Writing the Novel

by Lawrence Block

  As a result, you wind up paying a fee in the hope that you’ll be represented by a man who, if anything, has negative clout with the publishing industry. Furthermore, the criticism he gives you can’t be trusted, because he has a vested interest in encouraging you to keep on writing—and to keep on sending in manuscripts with checks attached.

  In some instances, the fee agent is in the editing business as well. The fee’s not all he wants from you. He’ll also offer to rewrite the manuscript, for a price.

  Not all agents who charge fees are quite so venal about it, and I suppose there are a few who are really just trying to cover the overhead while assembling a list of professional clients. Even so, why pay an agent when you can find another agent to perform the same task for free?

  The fee agent, of course, is a sure bet. You won’t have to write him a query letter and wait with bated breath for his reply. And, after he’s read your book, you can be fairly sure of a courteous letter praising various aspects of your writing. An agent who reads your work at no charge may send it back with a brief not-for-us note.

  Think about it. Do you want to pay fifty or a hundred bucks so someone’ll write you a nice letter? We’re supposed to get paid for what we write, not to pay for what other people write to us. Remember?

  I suppose you feel the same way about subsidy publishers?

  You bet.

  There is some justification for paying to have your work published if you are a poet or a writer of nonfiction. For most poets, that’s the only available avenue for publication. And, since poetry doesn’t make money anyway, there’s no particular stigma attached to paying for publication.

  Some nonfiction deserves publication and can be commercially viable, but it may be too highly specialized to interest a commercial publisher. This is particularly likely with regional material.

  In such cases, there’s no reason why an author would be ill advised to underwrite the cost of publishing his book. I personally believe that self-publishing is a much better plan than paying a subsidy publisher to do the job for you, but that’s by the way. We’re talking about novels, and it just doesn’t make sense for a novelist to pay for publication of his book. The only possible reason for it is vanity.

  The novel you publish with a subsidy publisher will not do much of anything but cost you money. It will not get reviewed in any significant media. It will not be handled by stores. It will not sell enough copies to amount to anything. It will not even do much for your vanity, really, because knowledgeable people will look at the book, note the subsidy house’s imprint, recognize it for what it is, and know that your novel is one you had to pay to have published.

  You can avoid the last pitfall by publishing the book yourself, using some ad hoc imprint. And, if you want to have a small edition of books made up in this fashion so that you can pass out copies to friends, there’s really nothing wrong with that. Writing’s a fine hobby, and if the novel you produce turns out not to be commercial, there’s no reason why you can’t indulge yourself a little and see your work in print. You’ll still spend considerably less annually than an amateur photographer, say, would part with for equipment and film.

  Self-publication’s okay, then, if you can afford it. And if you know that it’s not the road to wealth, fame or professional status.

  And what is the road to all those good things?

  You just keep punching. You must submit your manuscript relentlessly, shrugging off rejection and sending it on to another publisher the day it comes back. You simply cannot let rejection get you down, whether it comes in the form of a printed slip, a personal note, or a refusal to read your book in the first place. You can remind yourself that all a rejection means is that one particular person decided against publishing your book. It doesn’t mean your book stinks. It doesn’t even mean that particular editor thinks it stinks. And it certainly doesn’t mean you stink.

  You can remind yourself, too, that most novels have taken awhile to find a publisher, that many smash best sellers were turned down by ten or twenty or thirty publishers before someone recognized their potential. And you can tell yourself that success doesn’t hinge upon merit alone, that the determination to keep marketing your book is equally essential if you’re going to get anywhere.

  You already showed you’ve got determination. It takes plenty of it to get a novel written from the first page to the last. You’re not going to quit now, are you?

  No trick, then? No handy household hints to make it easier?

  One trick.

  One way of taking your mind off rejection.

  Get busy on another book. Get deeply involved in another book, so much so that the rejections the first one piles up won’t hurt nearly as much. You’ll be amazed, I think, by how much easier the second book is to write—and by how much you’ve grown as a result of the work that went into the first one.

