I'm Back?

One or two of you might be aware that I have literary ambitions. That's if the artist formerly known as Frau Lobster still reads this at all.

And what are literary ambitions? Guaranteed to be frustrated, unprofitable, bad for home life and work, pretentious, arrogant, selfish and unrealistic. You'd have to be a hermit to pretend anyone reads books these days, and if they do it's not like they'll run out of titles.

Writing a novel is not something your coworkers will understand. If you tell them you're doing it, they'll ask, 'Why?' It's a surprisingly good question, because writing a novel supposes that you've read or are at least are aware of Herman Melville, the Greeks, Faulkner, Steinbeck, Hemingway, Dickens, Thomas Hardy, and so on. Plus you're probably aware of lesser lights, Amy Hempel, Mark Richard, Terry Southern, Thom Jones, Lionel Shriver, Raymond Carver, John Cheever, Toni Morrison, Jonathan Lethem, Mchael Chabon, Jeffrey Eugenides, Vonegut, Bradbury, PKD, and so on. And you've probably read a bunch of other stuff, best sellers like Alice Sebold, oddballs like Pynchon, Cormac McCarthy, DeLillo. You might even have read Tom Wolfe and John Irving, and wondered why they don't like each other since they write almost exactly the same sort of book.

So the 'why' question turns out to be good, despite the fact it's generally asked by someone who has read little but TV listings and the instructions on a macaroni box since high school. The question is more accurately, 'who the hell do you think you are?' You have something to add to this literary dowry?

Of course if you’re the sort of person who even needs to decide whether to risk the 'why' question with a coworker, you already have an answer: 'Yes, I have something to add.' It's ridiculous, but like sexual preference, it's better not to fight it.

So where's my contribution? Don't look, it's not decent. It's embarrassing, but some parts are brand new and some have suffered a dozen revisions. The total is numbingly long, and I haven't worked on rewrites in earnest for most of the past year. It sucks. If I die today, promise me you'll burn it unread.

I haven't had the courage to face my own ms, but I have done something almost as good. I've done a critique in a writer's workshop I've been in for a couple of years. Critiquing has always helped me more than critiques, because in finding the problems with a stranger's story, I inevitably find problems in my own. Not that feedback isn't helpful, it's just not 'as helpful.'

As an added bonus, I've been fallow in the workshop long enough I don't know most of the writers as authors and fellow critics. The downfall of any workshop is when friendship trumps the awful truth that 'X' doesn't work or 'Phrase Y' is too purple to be believed.