Writing the Big Novel

Hmmm...about 571 pages into the Big Novel. Probably end up around a thousand. The interesting thing about the Big Novel is that it keeps growing out like an atomic mushroom cloud and instead of retracting as most novels do when you pass the halfway point, it just keeps growing. That is because the Big Novel does not play by the usual rules. Most novels just start and have a middle and an end. Very egg like. And you usually roll in around four hundred pages or so. And you can almost feel the arc and where it will end. The Big Novel follows none of these rules.

And so you are constantly stoking the fire and you have to put all your fears aside that naturally kick in. What if this thing just keeps going? Much like fission the fear is not that it will go off but that it won't stop going off. Then the second fear hits you which is: who the hell is going to want to read something this big? But of course that is ridiculous because predicting reading tastes has never been the purview of novelists.

So you roll along and watch the Big Novel grow. Eventually you figure it will run out of steam and start to close down. Because really, what goes up, must, eventually, come down. At least you hope it works that way.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Is The Big Book Dead?

On vacation with the inlaws in Florida and stumble over Don DeLillos Underworld in the library of a gated community center where some white guy is singing Louis Armstrong's What a Wonderful World and the Greatest Generation is applauding like mad and there is DeLillos monster novel among all the John LeCarre/Grisham debris and my thought is well at least it is some literature with a capital L among the slickies and the mystery novels the Greatest Generation prefers along with their Phantom of the Opera (which is what the one man show is ending up with) and so I grab it and head out into the warm night.

I had read White Noise a while back and couldn't stay with it. It felt dated and sort of turgid like a heavy car trying to get up a hill. But I wanted to take a crack at Underworld because I was writing a Big Novel myself and this was a Big Novel and my thought was there should be something here for one Big Novel man to instruct another Big Novel man fifteen years later. So I read the first chapter and it was entertaining and sprawling and big and had everything but the kitchen sink and of course DeLillo is a good writer and this is a big swipe at American life...but it felt, ultimately, like a big old building that had seen better days and better times.

And part of this is I am not a fan of post modern fiction ala DeLillo. It is just too big. Too... look how much I can write and how well I can write. I don't find this with Franzen novels. They are big but they don't feel like they take up a city block. Don DeLillo is the appointed great writer so you can see him writing like a great writer and building these monstrous novels, but I guess my question is do we care about Big Novels anymore? I mean do we really want to invest all this time in this Titanic that lumbers across the sea when in fact we could probably get across in a smaller sleeker boat?

I like to think the Big Novel is still relevant and Franzen gives me heart because his novels don't feel like a big lumbering whale although they are long. But there is something very immediate and and that saves them from the DeLillo big novel fate. And maybe this is unfair because Don's novel  is fifteen years old and it does feel like one of those books you find in the attic and you stare at the wall of prose like...wow...people read this...all of this! Or maybe it is  just the Mailer big foot white male writer time has passed.

I dunno...but I think I'm going to put Don back in the Community Center because I am only here a week and that is not enough for a Big Novel. Maybe Louis will be playing again and maybe I can find something shorter among the literature of the Greatest Generation. Probably not.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Novels as Commercials

Just read a novel that should have been a commercial. There were so many gang banger mainstream idioms that I surely could have been watching a commercial for Vans(which were probably mentioned twenty times as well as Timberlands) and maybe that is what it was. A very long YA commerical for hip hop gang banging dudes and dudesses who really could walk off the page and hawk some product with a yo  inference and then slink back into the book in their hoodies and Vans and cruise away sucking on jungle juice, giving us all "daps" and slouching into the fade away sunset.  CUT...that's a wrap.

The director was the only dude missing in the novel. But he or she was there in the editing looking for a hook. The bi-racial hook was the one used in this novel and one can see the plot slither away under the pressure of this editing. I don't think we need this...maybe a little more angst about being half black and half white...and so the author lays it on, but there is a fault line that gets violated. What was the authors original intent? What engine drove the story.

Books are written from the inside out and not the other way around. The problem with the publishing environment of today is that a lot of editors will tinker around and ignore the core of the novel and try and hang "popular" ornaments on the novel tree, but like a tree that is over decorated the book sags and eventually falls from the weight. These ornaments slow the book down and destroy the focus and worse they stand out as bogus...someone elses design other than the sculptor. And it happens all the time.