  One of the functions of an agent is to spare you the hassle of marketing your own work, not only because he’s better at it than you are but so that you don’t have to concentrate on two things at once. Until you acquire an agent, you’ll be wearing two hats, an agent’s peaked cap and a writer’s pith helmet. To keep the marketing process from taking your mind off your writing, make the business of getting your manuscript in the mail as automatic as possible. And, to take the sting out of the rejections your novel accumulates along the way, throw yourself into your second novel as completely as you can.

  Chapter 15

  Doing It Again

  It’s a lot easier to begin work on a second book if some eager publisher snapped up the first one ten minutes after it left your typewriter. But it doesn’t happen that way very often. As I suggested earlier, a great many of us write first novels that turn out to be unsalable. And many who do go on to produce salable second novels—but that only happens if we get that second novel written.

  There’s no reason to assume that your first novel will turn out to be unpublishable. But there’s every reason in the world to expect that it will take a long time finding its way into a publisher’s heart and onto his spring list. That time will pass much faster and be put to far better use if you spend it writing your next book.

  Among other things, plunging into your next book may help you deal with the old My-Novel’s-Finished-And-I-Wish-I-Were-Dead Blues.

  I almost hesitate to mention the depression that so frequently follows the completion of a novel for fear of making it a matter of self-fulfilling prophecy. I’d hate to think that, having finished your book in high spirits, you’ll now go sit in the corner and sulk so you can be just like the pros. I think it’s better overall, though, to be able to allow for this sort of thing. We writers tend to regard ourselves as unique specimens of humanity, so it may be reassuring to know that one is not the first person in the world to have finished a novel and wanted to throw up.

  It does indeed happen to most of us, and I’m sure it’s not limited to writers. This sort of after-work depression seems to be the typical aftermath of any arduous long-term creative endeavor. Indeed, it’s quite obviously equivalent to the syndrome known as Post-Partum Depression, the feeling of emptiness and purposelessness so many mothers go through immediately after childbirth. For nine months they’ve defined themselves in terms of this life growing inside of them. Their whole purpose has been to carry their child to term. Now the child’s born and the mother’s chore is completed, and what’s she supposed to do for an encore?

  Sound familiar?

  It’s a little worse for a writer. The mother’s got a cute little baby to play with, and if changing him’s a bore, there’s still a certain amount of satisfaction in having him around the house. If nothing else, everybody who sees him is going to make admiring noises. Even if the kid looks like a monkey, nobody’s going to hand him a banana. They’ll all assure the mother that her kid’s a handsome devil.

  Pity the poor novelist. Nobody comes over to visit his book and bring it a squeaky toy or a cuddly stuffed animal. His friends read it out of
a sense of obligation, and what praise they offer has a suspiciously hollow ring to it. Agents and editors, meanwhile, have the effrontery to tell him thanks but no thanks. His child doesn’t fit their needs at the moment, he’s assured, although this is not to say that the little brat lacks merit.

  My book’s no good, the novelist concludes. Therefore I’m no good. Therefore I’m a failure, and therefore I’ll be a failure forever, and if I had any brains I’d blow them out. If I had the guts to do it, which I don’t, because I’m worthless. So I guess I’ll drink myself to death, or go eat worms, or really get into daytime television watching.

  There’s not much point in attacking this position logically. Logic doesn’t have a whole lot to do with it. Post-novel depression is just as likely to strike when the book’s a hit, and it’s absolutely devastating when the novel scores a really impressive success.

