My Writing Process : A 'Blog Hop' Tour

Beth von Staats, a talented writer of Tudor-era short stories, kindly invited me to participate in the Blog Hop Tour "My Writing Process," prior to which, I had little notion as to what a 'Blog Hop' comprised, or what kind of physical and mental contortions might be required - being, still, a technological novice in all but the most basic aspects of social media. Fortunately, given my excess of left feet, mastering the 'blog hop' seems to comprise of answering four questions pertaining to the writing process - that I can do!

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What are you currently working on?

 

I have, most recently, completed a decade-long literary endeavor: Killing the Bee King, which will be released by Regal House Publishing at the end of July. It is, essentially, a spy-themed thriller set in Paris and London in 1803 and revolves around Napoleon's intent to invade England; it is a tale of secret agents and assassins, torture in dark ancient prisons, an emperor's obsession, and a dying man's magnificent triumph. It is a tale of two nations at war, and a man and a woman torn by conflicting loyalties, who in a time of secret agendas and shadowy plots, must learn not only to trust each other but to forgive themselves.

Now, freed from the constraints of editing, and the endless rounds of tweaking that invariably accompany a work in it's final conclusion, I am simply ecstatic to move on to another historical narrative.

My next novel is located in mid-eighteenth century Southeast Asia, and will comprise a maritime adventure through the Banda Sea at a time when the great European powers were seeking domination of the spice trade. The narrative revolves around the character of Lucie, a young lady of some gentility who harkens from Georgian England, whose trans-Mediterranean journey en route to India is intercepted by Tunisian pirates; pirates who dominate the North African slave trade. From thence, seized and ransomed to the sultan of Malacca, Lucie finds herself in company with a Portuguese shipowner who seeks to liberate his brother from imminent execution on the spice island of Ternate. Pursued by the ruthless sultan Marshid Khan, battling storms, Achenese pirates, the usual shipborne diseases, and each other, the two navigate the political and social intricacies of colonial outposts in their desperate attempt to reach Ternate in time.

So I am currently embroiled in research, examining Georgian England in the attempt to define the context from which Lucie emerged, and to better understand the evolution of her particular character as the various pitfalls and impediments within the plotline befall her. I am immersed in colonial politics of the mid-eighteenth century, historical accounts of Portuguese merchants, naval architecture, tropical food and colonial fashions. And, of course, the history of the spice trade. It is of utmost importance to me to maintain the highest degree of historical authenticity in my fictional works, and so to this end, the research might last six months prior to beginning writing the actual novel. Although, I have cheated somewhat and already penned the first three chapters!

How does your work differ from others of  its genre?

 

I am unsure how to adequately answer this question; I do not read a great deal of contemporary historical fiction. I can only speak to my own literary imperative - which is to create an atmospheric work of great suspense; to render a world in words, one in which the reader feels viscerally immersed; a historical environment saturated with authentic detail that lends a vibrancy to the narrative without weighing it down unduly. And therein lies the challenge!

Why do you write what you do?

 

I have long been fascinated by ancient and historical cultures; my academic background is in archaeology, a scientific endeavor that seeks to piece together the past. I have harnessed the writing of historical fiction to a similar purpose (although one can dispense with those dreaded footnotes, and has some license for fabrication - which tends to be frowned upon within archaeological circles!)

I find an intriguing juxtaposition between cultures of the past (and the associated constraints under which fictional characters operate), and that of modernity. A dramatic tension exists, for example, simply in a reference to eighteenth-century medical practice, where disease-ridden miasma's provoked ailments that only bleeding could cure. Within the context of this singular reference, however brief it may be, the reader is dramatically aware not only of the distance traveled in medical science, but the relative speed with which those innovations have occurred; and in these moments, within an historical narrative that is authentically portrayed, the reader is perpetually invited to compare the then and now. And, at times, with unexpected results.

The characters are critical, as they are in all genres of fiction, but for historical fiction I think of them as Virgil, guiding not Dante through the circles of Hell, but taking the readers' hands and leading them through the narrative. A guide through whose perspective we become acquainted with an unfamiliar world. In this regard, the characters are the structural bones upon which all else hangs.

