(Coming to you from the Philadelphia Writer’s Conference…)
Maybe it’s because I’m American, but I tend to associate coffee with books and literature. I know that it’s traditional to discuss literature along with politics or other current events at tea time, but Americans are more drinkers of coffee than tea. I enjoy both, and in fact had a somewhat recent bout with relatively rampant anglophilia that had me drinking nothing [i]but[/i] tea, but when I rediscovered coffee I remembered why that was my morning start-up beverage of choice.
I don’t know who first had the brilliant idea to stick coffee shop kiosks and seating areas in bookstores, but now when I catch a whiff of good coffee, I want to grab a book and sit down with a drink dominated by the power of espresso. I want to compare notes with successful authors while stirring whipped cream into my drink. Even if reality crashes back into my wishes and reminds me of the seventeen things I need to do in eight hours on top of paying a few bills to keep the garbage guys coming and the Intertubes flowing, it’s still a pleasant sensation, especially early in the morning.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who finds themselves thankful for the delicious aroma of the almighty bean. If you drink coffee, how’s your favorite way to do it? Do you prefer paying extra for purchasing some from a coffee house, or have you taken the plunge and started making your own? Is your coffee pre-packaged and freeze-dried, or freshly-ground and classified as ‘gourmet’?
Maybe it’s just me, as I amble towards the end of my current project, doing my utmost to follow my own tenth rule of writing fiction. There’s something that I’ve noticed over the past week. Maybe it’s just because I’m getting into ‘conference’ mode, or maybe this is a side effect of continuing to get everything squared away with the new flat.
The impression I get, however, is that the sooner we get to that finish line, the more things crop up to grab us by the ankles and trip us up before we cross it. Like hitting the wall only with the goal in site.
I mentioned this last week but I might have given the impression that I see a large portion of the entertainment industry through a somewhat cynical lens. I occasionally have to remind myself that the same industry that produces The Human Centipede or Jumper also produces Schindler’s List and District 9. For every Twilight, there’s A Song of Ice and Fire. You might hear a bit of Nickleback on the radio, but there’s bound to be a little Muse right around the corner. I guess what I’m driving at is that I don’t hate the industry, and it’s unfair of me to paint it with a broad brush.
But there is mediocrity out there. There’s the kind of thinking that would have you subscribe to the notion that it’s okay just to get by. That being amazing is just wrapping up another client’s project, and exemplary work is the kind that brings in more business that’ll help maintain the Audi’s suspension for another six months. That’s the kind of thing I want to get away from. And as I get a bit closer to finishing a manuscript that feels like it’s got something behind it other than my hot air and swollen ego, a bit of fiction with a brain in its head and some characters that actually have a touch of depth to them, I can almost feel that mediocrity creeping up on me, trying to smother my enthusiasm and remind me that my place is not to shine among the stars but to look up at them and dream as I remain mired in the mud down in the foundations of somebody else’s palace.
It’s like spraining a toe in the last 5 meters of a 100 meter dash. Taking the last turn a bit too wide on a Formula 1 track. Being down at least one goal as the clock hits 90 minutes and there’s not a lot of stoppage time. The well-educated, reasonable, lazy, McDonalds-eating thing to do is stop. Quit. You’ve done a great deal, but now you’re just hurting yourself and you should be content in making a good effort. Pat yourself on the back, treat yourself to a rest, you’ve earned it.
Am I just beating a dead horse, here? Am I saying anything new? I’m not just talking about this post, either. What possible difference can my work make? Do I really have a shot at producing anything interesting, anything worth reading?
I’m certainly not going to find out if I quit.
This is the home stretch. The checkered flag is in sight. A few more steps, painful as they might be, and I’ll cross that finish line. And yes, my performance will get picked apart in post. There’ll be slow-motion replay of every little mistake. People with a lot more experience than me will be all too happy to point out what I could do better, what they’d have done differently and might even tell me that I should have quit long ago.
I know this is coming. I know it might not be comfortable for me, that it will feel like I’ve just caught my breath only to have somebody punch me in the gut. But I accept this. I have to. I need to be aware of the fact that what I’ve done is imperfect, that it needs help, that it’s a lump of carbon deep in the darkness of my imagination and to truly shine it needs to be placed under pressure from a lot of outside forces. It’s frightening, on a fundamental level, and potentially painful, which might be why the last couple of days have seen me putting very few words of any significance down.
I’m girding my loins. I’m seeing the Wave coming and I’m ready to catch it. I hope some of you will come along for the ride, even if it’s just to tell me how much I suck.
I’m not quitting. I’m pounding out those last 5 meters. I’m making that last turn. I’m staying ahead of the defenders and waiting to get that pass that’ll let me slip one past the keeper. And for right now, I’m done making lousy metaphors.
