I’m going to pause for a few days this weekend to mull some structural issues with the novel I’m working on. I just need some fresh eyes. I’m so close to figuring out how I want to lay this story out. And, yet, I’ve changed things so much that I’m a little — not a lot, but a little — burnt out.
I’ve done this throughout this project to great success. In the past, when I had more money, I would go on a Writer’s Retreat. But I’m very, very poor now. So, I just spend the time reading and daydreaming.
But I have a feeling I may be about to make a major breakthrough with the structure of this novel that will help things speed up significantly. I’m still on schedule to finish the second draft of my first novel at some point in spring 2023.
Occasionally, I will see an old post I wrote a few years back about this novel project and it all seems very quaint. It’s just taken me much, much longer than I could have ever possibly imagined to get where I am now. And, what’s worse, it just doesn’t seem as though my dream of having a big blow out in New York City for my 50th birthday is going to be practical from a money standpoint.
So, what I’m going to do is make my new goal having a second draft of this first novel finished by my birthday, or thereabouts. Then, at least, I will have something to have a sense of accomplishment about. It’s simple and doesn’t require any additional money to achieve.
Doing such a thing is going to require some focus on my part. I can’t keep screwing around and drifting towards my goal. I have to keep thinking about my deadline and goal so I can actually get what I want done.
Of course, I keep saying shit like this and then, lulz, I blow past my deadline. But you have to have hope.
I’m working on a six novel project that is greatly influenced by what happened to me in Seoul many moons ago. It’s not set in Asia, but I’m using a lot of my experiences from that period in my life to flesh out the universe I’ve come up with.
But, while I have the good / bad old days of ROKon Magazine on the brain at the moment, is there any argument for, say, New York Magazine or The New Yorker to do a history of what happened with the magazine?
Well, yes and no. Let’s list the “noes” first.
It was a long time ago This is just not a timely subject anymore. It all happened so long ago — an everyone but me got closure — that it just doesn’t make any sense to do any sort of character study on what happened with the magazine. The whole thing would devolve into a very long therapy session with ME.
Who cares? It was a long time ago. No one cares and it happened in Seoul.
How would you get anyone to talk? You probably couldn’t get anyone to talk to you, even if you had the good name of a major publication like The New Yorker behind you.
The “Yeses.”
The story is crazy! What happened with ROKon Magazine — and specifically between me and Annie Shapiro is totally bonkers. Insane. Hard to believe if you know the full story. It’s a real story for the history books of publishing.
Some very colorful characters There are so many colorful characters that I’m using many of them (in a very Romanized manner) to popular six novels I’m working on at the moment.
Lots of twists and turns — even if the endgame is obvious Even though it’s obvious that my version of ROKon Magazine was going to fucking fail, the over all arch of the story is very, very interesting. Lots of twists and turns.
Anyway, no one cares. I just needed to get that off my chest.
The Internet works in mysterious ways. So, some time ago I wrote about how I was “famous” in Seoul. And, relative to the oblivion I live in now, I was pretty famous — at least within the microscopic expat community.
Annie Shapiro and me back in our glory days.
That’s all well and good, but for some reason I keep getting pings on that specific post. I have no idea what the search terms are that bring people to the post, but I’ve had about three people show up in my Webstats looking at that specific post for some reason.
If I wanted to be really paranoid, I would say someone got ahold of the fleshout outline of my novel and they’re now writing a cherry-picked screenplay from it. And because they want to know who they’re screwing over, they look me up and see that post.
While that’s very, very possible…it’s also a tell on my part. I think I’m STILL hurting from how Annie Shapiro screwed me over when she brought back ROKon Magazine without me. And that was a long, long time ago. Once bitten, twice shy and all that.
But, as I keep saying, you have to make decisions on what you do know, not on what you don’t know. So, I’m going to keep on keeping on until something absolutely happens that makes it clear I’m going to have to pivot to a different story.
Hopefully, I won’t get screwed over like I did with ROKon Magazine.
I used to think that great stories would somehow find a way to be told and now I don’t think that’s true anymore. Though, in fairness, I am using the greatest story I know as inspiration for a six novel series. So, I guess, in a sense it is being told — just not in the way I always thought it would be.
But the story I’m thinking about — what happened with me and Annie Shapiro in Seoul while we were working on our little expat rag ROKon Magazine — would be a great character study for someone at, say, The New Yorker to write about.
It was all so long ago that many of the main figures are dead or strone about by the four winds. But you could probably find enough people involved to tell what happened all those many moons ago. The passions associated with the magazine are long gone and you might get people who otherwise wouldn’t talk to you, to talk to you. (After they stopped laughing about how anyone would care about the short life of a zine in Seoul.)
So, I think I’m probably getting the best I’m going to get on this front. I’m using what I personally remember from those days to write a six novel series that ostensibly has nothing to do with what happened when I was in Asia, but actually is directly connected to it.
And any continued hope that the literal story of what happened with the magazine will ever be told says more about my lack of closure, long after everyone else has moved on, more than anything else.
I really need to shut up about working on this novel. I’ve simply talked so much about this project and it’s taken so long that I don’t even know why I keep mentioning it at all.
I should just do it in private and not tell anyone where things stand until I’m finished. But I am 100% extroverted and sometimes I just can’t help myself. I need to let off some steam by just giving a general sense of where things are with the massive project.
At the moment, things are going ok, I guess. My biggest problem is how slow everything is going. And I continue to worry about not just my own fate — I’m not getting any younger — but the fate of the country. My fear is just as I’m wrapping up my first novel, the country will collapse into civil war, starting WW3.
