Four years in ...
I am finally nearing completion of 'Hiram Falls' and want to reassure you I am still alive and having fun. And another 'excerpt' will be coming in December. ... And a few writing tidbits.
I am dictating this. With its latest models of MacBooks, Apple has returned the speech-to-text technology it once had. It works. It’s amazingly accurate. And it’s a weird way to write.
When I was a newspaper reporter and used a black Royal manual typewriter, I had to think out what I wrote beforehand. So, after covering something, I thought out the lede, the important points, the structure on my way back to the newsroom.
The shift to IBM Selectrics was a breeze. I could achieve a typing speed of 125 words a minute and almost, almost catch up to my brain.
Computers, though, brought a major shift. I became lazier. I just sat down and wrote. I could fix it later. Move things around. Zap things that didn’t make sense or that meandered. Whoa; spell-check?
Dictating, though, is like jumping from an airplane and not knowing whether you have, in fact, put the parachute on your back. You have no time to think it out. You’ve heard the refrain: “I wish I’d thought about it before I said that.”
Gone is that sweet delay between your thought and your brain telling you what keys to press. Gone is the ability to let your brain do a little pre-editing for you before your fingers hit the keys. With dictation, you are just writing on the fly. It’s intimidating. It’s confusing. It’s totally different.
This adaptation will take time. I’m an old dog. And I don’t dare try it out with my novel because I worry that my inner voice — and the voices of the characters — will change and what I write now will not match the tone and rhythm and style of what I wrote before.
And I have written a lot. It’s now up to 125,000 words. (No I don’t know how many pages; I use Scrivener.)
I’ve been at Hiram Falls now for four years. Well, four and a half if you count my first start in the spring of 2019 when I wrote 25,000 words and then, one morning, read it, hated it, thought it was boring as fuck and zapped it. I deleted the backup too. Six months later I started again.
I am now underway on my ninth revision. “Holy shit,” you say, but this is my first novel. I am learning some things the hard way. And this “final” revision is going to be painful. As my editor said, “You’re 99 percent there. But the last one percent is the hard part.”
I have been blessed with the help of a number of people in this project — the largest I’ve ever undertaken. The director of a local stage company got me started (again) when she commissioned me to write stories for her annual winter story program. Seven shows. She has just accepted the latest for this December. This year’s character becomes the sixth to be introduced to live audiences by professional actors.
The director has given me a great privilege: To have my work read to a live audience. (Attending the first show for the first story I about died with fear. But then I looked over at the person sitting next to me, at the most emotional point of the story, and she was crying. Never have I been so glad to see someone tearing.)
My spoken word sketches of characters from Hiram Falls have now been experienced by some 4,500 people. And their reaction, visceral, effusive — in person and via social media and texts and phone calls — have been a godsend. They have given me a rare commodity — affirmation while the process is still underway.
Once I got started in earnest in the fall of 2019, I approached five people of very diverse backgrounds to see if they would help. They agreed right away. Another blessing. They have read multiple versions; three have read every revision. Their feedback, encouragement, insight, questions have been enormously helpful.
For each major draft I also invited in a new reader, a cold reader (I like people who don’t mince words). And for the last two drafts, I’ve hired a professional editor. Who also happens to be a NYT best-selling author. Tough as nails.
With each I had one-hour (max) conversations after they’d finished. I recorded them so I could listen more attentively and go back and listen again. Each person has a style of their own. One woman has been a mentor over the years, someone who pushes me hard and encourages me to take risks and has incredibly high standards. She said this: “When I finish a book I want it to have been worthwhile. I want to have learned something about the human condition.”
To allow them to express their judgment — because we do that, don’t we — I ask them the same question each time: “If you saw this book in its present state in the remainder section of your local bookstore, would you buy it for a friend? Yes or no?”
Draft 8: Three no; two yes. I am getting closer.
Having at least five and sometimes seven readers of a draft is both an asset and a liability. The people are very different. They have different preferred genres. Some like emotion. Others like plot. Others like character development. It gets complex to decipher.
On this latest draft, for instance, my new reader told me he didn't get one of the characters at all. “Why the fuck do you have a ghost?” Another said the character was her favorite. Some thought I had too much of one thing and not enough of another. Another reader thought the opposite.
What to do?
I look for consensus. And for clarity I ask them why they feel the way they do which helps me sometimes see consensus where I didn’t think there was any. This consensus helps tell me what is working and what is not. And I make sure to ask myself the same question: “C’mon Geoff, tell me: What’s working and what’s not?”