The author wants to get published. I get that. What is sad,  is that the original intent of the author , the thing that got he or she  to write the book in the first place is really the only chance for a book to take off.  Originality with a big O. You cannot fake it....though some try.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Writing in summer

The Russian winter is gone  in Chicago and for writers this is a jolt. Happily ensconced in coffee houses you go about your business and assume the winter will drag on for at least another couple of months as we don't have spring in Chicago. We have wet soggy snow and dreary cold windy days that drag into June and then it gets hot. But now because of some kind of strange weather pattern we are in summer! And all those winter rhythms so conducive to writing the big Russian novels that require plodding and fires and lots and lots of coffee has been replaced by the airy days of summer. Bizarre.

And so you emerge bleary eyed after months of hacking away in your garret. Winter is enforced isolation as summer is enforced expulsion into the great outdoors of sunshine and air, peering strangely at the sky you have not seen except as a glaring cold ball of fire low on the horizon where night comes early and you pass the night in front of the television or the computer or with a book and rise to cold dark days that put you back in the coffee house and it is very good for the work. Summer...not so much.

You want to be outside man! Work. What work? Time to frolic. You are the school kid staring out the window and longing for the sunshine except you are now your own master and go on outside because the only taskmaster is yourself and he can be bribed very easily with promises of a bike ride or ice cream or just sitting on the porch with the laptop. The work moves into the background as all that Vitamin D pumps through your poor sun starved body and you find yourself waking up after a long hibernation. Could you really be that white and fat?YES!

So this lasts for the first week of the warm weather and that epic novel sits. Yeah you work on it but it is different. One foot in and one foot out the door at the Dairy Queen or throwing a football with the kids or wandering around the yard or garage and feeling like you should be doing something very active outside, but you have no idea what. Best to make some notes and tuck the novel while you lose your mind to the summer sun. At least until it rains.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Book Clubs Get Fiery

Just did a ladies book club for Rocket Man and I expected it to be the normal give and take of any book club with questions about the writing process and themes. I don't know if it was the wine or what but these ladies came at me with both barrels. Why did I write a book about someone losing their home?  A lot of people keep their homes and don't shortsale them away they pointed out. True. True. It's fiction. But your character just keeps doing all the wrong things! He is so immature!

Now you may think fiction gives you a sort of bye on the I made it all up front. It doesn't. These ladies saw the main character ( a man hanging on the edge of a cliff financially, morally, losing his home, marriage_ as myself and they asked me if I was getting a divorce, if I really hated my father, if I was losing my house. I told them that I see things going on write about it and that I saw the American Dream in trouble and that was my theme. Huh!

Which brings the whole thing of suspension of disbelief. Rocket Man is about what is happening right now to people in their homes and so there is a natural inclination to say that is me! But in fact it is fiction but I think reality television has blurred the world in terms of what we think is true. The ladies at the book club never for a second believed I had made up this story of woe. "It is just too much like what is going on," one lady told me, pointing out that real fiction takes places in different times and different places. The novel of social commentary really didn't compute with her.

Anyway, it was a great time. But man, those book clubs can get rough!

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

A Great Recession Story

Saw my neighbor and some friends hurriedly throwing wood into a pickup truck. I hadn't seen him since he divorced his wife and we all speculated that Ron might have just left the house. They couldn't sell of course and so they squatted like two Indians waiting for the next one to blink. Rons business had gone down the tubes when municipalities quit paying their bills and his wife didn't want him sopping up all of her money trying to save it. So they divorced and remained in the same house.

But one day two squads pulled up and we  never saw Ron again. He was just gone. We speculated that maybe he was still in the house but Ann only kept a few lights on and Ron used to light up the house like Christmas. So we figured the police meant Ron had been kicked out and we forgot all about it until I saw him out there by his woodpile with three women and two men. They moved like lightning throwing the cord wood into the back of Ron's white pickup. I used to help Ron cut that wood. It was sort of a fall ritual.

