny. I didn’t try to make them funny, nor was I even aware of the humor in his life during the writing process. I only found it later. Once I had stopped whapping on keys.

So I find the tag quite surprising. When asked to describe the genre of my book, I have great difficulty. People seem to think that all fiction falls into one of four categories: Suspense, horror, political thriller and chick lit. Though Something Missing certainly has a good deal of suspense, it’s not a suspense novel. Taryn, my agent, has described the book as quirky fiction, and I think this is an apt description, though it often leaves people scratching their heads, wondering what the hell quirky fiction is.

In the future, perhaps I’ll add the word humorous to my mangled description.

It will at least make me feel good.

Stealing from real life

Something Missing is a work of fiction. Even so, there are elements of my own life contained therein. Several characters are loosely based upon friends and acquaintances, certain plotlines vaguely resemble actual moments in my life, and specific incidents and locales inspired parts of the story.

Sometimes I think that Something Missing is little more than personal therapy wrapped up in humor, suspense and story. And the new book is shaping up in much the same way.

Obviously it’s common for authors to draw from real life experiences. That awful cliché Write what you know has some truth to it. And while Something Missing, as well as my current manuscript, are most certainly fiction (despite what some members of my wife’s family might suspect… I am constantly asked if I was some kind of a thief in my past), certain themes and elements are taken from my own life.

Take my mother-in-law, for example.

EBay, the online auction site, plays a small but somewhat significant role in my book. When it came time to research EBay, in order to ensure the veracity of the details surrounding this online world, I turned to Barbara, my mother-in-law, who is an EBay power seller, for advice. Barbara has created a small business for herself through EBay, and listening to her speak about it is like attending a Pentecostal tent revival. She loves EBay and might be convinced that EBay will someday save the world.

Through her business, she has managed to make friends with women from around the world, and she takes genuine pleasure in selling high end handbags and fashion at a fraction of the retail price to women in states like North Dakota or countries like Tanzania like that suffer from a tragic lack of Prada boutiques and Coach outlets. I sometimes wonder if she even cares about the profit. It’s almost as if she thinks of herself as a fashion ambassador, bringing high end goods to women in need.

Not being at all fashion conscious and finding the mere existence of a $500 handbag offensive and insane (and this coming from a guy who carries a bag), I turned to Barbara when it came time to write the chapter dealing with EBay. More precisely, I turned to her EBay auctions, crafting the online persona of Barbara Teal from my mother-in-law, Barbara Green.

It was quite fun. Gathering material from her dozens of auction descriptions, as well as the blog that she writes about her EBay experiences, it was simple to create an online persona for Martin (the main character of the novel) that was interesting, amusing, and genuine.

And paying minor homage to your mother-in-law in your first novel can’t hurt.

When to revise?

Danny (an old high school friend, perhaps?) asks:

When you write, do you draft everything quickly and then rewrite later, or do you craft each sentence until it is done?

Every writer is different. There are some who just blaze through their first draft as quickly as possible, doing all the revision later on. Stephen King writes like this and describes the process in his book, On Writing. He explains that if he doesn’t get the first draft out fast enough, he loses the sense of the characters. He writes at least ten pages a day, which in my world would be a lot.

Then again, he writes fulltime and has managed to write multiple novels in a single year, whereas mine seem to take about two years to finish.

Others write, edit and revise each sentence before moving onto the next, tinkering and rewriting until they have achieved perfection, so that when they are done their first draft, the book is essentially done. Kurt Vonnegut, one of my favorite authors, wrote this way. He would write and rewrite a page until it was done, and when it was done, it was done.

I fall somewhere in the middle.

Ideally, I’d like to think that I write like Vonnegut, crafting each sentence and paragraph until they are perfect. Sharing chapters with readers the way that I do necessitates this style to a degree. There has to be at least a little polish to the pages before I can ask friends to read them. But it’s also the way in which I am most comfortable. I can’t stand the thought of unfinished business, so to leave an unrevised page behind doesn’t sit right with me. I want it cleaned up and ready to go before moving on.