It would be a hell of a waste of a writer’s conference if I didn’t do any writing, after all.
It’s been been over a year since I discussed The Fine Art of Selling Yourself. Other than being almost done with a novel that, while imperfect, might actually have a shot of getting some ink, very little has changed for me. I still think pitches should be simple, agents should be approached with confidence and that no amount of rejection should stop you (or me) from trying to hook one.
But there’s something else. Something I nearly forgot in the rush to finish the aforementioned manuscript.
Have something solid.
It’s very, very rare for a project in any sort of media to get picked up on pitch alone. Unless you know someone in the business, have perfect timing, and possess a supernatural awareness of what’s going to sell to a lucrative demographic, you might as well be throwing darts at a dart board. But a solid work? Something that’s been revised, edited and polished? That’s like approaching the same dart board with a shotgun.
That’s why I took the pressure of off myself to finish before the weekend. I might finish at the Philadelphia Writer’s Conference, in addition to attending workshops and Tweeting to make sure all of my literary friends know what the place has to offer, but I realize just how bad of a first impression it’d be for me to run into a face-to-face with an agent, out of breath but happy to have a finished work to pitch. The last thing you want from someone you might be working with is to meet them when they sweat all over your shirt.
So I’m not going to embarrass myself – any more than I do normally, shut up. Clean clothes, nice hat, fresh battery in the pocket watch, business cards. I’ll meet people, network, get people interested. If I do approach an agent, it’d be to pick their brain, see how my genre is doing and what the demand is. Maybe a quick ‘elevator’ pitch as to what Citizen in the Wilds is all about, why it might sell and to whom it’d appeal. Maybe.
But I won’t be looking for an agent in earnest until Citizen is trimmed and pruned, which might be a while.
Speaking of, however, if anybody here has been using Google Wave for their project in terms of getting collaborative feedback, can you give me any tips on how to get started? I’m thinking once I get people on board, it’ll be best to release one chapter at a time, get it fixed up, and then move on.
Finally, if I do go that route, would anybody like to help tear my writing a structurally superfluous new behind? I’ll start a list. Then when the last word’s been banged out, I’ll start dangling nice meaty chops of potential fantasy-flavored fail for your minds to nom on.
Okay, in all honesty, I have no idea when the novel contest was or why I felt inclined to enter it. Or if I even did enter it. The ol’ cracker barrel ain’t what it used to be, as Uncle Karl might say. Regardless, I saw this as I was re-opening my files for the weekend’s work, so here’s what amounts for a Canned Goods entry when I’m shoulder-charging my way through the last 30k of the biggest fiction project I’ve tackled since I finished Fortnight years and years ago. I might post the second half of my last Canned Goods bit tomorrow, but I’d like to see if I can’t put something else together since Circle of Hellfire is, well, kind of crap.
Athletes often talk of ‘hitting the wall’. Without the right training or glucose intake, an endurance runner will come to a point where they’re all but overwhelmed with fatigue. These folks love to run and train hard for a marathon, but in the midst of their enjoyment comes a point that drains them of energy and happiness and leaves them struggling to just take one more step.
Writers can hit a similar wall. It might not weigh down your limbs or cause sweat to pour down your brow, but it can stop your efforts dead. It can be a transition from one scene to the next, a break in a conversation or just a pause in the line of thought you’d been following. Whatever it is, the steam runs out of the engine and you grind to a halt. You stare at what you’ve written, proud that you’ve gotten this far but knowing there’s more to go, and wondering how in the hell you’re going to get to that fantastic ending you’ve been planning with the help of women who game and magic talking beardfaces.
There’s really only one way to proceed if you happen to hit that wall. It’s the same thing those long-distance runners do, when you get right down to it.
Keep. Going.
As much as someone might tell you that writing something else other than your primary focus doesn’t help you, if you’ve written yourself into a corner and need to write your way out, sometimes you can’t do that as immediately as you’d like. So go write a blog post. Try a new writing experiment. Bang out some slash fic. Jot down limericks. Just keep writing.
I hit a wall recently. I knew I had to keep going, to get to the other end of what I was working on. But it felt laborious, like every few words I had to stop and catch my breath. I re-read things I’ve written before. I tried to remind myself of why I do what I do, what makes me passionate about writing and why some of the works out there that are so successful piss me off. The point is, I didn’t stop writing. I might have paused in the writing of the project that ultimately might mean something, but I kept my fingers moving across the keyboard until going back into the trenches of the main work didn’t seem as daunting, and before I knew it I was humming along again.
I know that, as a mostly unpublished writer, a somewhat arrogant jackass and a legendary waster of time and money, my advice should be taken with at least a couple of pounds of salt. But there it is. That’s how I tore down the wall between me and the end of my project. Maybe it’ll work for you, too.
