In Bunyon’s Pilgrim’s Progress, the hero Christian get trapped in a deep bog of misery, guilt and sin from which he must emerge. If you can strip the religion out it’s so accurate - despondency is a bog that you have to wade through. Clearly I have been in that slough but I’m emerging now and all it took was one coffee with a good friend. Isn’t it glorious that a Christian novel from the 17th century can capture an atheist writer’s feelings in the 21st?
It makes me feel egotistical and somewhat insecure that all it required to help me emerge was someone saying: ‘you are a really good writer, but your best work is ahead of you and I’m convinced when you really let go you’ll blow the world apart.’ He described it as a straining dam: ‘your true creative strength is pent up, the dam’s springing leaks and cracks, your work shows flashes of it where it’s got out here and there, but when the dam finally bursts - look out world.’
The tricky part is that it’s my tendency to overthink that’s holding it all back. What did I naturally do when he told me this? Start thinking furiously about ways in which to stop thinking so much in my writing.
He also told me that one of the editors at his publishing house (he’s a state sales manager) had agreed to look at the text of my novel, Crash Tactic in July to give me some feedback. This is a generous commitment of time and has fired me with the excitement of a deadline. I thrive on deadlines. As I’m overseas in July I’ve got to get through Crash Tactic and do another round of changes by the end of the month.
Panic, glorious motivating panic!
Crash Tactic revisited
Having not looked at it for over six months I printed off Crash Tactic and went over it at the weekend marking things that needed changing. There was so much! On one level it was embarrassing to think I’d let people read it in the state it was, but what was great was that I could see how much better it could be. Structurally it’s sound and from about page 60 where the hero gets kidnapped during a terrorist attack on the World Financial Planners conference it goes like the clappers. The opening fifty pages are a bit ‘treacly’. There isn’t the lightness (I’m talking language, sentences rather than ideas and plot) so the mark up pencil has worked overtime. It’s an action comedy adventure but reading through it struck me that in parts I’ve been sidetracked by the comedy. I’m so used to making it front and centre - the whole purpose of the novel. Maybe it’s too forced. It can flow from the situations and characters without explicit ‘quipping’ all the time.
The comedy safety net
Maybe I’m too in love with comedy. Perhaps that’s my dam - not so much being funny but feeling the need to entertain, being terrified that what I write isn’t entertaining - perhaps I need to trust that what I write is interesting and entertaining without having to force it. Am I using comedy as a safety net? I'm scared of writing something that’s not busily entertaining. It’s been said that a writing novel is like standing naked in a room and asking people to comment on your body. If that’s true, it could be that comedy is my underpants.
Mmm I’d say there was plenty for me to think about there, but I’m trying not to think.
Meanwhile still no call from the agent but I’m not worried, I’m back where I love being, right in the middle of my text.
1 comment:
Way to go Bruno!
Noticed in this weekend's Australian Magazine, Double Take feature with Mem Fox and her daughter Chloe, that Mem's novel, Possum Magic was rejected 9 times over 5 years until it was accepted and then, of course, it went stellar.
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