I’ve been blessed with some fantastic advice. One, an art therapist, told me early on to make sure I took plenty of time off after each draft. (Not hard for a writer; we love procrastination.) Another told me to get weirder. Several have suggested books for me to read. Others have talked about process.
My beta readers refrain from telling me what they think I ought to do to fix something or to make it better. But their consensus has been the same in this last draft — “You are almost there; but you still need to get deeper into your characters, choose details to show more of who they are and how they change.” Simple enough (not), right? But one put it this way, “you’re still writing like a fucking journalist. You are narrating from afar.” Fantastic advice hidden in that critique.
The best idea though came from the woman I refer to as my “mentor,” also a writer. She asked me: “Who are the main characters; name two or maybe three.” (The book spans nearly 60 years; there are a lot of fucking characters.) I told her. “Precisely.”
So what I should do, she said, is write a new ending. Not a re-write. Something new. Ten pages max. “You need to know where they end up more. That will help you understand them better, will take me deeper as a reader. Ten pages. Only write ten pages.”
So, after taking six weeks off to catch Covid, recover from Covid and then go camping in three states, I did. Ten pages. Banged it right out because during my hiatus, my brain worked out a lot of things that were bothering me … and some of my beta readers.
It worked. I love what I wrote (she read the draft ending and she, too, loved it). I have learned — or learned that I knew — a huge amount more about these characters — what drives them, what changes them, how they relate to others, where they end up.
The process has given me a completely fresh attitude about the whole book.
Since I am dictating, and this is, in a way, a conversation I am having with you, I wanted to get to why I am writing this.
I want to let you know that I am still alive and that I am still working on this book but the planned delivery of the book may be a little different than planned (and you already know I’ve blown by several deadlines.) I will finish it. And I hope you will like it. I will be posting the latest character sketch after it is presented to live audiences in seven shows this December. And I hope to report by then that the book is finished.
But … how you will experience Hiram Falls may be a good deal different than planned.
My initial intention was to publish this myself — on Substack as a serial WITH an audio version that also would be published as a podcast on all the appropriate platforms and on Vermont radio stations. A local printer was set to print the paperback — at near cost — because my intention was — and is — to donate all proceeds above my incidental costs (much covered by two grants I received) to three nonprofits who are helping me.
My editor, though, has a different idea. She admitted that “I have never before edited a writer intending to self-publish — I mainly work with writers who end up being published by the Big 5 or major independents. While I respect your intentions, this book deserves a much bigger audience than you can ever get on your own. I think you can get an independent literary house to buy it. It’s that good.”
Whew. Be still my heart.
With the latest draft, though, she has told me that she will help me get an agent. “And let’s give the Big Five a go. It’s that good.”
Blowing smoke? I don’t think so. My heart will not be still.
So I’ve shifted my thinking. And my plan. I will give it a go. Finish by November, agent by December, contract by June. With lots of rejection in between.
And if I don’t sell it by June, then I will go back to my original plan. I’m too old to go through years of rejection.
But I write for you, the audience. I am so appreciative of this small band of followers on Substack for expressing interest — and for occasionally commenting. I want to thank you for your interest.
I hope all of you who write for a living (or for simple joy) find some of my experience useful. And those who don’t write that much, I hope you still find this sort of post remotely interesting.
I will promise you this. If I do sell Hiram Falls I will give all of you who have signed up here a discount. And if you comment, I’ll give you some other goodies. And if you get a bunch of your friends to sign up, I’ll send you the finished book for free.
Wish me luck. I will write again next month when I, gulp, finally “finish” what has been also the most fun project I’ve ever done.
If we knew.... Would we have gone?
That road, that space between spaces where time pulls at almost everything you try on or have worn. How about those Big and little storms, the ones inside..... you know. So.. glad to find you again as you head for home on that self made path. Maybe it will be lined with Spring/summer flowers or Fall winded leaves finding the spaces behind their other true colors... or... possibly a colder winter... Yeah.. if we knew? but that is certainly what a writer never thinks about... Certainly not a duration or some nebulous end, but rather a longer final sigh, maybe... or a length of time where your part to carry the baton in a relay race, that now may soon go on, with others holding with a tight grip, the pass-off as someone else sees the finish line for you.... maybe.. tells you about it, though you never stopped looking, or hearing the echoes of the crowd, no matter the size. It is what it is, was just what it was, or will be what it will be.... and later, near the fire of time, we warm our hands , our hearts as another voice slips in uncalled and begins.............
Geoff, Best of luck and good fortune! Hop
Endings are scary and liberating. May the words be with you.