  Does that seem strange? Here’s how the writer’s mind adds it all up:

  The book’s a success. Gee, that’s terrific. But wait a minute. It can’t really be that good. I know it can’t be that good, because I’m the guy who wrote it, and I’m not that good, so how good can it be, huh? Now sooner or later they’re gonna find out it’s not as good as they think it is, and where’ll I be then? And anyway, what difference does it make if it’s good or not? Because one thing’s sure. I couldn’t possibly write anything that good again. Matter of fact, I don’t think I could write anything halfway decent again. Come to reflect on it, I’m pretty sure I couldn’t write anything again, decent or otherwise. I think I’ll throw my typewriter out the window. I think I’ll throw myself out the window. I think….

  I think you get the idea.

  Does this really happen? You bet it does. I’ve written more novels than I can shake a stick at—though some of them deserve it—and I still experience a letdown when I finish a book, one composed of many of the thoughts presented above. After all this time, I recognize what I feel as symptomatic of Post-Novel Depression. You would think this recognition would help, and once in awhile it does, but often it doesn’t.

  Some years ago, finishing a book was a signal for me to reach for a bottle. I put myself under considerable pressure in my work and felt that alcohol would do a good job of relieving that pressure when the work was done. What booze does, of course, is not so much relieve tension as mask its symptoms. When post-novel depression set in, I’d go on drinking in an attempt to alleviate the depression.

  This wasn’t wise. Alcohol is clinically a depressant, and pouring it into a depressed writer is like pouring oil on troubled fires. It does exactly the opposite of what you hope it will do, deepening and exacerbating the underlying depression. A few celebratory “Hey-the-book’s done” drinks may be a great idea, but the kind of medicinal drinking some of us get into can be ruinous.

  I don’t drink any more, and that helps. Another thing that makes my post-novel depressions easier to bear is that I don’t have as much of a high to crash from these days. I don’t write as intensively as I used to, having settled down to a steady and comfortable pace of five pages or so per day. I’m not panting when I get to the finish line, and that seems to make a difference.

  When I finish a book nowadays, I take good care of myself. For a couple of weeks I take plenty of time off. I read fiction—something I often can’t do while I’m writing it. I take long exploratory walks, recharging my batteries for the next book. I buy myself a present. If I can afford it, I try to get away for a week.

  During this period, I recognize my own emotional frailty. I’ve learned not to be surprised if my eyes begin to tear while I’m watching reruns of the Mary Tyler Moore show, I make it a point to eat properly, to get plenty of exercise, to keep reasonably regular hours. Sometimes I even try fasting for a few days.

  Before very long, my mind begins to remember that I’m a writer. It starts sending up signals, playing games of What If?, knitting little plot fragments like a subtle wife turning out tiny garments. I can’t avoid knowing that, to strain the metaphor, the honeymoon is over. It’s time to get back to work on the next one.

  You write the second book the same way you wrote the first one—hatching an idea, shaping it into a plot, outlining or not outlining as you prefer, and turning out the book itself one day at a time. In a sense, every novel’s a first novel—because you haven’t written it before. You’ll be ever so much more at ease the second time around, and you’ll probably display considerable technical proficiency compared to your maiden effort, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be a piece of cake. Listen, it’s never a piece of cake. No matter how many books you’ve done.

  Should your second book be similar in type to your first? Having written Trefillian House, would you be wise to embark on another gothic while Ms. Wimpole’s reading your first one?

  That’s your decision to make. And it’s possible your unconscious mind will make it for you. After I wrote my first novel, years passed before I was to write another lesbian novel—not because I wouldn’t have been delighted to do so, but because my mind didn’t produce any ideas in that vein. If I hadn’t been so goddam young and stupid I might have cudgeled it some, but I guess I just figured I’d exhausted the subject and ought to go on to other things—which may have been the right decision for me at the time.

  You may find that Trefillian House was your ultimate statement in the world of gothic novels. Or you may decide that you’re simply ready for something else; while you had fun writing the book, you now regard it as a warm-up exercise for something more ambitious and artistically satisfying. On the other hand, you may have found your metier, and your mind may be teeming with ways to write the same book different—and better this time around.

