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Friday, 27 April 2007
I am a book, fear me......
Very, very close to finishing the number 4 edit (is it 4? – I've lost count…) and panicking. Oh yes, it's shaping up altogether too much, getting to sound like a 'real' book – i.e. all of me and my baggage is being eased out as the boys ease into their roles and they no longer need me.
Each book is like giving birth all over again. Never expected that. And the fucking tears. Jesus Christ… what the hell are they about?
You know, this loss thing (grief thing, sadness-is-my-middle-name thing) is doing for me. I have enough problems trying to achieve world domination without trying to do it while on Prozac.
No, the loss thing mystifies me. I just didn't get this with Volume 1. I invariably cried at the end of Volume 1 with every edit, but that was it. But this baby.. it's the strangest fucking phenomenon I've ever experienced. Yet.
Part of me is very curious indeed to see Audience Reaction to it (always supposing I do), but a far bigger part is terrified of what that reaction will be.
I never really worried about parts 1 & 4 from a "Is this good enough?" viewpoint. When the first book was just about to be launched, and I lived in Orkney where people knew me, I did wonder (it was never really a worry) about how people would deal with me after I published "a book like that". But I never really felt anxiety about it. I believed it was a good book, well written and definitely unique. I felt comfortable that I'd done my job.
Volume 4 also has a concrete concern behind it, something to be anxious about. V4 runs a very real risk of being A Banned Book. I still haven't decided whether we should play the controversial card or keep very, very quiet indeed when we launch it.
I have a contingency plan if it does get banned, to publish it out of Holland, possibly Germany, where they are not so touchy about child pornography. But, of course, if it gets banned after publication, but early in its sales life, they will seize all the books and then I wouldn't have the money to redo it. So really we have to decide before we launch it whether we're likely to find ourselves being prosecuted or not. And legal advice is not really useful here as lawyers always err on the side of caution. They would simply tell me not to do it.
But I digress.
No, 2 & 3 have always been more uncertain. Of recent times, after splitting 3 into two parts, I feel a lot more comfortable with it. We have Skull Island and then The Road Movie. They read almost like two separate books, and they are in a way. A lot happens in them, they've got locations, fun things to do with tissue paper and scissors (kidding) – Hollywood will love them. There's a pitch in them and that's what you need selling any intellectual property.
Which leaves me with 2 – oh, poor little 2. I know I've said this before but I am still cresting that wave of insecurity with it.
I have actually considered (far too many times) skipping 2 and going straight to 3 but, realistically, it can't be done. There would be far too big a plot leap without it and anyway, when I think myself through the logistics of that I realise that there's a developmental stage missing. And I don't mean in plot terms either. Nobody in any of the later books is the same person that they are in Volume 1, and not because of what happens in Volume 1 either, which leaves only one answer – some kind of major shift occurs in 2 and none of the others will work without it. It's just a fact and no amount of wishing on my part will change it.
I know I've talked about my insecurity with my problem child volume in here before so I'm not sure if I've told you this, but Volume 2 is always, no matter how much I work on it, going to be "characters in search of a plot" for me. I described it that way to myself one day and it's stuck. And that was in Manchester as I recall, around ten years ago – longer, possibly.
And nothing's changed.
Do you have any idea how worrying that is?
If I think it's in search of a plot what the fuck will the reader make of it?
Dear God… the pain.
This is why, still, I have not exactly decided to publish it, not really accepted that it will be. I am simply in denial about it.
I have accepted it, of course. I'm just trying to pretend I haven't. Only today I was sat in Mr Scratchmann's office in a state of emotional disruption that is all too common for me. I was locked in with the soundtrack to Jesus Christ Superstar, which I'd heard wafting up the stairs and realised what a fantastic soundtrack this would for a trailer for Volume 2. It was so in tune with Danny's state of mind that it could have been written for him. And the track? The song where Jesus is sitting in the Garden of Gethsemane (I think) and is singing, "Tried for three years, feels like thirty". Or words to that effect.
How fucking weird is that? What, in Christ's name (literally) does Danny have in common with Christ tired and broken by the burden of striving, knowing he's going nowhere but down?
And that question precisely contains the answer, like all good mystical gobbledegook. Danny is tired and broken and knows he is going nowhere but down. (Is there an inappropriate dirty joke in there?)
So I sat there, goosepimpled, out of it, angry, feeling that trailer I was writing in my head, feeling Danny (and there's another dirty joke), and tearing up like the worst drunk in a pub singing Nobody's Chi-uuuulllld.
Tragic.
I think this is partly the problem. Volume 2 makes me so uncomfortable I think I'm kicking straight into Henery family mode – thou shalt not make others uncomfortable. Thou shalt give them plot not pain. Thou shalt give them locations not loss. Thou shalt give them literary flag posts not blundering around in the fucking dark screwing anything that moves because then you might fall over your own shadow and you'll know you are still alive.
The Henery part stopped at 'thou shalt not make others uncomfortable', by the way. My family weren't big on literature - let's not blame them for things they didn't do.
Funnily enough this anxiety of mine doesn't extend to my resident band of anti-fans/haters. I fully expect them to be fine-tooth-combing these blogs in anticipation of fault-finding Volume 2. As a matter of fact I've given them so much ammo in here over the past few months that they don't need to read the book at all to make a fairly accurate 'criticism' of it. Of course, it would actually be a critique of my neurosis, but I doubt if that would stop or embarrass them.
No, I actually feel an odd kind of quiet confidence about that, knowing what they'll say, the conversations they'll have amongst themselves. They've never surprised me yet.
