Truman Capote likened the finishing of a novel to taking your child into the back yard and shooting it. As a parent, I’m intrigued by the mind that could have created that sentence. Still, I take his point. I was all but undone by the completion of my previous novel, cried for days, became physically ill. Wracked with grief for what I’d created and destroyed. But not with this one. This one felt more like letting go of a red balloon. There was that sense of loss, but also elation. I’d seen its shape from the beginning, knew from the moment I conceived it, that it wasn’t mine to keep. They never are.
It helps that this is the shortest novel I’ve ever written, that it’s almost pure genre, that it’s undercut by comedy and that, unlike with previous works, I have an agent waiting for it. It helps that I have the distraction of another book launch, some other big events at home. I wonder how long I should leave it to germinate. Is that the word? Ferment, foment? Will it sprout wings? A tail? Bubble and toil? Stephen King says the longer the better. Six months, a year. That makes sense when you’re juggling best sellers, movie deals and miniseries. But for the rest of us, when is ripe rotten? I won’t be the same person in a year. I may not remember what it was like to be the me of 2011, writing this novel. Why I did it may not seem so important. There may be other distractions, a new project. I may, over time, not be able to connect with the urgencies that impelled these characters at this time, in these places. And as any (speculative) fiction writer knows, timing is everything. Secret video footage of Princess Diana was central to my first novel. By the time I finished it, there WAS secret footage of Princess Diana. An editor and I agonized recently over a short story that mentioned Osama Bin Laden. What do you do? Insert ‘the late’? Replace Bin Laden with Al Zawahri? Who?
So, I’m thinking weeks rather than months. Catch up on TNB posts, hang up a Gone To Google+ sign on my Facebook wall; pull weeds, try to stay away from the body in the back yard. Murdered child, phooey. Get real, Truman, if finishing a book was like killing your kid, there’d be hell to pay.
Wow, Capote really said that?! I finished a novel two weeks ago. I think it’s more like sending a kid off to boarding school. Not quite shooting them and eliminating them from the planet–more like setting them free and hoping they’ll do well without you standing right beside them.
Congrats on your forthcoming novel. What’s the title?!
Thanks, Jessica! It’s called American Monster. And you finished too—boarding school, yeah, I like that.
I have a friend who mixes music for major labels (you’ve heard his work a lot), and he makes the comment that mixes are never actually completed, just brought to the point that further obsessing ceases to add value.
Further obsession can so often detract, that it’s scary.
God, I can’t wait to shoot this little bastard. Metaphorically speaking.
But of course! Unless you’re referring to your work behind a camera. D’ya think Truman was playing with our heads? A secret Indie filmmaker in his spare time. Home movies?
I read in his biography that he narrowly missed being aborted. That has to afford you a sense of fatalism. But I take his point, I fucking love these people I made up, I am going to miss them when they’re gone. Also, I really like the title of your impending book, it’s very evocative.
Haha! Thanks. Not sure if I’m allowed to do this, but if you want, you can read an excerpt here: http://newdeadfamilies.com/current-2/the-fall-by-j-s-breukelaar/
Oooh, the end freaked me out, I didn’t see that coming. Thanks for letting me read it.
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