novel

Tale of the tape

When Ann Patchett finished writing her first book, she placed the manuscript on the floor, took off her shoes, and stood on this pile of paper to see how much taller it made her. Patchett did not reveal her new height.

Last week, I reported that I had finished writing my first draft. I thought I would put it away for a couple of weeks, but of course I kept playing with it, and the story stretched a few hundred words. When I hit 74,000, I said, Enough, and uploaded it to FedEx Office. I picked up the boxed manuscript today. I am 3/4″ taller. (If I had selected double spacing instead of space and a half, I would’ve been 1″ taller.)

I admit this is not the equivalent of the young Mickey Mantle launching a baseball on a 565′ parabolic course into baseball history, but it’s a momentous event in my little life.

On October 1, I’ll start reading. I’ll know going in that the quality of my work was checked by FedEx Office employee 6499086. FedEx wouldn’t have let my book out of their shop if it hadn’t met their high standards.

Today’s recommended reading

The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing by the poet and teacher Richard Hugo. This is a well-lit look under the hood of our weird craft, and so charming that it made me want to write poetry, which is not something our world needs. They don’t need it on Earth 2, either.

Hugo (1923-1982) was an original thinker and I’m sure he was an inspiring teacher. I’m inspired by Triggering Town, even though only a small part of the book is about triggers and towns and some of this stuff didn’t interest me and didn’t belong here (for example, politics in academia). Overall, it’s worth your time.

Random lines that spoke to me:

Give up what you think you have to say, and you’ll find something better…say nothing and just make music and you’ll find plenty to say.

You may object that the meaning has changed, that you are no longer saying what you want to say. Never want to say anything so strongly that you give up the option of finding something better. If you have to say it, you will.

…the single-syllable word with a hard consonant ending is a unit of power in English.

25 years of memory can kink a lot of cable

Some things are just meant.

[On notebooks:] Don’t use blank paper. Lines tend to want words.

Next week: I turn to chapter 1, page 1, and try not to be triggered.

Scoreboard update

As I write this, I have published four stories in four years. How have I maintained this blistering pace? When the railroad was invented in the 1830s, scientists were concerned that women were too delicate to travel so quickly. A forward velocity of 20 miles per hour would surely make a woman’s head explode, whereas we now know their heads explode because of Donald Trump.

I was paid well by today’s standards for all four stories. That’s a miracle here in the 21st century, when writers are so often compensated with likes, hearts, clicks, and “exposure” (that thing you die from). I remember Harlan Ellison hollering “Pay the writer!” in a documentary about his life. “Are you paying your printer? Your webmaster? Your artist? Pay the writer!”

Two of my stories featured women and three featured people in middle age (another miracle, given that most editors graduated from college about a week ago). Two are behind a paywall. My topics included chess, trains, sex, family, marriage, and baseball. All the major food groups. They were all fun to write, though the one I wrote based on my parents came close to killing me.

I find it interesting—to me, anyway—that I’m finding homes for these stories after I decided not to write more short stories. I swore an oath to the head of my order to write novels from now on.

That brings me to my first novel and my first draft, which today hit 52,300 words. I ended last week with 51,920 words. 380 words in one week? That’s barely more than 50 words per day. That’s how things go in the first draft, I suppose. Sometimes the words flow and sometimes I have a lot to think about. Anyone watching me would commit suicide to escape the boredom.

I’d like to finish my first draft by the end of June. How long will my draft be? My guess is 65,000 words. That means I have 12,700 words to write, or 2,546 words per week, or 363 words per day. That’s just a long email…if you know where you’re going.

I’ve been writing 10,000 words per month since December, so I’m confident I can do this. 10,000 words per month, or 120,000 words per year, isn’t much. Barry Malzberg, at the height of his career, claimed to be writing a million words per year. I imagine that Ray Bradbury, Norah Roberts, Danielle Steele, Stephen King, Dean R. Koontz, Robert Silverberg, and several others, in their prime, hit one million per year. They are out of my league. My current pace will get me where I want to go, and without my head exploding.

Lucky and Tango rest after a some major deconstruction in my archives.