The Tourist
07/04/10
This day (April 7, 2010) I have reached Chapter Sixty in my re-write of the first eighty chapters of my second novel, The Tourist. I began writing the book back in 2007, just after I had finished Except My Love For You, but before it had been accepted for publication, or extensively edited - in the first flush of the success of having a first draft of my first novel. Because the few people who had read EMLFY had liked it, I had dived right into doing another book. My operating principal was “Let’s give them more of the same, only more so!” Which is to say, I blew off whatever (slight) restraint I had exercised to control my... how shall we say?... idiosyncratic writing style - loaded with plays on words, over-loaded with references to the pop and the serious worlds of art and life. And an, at times, almost rococco approach to description and sentence structure. As well, I had attempted to accomplish a life-long artistic goal - to give a work of prose the formal style of a classic poem: irregular rhyme, repetitive structure (i.e different chapters with very similar structures, like stanzas in a poem), lyricism, evocative ambiguity, and (please the Muse) concentrated, precise, and beautiful language
During the editing of EMLFY preparatory to publication, my editors, Wayne Tefs and Alan McKenzie, told me that some of my style worked and some didn’t. Fortunately for me, I listened to them, and made many adjustments. I didn’t always take their suggestion because, as they said and I agreed - there always needs to be a balance between cleaving to what is conventionally considered good form, and sticking to your guns to the degree necessary to keep your ‘voice’, to use the cliche accurate word. Wayne said there would be criticism by some, and there was. But altogether I was happy with the result, as I hope and assume were most of the hundreds (so far) of people who bought the book.
Anyway, the insights described in the paragraph above became clear to me only after I had written nearly 100, 000 words of the new work. The structure of the new book, then having the working title of Turtle Dove, was on a whole new level of complexity vs. EMLFY, as was the prospective plot, the number and diversity of the characters, the locales (Paris, London, Toronto, Winnipeg), and, most importantly, the ideas behind the book, or the moral, or the point of it all - whatever you want to call it. In short, it was an extremely ambitious project.
The new book had been bravely started, but, as the EMLFY work and insight progressed, and the non-writing work on publication continued (marketing, recording, performing, documenting, etc.), work on the Turtle Dove came to a halt. I was tired, and confused as to where to go beyond a certain climax in the plot that the drafting had reached. Their were many balls in the air. How to catch them all? Besides, there was plenty to do on other composing fronts (music, poetry, blogging, etc.) so I put the work aside for what I though would be a short while. Skip ahead two and a half years.
I dusted off the manuscript in late 2009, poked away at it a bit, and asked my publisher Ray Blumenfeld and his editor Alan McKenzie to look at the unfinished draft. They had impressions, good and bad, and suggestions. Ultimatley, I got back to work, with the help of them, and a few other friends. But I’m out of time. More about their comments, and my new ideas and revived process next time. Oh, and the new novel is now called The Tourist.
Don’t forget The Launch Pad Coffee House at 525 Beresford on April 21. Doors open at 7:30PM. I’ll be performing with my main men, Tony Buchner and Darren Fast.
During the editing of EMLFY preparatory to publication, my editors, Wayne Tefs and Alan McKenzie, told me that some of my style worked and some didn’t. Fortunately for me, I listened to them, and made many adjustments. I didn’t always take their suggestion because, as they said and I agreed - there always needs to be a balance between cleaving to what is conventionally considered good form, and sticking to your guns to the degree necessary to keep your ‘voice’, to use the cliche accurate word. Wayne said there would be criticism by some, and there was. But altogether I was happy with the result, as I hope and assume were most of the hundreds (so far) of people who bought the book.
Anyway, the insights described in the paragraph above became clear to me only after I had written nearly 100, 000 words of the new work. The structure of the new book, then having the working title of Turtle Dove, was on a whole new level of complexity vs. EMLFY, as was the prospective plot, the number and diversity of the characters, the locales (Paris, London, Toronto, Winnipeg), and, most importantly, the ideas behind the book, or the moral, or the point of it all - whatever you want to call it. In short, it was an extremely ambitious project.
The new book had been bravely started, but, as the EMLFY work and insight progressed, and the non-writing work on publication continued (marketing, recording, performing, documenting, etc.), work on the Turtle Dove came to a halt. I was tired, and confused as to where to go beyond a certain climax in the plot that the drafting had reached. Their were many balls in the air. How to catch them all? Besides, there was plenty to do on other composing fronts (music, poetry, blogging, etc.) so I put the work aside for what I though would be a short while. Skip ahead two and a half years.
I dusted off the manuscript in late 2009, poked away at it a bit, and asked my publisher Ray Blumenfeld and his editor Alan McKenzie to look at the unfinished draft. They had impressions, good and bad, and suggestions. Ultimatley, I got back to work, with the help of them, and a few other friends. But I’m out of time. More about their comments, and my new ideas and revived process next time. Oh, and the new novel is now called The Tourist.
Don’t forget The Launch Pad Coffee House at 525 Beresford on April 21. Doors open at 7:30PM. I’ll be performing with my main men, Tony Buchner and Darren Fast.
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