In its essentials, I am seeking a reviving. A resurrection of a parallel universe (to challenge the complexities of modern astrophysics) that might have existed in the past. For so much of Killing the Bee King was based on factual accounts, and so many of its characters (for whom I retain a great fondness) were inspiring in their historical fortitude; so much so, that every part of the novel played out in all it's vivid intensity within the confines of my imaginative self. It was as if I was the sole ticket-holder to a cinematic pre-screening, and I had settled myself, with all necessary refreshments, into the plush velvet seat - and it all played out up there on the big screen. And not just on the big screen. Perched on my nose were my special spectacles, that enabled not only three-dimensional viewing, but with the added benefit of olfactory-stimulation. After all, how tragic to visit early nineteenth century Paris and London and not smell the stagnantly oozing puddles, the seeping sewage, and the heavy muskiness of unwashed bodies. No, no, no! It must not be! And so, with full sensory satisfaction, I tipped back in my seat, lost in the momentum of it; tense, apprehensive, tearful, delighted...wanting to see how it was all going to end. And, part of me, hoping it never would. Then, of course, like all of us that relate with relish a much-enjoyed film, I wanted to share this narrative with others.  I wanted to depict this period of the past with as much veracity as I could muster, perhaps kindling, for the reader, an interest in a time and place with which they might not be so very well acquainted.

How does your writing process work?

A 'process' sounds like a formulated plan; a literary methodology that has been rigorously proven to be effective; a set manner of proceeding that produces the best possible outcome, and one which is utilized consistently from one novel to the next. I have no particular process. I read non-fiction voraciously throughout. When writing Killing the Bee King, I read articles in obscure architectural history journals about the renovations of the Louvre, historical works about about culinary innovations, numerous biographical books about all my historical personages - William Pitt, Napoleon, Talleyrand..and of course, book upon book upon book about the French Revolution and the immediate aftermath. This obsession with the historical record is probably the only constant within any literary 'process' I adhere to. Then, with historical accounts fresh in mind, I write furiously...then wonder, ponder, muse about this or that...then revert to non-fiction yet again with an almost maniac devotion to extricating some measure of 'truth.' Creative initiative, at least for me, is not so easily harnessed; and I progress in fits and starts with constant referral to this non-fictional work or that...writing chapter upon chapter that feel sublimely perfect in the first draft, and then being stymied for days on end as to how best to proceed.

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Marta Merjver-Kurlat

Marta Merjver-Kurlat

I am utterly delighted to introduce a wonderful Argentinean writer as the next one 'tagged' in this blog hop, and I have no doubt she will accomplish this feat far more deftly than I! Her brilliant novel Just Toss the Ashes is a sublime examination of grief, love and loss within the complications of the family dynamic. Marta is also a translator and psychoanalyst who publishes in Spanish and English with Jorge Pinto Books, Inc., New York. 

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Pim Wiersinga

Pim Wiersinga

I am thrilled to introduce an incredibly talented writer whose marvelous work The Pavilion of Forgotten Concubines will be released by Regal House Publishing later this year. It is a simply exquisite work from an already renowned Dutch author, but this particular novel represents his English debut. I, for one, am excited to see what Pim is going to come up with next! In the meantime, visit his blog to find out his answers to the blog hop questions!

http://pimwiersinga-novelist.blogspot.nl/2014/06/lady-cao-is-me.html

Alain-Fournier, Le Grand Meaulnes, and the Poignant Romanticism of Youth

Alain-Fournier's exquisite novel Le Grand Meaulnes seems less a crafted fictional tale than an ethereal dreamscape. It describes the arrival, at a rural school in Sologne, of the charismatic Meaulnes who captivates his schoolfellows with his brash confidence and inclination for adventure. After abruptly disappearing for several days, Meaulnes returns, travel-stained and disheveled, and confides in the young and admiring François: while lost among narrow pathways and rural lanes, amidst meadows and hedgerows, the older boy glimpsed "the spire of a grey turret rising above some fir trees". Meaulnes subsequently found himself welcomed to a  strangely dilapidated mansion with crumbling outbuildings and carefully raked driveways, festooned with colored lanterns and jumbled collections of antiquated goods. He moved through the estate with the dazed uncertainty of a somnambulist but imbued with an inexplicably idyllic contentment: "a feeling of perfect, almost intoxicating tranquility: the certainty that he had reached his goal and that henceforth only happiness awaited him."

