Completely Finished

The final aspects of research and editing are done now, as of today, and I am now officially ‘abandoning’ the work. I tell you honestly that I could sit down and do another edit from beginning to end and the book would marginally change as I did. An occasional paragraph would be shortened, a bit of description added here or there, a change in the language ... I’m never entirely happy with my work and I could hack at it endlessly.

Repeated editing ends with the character’s voices getting changed, bit by bit, with ‘grammatical’ alterations – particularly the narrator’s, and I don’t want that. So I have to leave it be. No doubt there is the occasional spelling error, a word doubled somewhere in the text or such ... just the nature of the beast. Given that virtually every such example of this has been found and fixed, unless there’s a glaring error in the first page, I’m not overly worried about it.

Getting upset by that sort of thing can delay and delay the distribution of a book – so at this point, even if someone found a typo on page 3, I would ignore it. The work is abandoned. Time to move on.

I have received kind and useful advice from a variety of sources, and I am ready to move forward into the next stage. This will involve producing a number of full manuscripts which will be sent to bonded, reputable agents, all of which reside on the East Coast. This is a long shot – it is very difficult to get the interest of an agent in a new novel; I can only hope that my previous track record as a published author and the quality of the work will gain some interest. I don’t, however, have much hope.

Nevertheless – and this is an important point. An agent is the big time. Every other course, other than an agent, means effectively that the work will never make me the income which will enable me to work exclusively as a writer, full-time. Finding an agent gets me onto the list of significant publishers, those who will not accept work from unsolicited authors, and it is only those publishers who can produce the kind of stock enabling me to imaginatively get on a best seller’s list. Therefore, whatever the cost of three or four dozen manuscripts, it does not make sense to ignore this step only because it is unlikely. Whereas I know that many authors get trapped by false agents who fail to do anything, I do know how to avoid these pitfalls; there are in the world, writer’s unions. Reputable writer’s unions – those which have been around for five or ten decades – usually list agents which have long standing legal reputations. It is foolhardy to speak with any other kind of writer’s agent. Generally, one does not need to be part of a union to contact an agent. It is assumed that once contracted, you’ll be happy to join the union. And you know what? I will.

Moreover, if it does happen that I must then move from the agent to the publisher on my own, and the book gets some limited notice, it may happen that a previously contacted agent will put two-and-two together. This is also extremely unlikely. That doesn’t worry me much. I understand that people buy lottery tickets. My odds are considerably better than theirs.

So here I am. Book finished, agents about to be contacted.

I might actually get time to write about other things.

Through It

At last. Goddamn, I have made it through reading and editing the book, which was done twice from beginning to end. I find it interesting that the story is 3,500 words longer than when I started, but it is still tighter and flows very well now. I got to the end, the second time, just minutes before posting here, so I have a record of when.

I really doubted getting to this point.

I have still, regretfully, some technical issues that need researching, but that shouldn't take more than a day, perhaps two.

Best novel I've written. No doubt about that.

It Hurts

I know it has been more than a week, and that my last post was a bit down. This one isn't likely to be better. My head is rotting from within and the book is yet 89 pages from being finished.

It now runs about 70,000 words. It gets a little longer each week. The process demands that I work my way through each chapter twice, as the changes I make the first time through tend to demand further changes when I read it again, days later. That is one reason why this is taking so long. The other reason I covered in the last post.

Yesterday was my birthday, a very typical time for me to feel suddenly zestful about writing. Today I did apply myself. But the reality is that even when I am in the mood to work and work, three or four continuous hours to patiently work my way through only twenty pages tends to exhaust the hell out of me. My head gets foggy and I feel the need to abandon the work for something more straightforward and less reflective on my inner value as a person.

I have always said that writing is very much like beating one's head on a brick wall. The wall never falls down, you get bloody and it only feels good when you stop. Anyone who tells you they love to write has issues. They aren't tasking themselves, they're not ripping out their own guts and you can count on their material being quite bloodless.

Which describes, for me, most everything that has won a literary award in the past three decades.

But what the hell do I know? I haven't published a book yet.

Anyway, I'm safe and there's nothing to worry about. It's just the state of mind I'm in right now. I'll be better when it's done.

Despondent

At times, it seems I never finish anything. The solid depression descends and I look at my book and I think this will never be done. I will never have it together to finish this thing.

That is the nature of despair. It is not a surprise. It rises day after day, like a slow ebb of water that steadily fills a basement. For weeks you can ignore it, there's nothing more than an inconvenient dampness in the carpet. When you see a puddle, you know you ought to do something. You must take steps ... else the whole basement will be flooded.

As I was editing the other night I thought about an old bugbear of mine - where it is said the reader's opinion of a work has more credence than the writer, because the book speaks to each person individually. Each person brings their own personality to the page and therefore the book is different for everyone.

