A Better Book in Half the Time

September 9, 2005

"Have you thought about killing her?" asked Joe.

"You mean in the book? Or in real life?"

Joe burst out into a loud cackle, "Both, both."

I'd just finished the first draft of my so-called novel, and Joe and I were discussing it. Since the book was semi-autobiographical, I wasn't sure if he was asking about a character or the real person that the character was based on. He meant the character, of course, but I had to ask. He was concerned that there wasn't enough plot for my book to have commercial appeal. He suggested I add a murder, or maybe a suicide.

"It's not that kind of book," I reasoned. "It isn't a roller coaster ride. The arc is more like a walk across the Brooklyn Bridge."

"I understand what you're trying to do," he nodded. Joe has long been a Charles Bukowski fan and appreciates a plotless book as much as anybody. "But that stuff is out of fashion. It'll be a hard sell without some kind of twist."

Turns out, he was right.

We talked about Bukowski and Henry Miller, Kerouac and Hemingway. I rattled off a dozen classic, plotless books. "Take The Sun Also Rises, for instance. Nothing happens in it, yet it's required reading."

"What did you think of it?" he asked.

"I never finished it," I admitted. "It was boring."

"See?"

On the other hand, I've read a lot of Henry Miller.

After flipping through Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch in the bookstore the other day, and reading the first couple of pages, I was excited to read the whole thing. I carried the 400-page monster around while I searched for something more contemporary to buy as well. I read too much old stuff, and decided I should balance things out with something current. I scanned the tables, judging all the books by their covers, picking up those that struck me, flipping through their pages, reading the backs, et cetera. I didn't find anything. I looked at the Henry Miller book, tossed it from hand to hand, admired its heft, read another page, skimmed the back again, marveled at its very publication. After a few minutes, I put it back where I'd found it.

Sometimes I think writing the book I did was a big mistake, but I didn't write it to be a commercial seller; I wrote it because I couldn't help myself. Readers of the early drafts were encouraging, and put it in my head that I could get it published, but I didn't care one way or the other. Not at first, anyway. At first, all I was after was a catharsis. It turns out the book wasn't very good at that, either.

"Is that part true? Did that really happen?"

Dissecting and deconstructing the story, explaining the truth and the fiction, what really happened and what I made up, has done nothing but keep bad memories on life support. While the main character is clearly based on me, it is me at my most broken. Whatever made me think that crystallizing such a sad sack in print would be a catharsis is beyond me.

Now, it seems, the only way to make it all disappear is to write another book.

"Do you think you can write another?" asked Joe. "You don't think that was it, that was your story?"

"One of my stories," I said. "But not the only one."

"Well, what'll the next one be about, then?"

"I dunno. Guns? Spies? Robots? Maybe even all three. All I know is that I can write a better book in half the time."

Write—that—book!