The article is titled, “An Electronic Method for Confirming Documentation,” and it’s in the “Practical Matters” section.  The TOC is here, but you can’t access the PDFs unless you’re a member (and you should join if you have even the slightest interest in medicine and writing).

Of course, I’m perfectly willing to e-mail the PDF to whomever is interested.

That’s the lesson I learned recently.  I had finished the second draft of my first novel, “Montrose & Westheimer,” and I wasn’t entirely happy with it.  There’s one subplot* that I’m not satisfied with, but I was more or less happy with the book.  I was especially proud of the ending–when I finished it, I was, well, amazed at my own brilliance.  It expressed exactly how I felt about the subject at hand.  I told myself, “There’s no way you’re changing that!”

Time passed.

Recently, I had a couple of inspirations on how to correct the dissatisfying subplot.  Most everything else in the book was fine, I thought, but everything connected with that subplot could be changed with a third draft.  So I started a new draft** to revisit the problem subplot.  But then something else happened–I had an idea about the ending.

Just to be clear, I could change the problem subplot without touching the second draft ending.  If I’m not mistaken, I wouldn’t even have to change a word of the epilogue.

The idea came when I was considering how to keep the length of the book above 55,000 words and how to possibly push it to 60,000 words.  One idea was to add another chapter, and I had been wanting to do so for a while, but I had never figured out a method that would integrate with the story.  The idea I had, though, was to revise the last chapter, pushing about 1500 words of it into a new chapter and adding another 1500 words or so in front of it.  I’d only be adding 1500-2000 words to the story, but the last chapter wouldn’t be so long (I think it was over 5000 words) and I’d have my Chapter 15.  But then I’d have to change the ending.

I started with the epilogue, my brilliant epilogue, and I realized how utterly non-brilliant it was.  My character made a totally unrealistic jump from “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” contentment to cynicism and resentment–then to a strange sort of apathy that took even me by surprise.  It occurred to me then: How could I have ever thought this was good?  Even worse, how could I have thought it was good enough to publish?

Aghast at my own incompetence, I revised the epilogue.  I think I may have kept one sentence intact (and I even changed one word in it).  The rest was deleted into oblivion and replaced by something better, but by no means brilliant.  I’ve learned not to think that way.

*I’m not sure that “subplot” is quite the correct term.  The book is, essentially, a collection of several plots that form a larger plot.  Maybe “component plot”?

**Really, I copied the Microsoft Word document of the second draft, pasted it, and renamed it.

I’ve never been a fan of the short story. I’m still not–I’ve read only three Flannery O’Connor stories, preferring her novels. I’ve always felt that fiction should stretch out over a few hundred pages; short stories have always seemed like a waste. I’ve read hundreds of novels, and often in record time–Bel Canto by Ann Patchett in one night, Prey by Michael Crichton in one night, The Alchemist by Paolo Coelho in three hours. But I absolutely drudge through any collection of short stories–I haven’t even finished Neil Gaiman’s Fragile Things, though I’ve had it for months.

But Escape Pod has completely changed my perception of the short story. I’m not going to try to tackle O’Connor anytime soon, but I’ve gained a profound respect for the SF* story over the past few months of listening. For example, I can finally say that I’ve actually finished an entire Asimov story.**

One particular aspect of the SF short story that audio seems to emphasize is an internal universe. My first real education in SF was Orson Scott Card’s old standard, How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy. It’s been a while since I’ve read it, but I think that’s where I first learned that writing an SF** story of any length is an act of world creation. And like the real world, created worlds must have rules. Readers can believe the impossible, but that suspension of disbelief is broken if the story is internally inconsistent. Setting and following rules is an essential component of drafting and revising.

But a wholly original SF short story presents an interesting problem. In a novel, the rules can be weaved in over tens or hundreds of pages. In an established universe like D&D, Star Wars, and Star Trek, the rules are preset by precedent, and the writer can rely on readers to know those rules. But an original short story must impart the rules quickly, clearly, and subtly. The rules cannot be listed in a straightforward, clinical manner unless there is some stylistic reason for doing so (think Asimov’s robot laws).