My anxiety is more for the hardcore, hardliner fans. Is Volume 2 too big a shift? Is the absence of Himself too big a strain on it? Are they too addicted to Himself to live without him? Are they, in short, as fellow-obsessionals of Danny's, too vulnerable to want to experience Danny's loss with him? Am I going to make them too uncomfortable, too aware of what they no longer have? Am I doing the thing no creative wants to do and alienating my readers from That Which They Love?
Do I worry too much?
God, yes.
It's not my fault (she wails). I'm in this shit, day after day, wading around in pain, trying to make it worse, trying to make sure Danny's suffering hits its low points hard enough to chip your spine, that enough of his raw flesh is scourged, that he's cruel enough to everyone who fails him, by whatever miniscule degree gives him the right to torment and torture those around him. IT DOES YOUR HEAD IN!!!
Sorry, I'm shouting now. Deep breath.
And of course in Volume 2 there is That of Which We Cannot Speak. I have alluded once to The Big Shiny Present in here. I am frustrated beyond measure that I cannot discuss it with you, for obvious reasons, but you have no idea what a fragile, tiny, delicate, fraught thing this little secret is. It is like some kind of super-sheer Xmas bauble of super-fine antiquity and rarity. It is so tenuous and crushable and has the destructive power of four 9/11's.
Oh, it's the biggie. It's the tie-breaker, and you have to read (presently) 848 pages out of 903 before you get to it. I just drop it on you, literally, out of nowhere. No warning, no run-up. One minute it isn't there, next it is. This Big Shiny Present, or Monstrous Horror, depending on your point of view (and you will have one, believe me), is really going to separate the sheep from the lambs.
When I visualise the book being read I always see one of two scenarios;-
Jill and Jodie on a split screen, both reading the book at the same time. (J&J have been with me longest, hardest. They were my first. It figures I would visualise my first. Don't you?) They are engrossed, Jodie, hand hitting bottom in the empty popcorn bag, feet wrapped up in a blanket, Jill stirring a pot with one hand, with the baby on her shoulder and the book propped up on a wine bottle. (Why do I have both of them with food? Sorry girls.)
They hit The Big Shiny Present. Jodie scrambles up onto her knees and does a weird back-off across the sofa, holding the book and shaking it with sheer disbelief – can't be. She has to tell someone. At that same precise moment Jill sticks the baby in the sink and puts the pot in the high chair. They both dash for the phone, they screech to a stop. No, they can't. They keep this up for maybe fifteen minutes then they phone each other and get an engaged tone. Life's cruel like that. SO they run out into the street and tell a complete stranger – they got A Big Shiny Present. The stranger is understandably thrilled.
Scene 2. In the House of Dread, Great Literature is being pored over for linguistic errors. The Great Fangirl Who Must be Obeyed is reading DANNY Volume 2 on behalf of The Others. This is partly economy and partly The Porn Contingency Plan (no point in everybody reading it if the porn's no good) and wholly spite. Do not give Financial Aid to that which you wish to kill. She is not happy – NOT HAPPY, even.
The comma thing has been changed – there goes three-quarters of the Bad Grammar Attack Plan in one swoop. Shit. Sorry, darn it. What's worse is she is involved despite herself. She doesn't want to be, but the fucking thing is just so… well… involving. She is pissed off that nothing new is coming to her. She must find something original and specious to say – darn it again.
And then she comes to The Monstrous Horror. She can't believe it. Her growing spleen is halted in its tracks. She has gone from Blackly Consumed With Thwarted Envy to Ecstatic With Euphoria. She too runs to the phone. She cannot believe her luck. She can't get the words out, she's even more inarticulate than she was when she found a fellow-fangirl had not only been professionally published but had appeared on the New York Times bestseller list. She is so excited by the Scathe & Snipe Potential of The Monstrous Horror that she chokes on a chenille Goth cookie from that Lord of the Rings deli in Tribeca. She dies. (But did you notice how I got food in there too? I think I need my supper)
Sadly The Others never find out about The Monstrous Horror and they write about the book from The Great Fangirl's copious notes (44 pages) without mentioning it, thus inadvertently revealing that they've never actually read the book. I, regrettably, because I am trying to reform, cannot resist taking the piss and they are forced to retire in ignoble defeat, finally exposed as sad little girls who didn't get enough Barbie time, but too much TV.
Okay, that last bit just sounded like a badly overwritten revenge fantasy, but mark my words, the division will look exactly like this. Yep, when the Big Shiny Present hits the fan you will see the shit and fur truly flying.
Of course...... I could be making all this up to cover up the fact that Volume 2 is so fucking depressing I'm afraid you won't buy it without the incentive of a Big Shiny Present or a Lovecraftian Horror.
I'm not above it, you know………
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23:50 Posted in Blog , Books , Shopping | Permalink | Email this
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Comments
The descriptions are scarily accurate (especially the bottle of wine reference for Jill).
Also I am now going to have to try my absolute hardest not to turn to that page once I get into the book. I'll have to drag up all my will power not to spoil it for myself.
Can't wait for release.
Posted by: Jodie | Monday, 14 May 2007
Hi Jodie, glad to hear from you. After attributing you with a popcorn habit and inferred indolence, then your sister with infant neglect and alcholism I thought I might have offended you (blame it on low blood sugar).
And I know it was accurate, have you forgotten my webcam in your home?
I'll be announcing the release date of 2 soon. I'm seriously considering sticking down page 848 to stop premature peeping!
Chancery
Posted by: Chancery Stone | Wednesday, 16 May 2007