But invariably, revision is required. When I finished Something Missing, I felt that it was done. Click the save icon and move onto the next book. Don’t look back. But since that moment, the manuscript has been revised a great deal, first with the help my agent, Taryn, and then with my editor, Melissa. Between the two of them, they guided me through the process of shifting chapters in order to improve pacing, expanding upon elements of the story that I had never considered important, and retracting sections of the text that were unnecessary. It took some time, but the book is much the better for the work we did.

A copyeditor then cleaned up some of my prose (each change made with my approval) and I just finished a proofread in which still more changes, albeit minor, were made.

What I came to learn is that there is no correct process to writing a book. It must be your process. Don’t try to emulate King’s or Vonnegut’s style. Just write. See what happens. I fear that some people spend too much time thinking about writing when they should just be writing.

I know I did.

Something Missing on Facebook

My buddy, Tom, started a Fans of Something Missing group on Facebook last week. It’s already got about forty members, even though most of them have yet to read the book. Yesterday he assigned me a title: President of Writing and Publishing Department.

He is President of the Shameless Promotion Department.

It’s good to have friends.

Actually, it’s been surprising to experience the excitement and investment that my friends have had with the book. Because I had about a dozen or more people reading Something Missing while I was writing it, many of their suggestions, ideas, and thoughts were eventually embedded within the text. Whether it was a specific idea for revision or just a comment or thought that altered my way of thinking about the book, each one of my readers left an indelible mark on the story and its characters. Some of them even began to speak of the main character, Martin, as a real person, and even to this day, outsiders and strangers are sometimes confused when listening to one of my friends speak about Martin as if he were included in our circle of friends.

So as I went through the process of finding an agent and selling the book, my readers came along with me, celebrating my achievements, but in a way, also celebrating their own, since they each had a hand in shaping the story to what it has now become.

Including Tom.

If you have a Facebook account, check out the group. Once the book is actually available for purchase, perhaps these much appreciated fans will actually have something to chat about!

Division of labor

One of the challenges of writing, at least for me, is how to divide my time, my attention and my energy.  Holding down a job as an elementary school teacher (and finding it difficult to imagine ever giving up this job), my time spent writing is limited.  Oftentimes, several aspects to my writing career pull at me from opposite directions, and as a result, I can end up feeling guilty and frustrated over some neglected element of my work.

Take this past week for example. 

I'm currently working on my second novel.  A couple months ago I sent the first half of the book to my agent in order to solicit her impressions of my progress so far, and she responded with five or six pages of notes. Suggestions for revisions, for the most part, with just enough praise to keep me going.

She really knows what she’s doing when it comes to this stuff.

Initially I decided to put these notes aside, finish the book, and then go back and revise.  But as I plodded forward, I realized that some of Taryn's suggestions might impact the decisions that I was about to make in terms of plot and character. I was also anxious to begin applying some of her suggestions to the text (I enjoy the revision process a great deal), so without much thought, I began dedicating a little time each day to revising the manuscript from the beginning. And each day that little bit of time grew and grew.

At the same time, I continued my work on the latest chapter, finding the progress that I was making exciting and fun. Whenever things are moving along smoothly, I hate to stop writing in fear that I may prematurely sputter out. Before long, I found myself working on the manuscript from both ends, jumping back and forth like a jack rabbit, revising one minute and writing new content the next. I wondered if it was a good idea to be revising the first half of the book while advancing the second half of the story, but both the writing and the revision process held too much of an allure for me to quit.

At this time, I was also supposed to be proofreading the latest version of Something Missing, which had arrived a couple weeks earlier from my editor. While this was probably the most important of my current tasks, I allowed it to linger a bit, assuming that I could just breeze through proofreading in a night or two. Late last week, I attempted to execute this plan but discovered that there were edits to be made on every third page or so, necessitating a slower and more careful read on my part. It’s now four days later and I’m still not done, and this evening I was forced to email my editor and warn her that the manuscript might be a day or two late in arriving.

