Kyle Michel Sullivan's Blog: https://www.myirishnovel.com/, page 44

Irritations abound

Tomorrow I'm off to oversee a pickup in Newport, RI. A quick trip, in one day and out the next. Very simple...except we don't have all the paperwork needed for the job, yet, so I might get there and be able to do nothing. Been trying to get it for a couple weeks.

Same for another job in Dallas, that's not until Monday, next week. And I'm the one expected to get everything settled. Which I guess makes sense because I've been dealing with both for a while even though I'm not really working for the company full time, anymore.

I'm caught in this in-between phase. I want to focus on my writing and getting my books sold, finding out how to get them visible and noticed and all that crap without spending much money. But I need the extra cash since helping out my youngest brother's near bankrupted me. Maybe I should start a Go-fund me.

At least the Dallas one might be settled, which is good, but the one tomorrow? I may wind up spending an extra day in Newport.

Much of today was spent dealing with the upcoming jobs so only 70 pages gone through with NWFO. I'm taking my Mac with me instead of the PC, so if I do wind up cooling my heels in a hotel, I can keep working on it.

Going through it, this time, I'm back to thinking I may get rid of the subplot with the doctor's nurse messing with Brendan. It really serves no purpose in the story except to be prurient and indulgent. Just get rid of her, completely...or cut her back to just toying with him. Nothing more. I dunno.

I don't even know why I put that in, to start with, except to show how people manipulate and misuse others, when they can.

Divin' in...

Fuck it. I'm doing another read-through. I'm over 100 pages in and have found I spelled Charlie and McGabbhinn two different ways, as well as a couple more typos. So my instinct was right. I'm also trimming back a bit more, so I'm under 143,000 words, now.

This really does count as draft number ten. My red pen edit was draft eight. When I input it into Word, I made a lot of changes from that and some serious restructuring, so that's draft nine. And I have reworked the sequence of a couple moments in this draft, so it fits.

I was debating cutting one bit about Brendan being molested by a nurse in a doctor's office, while he was catatonic, because it didn't really seem to go anywhere. But I got lots of kickback over that, from Brendan, so added in another point with her. And I'm thinking of a third...meaning this draft is going to be different enough.

Ask anyone who knows me and they will acknowledge I do so much rewriting on everything, it's almost a parody of the above quote. A couple of them have told me they can't tell the difference between one draft and the next, but I always can. And any changes I make are very important to me and the story and characters.

I know I could work on this beast till I'm dead, but I do need to get on to volume three, so we'll see how things go with this pass.

Done with draft 8 or 9 or whatever.,..

I'm done with inputting the red pen changes to NWFO and feel a bit numb. It's down to 143,200 words from nearly 146,000. Cleaner. Sharper. Almost there. But I've got this niggling feeling I should do one last read-through to make sure before I send it off for proofing and editing. Crap. I don't know if I can face it, again.

I doubt I'll make my July 31st plan for publishing. And volume three, Home Not Home, won't be out by the end of the year. It's going to need at least as much work as this one did, and I'm only on draft 3 of it. There's much to add. Much to work out, still. So I'm not going to sweat it.

Something that happened mainly in this latest draft was changing locations and events. Like putting a conversation between Brendan and Jeremy at a shooting range instead of a pool, where it almost seems like Jeremy is upset with Brendan because Everett is obsessed with him. Jeremy was his second choice because he resembles Brendan.

And adding in an actual interview Brendan has with the FBI and a British agent gives a bit more heft to his belief he cannot return to Derry except through subterfuge. The British are still looking for him to interrogate about that bombing 8 years earlier. It's as if someone keeps stirring the pot to keep them thinking about him, even though most Catholics believe he's dead.

I also worked out a better way for him to find his motorcycle key years after he was kidnapped and brutalized in a playground. He's gone searching for the location and recalls the basic directions he was taken. He finally comes to a spot that seems right but he's leery because of the playground.

There's a knothole in one of the oak trees close by that's child-height and holds a number of things--cars molded from plastic, crayons, marbles, and the key. A child found it and is keeping it as part of their treasure. That way, he knows this is the place and it sends him careening into an attitude of Fuck everybody.

Just call me His Anal-ness...

I'm not sure I'll want to send NWFO out for proofing and editing when I get done, tomorrow or Sunday. And I will be done. I've got 5 chapters left to rework, though one is rather extensive.

But I'm falling into my doubting phase and thinking maybe I need to do another pass to make sure all the changes work. It's my writer's paranoia firing up my anal-retentive need for a perfection that is impossible to achieve.

I'm also at a point where I honestly don't know if the story means anything. If all I'm doing is verbal vomit. Brendan's telling me to shut the fuck up because it's his story and not some bullshit performative nonsense about a man fighting gods and monsters, but that might be his ego talking. Little prick.