Writers have responded to this challenge, it seems to me, by weighing how much disorientation is necessary before everything is made clear. Consider the following passage from Benjamin Rosenbaum’s “Start the Clock”

The real estate agent for Pirateland was old. Nasty old. It’s harder to tell with Geezers, but she looked to be somewhere in her Thirties. They don’t have our suppleness of skin, but with the right oils and powders they can avoid most of the wrinkles. This one hadn’t taken much care. There were furrows around her eyes and eyebrows.

Rosenbaum plays with disorientation by capitalizing “Geezers” and “Thirties.” These are proper nouns, but we don’t know why. We get a bit more a few paragraphs on:

I put my hands in my pants pockets and picked at the lint. “So this is pretty much all Nines?”

The Thirtysomething Lady frowned. “Ma’am, I’m afraid the Anti-Redlining Act of 2035 –”

“Uh-huh, race, gender, aetial age, chronological age, stimulative preference or national origin — I know the law. But who else wants to live in Pirateland, right?”

By now we’re pretty clear that something has stopped the age of these characters. Finally, he makes it all clear:

Frankly, we were excited. This move was what our Pack needed — the four of us, at least, were sure of it. We were all tired of living in the ghetto — we were in three twentieth-century townhouses in Billings, in an “age-mixed” area full of marauding Thirteens and Fourteens and Fifteens. Talk about a people damned by CDAS — when the virus hit them, it had stuck their pituitaries and thyroids like throttles jammed open. It wasn’t just the giantism and health problems caused by a thirty-year overdose on growth hormones, testosterone, estrogen, and androgen. They suffered more from their social problems — criminality, violence, orgies, jealousy — and their endless self-pity.

What impresses me about this story (featured in Escape Pod 99 and posted on Rosenbaum’s website) is the gradual amount of information we get. But even though it’s gradual, it’s made reasonably specific before we’ve read a third of the story.

I’ve been trying to use this gradual technique in my own writing. And that, really, has been the major fruit of all my hours listening to Escape Pod–it’s made me aware of subtle techniques for writing good SF. I’m glad it’s out there. Go and take a listen.

*By SF, I don’t just mean science fiction as we normally conceive of it; here I use it to mean stories of the fantastic, including fantasy, horror, and magical realism.

**Yes, listening to an audio version of a story is the same as reading it, no matter what Harold Bloom says.

This morning, I put the finishing touches of the second draft of my novel, "Montrose & Westheimer."  It clocks in at just under 59,000 words, and I’ll keep revising it but not at the current pace.  All that’s really left before I send it to publishers/agents is cleaning up–formatting, proofreading, etc.  Expect the numbers on the rejection counter to increase shortly.

Jim Macdonald reports that the Absolute Write people have fooled PublishAmerica once again.  One would have thought that they would have been on the lookout after they offered “Travis Tea” a contract for the purposely awful Atlanta Nights.  But they didn’t–Crack of Death* by “Sharla Tann” was offered “the chance it deserves” by PublishAmerica.  It will be published by an honest vanity press, Lulu.

While I’m happy to laugh at the stupidity of PublishAmerica, I’m saddened that this exercise is necessary.  A perusal of their website illuminates problems facing contemporary writers.  All the emphasis is on providing authors a conduit to release their books, not on providing books to a reading audience.  Non-vanity publishers focus their marketing on readers, not authors; at most, they feature a “Submissions” page linked on their index page.  At the same time, PublishAmerica insists that it is a “traditional” publisher while claiming that it is revolutionizing the industry via new technology.  It exploits authors’ desire to be published while fooling them into thinking that a PublishAmerica contract carries the same prestige as a small or specialty press.  The underlying problem, I think, is an inordinate desire to be published immediately.

*A reading from Crack of Death.  Let us attend.

Nancy spent all night starring at the cold gray cell walls covered in graffiti and thinking about Roberto. Where was he, she thought? Roberto where are you? Her heart ached for him, his shiny dark hair and firm taut muscles, his Calian accent, she imagined herself warm and safe in his arms, she imagined them making passionate love and him tenderly kissing the out line of her butterfly tattoo on her smooth buttocks the way he used to on those hot feverish nights in his penthouse sweet near the new Tescos in south Clapham.

All of a sudden she heard a key turn slowly in the lock. ‘Whose there!’ she shouted sharply. No one replied. Then the cell door opened slowly and creakily. She could see the out line of two tall men. ‘what’ she said.