This curious manor was inhabited, and organized it appeared, by an assemblage of children dressed in the formal attire of a bygone era: "frock coats with high velvet collars, stylish low-cut waistcoats...and patent leather shoes from the start of the century."  All seemed to reside under an enchantment, where innocent pleasures were defined by childish whimsy, where young girls in petticoats shrieked with exuberant laughter, and a distant piano-player evoked a sense of melodic serenity. Participating in the fete that followed, having discovering that it was occasioned by the imminent marriage of Frantz de Galais, Meaulnes is transfixed by the delicate beauty of Frantz's sister, Yvonne. When the wedding failed to eventuate and the guests dispersed, Meaulnes found himself unceremoniously deposited back at the Sologne school with little notion as to where he has passed these idyllic days, nor the route by which he may return.

The narrative, in the latter part of the novel, is depicted through the older eyes of François (who has acquired a certain wise pragmatism in the intervening years); he expresses his incredulity at Meaulnes' despondency: at "this emptiness, this distance, this inability to experience happiness" that persisted even after obtaining the affections of his Yvonne - his Beatrice, his Dulcinea. For it is not her Meaulnes seeks so particularly, as much as he is obsessed with the Lost Estate itself: "the little girls, the driver of the old berlin, the racing ponies...he was inquiring about this with extraordinary eagerness as though trying to persuade himself that there was nothing remaining of his great adventure...that they had not both dreamt it all." For Meaulnes, these later years are plagued by a dismal ennui. Frantz, likewise, is unable to relinquish the pampered permissiveness that characterized his time at Les Sablonnières (The Lost Estate): he is ever the "imperious, capricious, easily-discouraged" child who, despite chronological maturity, insisted upon "playing this ridiculous part of the young romantic hero." For it is those that persistently, and fruitlessly, sought happiness in a resurrection of the past, that seemed most doomed to misery in present times.

This Lost Estate is the distillation of happiness that Meaulnes desperately seeks, and the self-indulgent liberty that Frantz cannot escape. This is, in short, childhood; and these simple pleasures of youth have a tightly focused appreciative when remembered under the greater anxieties of adulthood; when, fraught and entangled by the necessity of wage-earning, burdened by the responsibilities of career-path, and confined by strictures of all that is deemed socially acceptable, the early years seem comparatively carefree. For childhood is the provenience of immortals; as far as the young are concerned, the days last forever, and the years stretch ahead in interminable succession. There will always be time: the hour glass perpetually turned, its sandgrains replenished; the darkly hooded figure with the scythe who lurks on the peripheries is disdainfully dismissed, if, indeed, he is thought of at all. But, when remaining years of a generously self-allotted lifespan seem to be dwindling, when one feels that they are accelerating with alarming rapidity down the other chronological side...the perspective is an entirely different one. In the face of diminishing time, one begins the restless quest for meaning and purpose; the grail often obstinately elusive. But perhaps the key to its whereabouts lies in the idyllic contentment of past remembrances, gilded and enshrined by the foibles of memory and the indistinctness of intervening time.

This notion, encouraged by the disillusionment that oft-characterizes maturity (and to which Meaulnes was particularly susceptible), is the quintessential dream of eternal youth; expressive, perhaps, of the adult yearning to  recapture that sense of simple delight, that ability to immerse oneself utterly within the present moment. For life becomes complicated as one ages. François' mother, so beautifully depicted within Alain-Fournier's novel, is so distraught by the appearance of frugality that she closets herself away to repair hats in secret, lest the family's necessary economies become the subject of village gossip. And Monsieur Seurel, François' father, seems a distracted, rather unapproachable fellow. Who would not prefer the rambunctious ramblings of boisterous boys through woods and grottos - climbing wild cherry trees, robbing woodpeckers' nests, with all their "stifled laughter" and physical exuberance? For Frantz and Meaulnes it was not a coming-of-age narrative as much as a refusal-to-age, and the poignant pain associated with this particular path.

