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Five Tips to Avoiding Total Disaster as a Novelist
By Kris Saknussemm
The problem with should advice is that it's either something you already
know, i.e. your diet should include more fruit and vegetables than
cheeseburgers and martinis -- or it's something really difficult (like
consuming more fruit and vegetables than cheeseburgers and martinis). So,
based on my own stumbling, fumbling experience, I offer the following list
of things I would strongly advise aspiring and despairing writers not to
do. I doubt that simply by avoiding these pitfalls you will be guaranteed
international fame and fortune, but I'm confident that you will at least
escape many unnecessary frustrations and defeats, so that you can be fresh
for the really poignant failures and setbacks that will either make or
break you -- and with any luck will do a bit of both.
First Tip. Do not spend years gathering interesting material -- odd
quotations, overheard remarks, colorful phrases, bits of trivia, weird
statistics and obscure facts in the hope that you will one day find a
story to contain them. I ended up with a literal warehouse of such stuff
and I can tell you now with considerable confidence that the larvae of the
human botfly bore into the skin and gorge themselves, emerging as
centimeter long maggots, while a Joshua Hendy nine-thousand horsepower
steam turbine delivers a cruising speed of 16 knots at 78 rpm. There is
nothing wrong in knowing that if left underwater for years brass gives off
a bright verdigris stain or that the first Birds of Paradise shipped back
to Europe had their legs chopped off to facilitate packing, but the
collection of details is like any acquisitive habit -- potentially
obsessive. You can end up with a novel that reads like the Gospel
according to St. Matthew translated into the Duke of York Island language
and a response from the publishing industry reminiscent of a deserted
poolroom on the shore of Sheepshead Bay. Put bluntly, burn your notebooks
and clear your head.
Tip #2. Do not spend years experimenting with different forms of writing
and various intellectual follies such as cut-ups and verbal collages,
intricate multiple person narratives, dream stories, recipe books,
anatomies, imaginary academic theses and the like. Yes, it's true that
some of the world's most interesting literature has elements of these
forms -- but that was then and this is different. If you are serious about
getting a work of fiction published today you need quick sharp answers to
the following questions. In what section of a bookstore or retailer's
website will your book be found? Which authors can your work be likened
to? In three sentences or less, what's your novel about?
Tip #3. The Puritans believed in covering the body for modesty's sake. Yet
they developed a sexualized fascination for the ears of women and the
noses of men. My point? (See Tip #1) In apparent restriction there is
unexpected release. Dickens created over 800 individual characters and
laid down some of the most intense cultural satire in English -- but his
writing really came into focus when Wilkie Collins hipped him to the
detective story. I struggled for years trying to find a form for my
writing, flitting around like a Ulysses butterfly. The moment I gave
myself permission to write an action/adventure story, things started
falling into place. Modern art has provided artists with unparalleled and
some might argue paralyzing freedom. Don't waste time trying to create a
new form. It's given to very few people in any medium to do that -- and
many of their achievements end up looking like legless Birds of Paradise
later. A seemingly simple repetitive musical style like the Blues has
proven capable of expressing the full spectrum of human experience and has
inspired countless variations and mutations. Give yourself over to an
established structure and follow its guidelines, and suddenly interesting
points will emerge to surprise you.
Tip #4. Read your work aloud, to some willing victim ideally, but at least
to yourself. Storytelling began as an oral form and the ear (however
erotically appealing) has a trueness to it that will reveal what's working
and what's not in a more immediate and decisive way than simply scanning
the page. This discipline will also slow you down psychologically and
bring you into more intimate contact with your story. In the end, it will
take no more time than reading back a page silently.
Tip #5. Ignore all reasonable sounding advice like "write about what you
know," "read as much as you can," or "try to write every day." If you need
to hear this advice you are in the wrong game. But more importantly,
reasonableness won't get the job done. One day in an ice-stricken back
alley in Boston I saw a fat little Irishman beat the daylights out of four
larger, stronger assailants. When it was over, and it was over
astonishingly quickly, he brushed himself off and said simply, "I had to
get unreasonable with 'em."
Unless you are willing to face the unreasonable in yourself -- unless you
are willing to entertain some strange notions (and deal with them when
they stick around) -- unless you are willing to get lost, confused and
even terrified -- then what you're doing won't have any meaning. The
famous device of conflict upon which all stories are supposed to hinge
starts within the writer. You are all the characters in your dreams and so
too with a novel. You can't put your creations into jeopardy or into
embarrassing or miraculous situations without going there yourself, and
that is not a sensible ambition for a grown person to have. As a writer
who has made more mistakes than most, my goal above all else is to be
very, very unreasonable.
**Kris Saknussemm grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area but has for a long
time lived abroad, in the Pacific Islands and Australia. A painter and
sculptor as well as a writer, his fiction and poetry have appeared in such
publications as The Hudson Review, The Boston Review, The Antioch Review,
New Letters and ZYZZYA.
Zanesville (Villard) is his first novel and the first
in a series of books called The Lodemania Testament. For more information,
please visit these websites: saknussemm.com or
zanesvillethenovel.com
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