NOVEL EXPERINCE

Just in time for Christmas, I self-published my novel, Not All is as You See. Actually it wasn't quite ready as I discovered since there were about a dozen errors in it that have been corrected for any future copies. But I wanted to give a few copies as gifts this year so I rushed a bit. Well, I've been working on it for three-and-a-half years. When I started, I thought I'd be done in six months. Ha! I barely got the basic story down in that time.

It's a fantasy novel with witches and wizards. Obviously it was inspired by J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter books, so of course the hero is a twelve-year-old boy, but it really is a quite different setting. I wanted a world where the magical reality and ordinary reality were much more intertwined, where witches and wizards had to have ordinary jobs to make a living. I also wanted suggestions that one could be part of this world and still be a religious person. I suppose that is pretty heavy-handed on my part, but my own ordinary world had religious activities as integral to my life, so why shouldn't it be part of a fictional character's life? Read the Parable of the Talents, Matthew 25:14-27, for an underlying theme in my story.

The hero, Alan, is clearly myself. He has my interests and foibles. Many of the other characters have roots in people I knew, but none of them are exact representations of anyone. Some of the characters are pure imagination. I'm not quite sure where they came from. It was an odd facet of writing that some of the characters had a life of their own and even I, their creator, was not always sure what they were going to say or do. Is that weird?

The idea to self-publish came from my cousin D. Now, she never read the manuscript of anything so her suggestion come because she's my cousin and not because of the quality of my writing. Actually she is a much better writer than I am. I think, however, O wouldn't have gotten around to finishing the book without the possibility of publishing it.

A rather sophisticated young friend upon whom I inflicted a copy of my magnum opus asked if I felt accomplished. A very perceptive question. Yes, in the sense that I did produce a extended work of fiction, which is what I intended to do. Yes, in the sense that there was a real satisfaction in seeing the improvements in each of the 39 rewrites of the story. The early rewrites were to fix the plot. The later one to fix the writing, especially to take out some of the verbal garbage. Yes, also in the sense of coming up with some clever ideas in the course of writing. Yes, also in the sense that I had to do the layout of the pages and deign the covers myself--something I've never done. And yes, yes in actually holding the book in my hands. The only other time I did something like that was when I held my bound doctoral dissertation, but it looked like what it was, photo copies of typed pages. This looked and felt like a real book.

In another sense, I am disappointed. I didn't have the heart to tear the book apart to fix the major problems that I saw quite early. The book is far too long at 496 pages. There are actually two plots running. The first one is pretty boring. It takes too much time to get anywhere. It uses a literary device of stories within a story that really bogs everything down. There's too much stuff that interests me, but won't interest most readers. There isn't a sophisticated enough plot to hide what's going on. It's too easy to guess things too soon. There are some minor things that I think come as a surprise, but the major ones are too obvious. The hero isn't very heroic, but then neither am I. That's the limitation of autobiographical writing when you're not all that interesting in the first place. (I hope this novel is a little more interesting than my very ordinary real life.)

If I started over again, I do a lot more plotting before writing. I did make pages and pages of notes before I wrote the book, but it wasn't systematic enough. In particular I needed to work out the characters better, to get their "back story" down and clearly identify their personalities. I think I succeeded with some of the characters in giving them a "voice." They don't all sound alike. I tried to match the way they talked and acted with who they were, but that needed more work.

The other question my friend posed to me was "are you going to put it out there for the world to see?" Yes, sort of. I'm putting it out there for the very, very limited world that stumbles into the Lulu site to see. As of my writing this, 50 people have actually looked at the description of the book (woo-hoo), but no one has invested $1.36 to download it in PDF format let alone $15.95 plus shipping for a paperback copy. (Just in case, this is where it's available: Kofink's Stuff) The first two chapters are available for a free preview. There's no magic, however until chapter 2.) I didn't spend the money to buy an ISBN number and distribution plan, so the book won't be available in stores. At $1.09 profit per book, I'd have to sell way too many copies just to break even. I never figured on making money or having much of a readership. It will be a surprise if anyone actually reads through the book even when they got it as a gift.

I do have a report from one astute reader who managed to get through the whole thing. He rightly observed that the magical elements, which are rather limited in the beginning of the book, increase dramatically by the end. In part that was intentional. I wanted the reader to be uncertain about the reality of the magical world. In part, however, the shift is the result of the two stories that are squished together in this book and of my anxiety that something exciting had better happen before the end or the reader will have the same reaction as Alan does at one point, "What a stupid book!"

Is there another book in me? I have long planned a small book of prayers or devotions, but haven't gotten around to doing anything about it. I also made a few notes for a sequel to my novel, but there isn't nearly enough of a plot yet even to sketch it out. I do have an idea for two minor characters, witches named Angela and Agatha. They would be rather elderly twin sisters, physically identical, but with very different personalities. They'd both be good witches, mind you, but one would be rather angelic and the other something of an agony. I already have some short skits of a rather whimsical nature that are available free. Maybe some more ideas will come from that. In the meantime, there is this aimless blogging.

Whether my writing was a detour, a dead end, or a scenic path on my life's journey, I don't know. That's often the way on a pilgrimage. You often don't know where you were until you're somewhere else. In any case, in these ordinary times,

May the Lord God bless you on your way and greet you on your arrival.

Wayne