A post on tone and editing that I'll redo the tone of tomorrow.

Yesterday on Facebook I spent the better part of an hour phrasing how I would announce the availability of my book on Amazon. I toyed with sounding apologetic because, aw man, I don’t want to look like I’m using my friendships for purposes of solicitation, and then I considered being goofy and self-depreciating because, hey, this is a self-published work, and anyone can self-publish, and then decided against that because Jeez, if I sound wishy-washy over the quality of my book, how I can expect other people to want to read it? After this, I wondered if I should warn people it’s a pretty dark story. We’re talking borderline exploitative fiction. But I decided I shouldn’t go out of my way to deter potential readers. The fetuses on the cover do a fine enough job suggesting gruesome material.

In the end, I went with a flavorless straight-to-the-point approach. The book is on Amazon. It’s horror. I’d love for you to read it. You can get it for free on these dates.

This isn’t the first time I’ve wasted 30+ minutes trying to structure and word what amounts to a couple measly sentences. I think the best analogy for my relationship with status updates and messages is akin to me getting ready for a big date. I try on different tones and words, dress up basic information in different button-downs, examine them in the mirror and shake my head—no, this just doesn’t work—move on to something else, and then, frustrated, throw on a T-shirt.  

In this case, with something as simple as a Facebook status update, the plain T-shirt works.

While it’s exciting to be done with the manuscript, I’m disappointed in myself for believing the story was “finished” over a year ago. And then a few edits later, thinking it finished again. And again. And done again. It’s why even though the book is up and live on Amazon, I still experience a frequent heart-flutter and think, good God, what if you’re mistaken like those other times?! What if you were overlooking some detail or plot point that was so silly, everyone's going to think you're an idiot?

It’s such a difficult thing, determining when you can end your project with finality and say, “Alright world. Enjoy it. Hate it. Here it is.”

It doesn’t help that I believe in the artsy-fartsy argument that there is no such thing as done. Five years from now you'll look back on something you swore was polished to the utmost sheen, and you’ll find ways you could mold and shine it further (although who knows, you may accidentally break it). We’re always changing. Those changes affect our perception. They influence our choices.

But we’ve also got to be realistic.

At a certain point it’s time to move on. Barring sequels, an actor shouldn’t revisit and perfect a performance from a decade-old film. It’s over. Sure he might come up with better choices after having had ten additional years in life to gain experience and wisdom, but he’s better off dedicating his energies to creating brand new characters as opposed to tinkering with past ones.

What I’ve learned with myself, however, is that I need to take repeated hiatuses from a work to whittle it into a form that pleases me. This isn’t me desiring time to grow as a person so I can look upon my story with enlightened eyes. No. It’s that I get too easily sucked into my books. This may sound like a good thing, but it’s like getting trapped in a single room of the building you need to reassemble. You can’t see the big picture. Sure you might consider repainting the walls—that’s what your editing will become—but if you were looking at the house from afar—thinking outside the box—you’d realize the walls don’t need painting, they need demolishing.

Readers/editors help in this department. They comment on things you never saw, force you out of the room because they’re now leading you to a cracked roof. They get you thinking in ways you weren’t before. But when I reflect back on all the times I mistakenly thought A Collection of Angels was done, I attribute it to my proneness to literary tunnel vision. 

~~Novella update + BLURB~~

My initial estimate that A Collection of Angels was only a month from release was mistaken. However, the book should make it out this month, and what better time for a horror story than October?  

The cover is almost finished. My Aunt Goddess Claire, the coolest aunt a guy could have (I’ll write a post in her honor soon—ever since I was young she’s been a supportive influence when it comes to my writing), sketched a wonderful picture that captures the story’s essence, and another artist is now tweaking and coloring and bookifying it, and I’m stoked. Although you’re not supposed to judge a book by the cover, a good cover can make or break an e-book, and what my aunt has drawn is spectacularly creepy.

In the meantime I’ve been tweaking my blurb. A book-jacket-esque description to entice a reader to purchase the story. I’m not proud of the amount of hours I’ve sunk into drafting something less than two hundred words. Trying to describe a work in an engaging yet concise way is tough. Too vague and no one wants to read it. Too detailed and there’s no point in reading. It feels good to finally—knock on wood—have the blurb where I want it:

  

In the bowels of the boat there is a secret collection.

It reeks and it rots and had Galen known about it, he would never have gone aboard. Forget the cute girl at the docks: he would have run home and locked the doors and prayed.

But of course he didn’t know.

He mistook hell for heaven, and now he is trapped in a broken reality, held captive by creatures who aren’t just interested in him. They want his little brother too.

To survive, Galen will need to shed wings he never knew existed.

Otherwise he and his brother join the collection.

This is why I date myself.

I once wrote a scene in which high-schoolers were excited for The Simpsons Movie, and someone asked, “Shouldn’t you just write that they’ll be going to the movies? Aren’t you worried mentioning the Simpsons Movie will date your story?”

I wasn’t.

I believe it’s important to know in what year your characters exist. That story I set in 2007. It began in the summer. The Simpsons was released July 27^th, 2007. It made sense the characters would watch it, and mentioning it by name better cemented the characters in the story's reality.

Some writers refrain from referencing popular culture out of fear of dating their work. They want their stories to forever take place in the present, in the here and now. This is impossible. In writing there is no such thing as a permanent present. Be as nondescript as you want, as vague about jobs and entertainment and world issues as you can, and it won’t matter: eventually (or quickly) your story will become dated.

It can’t be helped.

Language and society and the world change in unforeseeable ways.

Back in the eighties, you could have done your damndest to write a middle-class coming-of-age novel that would always read like it was occurring in modern day, but by not mentioning smart phones or social media, by a total lack of texting or tweets or snapchats, a 2014 reader would sense your story was written in a different era.

Does that mean the 80’s story has lost its relevancy?

Maybe a smidgen, but for the most part, no.

Novels aren’t like pieces of hardware. As newer stories emerge, older narratives don’t turn obsolete. Books aren’t timeless because they avoid details a modern mind would find antiquated. They’re timeless because they immerse a reader in the world of the pages. Readers can empathize with the characters on account of the story’s given circumstances. It doesn’t matter if those circumstances occur during ancient times or the Elizabethan era or the eighties or now.

So accept the inevitable. Any modern story is bound to become a period piece. Date yourself. Now, I’m not advocating writing unnecessary pop culture references. Don’t be superfluous. Don’t obsess with trivial details, where your writing is like a camera focused on background scenery while the main characters walk around blurred and out-of-focus. Just recognize your characters inhabit a world that has its own technology and cultural consciousness and, depending on the story you’ve chosen to create, know that to gloss over this might rob the work of its verisimilitude.