Launching Novel #5 Past the Asteroid Belt

I have written five novels in my life. This is not a boast, but an admission, since only one of the five has so far made it to the bookshelves, and that was right at the end of the last millenium. The next three are in the proverbial ‘drawer’ and the fifth, well, that was only just really finished this week so its fate is anyone’s guess. If you were a betting sort of person though, and you looked at the odds, you might be forgiven for thinking novel #5 is a long shot in the field.

I, however, am not a betting sort of person. Plus I am a hopeless optimist. I was thinking about that phrase today as I drove to work: isn’t it an oxymoron, to be a hopeless optimist? Nevertheless, that is what I am. And as a novelist in this world, it’s most likely a really good thing. Because the odds of getting your literary fiction novel published in 2018 sometimes feel less than the odds of riding shotgun in Elon Musk’s Tesla Roadster past the asteroid belt.

Nevertheless, the excitement of finishing a novel in a way that feels right and just cannot be understated. I have been working on this novel since last July. I wrote a euphoric and fairly full first draft in just 48 days, a record by any mad novelist’s standards. Then I spent seven months “onwriting” 22 further chapters to the novel. See my earlier blog posts (or just watch The Wonder Boys). By the start of this Spring, I was really starting to wonder when an ending would ever present itself. But based on experience, I knew that it eventually would.

Around 5am one morning last week, wide awake with my usual predawn insomnia, the ending to my novel wrote itself out. I had started the last chapter the day before, after getting the idea on the treadmill at the gym, and I knew from the feel of it that it was the final chapter of the book. It had a quality none of the other ‘extra’ chapters had had. It wrapped up two of the important storylines. It featured all the main characters in one place in a pivotal scene. It had vital comic elements, it felt very final, and it sort of wrote itself.

Somehow I had to decide how much of the extra chapters to include between the original ending and the new final chapter. Most of those chapters are what Hemingway referred to as the iceberg: everything below the surface that informs what you actually show your readers. You know, that small cold block that sank the Titanic. Unhelpful metaphor. Moving right along.

I put about seven new chapters in and tinkered with it until it felt whole. Printed it out. Cover letter for the publisher. Ready to send. No idea if there’s a market for it. Frankly, it’s a little scary to think about finishing the thing. I mean, what will I do now when I’m awake from 3-5am? I miss my characters, so I guess there’s no reason to stop writing their story for my own private fun. I could do what Grady Tripp in The Wonder Boys did: just keep typing till the page number starts with a 2 and has 3 digits after it...