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[wolfofmagdeburg]

Where the hell does time go? I have a little over a week left in the flat- room- I'm living in at the moment. I won't miss it much. My internet connection is wire-reliant and intermittent, and my TV connection has failed since there was a storm up here a couple of weeks ago; I suspect the aerial on the roof was damaged. Two of the three other

Comments

[mrs_leary]

Gosh! First off, let me congratulate you on writing (and rewriting!) a whole novel. Everyone talks about doing it; not many actually get in there and do it. Well done.

Obviously I haven't read it, so I can only go on what you say above. It sounds to me like it's very much a 'slice of real life', a book which observes how things are. Maybe you are trying to fit it into the 'thriller' genre, when actually it's not that at all...?

There are plenty of novels and films out there that are observational and insightful about how things are, and (like life itself!) do not follow the narrative structure which builds and builds to a climax and then wraps things up fairly neatly. Such things can indeed (again, like life) leave you feeling a bit dissatisfied and unresolved. That doesn't mean there's no value to them. After all, not every novel can or should be all sparkling feel-good entertainment. Some are about the truth of life's experiences, and that can sometimes feel all too unexciting. But truth and insight have a value of its own.

I guess what I'm saying here is that maybe it is what it is. And no amount of reworking and wrestling will make into something it's not.

So, do you: (a) keep wrestling with it; (b) hone what's there rather than what you feel should be there; (c) draw a line under it, and move onto your next book; or (d) go with another option I haven't thought of...?

(Hoping that's of some use...)

[wolfofmagdeburg]

Well, I haven't written-written the whole thing- I got a little under halfway through it the first try around, scrapped it, and now I've got a lot of wierd disjointed bits and a detailed plan for version 2.

When I say about a satisfying end, I don't necessarily mean a 'happy ending', I mean just some sense of completion or closure, some feeling that the reader has gotten something out of the experience. I know it's hard for me to judge, but at the moment, I just don't feel like there's anything productive to be said about the planned end. There's no *impact*.

I don't really know what I'm going to do about it, I'm just yelling into the ether. I just don't know why nothing I try works.

[mrs_leary]

Perhaps it's time to get back to the basics. What is it that makes you unwilling to just let this one go? What is the core idea, or the heart of the thing, that drives you to write it? I'd say start from there, and work your way back out.

I did get what you meant about the ending, and sorry for not conveying as much in all my blathering on! :-)

I think that if you haven't written that ending yet, then you can't really judge how it's going to work or what sort of impact it will have. When you write down or otherwise describe the bare bones of a plot, it almost always sounds remarkably lame - especailly to the writer. Maybe once you get there 'the long way', as it were, you'll find it packs a real punch - even if only because it has the whole weight of the novel behind it.

I'm thinking about the film of Tinker Tailor, which many people seemed to think was boring. I found it intriguing and really involving - and so did Bruce. When I commented as such afterwards, he said, 'No, it's not Mission Impossible, thank god! It's how it really is!'

That's kind of where I'm coming from in reaction to what you say about your novel. It's how it really is.

The idea that there isn't such a great difference between the 'good' guys and the 'bad' guys is pretty profound, if you ask me. The idea that people don't achieve closure in real life, even when given the chance (e.g. a parent in hospital), is also pretty profound. The idea that in real life these kinds of trauma can drive away a potential love interest rather than bond people together - absolutely. I don't see the problem in you addressing these things. Not at all.

But maybe you feel I'm getting the wrong end of the stick again. :-)

[wolfofmagdeburg]

I've spent so much time on it, and I care about these characters the same way really passionate fanficcers care about their favourites- I want people to see them the same way I do, I want people to care how they feel. I don't know anything about child-rearing but I imagine the feeling is the same- my characters aren't objectively better than anyone else and they may mess up, and mess up often, but I want them to have the sympathy and love of others just because they're *mine* and the instinct is to make sure they have the best chance to thrive. In terms of the plot, I wanted to address domestic abuse because deeper dialogues about this are *still* only going on in the deepest niches of law and social work; the pop culture grasp of what's 'normal bickering' and what's abuse in a parental or familial relationship (especially in film and literature) is a) massively skewed and b) sensationalist and heirarchical. Think about the racks and racks of parental abuse stories/autobiographies you can find in any supermarket book section- a criminal phenomenon has become a whole subculture of commodity, and with that comes a horribly mercenary heirarchy of suffering that affects real abuse survivors, who figure they can't possibly have been *that* mistreated and aren't worthy of justice or help healing because 'hey, at least [X horrendous thing] didn't happen to me like in that book!'.

Okay, I do see what you mean there with the Tinker Tailor comparison. But in that film, there was an end objective that ultimately, the plot did revolve around, and that most of the film was directly, actively about. I feel like the 'family saga' moments in between are currently too passive and slow... but if I drop the 'thriller' aspects and make the family saga the sole focus, there's just no goal to the whole thing. I want it to have profundity and integrity, yes, but I don't want to write a literary novel... I want people to *feel* over all of it, not just make academic notes on it.

The way I see it is, after studying them last year I could tell you the complete intimate details and meaning of most of Joyce's works, but I couldn't give less of a toss about the characters in them; I never once sat up after finishing one and thought about how I felt for them, because I didn't. Conversely, there are a lot of pulp sci-fi and fantasy stories which I have really loved, that have been chock full of personality but are about as deep as a kiddy pool- you could probably vaguely say they're about bravery, or human misuse of science, but mostly, they're about cool monsters biting people and stuff blowing up.
I want to do something that's *both of these things*. Maybe in the end, it's not my ability or ideas that's the problem, it's just about me wanting to be able to do all of them at once in a way that's impossible to balance.

[mrs_leary]

Hey there, hon! Sorry I didn't reply right away, but I wanted to have a think about what you say here.

I love what you say in your first para about how much you care about your characters. That's the way it should be, too! And I am absolutely 110% sure that your love for them will come across in your writing, and people will connect with that and them, and it will be *Feel* City. (Not everyone will connect, of course, just as you haven't connected with Joyce. But that's the way it always is and always should be.)

For what it's worth (and I realise that my advice isn't necessarily worth anything much at all), I don't think you should drop the thriller plot, because that's the structure off which everything else hangs. It might well be the least important part of the novel, but it's there to help you move from one chapter to the next, and to know when the end is. And I am sure it provides a lot of opportunities for insight into the characters and their situations along the way.

I absolutely think you should continue to aim at including both the literary and the involvement or engagement of the reader. I don't see them as incompatible at all. And it's certainly what I always try to do! My guiding light is the following quote (though I try to overlook the fact that it came from Norman Mailer):

'The best fiction is where art, philosophy and adventure all meet.'

When I think of my favourite novels, they all have that combination of the literary and the love. I'm sure yours can work that way, too.

But then, don't listen to me unless I am being of use. It definitely sounds to me as if you know where your towel is.

[wolfofmagdeburg]

That's alright! What you say is definately of use. :)

I've worked on it a bit, trimmed it down- just made everything happen a lot faster. I do feel a bit better about it now. I'd like to work on it straight away but things are getting so hectic for the next few days that i think I'll give it some space and let the changes settle in my head before I start working on it.