“Pain or damage don’t end the world. Or despair or fucking beatings. The world ends when you’re dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. Stand it like a man… and give some back.” – Al Swearingen

 

Hola.

I can tell it has been a while since I blogged. I had a moment logging into WordPress when I blanked on my password. Derp!

I aspire to be a gracious, karma-forward soul. It’s a struggle. I keep a lot of scores and I can hold a grudge.

If I were to make a list of the top ten people whom I would delight in hearing that they passed this earth, three of the top ten names on that list shook this mortal coil in the past month. Of course, there was plenty of “Oh that’s so sad,” on Facebook. Okay. Okay. We’ll pretend that guy, as a high school Junior didn’t hang out in the Junior High bathrooms at lunch time with three of his toadies, taking lunch money from little kids and getting stoned. Sure. We won’t talk about the morning I watched him walk through the school library and challenge every single male there to a fight, one table at a time. We won’t mention the time he was hired on at the McDonald’s where I worked and threatened the General Manager with a knife on his third day. We’ll pretend he wasn’t psychotic. We’ll pretend that the list of people he fucked with wasn’t so long that he wouldn’t leave his house unless he had at least two other sycophants with him for protection. That’s cool. “So sad.” Yep, that’s our narrative. Let’s go with that.

But dead is dead. The bell will toll for me, and there will be a dozen people who will delight upon hearing the gophers are delivering my mail.  Isn’t that the way it goes?

“I’m one of those guys you either love or you hate. And I’m fine either way.” – Bobby Pinson

Just the same, if you are one of the other seven names on my “The World Would Be a Better Place Without You” list, don’t buy any green bananas. Make sure your insurance premiums are paid. It looks as if Satan opened up a brand new Douchebag Wing in hell and there’s finally room for you.

If you’ve followed this blog for any time, you know that I’ve been frustrated with my literary agent’s lack of responsiveness. Back in March I was out to dinner with my son’s girlfriend’s parents. Future inlaws, maybe. Both the parents are lawyers in Reno: the pro-bono, lost cause, advocate for the disadvantaged, hippy type of lawyers. They were an absolute delight to break bread with. The mom is shopping a screenplay, so we could talk craft. The dad could make a living as an Alec Baldwin impersonator. Dead ringer in looks. Same husky voice. Same charm.

And – for whatever reason – the dad latched on to my tale of frustration with my agent like he gave a shit. He was very personable and asked a lot of probing questions. In his gentle, Alec Baldwin way, he asked, “Why don’t you reach out to her one more time? Just try. See if you can open a dialog.”

I defensively explained why it wouldn’t work. “She has all the power. All I can do at this point is piss her off.”

“Yeah,” he nodded. “But there’s a way to reach out in with a professional tone. Without recrimination. You’re a writer, why don’t you write like you’re a character who is wooing a lost love? What would it hurt to try?”

So I did. I reached out to my agent one more time in a professional way, without recrimination.

And it worked.

My agent and I have a standing Skype meeting every three weeks to talk about how Selfie is moving through the publishing gauntlet of rejection.

It came up that she had never read the other YA “trunk novel” that I sent her. She read it. Now we’re workshopping that dusty manuscript into something we can pitch. So how ‘bout that?  I’ve got an agent who is a real agent.

Back when I signed with her, I made a pledge to myself that whatever she said to do, I would do without question or pushback. As I worked through her list of edits for the YA trunk novel, I said to myself, “No way. I wrote that part THISWAY for a reason. If I take it out or change it, it will break THISPART.”

I kept my mouth shut and did exactly what she asked anyway. And yaknow what? Yep. You do know what. She was right. It’s a much better novel now. Leaner. Funnier. More cohesive.

I’ve got a writer buddy who is finishing up his second full-length novel. He’s following a writer schema that encourages writers to just GET THE DAMN NOVEL DOWN ON PAPER without a lot of second guessing or over-plotting or outlining.  I wholeheartedly agree with this approach. You can’t edit what you haven’t written. GO! GO! GO!

But the writing philosophy he’s following also says not to edit or change the fundamentals of the book after it has been written. Copy edit, yes. Workshop with a critique group, no.

I understand the logic. I have participated in so many critique edits, I can tell in an instant when the writer has second guessed their own better instincts, making all the changes in the first three chapters that any-and-every family member suggested. It has turned into a trope. I’m absolutely slogging through three chapters of crap, regretting that I ever agreed to critique a full length novel, and then… BOOM! There’s a shift. The writing gets crisp. The writer’s voice emerges out of nowhere like a clarion blast.

“How!?!” I shout. “How can the first three chapters be SO bad and then the rest is SO good?”

Answer: Too much self-doubt. Too much insecurity. Too much listening to every other yahoo who doesn’t know shit about structure or voice or economy.  A writer can absolutely kill a manuscript by trying to make their critique readers happy at the expense of their own voice and vision.

I get it. I do.

But 100% “Trust Your First Instinct?”  Copy edit only? No revisions? Really?

I keep asking myself, “What kind of friend are you, Shawn? The supportive kind who nods and keeps his mouth shut? Or the kind who leans in and whispers ‘Dude. Seriously. Don’t do that.’?”

HYPOCRITE ALERT: I’m the worst at not letting a fresh manuscript cool off in a drawer before I start editing. The worst.

These past weeks of editing my seven-year-old trunk novel? Golly, Arthur. It sure drives home the theory that a novel is never finished. With my trunk novel edits I have been exponentially more clinical and objective about what really works and which parts were me masturbating against the keyboard.  I “killed my darlings” with the ruthlessness of a Boko Haram warlord.

The more I learn about the craft, the more I learn that every certainty I ensconce in Lucite is going to end up being a reason to laugh at myself three years from now. Our journey is our own. We find our truths and then we find new truths.

We were. And then we are. And then we were.

To my writer buddy: One “having written” has more mass and weight than ten thousand “might writes.” Do your thing. Just keep writing, bro.

The World’s Greatest Mother-in-Law™ lives in a super-active Senior community in Florida. She forwards me classified ads from the community paper that say something to the effect of “GHOST WRITER WANTED.”

Yeah. I get these pitches from all quarters and there was one I even seriously considered because I knew the guy’s story and it was complex and tragic. But 99% of GHOSTWRITER WANTED folks are people who want to “have written” a book without actually sitting down and putting in the work to write a book.  Ghost writing. That sounds like a great idea!  I’ll do all the work, you put your name on the cover page, and then we’ll split the profits 50-50!  Because why? Oh, right, you had a great idea!  Cool. I never have great ideas of my own I’d like to write about. Without your great idea, I’d just be staring at a blank screen all day.

You write your story and I’ll help you. Just because I should help you. Because as hard as I try, I’m always running a karma deficit and I need to give. Fair enough?

One “having written” has more mass and weight than ten thousand “might writes.”

One man’s life lived with karmic reverence for others has more light and resonance than ten thousand “So sad”s on a Facebook memorial page.

And then there’s Shawn, adrift somewhere between the psychopathic bully shitstain whose heart mercifully unplugged him from this existence… and the pro-bono lawyer advocate-for-the-poor who takes an interest in the life dramas of bitter saps he barely knows.

If I’ve wronged you, I ask your forgiveness. If I just annoy you, I ask for your patience. Like a manuscript, I’m never quite past the point where I can be edited into something better than I was seven years ago.