‘Are you Nancy?’ Said a smooth commanding voice.

‘Might be.’

The two out lines stepped slowly into the cell and she could see they were two men, one white and black.

Eva of Podiobooks.com wrote in response to my post about my first draft:

Best of luck to you as you move from first draft to final product. It’s an iterative process and one that, in my opinion, cannot be rushed. Do everything you can to find yourself a top-notch editor.

Too many folks rush into "alternative" (gods I hate that word) publishing methods, thinking it gives them a pass to avoid the pain and suffering that comes with polishing a book. It does not. Make the book as good as it can be and then decide the best way to distribute the material.

If you think a free serialized audio version is a good way for you to gain exposure for your book and build your chops as a writer, I’m all for it.

Eva makes a point that seems very obvious but, unfortunately, must be expressed by more people.  As "alternative" publishing increases–especially in online formats–people rush their works to press earlier and earlier.  Some works, of course, simply do not belong in press because they are not good enough.  It is up to the author to have humility enough to distinguish which books belong and which books do not belong in the hands of ordinary readers.

I once attended a reading in which Anne Patchett, author of Bel Canto and The Magician’s Assistant, exorted the audience to put works not worthy of publication in a drawer.  She told the story of a friend who just finished his sixth (!) novel and finally felt he was ready to publish.  She said that her friend will have much greater success now than if he published any of his previous novels.  Indeed, Patchett noted that she was offered publication of a short story collection early in her career (at age 19), but decided against it to her advantage.

Should authors use "alternative" (sorry, Eva) publication methods, then?  I think they can be valuable, depending on the work.  Sometimes market glut does not allow a worthy work to be published.  Sometimes the author doesn’t want to deal with contracts or just wants a limited audience.  These are worthy reasons to go outside the traditional publishing methods.  Another reason–and one I will probably exploit–is for revision purposes.  In recording a work, the author will quickly find if the characters have unique voices or not.  If a great deal of vocal trickery is required to distinguish characters, then the author needs to revise.  If they sound fine without such trickery, then the author has achieved uniqueness.  Whether or not I distribute my book as a podiobook (or at all), I’ll probably record it first. 

Over the past few months, I’ve been writing a novel, and I finished the first draft yesterday.  It’s about 42,000 words at  present, though I suspect it will be about 50,000 after revision (I have much more to add than to cut).  I won’t go into specifics here just yet, but it is titled "Montrose & Westheimer."  I’m sure that some readers of this blog will be able to figure out its subject; if so, please do not out it in the comments–send me an e-mail instead.  I hope to have it revised by the end of the year, at which point I’ll start sending it to agents and publishers.  I’m considering releasing it as a podiobook, as well.  We’ll see.

I learned a lot from this draft–so much  so that it will have been valuable even if the book never sells.   First and foremost, I learned to perservere.  Several times during the writing process, the weight of finishing the damn thing (as it came to be known in such moments) seemed too much to bear.  Somehow, though, I always convinced myself to press forward and found, to my amazement, a solution to the problem that had frustrated me.  I also learned the value of discussion.  The book came out of a discussion with my wife and the book’s ending came out of a similar discussion.  Many authors say they would not succeed without their spouses, and I can truly affirm that statement.  Finally,* I learned the value of both trying outrageous ideas and cutting them when they don’t work.  I tried an alternate voice in the footnotes, similar** to the authorial voice in Tim O’Brien’s The Lake of the Woods.  Although I produced some nice passages–the kind that I glanced at again, as if to say, "I wrote that?"–the second voice was too gimicky in the story I was writing.  I realized that agents, editors, and readers would just find my second voice showy.  My  realization came about because I could not justify its place in the story; maybe the  second voice belongs in another story.  I do not know, but I know it did not belong in "Montrose & Westheimer."

I will, of course, keep updates on "Refuge" as I revise and (cross your fingers, bow your heads) send it away to agents and publishers. 

*I learned more, but I want to cut this post short. 