What a marvelous theme it is upon which Alain-Fournier expounded! It brings to my mind the mythic island of Hy-Brasil that appears once every seven years somewhere off the Irish coast, shrouded in fog and mist and inhabited by fairies and wizards. Any so fortunate to set foot upon this miraculous isle are granted eternal life, but to those who seek it, it remains perpetually elusive, invisible between the waves, impenetrable and indiscernible. As Les Sablonnières becomes for Meaulnes - a mirage that lures him on, that promises fulfillment but leaves him perpetually yearning.

The Lost Estate takes its place alongside palaces of memory, where reminiscences become inextricably located in architecture, and childhood is indeliably linked with the overgrown manor house, pregnant with possibility. I remember something of this kind from my own early years - the old Raffles hotel in Singapore, before the modern renovations, before the whitewashed exterior and the sleek website. It had been a dilapidated mansion, dusty and cobwebbed, redolent with myth and legend. We would come for tiffin, for that rich succulence of Sunday curry, then we, the children, would be released from the company of adults, free to explore - and one could not, indeed, imagine a more enthralling place. We would scamper up narrow back stairways, through cavernous rooms filled with heavy colonial furniture, gaping at billiard tables beneath which tigers had crouched (or so the story went!), entranced by faded photographs of bearded men and solemn women in sepia; fascination existed in forgotten corners, in dark remnants of bygone times, in the faded carpet and timeworn stairs. And so, perhaps, it was for Meaulnes and his lost estate. For he must have imagined, as did I, that this crumbling architecture was more than just a receptacle for neglected furniture and dusty books. Perhaps it is the notion that some sort of old wisdom resides in places such as these, that past inhabitants still dwelled within its walls, whispering ancient secrets to those who would listen. But time, and progress it seems, wait for no man. Raffles was sterilized, revamped and regenerated, reborn, glorious and pristine - all vestiges of  inconvenient colonial embarrassments concealed beneath a freshly painted exterior. And the fate of Les Sablonnières? Utterly demolished, so that scarcely even memory remained; a wasteland, the provenience of rabbit burrows and tangled weeds. Gone with the rapidity that is youth. For when Meaulnes returned, years later, the Lost Estate was again irretrievably lost to him - as indeed it had always been. It existed only in the remembrance, in the later re-telling.

Perhaps, this yearning for a pristine past characterizes societies and nations as well as individuals. Napoleon Bonaparte comes to mind, and his attempt to evoke the glories that were Rome within architectural facades, ranking nomenclature, and the organization of a nation of which he crowned himself emperor. Because this illustrious past, this glorious heritage that all acknowledged to be the very root and legitimacy of power, this was better, surely, than the humble Corsican parentage from whence he had come?

It is not that childhood is always idyllic, or that maturity is bound to be the wellspring of malcontents, but it is, instead, about the dream of perfect happiness. A place of peace, a haven from the turbulent upheavals of life. Reminiscent of mythic after-worlds where virgins abound, and perpetual peace and contentment reign. Not only does such a place not exist in the earthly realm (as Meaulnes and Frantz find to their respective grief), but perhaps the irony lies in the probable dissatisfaction one would find there after residing overlong! Perfect peace? Calm contentment? Where, then, is the passion, the heat, the dissension, the conviction, argumentative or otherwise, the dialectic that engenders growth? The debate that stimulates further thought? The emotional upheavals that define the human experience?

This marvelous novel Le Grand Meaulnes is all the more poignant due to Alain-Fournier's own tragic death on the Meuse in 1914 at the tender age of twenty-seven. Little more than a youth himself. This novel captures, in all its sensitive intensity of prose, this yearning that has subsequently come to characterize so many brilliant works of literature, and to which readers today remain equally enthralled.

Intermittent Quietude: Ahab, Hector, Winterborne and the Coalescence of Character

Sometimes one encounters, within the course of a literary work, moments of quietude. They exist for a brief flicker, as if distinct from the time-stream of the novel; all else: plot machinations, the adversarial heft and hump of the narrative world, the angst and the strife - it all drops away. And the world coalesces to the tight singularity of these two characters (or perhaps one coming to some revelatory self-insight). There is a narrative stillness, where the literary world that surrounds the two slows to sluggishness, eclipsed by the acute emotional focus of a moment stolen from time. And these are the moments that linger in memory.