But hopefully (?) we’ll just turn into an autocracy instead and I will at least be able to publish my novel in Canada or something.
There’s a great scene in Ocean’s 11 where someone goes through a list of crucial parts of making the heist a success to Matt Damon’s character and when he gets to the last thing, he doesn’t tell Damon what it is.
Time is running out.
I feel that way as I work my way towards being in a position to attempt to sell my first novel. I read all these different how-to books that give you all this advice that you absolutely have to follow to sell your novel. But, I think, really, a lot mean to just remind you that it’s really difficult to get a novel published the traditional route and for people to adjust their expectations accordingly. The people who give all their advice about how to write a novel mean well, but the net effect is to try to discourage as many people as possible from writing a novel in the first place.
Anyway, as I continue my march towards querying, I again and again find myself uneasy about what is going to happen when literary agents do “due diligence” on me. Repeatedly, literary types — who I’m willing to pay! — have dismissed me as a crank and aren’t even willing to work with me at all.
It makes me wonder if there some sort of unspoken culture clash that I just won’t be able to overcome. Do I, by definition, come across as too bonkers for your average literary type?
This is extremely aggravating for a number of reasons, chief among them being creative people tend to be “problematic,” weird” and “different.” It also doesn’t help that I’m a CIS white middle age man who writes from the POV throughout the novel of someone who is not that, but rather an Amerasian woman. (Among other different types of people.)
But, in the end, being delusional got me this far and being delusional is going to get me as far as I can possibly get before I learn one way or another if what I fear is true or not.
I’m really growing to like both the tactical beginning of the first novel I’m working on and the strategic beginning of this planned six novel project. The tactical beginning is strong because it opens with a huge question — why is this person in this situation?
What I imagine the protagonist of the first three novels in this six novel project looks like as I write.
It’s take me a very long time to stumble across this specific beginning and it could definitely still change. But, for the time being, I’m pleased with what I’ve managed to come up with. It is kind of embarrassing how many months I wasted with various other versions of this novel. And I like to think, at least, that if I had a wife or girlfriend maybe the process would have been sped up considerably.
Meanwhile, the strategic beginning is cool because there’s a lot — A LOT — of room for growing and development. I easily have six total novels I can map out if I try to sell this first novel, set 25 years ago. Everything is pretty sorted out in my mind, I just have to knock out the remaining five novels in the series (and beyond.)
Of course, a lot could go wrong. And they say if you’re querying your first novel, you need to be working on something else while you’re doing it. I’m not getting any younger and I really need to put up or shut up one way or another.
But, in general, the whole experience continues to a lot of fun — if a lot of hard work.
It’s really taking a lot, lot, lot longer than I imagined to write this first novel. A lot of the delay comes from how I’ve been drifting towards my goal, rather than setting any clear deadlines. I suppose I just am reluctant to make this a chore. Writing a novel is supposed to be fun, not something you dread.
But I’m just not getting any younger.
I have to at least try to be more organized, focused and driven with this project. My current goal is to start querying in the fall of 2023. But to do that, I’m going to have to write two drafts then have beta readers then get someone to edit the copy THEN querying it.
As such, I probably need to have my second draft done in early 2023. I’m well on my way to making that a reality, but I have to stop daydreaming so much. I have to focus. I really want to at least have a second draft done in early 2023 that I can be proud of.
Then I can try to figure out how to get some beta readers in the summer of 2023 and begin the process of querying in the autumn of 2023. I have no idea if the novel will be good enough to catch the interest of a literary agent, but at least I will have achieved my goal — go through the entire process of writing a novel and trying to get it published in the traditional manner.
And, what’s more, I will know how *I* develop and write a novel. And that will help me a great deal when it comes to writing my second novel. When you reach my age, you are forced to prioritize for no other reason than if you don’t get something, anything done, you’ll be in your 60s and it will be very comical that you’re STILL trying to “make it big.”
The existential change in what you can actually achieve in life once you reach a certain age is something I’m growing very unhappy with. Is this a mid-life crisis?
Anyway, I have to keep believing in myself. But I also have to realize that if I get what I want, I won’t get what I want. It’s not like I can “make it big,” move to NYC and act like I’ve live there all my life. Even if I stick the landing, and sell a pop novel that is huge — I’m still going to be an old man who can’t date 24 year old women. And if I tried, it would be really creepy.
I just need to stop deluding myself and start to think a bit more clear eyed about what my immediate future is.
A shit ton of things could go wrong between now and the fall of 2023 when I believe I will finally — finally — be in a position to query my first novel to literary agents. Of course, it could be that I’m just too bonkers for literary types and all of this is a fool’s errand, but this six novel project has become existential to me and so, lulz.
I can’t help who I am. I can’t help how old I am. I can’t my background. I can’t help a lot of things. But I have come up with a really good canon for this projected six novel project.
One thing that I really worry about is things I just can’t control. I can’t control how difficult it will be to properly query. I can’t help that it could take months or even years for any agent to take me on. And I can’t help that there is a serious post-production lag time from the moment I sell the novel until it actually hits bookshelves.
And what’s worse, there is the looming possibility of autocracy or civil war in the United States in late 2024, early 2025 and there’s a real possibly that historical events might make my efforts at becoming a successful novelist very, very moot.
All I have control over it the story I’m working on and making it a good as possible. That’s the reason why it’s taken me so long to get to this point. I have very high standards for myself and this project. So repeatedly during the years I’ve spend on it I’ve simply lost faith in what I was working on and forced myself to start from scratch.
Even though this has caused me to spend far more many years on the project than I could ever have imagined, at least the end result is also far better than it might have been otherwise.
At least I’m less likely to embarrass myself than you might think otherwise.
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