They finished throwing the wood in the truck and sure enough a squad pulls up. I see Ron talking to the cop, gesturing to his wood and the cop shaking his head. Finally Ron left and then the cops left. I stared at where the wood used to be. Ron loved chopping that wood. It was a ritual and now it was just gone. We would all be gone eventually. Ron was just the first.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Television and Books

Bill O'Reilly is bringing out a sequel to Killing Lincoln aptly named Killing Kennedy. Henry Holt the publisher says that due to vigorous sales the second book should be well received. Billy uses a co writer and I would bet he is the writer seeing the big mans schedule. Popular history requires some research and this takes time and the writing takes time and thought and Billy (pardon to all O'reilly disciples) does not seem like the kind of guy who sits around and writes historical books. What Holt really loves of course is having his name on the book, they could care less if he pens one word.

Television has become the instrument of book selling. Every cable pundit has multiple books. Chris Matthews even hawks his own book on his show in a third person commercial "And it would make an excellent Christmas gift" You  could just see the publishers asking him for that plug. So it doesn't matter really who writes these books as long as the television personality can say it is theirs and plug it on their show. With publishing undergoing the equivalent of the Titanic going down (unsinkable) you cannot blame them for grabbing onto any piece of flotsam in the e-market sea.

Glenn Beck is a novelist and he sells well. Many Beck followers will plunk down the price of a hardcover and so we can expect a long line of Beck fiction. What does this say? Just that advertising is expensive and doesn't work and if you can use a television personality who is on the air night after night then there is a lot more bang for the book. To the victor belongs the spoils and certainly for the modern author one sure road to bestsellerdom is to have your own show.

Or at least stick your name on someones book who has a show. You will probably be doing the writing, but there are worse ways  to get on a bestseller list. I just don't know what they are.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

The Help Needs help

Watched half hour of The Help and turned it off. I committed the cardinal sin of watching a movie that I READ THE BOOK. The movie was just so over the top and so obviously slanted toward women and so Mad Men esq and so Southern The View/Devil Wears Prada/Dont We Look Great in sixties garb that it was nauseating with the overplayed saccharine accents that woman in Jackie Kennedy garb just cant help themselves doing and  beating us over the head with AREN'T WE THE PRETTIEST RACIST WOMEN YOU HAVE EVER SEEN. They needed some homely women at least to balance it out.

But it really was Hollywood. Hollywood ruined their own movie. Mary Steamburgen(sic) was ridiculous in her portrayal of the Jewish Editor sitting on her desk talking to someone who had never published anything like she had all the time in the world for budding writers who want to write radical books about racial relations in Mississippi. Sissy Spacek should have just kept drinking or playing bridge or whatever she was doing. Hattie McDaniels was rolling in her grave at the short distance Hollywood has traveled for black actresses. Mammy was more authentic in every way than the maids.

It turned into a Nora Ephron vehicle about Skeeters empowerment. Skeeter who screeched along under her mothers fierce eye and finally blows the whistle. She was about as believable as my left foot. So wide eyed so surprised, so obtuse at the revelations of racial mores in the society she had grown up in as a privileged white girl provided. The book did not suffer this way because the book could float into the readers mind and we could edit out the fluff and the dribble that did not pertain. Hollywood lives in fluff and drivel.

And it will sweep the Oscars. No doubt about it. I could see that in the twenty minutes I watched. Take women and put them in a racist time and give them kicking dresses and have them pee every five minutes (it seemed everyone was on the toilet) then you have a winner. I dunno. Maybe I'm jaded against Magnolia and lace and urine.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

The Sword of Age

In this country it is all about those two numbers that correspond to that weird date on your birth certificate where you left the cosmos and started your life on the planet earth. And from that day on the bastards started tracking you. They  just had to know how many years had passed since the day that nurse spanked you on the ass and you screamed out in protest because you had just left this nice warm dark place and you intuited that from here on out it was every man or woman for him or herself.

And so you tooled along and went along with the birthday parties where they made this big deal about this number and gave you presents and cake and ice cream and you were down with it because it all worked in your favor and who cared about a little number anyway? Then the little number started to grow and the birthdays changed. Not so many presents or cake and ice cream ,but still everyone wanted to always know what that number was. In fact it was the first question out of a lot of peoples mouth a lot of time.

And then somewhere it started to become this thing around your neck. People didn't seem to care about your birthday at all anymore, just the little number. And you noticed people used the little number against you especially if their number was smaller. And the weird thing was that people always guessed your number about ten years off. Thinking your number was ten years light. But they always persisted and had to know...really what is your number...how old are you really?