As Ahab meets his own desperate end, the broader narrative expanse coalesces to encompass two - the Captain of the Pequod and his mammalian tormenter: "Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! Thus, I give up the spear!"  The emotional intensity, after traversing the salty brine aboard the Pequod in close company with Ahab and his crew for innumerable chapters, is indeed profound. One can vividly envision the physical contortion of effort, the visceral rancor which drives Ahab, and the shuddering finality of that last spear thrust. All of it disappearing beneath the placid blue, leaving a ripple or two in its wake.


Or that passage in The Iliad, one of the few that do not dwell on brutal axe-blow or dark bloodspill, but one in which Hector embraces his baby son for the last time, knowing full well of Troy's dark fate. In the midst of carnage and fear, as the corpses accumulate and the gods do bloody battle, there is a moment of stillness, of tender affection, and the narrative slows to dwell upon a warrior's love for his family. "Hector looked on his son in silence, with a smile." While his wife, Andromache,  pleads with him, weeping copious tears: "don't orphan your child, and make me a widow," the city depends upon him, and honor calls him back to defend the battlements. Then, this section, already fraught with emotional intensity, elevates sentiment still further; when his son drew back in fear, daunted by the horse-hair plume that nodded "fearfully from his helmet top", "scared at the sight of bronze," this peerless warrior of Troy lay his mighty helmet on the ground with a laugh, "kissed his dear son and held him in his arms." And all the devotion of a parental heart is hard-wrought with the understanding of what is to come. This tender interlude between father and son is framed (before and after) by grim slaughter inflicted by glittering spears, by sharp bronze penetrating to bone and brain, and by darkness falling over many a pair of eyes. In this moment of love, so vibrantly heightened by the ruthless brutality of death, the work becomes something greater than the sum of its requisite parts. Born in oral tradition, the Iliad continues to sing to us thousands of years later.

Perhaps a similar narrative narrowing facilitates the heartrending battle scene in Shakespeare's Henry VI Part 1, where Talbot entreats his son with desperate intensity to flee the field: "Wilt thou yet leave the  battle, boy, and fly..." and his son indignantly replies: "Is my name Talbot? And am I your son/And shall I fly? O, if you love my mother/Dishonor not her honorable name/To make a bastard and a slave of me./The world will say he is not Talbot's blood,/That basely fled when noble Talbot stood." This scene, this exchange of a moment amidst the frisson and fear of battle, presents a powerful rendering of Talbot's attempts at emotional restraint (and the curiously agonized joy with which he accepts his son's stalwart profession of nobility and fatality) and a son's determination to die well in violent proximity to the father he loves. This scene could be dramatized in a variety of ways: with words flung hither and yon among sword clash and conflict cry, or perhaps this exchange is conducted with hard-won breath in a moment's respite. In either rendition, the surrounding tumult heightens the drama, isolates father and son, and presents a dramatic juxtaposition to the poignant dialogue in which each so valiantly offers their own life to save the other.

Or (less of grisly carnage, but death nonetheless) in Hardy's Woodlanders, as Giles Winterborne lay dying in a wind-thrashed hut; the tempestuous storm without highlights the quietude within. The darkness surrounds and envelopes Giles and his yearned-for Grace, and by the light of a candle, she is of-a-sudden struck by his "purity of nature, his freedom from the grosser passions, his scrupulous delicacy." It is only within the confines of this isolated abode, prompted by Giles' self-sacrifice, that Grace at last understands him. And it is these perceptions that elevate her affections to "something little short of reverence." A reverence all the more tragic for being so lately realized.

These moments of stillness within a novel (oft preceded or surrounded by a flurry) can, I think, be utilized by a writer to powerful effect. For the characters involved, these particular circumstances are often eloquently suggestive, signifying the depth of a hitherto unacknowledged emotional bond, the futility of a life consumed by an unquenchable thirst for vengeance, the poignant leave-taking of a baby son by a father destined to die, or the desperate attempt to preserve one's offspring at whatever required cost. Whether it be Shakespeare or Melville, Hardy or Homer, these writers have composed exquisite moments of emotional intensity that imbue us, like the characters therein described, with a still attentiveness; breath caught and held - seized as we are by the emotive force of these moments: defined by the surety of death, the despair of love, and the irretrievably agonizing loss of a child that is, almost, more than can be borne by the human heart.