**Who am I kidding?  I lifted the idea directly from O’Brien.  Great poets steal, though… 

I’ve been thinking lately about how writers often reveal their subconscious insecurities in their works.  I remember reading that Alfred Hitchcock was falsely accused by a police officer when young and therefore featured many "presumed guilty" plotlines in his films.  Whether intentional or not, Hitchcock’s view of the police force showed through; I didn’t think it necessarily a bad thing, though, because, for all I know, it might have been intentional.  Then I heard that he featured the most beautiful actresses in his films because he was so insecure about his own appearance (or something to that effect–please do not quote me).  I doubted he would have liked that pointed out to him.  I started to notice other such revelations in literature, most notably Joyce’s whore/Madonna portrayal of all women characters in Portrait.  Though Joyce proclaimed freedom in his novel from the oppressive Catholic Church (or, as he puts it, the catholic religion),* he still fell prey to the worst heresies of sexual ethics of his time.  Once I realized how prevelant this trend toward unknowing self-revelation was, I became paranoid about my writing.  Would I reveal my weaknesses through my own writing?  What about views I didn’t want put on display?  Eventually, I recognized that there exists a certain advantage to unknowing self-revelation, if the writer knows how to use it.

Before I was paranoid about revealing too much, I was paranoid about revealing too little.  I had things I wanted to say because no one else was saying them.  I felt uniquely qualified to say these things, so I tended to overemphasize the things I really, really wanted to say.  Then I read Flannery O’Connor and Walker Percy, and I thought a bit more about self-revelation.  O’Connor and Percy had distinctive worldviews (namely, Catholic worldviews) that showed through in all of their works.  O’Connor’s grotesque imagery of ordinary people leading ordinary lives showed her view that the world is broken down nearly beyond repair, and Percy’s layered cynicism showed his doubt that secular society can save itself.**  I learned from my ruminations on these two authors’ work and on the revealed inner demons of Joyce and Hitchcock that both the writer’s worldview and the writer’s flaws show through in any given work.  If one tries too hard to combat or emphasize either, one either highlights the faults or reduces the impact of the worldview.  I realized that my worldview, like those of O’Connor and Percy, is unique and will exist in my own writing, along with the flaws I’d rather not admit to.  In the end, though, I’m satisfied with the trade-off, because maybe both my worldview and my flaws will help someone else form a worldview or work out their own flaws.

*Query: Is that choice in capitalization a legitimate convention of the time, or did Joyce put it in to emphasize his breaking-away?  My inclination is that he’s using French capitilization, but I’m not sure.

**Awful oversimplifications, I know, but brevity prevails over completeness in this case.

—–

I do believe I am on the second-to-last draft of my presentation at the CEA conference. I had trouble distilling my point into so narrow a time constraint, but I’ve made a better point for the effort. For those who are scratching their heads at the title–I don’t assert that America is a pagan nation, but that Gaiman seems to think so, sort of. My point is that I simply don’t see Christianity as primary in our national culture. We pay lip service to Christianity in civic exercises (which I don’t necessarily oppose), but not much more.

I was awakened to this idea when the crazy judge out in Alabama dropped a two-ton, granite sculpture of the Ten Commandments in the foyer of the state courthouse. He justified it by saying that the Commandments are at the core of our system of law, a dubious statement at best (certainly murder and theft are illegal, but adultery, dishonesty, and blasphemy remain legal–indeed, protected–in most contexts). The judge’s actions were clearly improper evangelization,* and he was rightly booted out of his lofty position. I realized that the judge wasn’t asserting the presence of Christian culture, but trying to place it there. The sculpture was newly commissioned, not part of the history of the state’s legal system. He was forcing it, and he failed.**

On the whole, I guess I am too cynical to believe that America is in any way Christ-like. Yes, we have Christian images and rituals ingrained in our lives and in our calendars, but we also have pagan symbols like the Easter Bunny. We also have a pop culture creation, Santa Claus, that was once a heroic Eastern bishop.* We have drunkenness and debauchery on the feast day of St. Patrick, who prayed for “God’s hosts” to deliver him from “temptations of vices.” Ours is not a Christian culture, but a confused national culturewith some strong Christian elements. Some of those elements need to be solidified, but we should not fool ourselves by claiming we have placed Christ at the heart and soul of the nation. We aren’t even close.

*Improper because the judge is an arbitor, not an evangelist. How can a non-believer in the Judeo-Christian God expect to find solace in a courthouse that yells in carved granite, “I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt have no other gods before me”?

**Sort of. Now he’s an activist, and his two-ton evangelization tool tours the nation.