But every minute that I spend reading Something Missing is a minute spent away from the new manuscript, which is still clamoring for attention at both ends.

What’s a writer to do?

And these are not my only projects at the moment. There is this blog, of course, which I would like to write for everyday if I had time, as well as a blog where I write to my unborn child every day. Then there is the Op-Ed piece on my refusal to wear a neck tie ever again just waiting to be finished, and a couple more that should've been started already. And if I really had some time, I have a couple children’s books that I could be wrapping up as well as a poetry contest that I had hopes of entering.

Like I said, it’s difficult finding ways to divide my time amongst my many writing interests.

Fortunately, I have a solution which I have always been able to fall back on in times like these:

Sleep less.

It’s not always easy, but it helps.

Character first

Penelope Pudding (a genius pseudonym) writes:

Do your books evolve as you write them, or do you know how they will end in advance?

Interesting question. As you probably know, every author is different. Perhaps the story behind my Something Missing will answer this for you.

The idea for Something Missing began on a November evening in 2004. My wife and I were having dinner with close friends, Charles and Justine. During the course of the meal, Justine told us that she had lost an earring earlier that day and was hoping to find it when they returned home. I asked Justine how she knew that the earring had been misplaced. “Perhaps some clever thief came to your house and stole just one earring, so that you wouldn’t suspect theft.” This idea lodged itself in my mind throughout the evening, and when I arrived home later that night, I jotted down the idea on my ever-growing list of possible story ideas.

Fast forward three months later to February of 2005. My wife and I are in Boca Raton, Florida to spend a week with her grandmother. After a day without Internet access or cable television service and a dearth of decent reading material, I found myself in a desperate search of something to keep me busy. With my idea of a thief who steals items that go unnoticed still rolling around in my mind, I decided to give the story a try. I wasn’t sure if it would be a short story or something longer, but by the time the trip was done, the first three chapters of the novel were complete and I was well on my way.

When I began the book, I had no idea where the story might take me. I’ve since learned to embrace the unknown and allow the story to come to me. Stephen King calls this “unearthing the fossil,” though I wouldn’t hear this expression until the book was nearly finished. A few years ago this would have sounded like nonsense to me, but now I believe it. There were many moments in the writing of Something Missing that I literally did not know what would happen next until I wrote it. In fact, as I closed in on the end of the book, I still didn’t know what my main character’s ultimate fate would be. I was writing the chapter in which much of the plot would be resolved when my wife called.

“I can’t talk. I’m about to find out what happens to Martin.”

“Really,” she said. “What happens?”

“I don’t know! I’m still writing it!”

If you are reading this chapter someday, remember that I experienced it just like you are: one word at a time.

Though many authors know exactly where their stories will ultimately go, I do not, and I’ve learned to trust this instinct. I start with character. I find a person who interests me, and then, in a vomit-provoking, disgustingly spiritual, earthy-crunchy way, I assume that the plot is already written in the character’s fate.

Once I’ve found the character, his or her fate is sealed. I just have to unearth it.

This philosophy seems to be working well in the book I am writing now as well. My main character, Milo, actually began his existence as a funeral home director, but after wrestling with him for three chapters, I finally put that book aside and planted Milo into the story in which he belonged. A story that’s still revealing itself to me.

Weird, huh?

But it’s true. I’d been trying to start a novel for more than five years before beginning Something Missing, but each time, I thought that I needed to plan the story from beginning to end before starting to write. While many writers work this way, I have found that I am better off beginning with a glimmer of an idea and discovering the rest along the way. I leave the story to fate, and things have seemed to work out so far.

I like to tell this story because I worry that too many writers sit around, waiting for their one great idea to emerge, when that idea might already exist, waiting to be unearthed.

So if you’re waiting for the next great novel idea to reveal itself to you, why not pick up a pen and starting writing while you wait?