Tonight's Poet Corner: Introspection
Here's the deal with first novels: They can cause a lot of trouble for a writer, especially mentally. It can safely be said that most authors see their first novels as things that need to be perfected and successful, and that makes sense. After all, if you want to be published and sell stuff, the first book that gets printed has gotta be good. Hell, Joseph Heller's first published work ever, not just his first novel, was Catch-22. And look how well that did!
That being said, many first novels are written, stew in a journal or on a Word document, and never get published. They don't have to be published. That's the truth. And that was quickly becoming the reality in terms of my first novel, The Sequined Door.
The Sequined Door is not, by any means, a bad book (and I use bad in the technical sense here). It's a fluffy, silly, colorful, LGBTQ+-teeming, fabulous piece of work. But it is, in many ways, inherently flawed. Many examples of queer-identifying individuals in the story are either underrepresented or misrepresented. The plot is thin, and some of the characters are two-dimensional. Some of the morals behind the writing are riddled with naivety and a wee bit of ignorance (I wrote the thing in eight days, at the age of twenty-three, still learning a lot about the LGBTQ+ community. I admit that. I have grown from that). Most of all, the novel is what a publishing agent might call a "portal story" - meaning that a character from one world technically travels to another, unseen or unknown from the first world. And "portal stories," ever since The Chronicles of Narnia, seldom get published unless they are exceptionally good.
Obviously, The Sequined Door was just the stepping stone for me to continue writing, and I finished [Insert Self-Discovery Here] a few months later. After realizing that my second novel was too short for most publishers and/or contests (off by about seven thousand words), I put it aside and started working on The Authoritarian Auction. And after ten chapters, that novel came...to a grinding...halt.
At the time, I made it no secret that my long-term projects had either not been started or had puttered out. I wrote Happy Distribution but was unable to write other scripts, screenplays, or television series afterward. My short stories got even shorter. Most of my work was, honestly, confined to this blog. I went sort of back to where I was in high school, mostly pounding out poems and blurbs and doing very little in between besides brainstorm. Needless to say, I was getting antsy. I wanted my creative fire back. I understood that inspiration and motivation fluctuated, but this was getting too exasperating, and I needed something to do or write to get my mind off the fact that I wasn't making enough money or finding a second fulfilling job.
Then I wrote a new outline to The Sequined Door, turning its magical city into a real town as per the advice of a publishing agent and changing around much of the plot and characterizations. It was twenty chapters long, like the original novel. It still had the same two main characters, but with different stories, one even darker than the last. And of course, being ambitious and bold as Hell, I even put up an announcement that I was planning on rewriting The Sequined Door on Facebook, which was shown to over two hundred people.
Word to the wise: Never do that. Because, oddly enough, when you say you're going to do something on Facebook, you wind up feeling more obligated to commit to it than if you told just your family or friends in a private space.
I really was planning on rewriting The Sequined Door, as if it were an awaiting magnum opus for me to perfect and sell. Make no mistake - I wanted to write a strong novel with a lesbian main character. I wanted a book of mine to be published with strong LGBTQ+ representation. I wanted honesty in a story and characters who passed the Bechdel test. But I began to realize, all throughout today, that my motivations were misguided and misdirected. I was, in short, attempting to create a new story that was ultimately stifled by the tropes and technicalities of my previous novel.
Of course, I questioned and questioned and questioned over the span of nearly twenty-four hours. I tried to see where my true priorities lay, and whether or not The Sequined Door's setting, as a real town, would really function without detracting from the main plot. And I slowly realized that not only was I trying to force myself to rewrite something that was okay in its own way as a learning experience and as a first novel - I was also trying to write a story that deserved its own essence and its own standing without leaning on elements of my former works.
I knew that the reason why I had been pushing myself so hard to rewrite my first novel was because I wanted something I was proud of to be successful and publishable. I got that. But in the end, my first novel was not the end-all, be-all of my productivity. I knew that eventually, I would get back to writing longer projects and become creatively rejuvenated. Obviously, there were a lot of changes and stuff happening in my life that were pulling me away from being a fully prolific writer. I understood that I had done a whole lot more writing at my age than most of my writing colleagues combined. I had come a long, long way. And really, in order to make my newer stories tellable, I had to allow myself time and patience to mold them, evolve them, and make them their absolute best.
I cannot really say if tonight I will write another chapter of The Authoritarian Auction, or start another miniseries or play, or plot out a brand new novel. I want to write - of course I do. But maybe tonight, I'll just read more of my books on the shelf, or play some guitar, or simply fritter away time by dabbling in some games like solitaire. Or I'll focus on making my finished projects a reality onstage or film. Or I'll support my girlfriend and sister in their own creative endeavors and learn a bit from them. It's all up in the air. And that's okay. In the end, I have written The Sequined Door. I have written [Insert Self-Discovery Here], and Happy Distribution, and The Liffey is Half-Asleep, and six full-act plays, and one one-act play, and hundreds of poems, and so much more.
The Authoritarian Auction waits to be continued, and if it's not finished, that's okay. Other ideas wait to be utilized and strengthened. Fantasy ideas, sci-fi ideas, romance ideas, horror ideas. They're all there. They're not going away any time soon. There is no time limit on them. Many of them have been outlined and written down. Many more of them continue to take refuge in the rustic log cabin that is my brain.
I have stories to tell. New stories, with their own energy beyond my previous writing. I will start up new projects. And in the meantime, no matter in how small of amounts, I will continue to write.