Acquiring Reality: Bookshelf Neighbors and the Transition to Print

My novel arrived by mail this afternoon - an innocuous package in a nondescript padded envelope. Nothing particular to warrant the leaping beat of heart, the sheen of sweat on the brow, or the fingers that seemed suddenly inadequate to the opening-task. And abruptly there; after ten years of oft-laborious labor (twisting reluctant words to suit my purpose, persuading, wrenching and coaxing phrases, then, in an irritated fit, discarding them all to begin anew!) What a process it is, this novel-writing endeavor! And what a marvel to see it in print for the first time!

It has existed after all, these years past, in some burgeoning state of gestation; evolving, developing, maturing in the dim recesses of binary code, in a seemingly infinitesimal sequence of ones and zeroes. Saved and stored in the dark; from where it resurrects itself to be worked upon, to be sent out in fits and starts to this agent or that; but the vast body of it, like the incandescent beauty of an iceberg, remained subdued and quiet, luminous beneath the surface - a vague ghostly thing that abruptly materializes with a press of the button...intermittently occupying flickering space on one's screen,  defined by a complex array of code, but hardly the Platonic ideal of the 'Book' as we imagine it to be. Instead, it is an abstract version, an electronic facsimile that lacks the tactile substance of objects that populate our three-dimensional environs. It is, as of yet, a shadow of itself...

But now, in copy and cover, it has acquired independent spatial form, and I can almost imagine it pulsating with heated life beneath my hands - for I have long been acquainted with those that live within - with their trials and misfortunes, with their passions and their angst. Now, in print, they come to vibrant life in a manner hitherto denied them. These inhabitants of my literary landscape have the power to enthrall and ensnare, to beckon and beguile. Or not. For indubitably it is not to everyone's taste. But without qualm or agenda I can quietly acknowledge the beauty it holds for me - a literary child of the heart.

For despite the portable ease of e-books, and the convenient readiness of kindles on the go, there is something potent and powerful about the feel of pages beneath one's hands. And something magical about the abrupt manifestation of this novel in three-dimensional form after years of quiet slumbering in code - confined and restrained (like Rapanzuel shorn) within the dusty recesses of my computer tower. For now it has materialized with the trundle of the mail van like a conjuror's trick, summoned from the proverbial hat. Or a supernova - the novel existed, after all, for a seeming-eternity in dim obscurity that, with second glance (timed in accordance with the postal service!), flares into a brilliant cascade of heat and light. And a dull and unassuming gleam erupts in a burst of stellar radiation, exuding such luminosity that neighboring galaxies are momentarily muted. And so it was for me - at least within my own expanse of personal sky!

Perhaps it is an accessibility issue - the printed novel can be touched, carried, and seen. It can sit snugly in the bookcase between Lost Illusions and Crime and Punishment (not that my humble offering presumes to the greatness of its neighbors, but their formidable presence serves to remind me of the exquisite potential of literary expression). For it acquires a reality, does it not? Becomes something substantive that can be readily perused by eyes other than our own. It can be disseminated and discussed, devoured and discarded, adored and derided. And in the process this collection of words becomes something much more. It's existence is no longer laptop-confined, or limited to my own imaginative mind, but exists within the cognitive receptors of each subsequent reader - in a multitude of chemical pathways, and, however temporarily, in the nueral flash and flare of synaptic activity. And the collective readers (however scarce and sundry) bring to mind earth's night-half when viewed from high above - the clustered twinkle of lights that scatter in careless profusion across the darkness.  And is it not this potential that most excites a writer? For aspects of the novel, the intricate working of plot, the endearing quirkiness of character, to come to life and light within the mind of the reader? And (without undue greediness) another? To initiate a neural cascade! Granted, readers might find it tedious, barely venturing past the prologue, but regardless for a moment I have them. And if my literary labor is done sufficiently well, perhaps, like Mark Antony's crowd, they might be willing to lend an attentive ear (or eye) to the work in its entirety.

