A terrified novelist

I’d like to tell you about my novel. The dead one. The one which stirs in its grave.

gaussian blur

It started in 2002. I lived in Prince George’s County, Maryland–about ten miles from the DC border–and I had a typical life for a college-dropout & would-be artist. I worked at a independent bookstore; I dated a woman nine years my senior; I wrote awful poetry. One day, I wanted to write a story.

I figured twenty pages was a suitable length. I also figured I could clear my throat for the first three pages. Anyway, I set the story in DC. A blizzard made its way to my fictional District, closing the schools for a few days. My protagonist puttered around the house, thought of his deadbeat dad–a father he never met–and decided to spend the snow day with his friend, Derek. Derek was an emcee; my protagonist made beats; together, they dreamed of obtaining a record deal one day. I too had such a dream: waiting daily for a publishing contract to–just–fall from the sky.

There was sex, betrayal, fist fights, a father-son reunion, money gifted by said deadbeat dad. I think my protagonist bought himself an SUV and–

sigh

Eighteen months later, the short story became four hundred pages (no chapters). I printed out the four hundred pages. I read the first ten pages–maybe. I held my phonebook-thick manuscript, reading the first pages, thinking aloud what have I done? By this time, I was in Georgia, a few miles from the Alabama border, still living the (now twice-over) college dropout, artistic life: my new girlfriend was two years older than the one I left in DC; I worked for an insurance company; I still wrote awful poetry, waiting for that publishing contract to appear out of thin air, still.

2004 passed. 2005 stopped by and I entered my first marriage. By the end of the year, I hated my insurance company job and I started to think about my novel. In my cubicle, I scribbled a quick outline–changes that had to be made for the second draft. Unbeknownst to me at the time, my first depressive episode began to surface but that is immaterial for this story–I only mention it for context, to quickly characterize my state of mind back then.

success?

I finally sat down to completely rewrite the novel. I changed a few details. I reset the novel from DC to a fictional rendering of my hometown in New Jersey. The blizzard remained, as did the throat-clearing: about three pages of scene setting written in what was, at the time, my best verse. Everyone was the same age, more or less, though my protagonist was less pragmatic the second time around. More unstable. More unsure of himself. Less hopeful. More dour. A sad young man who carried around pound of guilt on his back.

He later met a new character I created. She became his first love. She lived with her father in an incestuous household. She was murdered by her father; my protagonist saw her body and was eventually shot in the back by her father who, seconds later, took his own life.

My protagonist suffered paralysis, post traumatic stress disorder, disassociated himself from his friends, went to college (Temple in Philadelphia), where he abused his painkillers and threatened to kill his psychiatrist, prompting a trip to the mental hospital.

By the time I got him to the mental hospital, I had no idea what to do. I thought the novel climaxed too soon. I figured if a shootout and a commitment to the looney bin occurred in part one of the story, then how the fuck do I make the story climax in part two?

Well–my depressive episode took hold; my wife and I split up; I moved back to New Jersey. Then, I didn’t regard the novel as officially dead–just on hold until I sorted out my life as well as my hero’s. In the meantime, I came to some conclusions: I didn’t know how to write well; I didn’t know the elements of craft–I’m sure I used a few accidentally in the novel; I had no idea what I was doing. So I went back to short stories for practice. This was in 2007, by the way.

end gaussian blur

Novel zombies are inherently difficult to kill. To my knowledge, there’s no way to do it: no decapitation, no gunshot to the head. Is it enough to say my novel is dead?

A dead novel isn’t a failed novel; a failed novel–wheezy and fatigued as it might be–still breathes, still generates a modicum of hope that one day, it’ll become a success or, at least, its author can use it for parts in other stories.

What makes my novel dead? It’s not a failed project, it’s one I gave up on over the years because of a challenge. To be fair, I didn’t know how to write a short story; I had no idea how to construct a novel; there was no hope that I could actually save a novel.

I guess a dead novel is one without faith from its author. Even a failed novel can be crafted and sent into the world with loving hands. The author must love his story, his characters, his world. When I loved, my novel began to fail; when I stopped, it died. Love, like a zombie, dies hard, if at all. I realize–I love my main character. A decrepit page flickers, threatening to turn.

@thomasdemary. @twitter.