The Land of Lost Novels – Tales of the Trunk

I was reading a very good post today by author Justine Musk where she talked about her “practice” novels. What she meant by this was the novels she wrote in preparation for reaching the level of craft that allowed her to jump into the ranks of published authors. I think her post is significant in a number of ways. For one thing, I applaud that someone still believes it’s important to wait for a book that is good enough before being published. I wrote several novels before I was ready, and thankfully no one published them at the time. I say thankfully because they were written when the horror boom was still in full swing near the end of the eighties and early nineties, and at least once – had I not been out to sea at the time – my agent at the time told me in exactly these words: “I have a slot to fill. If you have a completed manuscript, it’s in.”

Now, I did have a completed manuscript, but I was out at sea.  By the time I received her message, said slot was long gone, and shortly after that said agent was arrested for embezzling from her romance clients.  I guess I missed sailing on several bad ships at that point in my career.  I was – of course – devastated by missing my “big break.”  Let me tell you – if those novels were the ones I’d built my career on, even the small chance I have of breaking out in the future would long be gone and I’d be somewhere in the pile of discarded midlist writers that didn’t survive when the market shifted.

I understand that once you decide to be a novelist, impatience becomes a way of life.  The hunger to see your work on shelves, to receive comments from fans / critics / editors and anyone who has an opinion – and to make it onto the short lists for every literary award in existence are very real things, and they have to be dealt with.  I recommend chocolate, coffee, long walks on the beach, bourbon, more coffee,  dark beer, still more coffee and hard work.  I do not recommend shortcuts.  I don’t care what you say, if you have put your novel before dozens and dozens of editors and publishers and come away with nothing, you might need to put that one in the trunk and get to work on the next.  It does not mean you are a misunderstood genius and that they are all blind, it’s a step in your growth as an artist.  In fact, while you are collecting all those rejections you should already be working on the next book.  It’s not about being “published” – it’s about writing, and creating.  If your hunger is for the limelight and not the storytelling, you aren’t going too far in this business.  It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

Some who know me well will recognize the hint of a rant about self-publishing in the air.  I’m not going to do it.  If that is the route you choose, more power to you, but I stand by my guns.  If the work isn’t good enough to find professional publication, work harder.  Unless you just want something for friends and family, or to drag from convention to convention to justify a table, your time is better spent figuring out how to improve your craft, and working on the next book.

Not that I’m saying discard the old ones.  Far from it.  That’s why they call it a trunk – you keep things in it.  At least one of those early novels of mine has been dragged from the depths and completely revised – it will be published sometime in the next year, and I believ it is now worthy of that publication.  When I pulled it out and blew the dust off it had the distinct odor of fictional manure about it.  Luckily for a very viable story, and for myself, I’ve learned a few things in nearly two decades, and I was able to do the book justice when I revisited it.  I also found bits and pieces of my early writing that I would love to recapture.  We all change – not all change is for the better.

The message here is, never throw anything away.  Learn from what you do, and strive to make each thing better than the last in some way.  You should never reach your creative peak – if you ever believe you have achieved this, it becomes a downhill, boring ride into oblivion.  There is always something more, something important just around the corner.

Not sure what that is for me at this point, but I have it’s phosphor trail in my sites.  For Justine, I’m sure it involves unicorns…

-DNW