I wonder how it is that these readers gain so much credit from the effort of reading. I wonder if they edit their own thoughts, their first conclusions, as diligently as I edit the book they're reading. I wonder if their consciousness is capable of obliterating a sentence of their own, never to be read again, as rapaciously as I erase words that I've written. Do readers check themselves upon opening the volume?

Editing is a brutal process. It is a methodological revising of one's thoughts. It is saying about oneself, "You were wrong to write this. You did a half-ass job here. You don't have it there. You were inadequate. You pandered, you blundered, you satisfied your ego, you preached. Fix it. Work harder. Don't be so stupid." If you take the process seriously, you must begin with the premise that however well you thought you were doing in the past, it wasn't good enough.

How many readers accept that premise?

When characters I loved disappear because they ceased to be relevant, do the readers know? When jokes I made are torn from the book, when words of love are deleted and family members made redundant, do readers remember who they were or why they once lived as my other characters?

When a loved character fails at a task and bends under the crippling weight of the narrative, because I sacrifice that character to the theme, does the reader have the power to sustain that character? Or must the reader wait until I do it? And if I do not - if the character is left to languish and die - will eyes crossing a page line after line serve as a spell for resurrection?

I know from the book only what the author chooses to tell me. This is why I have learned. This is why I am well 'read'. I do not write the books of other writers, and therefore I do not dictate to them the subjects and personalities I see. I set out to read and I am an empty vessel.

Leaving America

Here is what America is facing. This was found as a comment on the RedState.com site:

”What if I Don't Care About Uninsured?
Does that make me a bad person?

I hope not because after thinking long and hard about it I have decided I really don't care that they don't have insurance. And, more than that, I am offended that I am about to be forced to buy it for them. I consider myself to be somewhat compassionate but I am having enough trouble paying for my own insurance to where I don't really want to be forced to buy someone else's.

This is un-American.”

Watching this debate from up here in Canada, all I can feel is an infinite sadness. Not for the vast number of people without health care, but for a nation which is on the verge of turning in on itself violently. A nation no longer anxious to support its public institutions, resistant against giving any sort of proper education to children and resistant against rebuilding or maintaining its government works.

America is drunk. It has been for some time. And to pay for its liquor, it has been willing to sacrifice its assets, one by one. There comes a point in the life of a drunk when, after losing the job and watching the spouse leave and take the children, it suddenly becomes okay to stop thinking about ‘straightening up and flying right.’ Comes a point when the drunk is free to throw that out the window and just drink. It’s a good point for the drunk. It is the all-forgiving, all-releasing moment when a drunk realizes the bridge is burned, the valley is crossed, the die is cast.

“Now,” thinks the drunk, “I can drink with a clear conscience.”

The question has ceased to be, can America save itself. Anyone who sees the continued existence of Fox and its profits, the continued presence of the Republican party in spite of their lack of political representation, the continued presence of America in Iraq and Afghanistan, the continued presence of American troops in more than 150 of the world’s countries, the disaster of New Orleans, the state of politics in California, cannot seriously doubt that the most powerful nation on earth is on the skids.

The question has become, when will the wife leave? Has she already?

Because clearly America isn’t interested in getting any job done. It isn’t interested in love thy neighbor, it isn’t interested in solving any problem. From the richest ponzi-scheme operator to the lowest bum on the street, the only question is how much money is in my pocket, and how much booze will it buy. Booze in this case meaning personal comfort, personal space, personal privilege, personal justification and personal exemption. Ignore him, not me. Tax him, not me. Jail him, not me. Exempt my house, exempt my family, exempt my religion, exempt my contribution. Make the other bastard pay, wreck his religion, fuck his family, flatten his house. He isn’t an American, but I am.

Those of us who have known drunks know the solution. After years of placating and educating, after giving love and support and chances, the only option left is to cut them out of one’s life. It is a gesture no one wants, but everyone must sooner or later accept. Life is meant to be lived, and the drunks in our lives make that impossible. Sooner or later, with great sadness, we move them out of our lives. If we chance to meet them, we are struck and baffled at their condition, at the steady, virtually animal abuse they subject themselves to. And if they ask for a twenty, if they ask for a bit of help, we shake them off with only the barest disgust we must as humans feel, in order to be free of them. Kill themselves if they must, but kill themselves alone.

America will lose its power to influence outwardly, but it will lose its will as well. The enemy is within. The body is the enemy, and it is the body that America has decided to poison. The brand is selfishness, aged now fifty years in the bottle – but the rotgut will soon follow, when the money isn’t there for the good stuff. The booze will go on doing its job, but the labels will one day read martial law, seizure of property and public execution ... followed by destitution, depravity and dissolution.

I think as I watch that the last will happen in my lifetime. But perhaps not. Rome drank very heavily indeed, and took centuries to die. But things happen faster now, and the liquor has more punch than in did in Rome’s day. It may all happen in a comparative blink of an eye ... and there will be many who ask, how did this happen. Where did that country go? We had so many opportunities. We had everything going for ourselves.

But all drunks think that way.

Not The Best Of Days

Try as I might, I can’t get into bulletin boards. From time to time I’ve joined them. The result is always the same.