And then you realized at at point that number was a sword. They couldn't get you any way else. People a lot dumber than you, slower, uglier, still wanted to know that number. And so you start to lie to them. Just to piss them off. And they would look dismayed. But i thought you were...nope. Not that number, this number. Really? Oh yeah. My number is less than yours. And you leave them there wondering, staring at you and you think to yourself, fuck em.

I mean, what's in a number, really?

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Rocket Man...funniest novel since Straight Man...Chicago Sun Tiimes

Authors and the Fight Between Amazon and Barnes and Noble

There is a big fight going on between Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Basically Amazon is trying to squash traditional book publishing with the Kindle and Barnes and Noble is fighting back and saying they are Custers last stand between traditional publishing and the cold windy streets of Ebooks. Authors are in the middle but according to the NY Times article we will suffer if BN goes down because people will quit buying books and we will be left with our little downloads to make a living. That would suppose authors are making a living now.

The one percent rule applies here. About one percent of the authors make all the money and the rest scramble for the crumbs. Shelf space is the dividing line and if you cannot get shelf space in a store then you do not exist. You may be one great writer but there are only so many slots or so much space in a store and your book might not make the cut. So you have effectively disappeared. Or you never got up to bat in the first place. Getting a book of fiction published has never been easy and now it is something like winning the lotto (except for the money of course)

So where does that leave authors. Wellllll (as Ron Paul would say) you know having an ebook out there might not be like having a real book but it beats the alternative: oblivion. And I don't mean you are not still writing oblivion, I mean you are still writing very good books that you simply cannot get published or get onto the shelves. So you really don't exist. And that is a very real fate for most authors in the old paradyme. Not to say we all don't want the book published route, but if presented with some water verus no water in a desert, I will take the few drops offered.

So who knows if BN will win. The big authors do have a lot to lose. They are making real money. The literary mid list fiction writing authors probably will do better in an Amazon dominated world. At the very least they will get their books out there and if they hustle and word of mouth gets going, they might even sell. And they can have all the shelf space they want.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man...one word...plastics

Serial Sex Murders and the State of Publishing

I had  a friend say to me he was glad he had published his two books when he did and gotten the contract he did then because now it would be impossible Maybe that is why a film company is bringing out a 3D version of The Great Gatsby. They said it would allow them to give a faithful telling of the novel by bringing a stage quality (3D) to the film. Hmmm. Or like my dad said the other day, the only  people getting published are those that do something notorious (branding/celebrity) and suggested I go ride a motorcycle off a mountain or leap from this planet to the next and write a book about it. Thanks dad.

But if you are a fiction writer then there is a bit of feeling of yelling into a void. It would seem that Fitzgerald might reach more people in his 3D format than the original pulp version. Or that might friend might not get the contract he got before or maybe I really should jump into the next universe and write about it. But certainly a lot of the rules governing fiction might be on their head between the Kindle, the economy, and the more brazen publish somebody famous and play it safe.

Saying all that you have to believe good fiction by unknown writers is still being published. I remember a letter I received when I first started out and she said I had a good novel (an agent) but that serial sex murderers are what get published now. But for me to keep at it, "quietly good books do get published" One would like to believe that but maybe that quietly is the undoing of it all now. Quietly might not suffice in the age of the Internet.

We live in a loud polymorphic culture of multiple stimuli. I run my UVERSE from my phone and DVR movies while I  sit in the dentist office so I hae them to watch when I get home. That is a lot of  options to have in the palm of ones hand. And yet there those novels I still flip off the television to go read. I am a writer, so I may be the exception, but maybe those "quiet books" are the ones that people will still seek out. But you have to have a publisher take a chance on those people who will turn from the media of the age.

I have to say though, a good story should be the determining factor. As a novelist you have to cling to that notion and ignore everything else. So in a way I guess I am back to to battling it out with the serial sex murders with the book quietly published. Let's hope it still gets published.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/

Why publishers won't buy your book

Mmmmm....this is a tough one. Why wont publishers buy your book. Well, let's break down publishers into it's component parts. We are not talking about Max Perkins. We are talking about someone, probably a twenty something someone or a thirty something someone who quite possibly is female and is working in an office in Manhattan with books flying at her all day long like leaves in a ferocious autumn wind. The books literally rain down and these are books from agents but the slush pile detritus is put into the mix as well. Now put that person in the year 2012

Publishing is on  it's proverbial ass. Mainstream publishing where the brick and mortar press cranks up like an old dinosaur still rules, but there is that comet rolling though space and the temperature is falling. Books still dominate and a publisher can put an author on the map, but at a million kindles a week, the times are a changing.  Let us be clear. This has everything to do with why your book is getting rejected and it has nothing to do with your book getting rejected.  Your book is getting rejected for reasons that mystify and convolute, creating more smoke than fire. Well...so what are they?