I dunno what it is with me, right now. I'm in a weird mood and that's probably why I'm so edgy about the story. I'm too close to it to be objective...hell, even subjective. So I'm still going to send it out and probably wait to get reaction before crashing and burning.

But I don't think I'll make my deadline of my next birthday for publishing. I want to be sure and not just in a surrendering mode. I've been at this for too damn long to just let the story make-do.

Oh, the photo is of downtown around 1976 or 1977, before the super-boom of building started.

Stupid Blinders on...

Damn, I just remembered the LA Times Festival of Books was last weekend. I got so caught up in working on NWFO, APoS-Derry got ignored -- and it was on display there. Shit. Here are some images of it...but now I feel rotten that I didn't make use of this to get interest drummed up.

I really suck at publicity and promotion. I've never been good at it. That's one of the reasons I was never able to get my screenplays off the ground -- no ability to sell them. Hell, 90% of Hollywood is selling. Yourself. Your product. Your ability. And even then, you have to be supremely good at it.

Despite the fact that your product or abilities are only 5% of the equation, really. A friend of mine is an award-winning DP (we're talking MTV Music Award for Cinematography) who is an artist on film in his use of light, color and shadow. And he has to fight to get work. I'm nowhere near the same level of ability as him, so I'd have to push 2-3 times harder...and it's just not in me.

So I fucking blew it with APoS-Derry. And I feel like shit about it. But there isn't much I can do, now. I'm so deep into debt, and I've spent so damn much on pushing the book. I have to keep in mind, I'll be doing that, again, with NWFO. But I'm not seeing the return I need to justify it.

But I have to. Somehow, I'll have to find a way to keep it going...including with volume 3, Home Not Home. 

At least I'm closing in on finishing draft 9.

60%

Just 40% left to input. I'm still rewriting from the red pen notes and characters are sharpening themselves. Like Evangelyne, who becomes angry with Brendan when it looks like he's trying to be her knight in shining armor against a racist sales clerk. She gets huffy if she thinks someone feels she can't handle herself and needs protecting.

They have a quiet argument in the middle of The Galleria before she realizes Brendan is completely confused about the problem. I'd had it wind back around to him not being able to return to Derry, but then just cut anything that alluded to his past and kept it focused on Vangie misreading his meaning when he barked at the clerk. They'd been insulting to him, as well.

Vangie knows her own value and has no doubts about herself. He does not know his, except when it comes to repairing things. Which is brought home to him when he sees how Everett is, regarding his artistic ability. The man has zero self-confidence, despite doing two elegant portraits -- 1 of Brendan and 1 of Aunt Mari's family. Even the B-girls like what he did.

This gets Brendan to thinking he wants to change the way he sees life and deepen his existence. Not be alone. Not be afraid to do something new, like learn a new language. For no more reason than just to do it.

I may be reading more into my writing than I think, but I like this idea of what I think it is.

April 28th

That's the day I need to have this draft of NWFO done so I can send it out for proofing and editing. April 30th, I'm off to Rhode Island to oversee a pickup, then May 5th I'm running to Dallas, San Francisco and Sacramento for other packing jobs. So I won't have the time I need to work on it till after...and that'd make things too tight to make my deadline.

I'm going to make it. I'm about 40% done...up to the chapter where Brendan nearly kills a man, then freaks out at realizing how easily he could have done it. No hesitation on his part.

That sort of ties into his thoughts when he and Scott are discussing the mass murders committed by Dean Corll and Elmer Wayne Henley. Scott insists there has to be a reason or explanation that will help people understand why Henley and David Brooks would take male friends of theirs to Corll to be raped and killed.

Brendan points out they were just guys being paid -- money, car, drugs -- and there's something in many people where self-interest takes over and concerns for others vanish. He saw that happen in Derry, with Billy helping his uncle prepare for the attack on the People's Democracy marchers at Burntollet Bridge, and Colm casually helping kneecap Paidrig, who'd been his buddy since before he met Brendan, all over cigarettes.

Scott insists there has to be some existential cause but to Brendan it's just immediate circumstances and luck of the draw. If during Bloody Sunday he'd moved an inch to the left, he'd have been killed by a soldier instead of just hit by shrapnel. And the Paratroopers had stormed into the anti-internment march with live ammunition in their weapons, ready to commit slaughter.

So now he's nearly killed a man he didn't even know in order to protect someone he did know, and it emphasizes his belief that circumstances are what count all too often in all too many situations, not deliberate thought.

Because if he had thought through him defending that friend, he'd only have used a baseball bat to crack the attacker's knees, thus stopping him, instead of aiming for his head.

My ways is slow...

