In the Hole or Under the Waterfall?
In baseball, being “on deck” refers to the very next batter, after the current batter is no longer batting. There is a more unofficial term for the player that’s two batters away from action. They are sometimes referred to as being “in the hole.”
And the one coming up after that player? Though literature is scarce on this term, I did hear this position referred to once during a broadcast as being “under the waterfall.” I can’t independently confirm how recognized that term is, but it will serve my purposes for today.
Of late, I find myself considering ideas for a major project, a novel, that may be not only in the hole, but as far removed as under the waterfall.
My next novel is Project Beta (working title) which I’ve mentioned here recently. I have edits and revisions to make to it for at least several months now. That’s the current project. That one is on deck, no doubt about it. (If you’ve lost the metaphor, a novel is “at bat” when I publish the thing.)
Normally during the mid-to-late revision stage of one novel, I’d allow myself to at least take notes, or even scratch out an outline on the next. I don’t like doing too much on one novel before the first is complete, it happens sometimes. Yet this time, despite several ideas, themes and characters taking initial shape in my mind, I don’t know if it’s to be my “next” novel. I don’t know if I’m at a place where that novel should be in the hole, under the waterfall, or even further into the future.
For one thing, it feels like it could be a literary novel more than my usual genre piece. Project Beta is already more literary in some regards than my previous work, but this future project would be even more so than that. Do I want to go literary that deeply, so soon afterward?
This concept I’m pondering could potentially require more words than I’m used to. It might not, of course, but it feels like it would be a longer one. I don’t know if I am in a place, mentally, spiritually, or time wise for a piece of such length to come next in my line up.
Also, though I’ve not officially decided on what my next novel will be (in the hole), I have had a backdrop of one in mind for most of this year. The irony is, the structure and theme, though not the plot, would be similar to this other novel I’ve been talking about. To write both would probably be redundant to me as an author, yet aspects of both appeal to me.
And if I pursued this novel at any time, I sense I will need more quiet than I generally have required for my work so far, and for longer periods of time.
I was also giving consideration to going the traditional route at first for whatever novel I put “in the hole.” Longer, literary fiction from an unknown is not at all a wise route to find an agent.
Yet I see it unfolding over the last several weeks. I’m sure things would change a bit as I actually wrote it, but a rough map has appeared. (Based, I admit, on an ancient story, as is the other novel I had in mind.)
And of course, all of this is based on the assumption I will write this novel at all, ever. (Though as time goes on, the more certain I feel that at some point I will.)
But will I write it next?
Tinkering.
Sometimes you have to. Every few weeks I have been doing so with my original one-man stage show, The King is But a Man. I sadly haven’t found many chances to perform it beyond its 2015 debut. Plus, with my changing schedule and other projects, I’ve not has as much time to rehearse it in private as I would like.
I got to the point a few month’s ago whee I wondered if there wasn’t something I could do to improve it. It took me over a year to create in the first place, and I’d never flush it’s overall premise. But I got to thinking that if despite having no immediate “gigs” on the calendar to perform it the show hasn’t demanded, insisted, screamed out to be rehearsed in private on a regular basis, that there may be some aspect of myself that is unhappy with some aspect of the show. I asked if there was anything I could in theory do to the show to make it more exciting even to me.
In a few small areas, the answer was “yes,” and hence the tinkering.
Adjusting and reconsidering aspects of a show that very few people have ever seen is not easy. The easiest thing of course would be to leave it as it is, get back to rehearsing it exactly the same as always, and try (and try and try) to find somewhere to perform it. It would be one thing if I had the resources and network to have well-attended previews, and maybe some talk-backs, I’d have some momentum to adjust things. As it stands, I have only my only satisfaction and interest as motivation.
Yet we need that sometimes, as artists. We have to be willing to look into what we’ve created and ask if it truly satisfies who we are, and if not, if anything can be done about it. A novel, once completed, is generally a done deal, as are most “final” written products. But art itself is always changing, always reacting, always requiring an openness, and a refusal of dogma. As disappointed as I am with the outer success of this show so far, I am trying to at least embrace the opportunity to prove once again to myself that even our own work deserves an open mind from us.
Writing and the Olympics
The Rio Games are underway. I wonder which sport is most like writing?
There are word sprints, of course, which many people find quite useful to their process. I’ve never been much good at them, but their popularity cannot be denied. So for those people at those times, writing could be said to be like track’s sprinting events.
Unless of course you are one of those who say, (and say and say and say, because it’s a well-used expression), “writing is a marathon, not a sprint.” And truth be told it is, more often than not, at least when working on a novel. Whether you self publish or go for an agent, there is nothing fast about writing, editing, revising over and over, and bringing it into existence as a marketable product. I have to remind myself of this sometimes, and it’s taken me years to get a bit more comfortable with the idea of a marathon. (Writing kind, I’d likely collapse and die if I attempted an actual marathon. No, I won’t train for one with you, sorry.)
Equestrian events come to mind. Those who think the can sit down and make a novel, or a short story, or any amount of their writing obey their bidding without any effort are almost as foolish as those who think they can mount a horse and insist it do anything and everything it is told, like a machine. I’ve known enough “horse people” in my time to know that the personality and tendency of the horse must be accounted for, or at best the rider will do poorly in the event. At worse, the rider will be thrown off into the dust.
There is a reason they are called “riders.” It takes two independent life forces working together for the ideal result. “Rider” even sounds a bit like “writer,” one who also must tame the muse, ride the powerful animal that is creative moment, trying not to fall off or get kicked by it-showing patience and coaxing a performance out of it when things are a little tougher along the way.
Writers spend most of their time just treading the proverbial water, and it can be exhausting. All the while they must be ready to wing a shot towards a goal, when the opportunity presents itself. Staying still results in sinking below the surface, and we know what happens after that. Therefore, is water polo an apt metaphor for the writing life?