I remain in awe of accomplished writers of the past (with whom I am far more familiar than contemporary novelists), who so deftly depicted the most deeply-felt of human truths in a poetic prose that endures for an age and beyond. With the arrival of my own literary work, I realize, as if for the first time, that I too am a writer! Not that I presume to such greatness as these most worthy forebears, or the esteemed literary neighbors on my resident bookshelf, but as I am beguiled by a Shakespearean phrase, a Dickensian characterization, or Balzac's purity of depiction, the elusive possibility of phrase-perfection lingers in the air. We strive ever onward, seeking a clarity of form, and the stark beauty of expression in the distillation of language. A collection of words that comprise a harmonious phrase. The sentence that so perfectly encapsulates a given moment in time, an emotion, or a detail that attains some level of profundity within its linguistic context. It is the phrase that comes unbidden in the writing of it, as if from one other than ourselves, the whispering Muse whose breath warms our cheek and gently stirs our hair to movement.

And reading my novel in print for the first time, I encounter again a phrase here and there of which I am quietly proud - words, which are often petulantly uncooperative, have here (in this literary moment!) been harnessed to glorious effect. And, inspired by these literary forebears who wielded their pen with such skillful dexterity, I strive for a plenitude of such phrases! Perfection in a novel no less! Greedy? Indeed! But I believe that one must always seek betterment, that honing one's craft is, indeed, a perpetual pursuit. However, when an author (who is indubitably the hardest to please when confronted with their own work) recognizes an incandescent phrase here and there, a literary moment of pride, this in turn provides the necessary fuel to sustain further effort. Perhaps it is about befriending Sisyphus and loving the rock?

Inscribed with an ISBN and a library of congress number, registered in Bowker, and generally available to an audience as of April of this year, Killing the Bee King is no longer a project, an undertaking, a Sisyphean labor of love, a ceaseless round of edits and drafts - each one fraught with issues, difficulties, and errors. It is a novel. Published. It no longer dwells in the close darkness of chip and gigabyte, nor does it soar solely within my own imagination, but it has become part and parcel of a globally-accessed bookstore. The printed novel then belongs to us all - a tiny portion of our collective literary compendium. My scattering of phrases are no longer quietly hoarded, but broadly, thrillingly, and terrifyingly available for the widest of audiences to peruse; over which they might purse their lips and mutter (as my Pragmatic Critic is wont to do). Regardless, there is a quiet joy in the completion, in the relinquishment of said work. And so it appeared, this novel of mine, on an ordinary afternoon, a dull and slumbering Monday, where it seemed little of note would eventuate. And I stand in gaping wonder at the reality of it. After years of working with an abstract version, stored within the shadowed recesses of bit and byte, I now hold a book, a veritable book, in my hands! And, more than anything, I hope never to lose this sense of awe, this tightly-held marvel that the first printing of a new novel evokes. For whatever lies ahead, one has this moment - and what a grand moment it is indeed!

Balzac wore a Bowler too: Acquiring a Literary Hat Fetish

I have discovered, along with my unremitting devotion to literary composition, a tendency to accumulate hats at a rather alarming rate. Some of which are bedecked with feathers, and are, I fancy, rather flattering at a rakish angle - others, square and dowdy, droop in unlikely places and for which I hold little affection. Regardless of the limitations of closet space, and the unsuitable hat-climate in which I currently reside, these hats (like Bartholemew Cubbins of Dr. Seuss fame) reappear upon my cranium with accelerating frequency.

For these are, increasingly, the stock and barrel of the literary trade - the multitude of hats which the writer today accumulates, and must, perforce, accustom themselves to wearing. It used to be that we wore one - a signature fedora perhaps - a slightly battered, world-weary cranial piece that had seen us through one novel or another. The writer's hat. Comfortable, softly threadbare in all the right places - so much so that one was little aware of it being worn at all. For hitherto we only required that one - and beneath the broad brim of it we wrote with an impassioned ferocity, emitting the heated angst of life in a fluid conmingling of ink and blood upon the page (to borrow Hemingway's visceral depiction of the process). And then? We finished with a flourish and consigned our work to the trusted realms of publishing - who attended to the tedious tasks of marketing, printing, and distribution, leaving the author to contemplate the formulation of their subsequent literary work...