I'm slowly digging through and have managed four more chapters, one of which wound up with a bit more restructuring and rewriting than I expected. It's setting up how Brendan and Jeremy will wind up being good friends after he returns from the Yom Kippur war.

Turns out Jeremy was talked into going to a kibbutz for a year, by his rabbi. Of course, his family happily goes along with it, so he feels like he has no choice but to do as they want.

This popped up while I was redoing a lazy summer afternoon between Brendan, Scott and Jeremy, in the pool. In Houston, summers are brutally hot and humid. Which Brendan doesn't like. But having the pool to help him deal with it becomes a mainstay of his existence. 

Initially, I'd written the scene as an earlier one Brendan was remembering, but I chucked that and made it current. There's tension between him and Scott, who was moved out of the pool house so Brendan could live there. Aunt Mari wants Brendan to remain close to the family, and this is how she manages it after the B-girls caused a situation that makes him want to leave.

So Scott is snarky with Brendan as he floats around the pool, but Brendan ignores him. Jeremy notices and winds up confiding his reluctance about the trip to Brendan while Scott is out of earshot.

Then during Hanukkah, Jeremy makes a short visit home with a couple of IDF buddies. Brendan sees he is unsettled, jittery, and having trouble being around his family, so he trusts Jeremy enough to let him have his one joint, to share with the guys. To settle them. Which it does.

And step by step, he and Jeremy wind up being more like brothers than any of his actual brothers. this was not specifically planned, but I'm liking it.

Old habits and all that shit...

As I go through NWFO and input the red pen edits, I'm also still adjusting the language and tightening up the structure. I've compared my writing to peeling an onion, before, but it really is like that. Each draft is one more layer gone until I get it down to the point where I am about to wind up with nothing.

I'm removing as many softening words or tentative conjugations as I can. Less of the it seemed kind of writing and more of the it was. Also turning I was running into I ran. Make everything more immediate for Brendan's telling. Tighter. Cleaner.

I'm currently reading The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon's Pulitzer Prize winner...a chapter at a time as I do my business on the toilet. It's taken me some time to get into the book, and I like Joe Kavalier more than Sammy Clay, so far, but it's started me thinking about something.

The writing style does not seem to fit the story, to me. Chabon's prose is very busy and rich and erudite, with a couple words I had to look up. Which surprised me, because I like to think of myself as somewhat educated with a good vocabulary. But that's what clued me in.

Joe is a Jewish boy who's escaped from Prague after the Anschluss. Sammy is his cousin, in Brooklyn, who's always trying to find an angle. It's weird, but the writing of their stories is...I dunno how to put it...too rich for their backgrounds, so far. It's told in 3rd person omniscient, so it's not like the boys are using words and phrases they wouldn't yet know, but it doesn't match them.

I'm thinking of another Pulitzer Prize winner -- Lonesome Dove -- in comparison. Larry McMurtry's style is simple and direct, like his characters, Gus and Call. And Alice Walker's style in The Color Purple fits Celie perfectly. But that of another Pulitzer winner -- Trust -- was so dry and removed from the characters I could not connect with them; it was like I was reading an outline for the book and characters instead of following their stories. And A Confederacy of Dunces was working so hard at being unusual it became impossible.

I like to think the style I have in APoS-Derry and NWFO reflects well on Brendan, which is probably easier to get away with because it's being told in 1st person. Won't know till I'm done.

Started in on the final draft...

I know I've said this, before, but this is the final draft of A Place of Safety-New World For Old. I might make corrections for typos or missing words and the like, but no more restructuring. It's time to let go. I could work on this book until I was dead, and considering how old I am that wouldn't be all that much longer. But I think 20+ years is sufficient time to write a novel regarding something you know nothing about.

I'm doing this draft on the PC, as mentioned before, and it's helping. I've found more errors, and Word for PC is more of a Grammar Nazi, so I'm having to justify my own use of punctuation and sentence structure. Not what I expected. At least it's making me think of what I'm doing.

Responses to my initial book cover design are...interesting. It's another case of taking me outside my box and making me justify my decisions while causing me to think up other options. I've been scribbling out some other layouts, but those seem busy. I like the simplicity of the first cover and want to keep that as much as possible.

It's like with my reworking of the cover for How to Rape a Straight Guy into Curt -- I never would have thought having a tightly muscled man wearing a pair of trousers and looking back over his shoulder would so neatly encapsulate the story...but it does.

I may be trying to be too literal as to what the cover must be. I thought of slightly copying this promotional poster for Beautiful Thing, but with a young man in full figure looking at the skyline of Houston, ca. 1975. The vast majority of Houston's skyscrapers were put up after 1980. The image of downtown that they used in this image is from about 1981, at the earliest.

Which doesn't do much for my using that as part of the cover.