Not right for our list. Not right for us. Not right for the genre. Not right. Hmmm. Ok. Don't care for the characters. Could not get into their head. Don't like the voice. Don't reallly see a spot for this book. Too much action. Not enough action. Not enough character development. Too much dialogue. Not enough dialogue. Too Slow. Too long. Too short. Episodic. Been done. No one would care about your characters. Already have a novel like this. No brand. No platform. Just....NO!

Believe me I have heard it all. But here is thing. Do not take it personally. There are so many variables pressing down on this decision that you will hear maybe 1/8th of the truth and that is that they just dont know if they can sell it. And you know what, that is true. No one is sure what sells and what doesn't and throw in the Kindle factor and now you are off to the races. So really, it all comes down to what you think of your work and if you believe in yourself.

Listen to the advice, listen to the criticism, make the changes, don't make the changes, submit it again, write another book. Move on, but never take it personally. It's just business. 

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Rocket Man...one word, just one word...plastics

Back to Work

Back to work after the holidays. Writers like everyone else have to remember what they have been doing for the last month of the holidays but unlike other people there is no easy system to plug back into. Most people return to the office and slog around and talk about the long holidays and slowly get back to work. Writers return to their garage or their basement or their attic or the desk in the corner and sit down with their coffee to find the thread again. And if you have taken off a lot of time then that thread is elusive.

It is a different way of thinking. The system is created by you and only you enforce it. You are the taskmaster who must demand the work be done. No easy thing in the dog days of January where the sun only shines for a bit and we return to the darkness of a Northern Winter. But the writing must continue. So you open up and start typing, looking for that magic of about a month before. Maybe you wrote through the holidays, but most people have to put it down for a while to satisfy family and friends and themselves.

It is the routine that has been obliterated and for the working nine to fivers the routine starts again on the commute. But the writer has no armor and since routine is self imposed then it must be started again like an engine that has been cold and out of gas for a good month in the shed. Usually it takes about a week for the cobwebs to clear out and the engine to run again efficiently. The first few days are just blowing out the pipes with the promise it will get better. By Friday you should be back to where you were.

If not, maybe the next week. Or the week after that, but the  muse will return... probably just in time for Easter.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Hemingways Attic...a writers survival guide

The Dream of Midnight in Paris

Woody Allen's film Midnight in Paris is  A Moveable Feast. Most of us who write or read seriously know about the Left Bank crowd of writers and painters who set the bar in the twenties for all to follow for the next hundred years. It was an amazing amalgam of creative talent centered in post WWI Paris and more centered in the bars and bistros where the writers and painters cross pollinated and created literature and art that is probably unparalleled since the Renaissance. Who hasn't become a writer or a painter and think about going to Paris to live the life less certain?

I did and so did the Owen Wilson character who is struggling between art and commerce and a wife who wants the finer things. In his fantasy or Woody Allen's we meet Hemingway and Fitzgerald Dali Gertrude Stein Picasso Zelda Mcleish and are mindful of the lingering presence of Joyce and Faulkner and the many others who came to the heart of the world of art and writing to make history and live  the artist life in a world where art is preeminent.

This is the assumption and the dream and Fitzgerald is refined and Hemingway is coarse and hilarious and Gertrude Stein is the Grande Dam of writing and Picasso is conflicted and Zelda is brilliant and heading toward insanity. This is the world we dance through and of course Paris is the magical background that makes us want it all the more. And Owen Wilson wants it and when he finally throws over security for a life in Paris we say but of course.

And then the movie ends and leaves us with the dream of the Left Bank fantasy intact. And why not? Those people took a chance and went to Paris to be artists and live a life apart. Undoubtedly there was hardship and people starved and did not find literary fame. But Paris is not a dream, it is a real city, and as Owen Wilson says, just walking in the rain in Paris at night is enough. One can  only imagine.

http://www.billhazelgrove.com/
Hemingways Attic-- surviving as a writer