If you’ve written more than two things in life about which you cared, I don’t even need to elaborate on how wrestling is a damn near perfect reflection of writer problems.
Then again, so is platform diving, wherein a human being stands high above a pool and takes sometimes a flying leap out into the air, with mere seconds to get under control before slamming into the depths.
Archery requires concentration, relaxation and calmness, confidence and guts. Dead-center perfect shots are always the goal, but only occasionally the result, even from the top players on the planet. Rifle and pistol events have similar skill and temperament requirements. Are these the ideal writing metaphors?
If you’re always chasing a concept or idea in your writing, perhaps trap shooting, with its flying clay disks streaking across your perception for only a moment is more apropos.
Or, like a shot put, do you find ideas heavy, laying up against you as you store energy to put them out into the world, having to do a bit of a shuffle, letting out a bit of a grunt or scream as you at last shove your creative burden out away from you some distance before it is measured by others?
Then there’s modern pentathlon. Never heard of it? That’s not surprising. The founder of the modern Olympic Games himself came up with it, and almost from the very beginning it has been unpopular with both audiences and the Olympic authorities. Points are accumulated by each athlete as the compete in brief competitions of fencing, equestrian, swimming, pistol shooting and running.
Modern pentathletes toil in obscurity, even among other Olympians. Their exploits and triumphs rarely make the news in this country. The glory of the sport is usually contained to personal triumphs.
Even the medal winners in this odd sport remain anonymous to the world in most cases.
Those medal winners usually excel in two or three of the five events, get by in another two, and are, frankly, deplorable in one of them. Their strengths must make up for their weaknesses. Those who are excellent in all five disciplines are rare individuals indeed.
So let’s review this event for a moment. A struggle often ignored by the public for being not sexy enough-it requires competitors to be at least adequate in multiple skills-form partnership with a powerful entity, be quick and skilled at striking with weapons while avoiding strikes from others, keep afloat despite fatigue, stay on target and call up reserves of endurance in a final run to the finish.
Oh, and even if you succeed, most people will never have heard of you, ever.
If this concept does yet sound familiar to you writers out there, you are either very lucky, or very new to the craft.
So then, is modern pentathlon the perfect Olympic metaphor for writers?
No. It’s close, but as I’ve shown you, all kinds of sports in the summer games have parallels with the writers life. In fact, all of them probably do in some way or another. Can you think of more?
But the best metaphor in this case is probably the Olympics themselves. Writers train, practice, want to give up. The usually don’t win medals and only even have a chance for glory every once in a while. Yet just being in the arena, with all the others, most of whom will never reach the podium is something they value. Something they must learn to value, or quit.
Most of us haven’t quit yet.
How Do You Solve a Project Like Novella?
I’ve only mentioned it once here on that blog, and that was back in October. But I have what I’ve been calling a novella ready for its next draft. I did some red-inking on it earlier this summer, and I need to type out those changes, so I’m not sure what the word count of the current version is, exactly. But I estimate it at above 50,000, which any Nanowrimo participant will tell you is the roughly accepted lower end of novel length manuscripts. My current murder mystery. Murder. Theatre. Solitaire clocks in at only 52K, and I have called that a novel all along.
All by way of saying, maybe the project I’ve been calling a novella is closer to being a novel than I thought, judging by both my own, and some popular length standards in “the business.”
I’ll continue calling it a novella if it ends up at less than 50K, even though I know it’s not an exact science. But in its current form, it is close in length to my mystery novel. I wonder why I’ve called this project a novella by default all this time?
Part of the reason, I speculate, is that Project Beta (a working/computer file name for it, not the actual title) was never planned. If you read that one other entry about it, linked above, you’ll see the story of its creation. Novels just seem like something I need to have planned to start, work through finish, take a break from, edit, revise, self publish and talk about over and over, all from starting from a certain date in many cases. Because from the beginning of Project Beta I had no exact plan as to where it would fall in my novelist timeline, I referred to it as more of a novella. Maybe. I suppose part of me was/is more willing to believe that a novella came out of the proverbial “nowhere” last fall, than a novel doing so.
Who cares, you ask? Writers. Writers care about this sort of thing. More so when they’re looking for agents or pitching to small presses, (novellas are far, far less likely to be accepted by either) but such designations matter even to those of us not pursuing the traditional path. And I don’t see myself pursuing the traditional path to publishing with Project Beta, whether it is truly a novel or a novella. For better or worse, I often prefer to be more precise with myself.
Have you ever gone to your fridge for the last Coke, (or whatever) only to find there was none? All this time you assumed you’d be undertaking the experience of that final item, and then suddenly, you won’t be. You could run down to the store and buy another Coke is you really crave one, but admit it; it’s not the same. Dumb as it is, a Coke you have to drive five minutes to the store and pay for will not be as satisfying as the Coke you thought was in your fridge already. Exact same product, but your mindset heading into it makes all the difference in terms of satisfaction.
That’s in the same sphere as what I’m talking about. Novel, novella. Word-Assembly-Story-Thing. I know I can call it whatever I want to, and it will still be the same manuscript. But I’ve thought of it as a novella for so long, I wonder if calling it a novel now, when I didn’t prophecy (plan) a novel at this point in the process would be like going to the store to make up for the missing Coke.
There were certain things I thought of doing with it to make it public, if it were a novella, that don’t feel wise for a novel. I don’t know.
Eventually, like everything I write that is to be read, I’ll revise, edit, check and double check it, format it, and in some form make it available for the world. I want to share Project Beta with people. Its origin story in my mind is somewhat different from that of other projects I’ve been inspired to undertake. I’m glad it’s there. I just…wonder if there’s Coke in the fridge right now or not.
Ty Unglebower 