It is, probably, the lack of control I have over them. About three quarters of the threads are frivolous, twitter-quality babblings, the kind posted on blogs I don’t read. The kind that are anagolous to the poetry high school students read to one another, when they get together the courage. Empty. Lacking in substance. Lacking in purpose, or point. Generally the sort of thing that looks weak in print, and fits appropriately with the weakness of most things on the internet.

You know. Chat room dialogue.

Sooner or later, I feel the pressure building up. I’m just like that. I’m not kind, I’m not patient. I’m a misanthrope. I hate people. It isn’t so much the people themselves, it is only that they are such bland creatures, with bland aspirations and bland hopes, and things to say that are all too commonly bland. Whereupon I lose it.

I’m stuck with this feeling that the vapidity of the world is certain to blot out the sun unless it is beaten back somehow, preferably with heavy objects in hand. I wind up in a mental loop where I’m remembering that the worst evil is apathy, and that all that is necessary for apathy to take over the world is for enough good men to do nothing. And if you will forgive me, I consider myself a good man. I do so because I don’t steal, I don’t seek to harm people, and I don’t seek to compel others to do my bidding.

But of course, once you tear someone down, that is exactly what you are accused of being. Because people are weak, which means they offend easily. They see any strong opinion as manipulation. They see every harsh word as equivalently abusive.

I want you to know. I write on my blog because I am able to act in accordance with my moral beliefs. Which do not always include looking after the wellbeing of others.

I promise only to live beside others and let them eat and survive without interference.

But I don’t promise to be nice.

Sorry, We Have No Normal

I am aggravated when I am told, “Your involvement in domination and submission is normal ... you have nothing to be ashamed of.” This is partly because I’m not ashamed. But mostly because I am not normal. I know this for a number of reasons.

I want to make a small point, without getting too deep into a lot of psychology. Being normal and being accepted are not concepts dependent upon each other. It is perfectly possible to be accepted and to not be normal, at the same time. While both words imply a fitting in when it comes to other people, ‘normal’ further implies most people, while ‘accepted’ implies any people.

Thus, my Mistress accepts me, my daughter accepts me, my friends accept me. Normal’s got nothing to do with it.

Pundits like to treat the word ‘normal’ as though it is an indecipherable concept, something that cannot be defined as it is completely subjective. No one believes them, of course ... that is because, subjective or not, a person’s own abnormal behavior quickly becomes evident, at a young age.

I know I’m not normal. I have good reason to know, since I cannot mention my interests in BDSM most of the time: not to mixed strangers at a party, not at anyone’s wedding, not casually during a job interview, not at the office Christmas party and not while I’m interviewing anyone for a freelance article I might write. I can’t do it at those times because people won’t accept it, I’ll be asked to leave (though politely by my understanding and sincerely sympathetic friend) or openly dismissed. I may get away with a few oblique references, some cleverness in the manner in which the subject is brought up without openly supporting it myself – but I can’t give lengthy descriptions of my philosophy about such things. That is a fact of life.

This does not only apply to BDSM, of course. I am a social pariah in a variety of ways. I suggested recently at a party that an alcoholic who won’t stop drinking is a monster to his family and was immediately told I didn’t know what I was talking about. I always have to be careful: I might say something random about humans having the right to kill their pets or my lack of interest in nationally televised sports and get into trouble.

I have this one place ... I call it home ... where I can say anything, no matter how unpleasant or socially unacceptable, and still be petted and loved by my Mistress. There are a very small number of people in my circle to whom I can say anything. As the circle widens, I can say less and less, until I’m reduced to saying nothing at all.

There are a few people I know who are aware that I’m censoring myself – but as near as I can tell, they are not certain as to whether I should stop, or whether I should just become less obvious about it. It may be that most everyone knows that I’m censoring; but there’s no sign from most of the population that I am.

It doesn’t matter. I have to censor. There have been times when I didn’t have to, when my income wasn’t dependent on what I said or who I said it to ... and it is easier when I’m not dependent on company for a good time. That is because, in short order, I wouldn’t have any.

My Mistress would stay. I don’t have to lie to her. We wouldn’t get many visitors.

Scratch that, we don’t get many visitors now. Among friends, I really don’t censor as much as I should.

With new people, I usually do some experimentation. What can I admit? How much can I say and on what subjects. I think everyone does ... but less people have my god-complex, or my delusions, or my fetishes or my grating personality. There’s a lot more testing when it comes to me than others, I think, need to do. Sometimes I never stop testing.

The ‘tests’ that I suggest are nothing more than me telling the truth and seeing how it flies. I don’t very much lie – I do so by omission, mostly. Sometimes to cover up something I’ve said that went too far. That is the nature of it.

To tell me, however, that I am ‘normal’ in spite of being into BDSM ... hell, I’m not even normal among people who are into BDSM – or D/s as they call it, or whatever anagram is popular this month.

The argument is patently stupid.