Yeah, well, we’ve all done it. Acted first, thought later. The impulse buy. Opening your mouth at the wrong time. The kiss that went too far.
Act in haste, repent in leisure, a proverb as old as language itself.
A lot can be understood – if not forgiven – in the heat of the moment, not having or taking the time to reflect. They lead to red-faced excuses or justifications, mumbling a word-salad of “Well, I mean, I guess, you know, it just sort of happened”, while trying to avoid saying, “Wow. That was really dumb.” Fortunately for all of us, the great majority of those actions occur in a very narrow time frame, the brief period when the emotions act and the mind just…sits. But how does one justify an impulsive action that spans months or – wait for it – years?
Like writing a novel without a clearly defined genre.
Say, what? How could you even conceive of a book without knowing what genre it fits into? Well, I mean, I guess, you know, it just sort of happened. And the result was House Amongst the Dunes. In my defense, the book started out as a writing exercise, an investigation into different styles and voices. My earliest works were heavily outlined with multiple pages spent on each chapter before the first real word was written. Stephen King said that novelists who outline are writers who wished to God they were writing non-fiction, and I came to realize that my outlines weren’t just an unnecessary crutch but a justification to avoid taking the plunge and actually writing the damned thing. House Amongst the Dunes was my first work without a formal outline.
And it just flew together. Since it was a writing exercise, I took a shortcut by rescuing favorite characters from old, discarded works, characters who lived on (at least in my own heart) long after the stories in which they existed had been buried. That kicked in the afterburners and sent the piece zooming. Okay, okay, you’re thinking, I can see it, I can understand how you might have been sucked into the project without the benefit of careful thought. Well, appreciate the charity, but I really don’t deserve it. Why? Because after 7 chapters, I put the work down and walked away. Only to come back to it about eight months later.
A logical, focused reconsideration of the project? A new and exciting insight into direction and purpose? An inspiration of how it might fit into current literary trends? No. I just missed writing it. The story, the characters, even the style. Like that enchanting kiss I couldn’t quite get out of my mind, I came back wanting more for no better reason than I wanted it. Seven more chapters followed, filling the pages with dizzying speed, and I realized that the story had been slowly percolating on the back burner of my consciousness over those intervening months, adding flavor, color, and intensity. Another stop at Chapter 14, this time because the ending wasn’t quite clear. I had a rough idea about the climax, but I wasn’t quite sure about the route from where I was to where I wanted to be. So, I dropped it again, silently accusing Stephen King of being full of crap because an outline would have saved me from this quandary.
Well, the guy isn’t a multi-book, multi-million dollar author for nothing.
With 14 chapters now completed, my mind kept actively returning to the story, dragging the pot back onto the front burner as reflection, other storylines, and random thoughts forged a way forward. I put together a few paragraphs here, a short passage there, and completed a middle chapter that bloomed fully into my mind. The decisive step was writing the last chapter before the others, putting clearly down on paper how I wanted the work to end, and the rest of it just came into line.
And there it was, a completed book, a good book, a fast fun read that I had christened Beach Book as a working title because I thought of it as a quick summer read. But what the hell was it? Well, if you still harbor any hopes of me being a sensible, level-headed writer with a clear vision of establishing an audience, you can forget them at this point. I went ahead and published the thing.
Needless to say, I sold about 10 copies, all friends and family. I even went so far as attending a writing seminar where I was put into the wrong group – because I called it by the wrong genre – and got nothing but discouragement as a result. So, a sadder but wiser man, am I, having learned my lesson and determine not to repeat such a mistake? Not hardly. I just produced the second book in the series and am mulling over a third.
Justification? Well, I mean, I guess, you know, it just sort of happened. Or I can fall back on a bit of wisdom I was offered at the very start of my writing career: get yours up front. If you are writing to get rich, you are almost certainly doomed to disappointment. But if you are writing for the pleasure of creation, for the satisfaction it gives you, then you have a rich and delightful career ahead of you. And since writing what you love is the best route to outstanding fiction, who knows, I might still get rich before I die.
Here’s hoping…
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