And I want you to remember, my handful of readers, that even writing a little bit every day means a hell of a lot more than some people let on.
Writer's Quotation of the Night:
The gift of words is the gift of deception and illusion.
- Frank Herbert
That being said, many first novels are written, stew in a journal or on a Word document, and never get published. They don't have to be published. That's the truth. And that was quickly becoming the reality in terms of my first novel, The Sequined Door.
The Sequined Door is not, by any means, a bad book (and I use bad in the technical sense here). It's a fluffy, silly, colorful, LGBTQ+-teeming, fabulous piece of work. But it is, in many ways, inherently flawed. Many examples of queer-identifying individuals in the story are either underrepresented or misrepresented. The plot is thin, and some of the characters are two-dimensional. Some of the morals behind the writing are riddled with naivety and a wee bit of ignorance (I wrote the thing in eight days, at the age of twenty-three, still learning a lot about the LGBTQ+ community. I admit that. I have grown from that). Most of all, the novel is what a publishing agent might call a "portal story" - meaning that a character from one world technically travels to another, unseen or unknown from the first world. And "portal stories," ever since The Chronicles of Narnia, seldom get published unless they are exceptionally good.
Obviously, The Sequined Door was just the stepping stone for me to continue writing, and I finished [Insert Self-Discovery Here] a few months later. After realizing that my second novel was too short for most publishers and/or contests (off by about seven thousand words), I put it aside and started working on The Authoritarian Auction. And after ten chapters, that novel came...to a grinding...halt.
At the time, I made it no secret that my long-term projects had either not been started or had puttered out. I wrote Happy Distribution but was unable to write other scripts, screenplays, or television series afterward. My short stories got even shorter. Most of my work was, honestly, confined to this blog. I went sort of back to where I was in high school, mostly pounding out poems and blurbs and doing very little in between besides brainstorm. Needless to say, I was getting antsy. I wanted my creative fire back. I understood that inspiration and motivation fluctuated, but this was getting too exasperating, and I needed something to do or write to get my mind off the fact that I wasn't making enough money or finding a second fulfilling job.
Then I wrote a new outline to The Sequined Door, turning its magical city into a real town as per the advice of a publishing agent and changing around much of the plot and characterizations. It was twenty chapters long, like the original novel. It still had the same two main characters, but with different stories, one even darker than the last. And of course, being ambitious and bold as Hell, I even put up an announcement that I was planning on rewriting The Sequined Door on Facebook, which was shown to over two hundred people.
Word to the wise: Never do that. Because, oddly enough, when you say you're going to do something on Facebook, you wind up feeling more obligated to commit to it than if you told just your family or friends in a private space.
I really was planning on rewriting The Sequined Door, as if it were an awaiting magnum opus for me to perfect and sell. Make no mistake - I wanted to write a strong novel with a lesbian main character. I wanted a book of mine to be published with strong LGBTQ+ representation. I wanted honesty in a story and characters who passed the Bechdel test. But I began to realize, all throughout today, that my motivations were misguided and misdirected. I was, in short, attempting to create a new story that was ultimately stifled by the tropes and technicalities of my previous novel.
Of course, I questioned and questioned and questioned over the span of nearly twenty-four hours. I tried to see where my true priorities lay, and whether or not The Sequined Door's setting, as a real town, would really function without detracting from the main plot. And I slowly realized that not only was I trying to force myself to rewrite something that was okay in its own way as a learning experience and as a first novel - I was also trying to write a story that deserved its own essence and its own standing without leaning on elements of my former works.
I knew that the reason why I had been pushing myself so hard to rewrite my first novel was because I wanted something I was proud of to be successful and publishable. I got that. But in the end, my first novel was not the end-all, be-all of my productivity. I knew that eventually, I would get back to writing longer projects and become creatively rejuvenated. Obviously, there were a lot of changes and stuff happening in my life that were pulling me away from being a fully prolific writer. I understood that I had done a whole lot more writing at my age than most of my writing colleagues combined. I had come a long, long way. And really, in order to make my newer stories tellable, I had to allow myself time and patience to mold them, evolve them, and make them their absolute best.
I cannot really say if tonight I will write another chapter of The Authoritarian Auction, or start another miniseries or play, or plot out a brand new novel. I want to write - of course I do. But maybe tonight, I'll just read more of my books on the shelf, or play some guitar, or simply fritter away time by dabbling in some games like solitaire. Or I'll focus on making my finished projects a reality onstage or film. Or I'll support my girlfriend and sister in their own creative endeavors and learn a bit from them. It's all up in the air. And that's okay. In the end, I have written The Sequined Door. I have written [Insert Self-Discovery Here], and Happy Distribution, and The Liffey is Half-Asleep, and six full-act plays, and one one-act play, and hundreds of poems, and so much more.
The Authoritarian Auction waits to be continued, and if it's not finished, that's okay. Other ideas wait to be utilized and strengthened. Fantasy ideas, sci-fi ideas, romance ideas, horror ideas. They're all there. They're not going away any time soon. There is no time limit on them. Many of them have been outlined and written down. Many more of them continue to take refuge in the rustic log cabin that is my brain.
I have stories to tell. New stories, with their own energy beyond my previous writing. I will start up new projects. And in the meantime, no matter in how small of amounts, I will continue to write.
And I want you to remember, my handful of readers, that even writing a little bit every day means a hell of a lot more than some people let on.
Writer's Quotation of the Night:
The gift of words is the gift of deception and illusion.
- Frank Herbert
Have a great night and a great weekend, everyone.
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