  Remember that the choice is yours, and that it doesn’t involve signing any long-term contracts. You can try something else with your second book, then return to gothics at a later date. Conversely, you can write a second gothic without typing yourself irreversibly as a writer of gothics and nothing else. Your second book is just a second book. It’s not a career.

  Even if you do write a second gothic, it’s not too likely that we’ll be seeing more of Trefillian House’s young widow. Gothic novels don’t run to series heroines. Their lead characters are generally well supplied with house and husband by the time the book is over.

  Series characters, however, are frequently met with in some other fiction categories—suspense novels, first and foremost, but westerns and science-fiction novels as well.

  I’ve worked with three series characters over the years—Evan Tanner, Matt Scudder and Bernie Rhodenbarr. Obviously, I enjoy doing this sort of thing, developing a character over several books, learning more about him as he makes his way through plot after plot. When I get hold of a character who really engages me, I’m loathe to let go of him.

  Should your second novel feature the same character as your first? Again, that’s up to you. If you find that the lead of your first book has a sufficiently strong hold upon your imagination so that you want to write a second book about him, by all means go ahead and do it. Bear in mind, though, that you can always write your second book about some other character and come back to the first one in a later book. You may want a change of pace.

  It’s important, if you do embark on a series, that you not presuppose the reader’s acquaintance with any previous books. Your second novel—indeed, each of your series novels—ought to be complete in and of itself. You’re writing a second book about a particular character, not Volume Two of a trilogy; the reader shouldn’t have to have read your first book in order to appreciate your second.

  At the same time, there shouldn’t be so much duplication in the second book that someone who has read the first will be bored. Don’t worry overmuch about this last, however. It’s been my observation that the sort of reader who likes series books doesn’t mind being reminded of certain things. The sense of the familiar evidently appeals to him; he gets the feeling that he’s an insider, already acquainted with characters who must
be described for noninsiders.

  One problem with a series is that you have to remember who’s who and what’s what. The same readers who most enjoy series novels are most insistent that the writer avoid inconsistencies. It may be no particular problem remembering that your lead has blue eyes, but what color are his girlfriend’s? And where did I mention the names and ages of Scudder’s kids?

  Arthur Maling has a particular dilemma along these lines, and one that serves to illustrate just how complicated the business of series novels can be:

  The Price, Potter and Petacque books have given me particular problems. Instead of having just one series character, I have a cast of fifteen or sixteen major and minor characters that move from book to book—Brock Potter and everyone in the company—and I have a hell of a time remembering the color of everyone’s eyes, the names and ages of everyone’s kids, etc. A fellow mystery writer and friend of mine, James McClure, made a chart for me, listing all the Price, Potter and Petacque characters and their relationships, and it’s been helpful; but I keep forgetting to enter the pertinent details, which means that I frequently have to dig through several finished books or a couple of hundred pages of manuscript to find what I said about one or another of the characters a year or two or four previously.

  A problem with a series, albeit one you’re not terribly likely to face in the second book, is boredom. Most series writers run into this sooner or later. Dorothy Sayers is supposed to have told Agatha Christie how sick and tired she was of writing about Lord Peter Wimsey; Christie in turn confessed to a deep-seated desire to kill off Hercule Poirot, and proved it by doing precisely that in the “final” Poirot novel, written in the forties and not published until after the author’s own death.

  I stopped writing the Tanner series not because I grew tired of the character but because the books themselves seemed to have a deadening sameness about them. It seemed to me that Tanner kept going to the same kinds of places, meeting the same sorts of people, having the same kinds of conversations, and dealing with the same kinds of plot problems. I’ve since come to realize that there’s nothing necessarily wrong with that. My awareness of this sameness was inevitably more acute than a reader’s would be, since I was spending a couple of months writing something he would read in as many hours. Besides, readers want a series book to be pretty much like the last one; if they hadn’t liked the last one in the first place they wouldn’t have bought the second, or the third, or the fortieth.