Now, however, writers of serious intent must accustom themselves to all kinds of cranial adornments - some of which poke and prod in the most uncomfortable of fashions. My grammatical hat, for example, leaves much to be desired, and I have the most unsettling notion that it accentuates, in glaring relief, my literary shortcomings: my comma-phobia, my hyphen-uncertainties, and the nuances that elude specific rules but incorrect usage proclaim "here writes an ignorant one!" So I pore over my Chicago Manual of Style in the vain hope that I can accustom myself to this cranial appendage that seems so instrumental to my success as a writer.

And there are, indeed, so many of them...some of which are more eagerly worn than others. My historian hat has been much in evidence as of late, and conforms beautifully to the curve of bone beneath. For beneath this bowler I spend many an hour perusing diaries, letters, historical treatises that offer an unprecedented glimpse of a time and space which is to become my world, and which will, in fits and starts, facilitate the emergence of a new narrative. Balzac described himself "much more of an historian than a novelist" and I incline to his view - or at least to the extent that my writing is predominately informed upon by my non-fictional explorations. The Human Comedy comprises an immense repository of historical detail, deftly intertwined within the narrative - methods of paper manufacture, fashions and furnishings, political escapades and small-town geography were all conveyed with scrupulous verisimilitude. So Balzac wore a bowler too! I yearn to wear mine with as much panache.

Lately, I have been the reluctant recipient of a helmet (particular to this part of the literary process) - ensnared as I have been by the  intricacies of formatting, caught in the sticky web of preparatory necessities that do little to enthrall the authorial mind. Pinioned in the mire and mesh of hyphen-placement and white-space, margins and trim, font size and style, kerning - and other aesthetic attributes I had, in truth, little desire to master. In the midst of my affliction, beneath the dank confines of metal that has a way of closing in around one's countenance until it seemed it would fasten permanently to the skull like some beast of alien appetite, I despair - would one ever be done?

And then - the marketing hat - an incommodious bonnet that flopped and flipped about one's ears in a most disconcerting manner. For even with the gratifying attention of prodigious publishing firms (of which few of us can boast) one still must market oneself. And there seems a bewildering variety of ways and means in which this must be done in modern society (I stipulate modern because I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time embroiled in the past!) For work completed must henceforth become work advertised, work marketed, work pushed and pulled and shoved (hopefully not to the detriment of said work or sanity of associated author). For bereft of parental attention it will languish and wallow, theoretically available in this medium or that but a forlorn, unrecognized thing consigned to some virtual dark and dusty corner of the cavernous Amazon warehouse ...and precisely how this is to be done - I do not know exactly. Is there a polite manner in which one can market one's work, without forceful brandishment? Without an email deluge? Without unwanted encroachment? It remains a finely tuned balancing act - one that does justice not only to the literary work itself, but maintains a modicum of respect for the author as well as the reader who comprises their audience. My hope is that one acquires a degree of satisfaction in the donning of this particular hat and wearing it well.

 For as much as we might desire to maintain a modest collection of much-beloved hats (one or two might suffice) we are now, more than ever, forced to accumulate and adjust to copious cranial attire. Far more frequently than we might like we must needs don one ill-fitting encumbrance after another as we attempt to master the variety of skills that seem a prerequisite to literary success in this the modern era. And just when it seems the task is done, formatting throws the proverbial wrench in the works - entailing, as it does, wrestling with InDesign and the erroneous snatches of html code that lurk beneath, poised to manifest in some devious fashion, compromising the aesthetic whole of the e-book version. So one must utilize InDesign to maximum effect and pick it apart with minute attention to coding when exporting it for e-publication...and so new tasks manifest and another hat reappears awkwardly perched above the brow.

But perhaps the remedy is to embrace this requisite hat fetish, this acquisition of skills - wear the various hats with as much aplomb as one can muster. For with the wearing of them, they inevitably assume an increased familiarity, become softened with use, much as the rigidity of new leather mellows into suppleness, acquiring a worn patina that is increasingly pleasurable to behold. And the hats themselves become less intrusive as the associated skill-set matures from one of initial bewilderment to well-practiced ease. Ideally. Inevitably the writing fedora (and for some of us the historian's bowler) will remain on a convenient hook, welcome accessories to coveted time - time to write, time to ponder, time to weave gossamer strands of a new narrative, time, in short, 'to murder and create'...and this fluctuating array of headgear? What can we do but make reluctant room in the closet?