Veronica Comes Undone. How did this happen?

Veronica

Most of my writing has been scripts: TV scripts for Prisoner and Country Practice all those years ago, and play scripts. All my long prose pieces never got to the ‘long’ bit, they fizzled out for some, many, reasons.

About 12 months ago I was trawling through the web looking for ebooks and came across smashwords.com and the words, “Publish your novel here.” What?

I’d heard about e-publishing, self-publishing, and thought I would find out about it one day. Well, it found me.

The difficulty of getting first, an agent, and then a publisher interested enough to read something has always been dawnting, debilitatingly so.

But here was a publishing path free of all that.

I had had an idea bouncing around in my head for some time of a single-mum 30 something freelance psychologist who used sexual techniques in her work. I had filed it away under the title “Right Up Her Alley”. This was a common saying of my mother’s: “I knew that Susan would make a good bank clerk, money’s always been right up her alley”, meaning that the person fitted the job. The humour and sexual connotation wouldn’t’ve occurred to her.

As I began writing, and the ‘thing’ took shape, that title became more and more inappropriate. I wanted a title that was unique and I’d always liked present tense titles (I wrote a play once called Leonard Stays in Bed). I decided on Veronica Comes Undone but because it became obvious very quickly that this was going to be a work in 3 volumes I decided on an arching title of Veronicability (the art of being Veronica).

It was a move away from the literary attempts I’d been making, but one look at this and any ebook site soon tells you that popular fiction seems to be ‘the go’. Besides I took the idea of writing a popular ‘straight’ romance as a bit of a challenge; as indeed it was. However I had two very willing friendly women, Julie Hasler-Reilly and Helen O’Connor who were living nearby and were more than willing to frankly answer my intimate and gynealogical questions, should such questions arise.

The formatting was difficult as the form of the text had to fit smashwords strict criteria but they had a Guide in ebook form to help and it was written in a very user friendly fashion. The preparation of the text and the production and design of the cover image took forever but finally, last Monday, August 24, 2014, about 20 months from the word ‘go’, I clicked ‘send’. Within seconds a message came up saying my book had been received and it was ’28th’ in the queue.

Within 16 minutes it was on the smashwords front page. I immediately posted a message on facebook telling the world – well 248 people – that my book had gone ‘live’ and within 32 minutes of clicking ‘send’ I had a sale.

The feeling was a combination of relief, elation, expectation, awe, and satisfaction that not only had I finished something but it was ‘out there’ for all the world to see: the place where all artistic endeavours should end up.

Now back to Veronicability II: Veronica Spreads it Around.

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Poetry tip from John Williams (not the musician but the novelist)

John Williams is the late American writer (1922-1994) of the novel ‘Stoner’ billed as “the best novel you’ve never read.” How true. I came across this novel by accident, read it, loved it to bits, and I’ve been raving about Williams ever since. Again by accident and with a little help from Paul Hasler, I came across his fourth, most successful, and last novel, ‘Augustus’ an epistolary novel of the first Roman emperor and nephew of Julius Caesar. It couldn’t be more different from Stoner, an autobiographic novel about a poor farm boy who goes to university and never leaves. This may sound boring but it certainly isn’t; it’s the most fascinating book I’ve ever read.
Anyway, early in Augustus I came across the following quote about writing (poetry) quoted from the mouth of Horace,

“But the point is this: the end that I discover at last is not the end that I conceived at first. For every solution entails new choices, and every choice made poses new problems to which solutions must be found, and so on and on. Deep in his heart, the poet is always surprised at where his poem has gone.” I know this surprise.

Great stuff. Williams other two books ‘Nothing but the Night’ and ‘Butcher’s Crossing’ are yet to be found, but I’ll find them.

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Artistic Endeavour

Artistic Endeavour
The creation of any piece of art, poem, play, statue, novel, design, etc, is a process in three parts: idea, realization, consumption. In terms of the novel, the first two are the domain of the writer, the third, the reader.
For the work of art to be efficacious all three must be fulfilled, especially the third. That manuscript in the bottom draw is not a work of art until someone reads it and is affected by it; the watercolor behind the wardrobe is not a work of art until someone sees it and is affected by it, no matter how little the effect is: a smile, a feeling of calm, even an annoyance. There must be artistic input and emotional output.
The writer writes what he writes. The page is not a mirror (Colm Toibin), you cannot see the writer on the page, you see the writer’s imagination on the page. The writer has exercised his imagination and fulfilled the first two requirements: idea and execution. The writer has used whatever tools at his disposal to create the text: story, characters, point of view, tone, etc. How you, the reader, interpret the text is solely in your hands. The writer cannot, and should not, tell you how to interpret what he’s written. Of course the writer wants you to be excited by the exciting bits, and to be titilated by the titilating bits but the meaning and your reaction to that meaning is yours, and yours alone.
The writer does not know what psychological and emotional history the reader brings to a book. The writer does not need to know that. The writer does not care if you are invigorated, inspired, aroused, or horrified: as long as something is going on in your head: a change, an understanding, a revelation, a realization. Something.
If you feel nothing, really feel nothing, then the artistic endeavor is a failure; don’t finish it, don’t recommend it to a friend, don’t buy the sequel.

When I describe a galley kitchen, I don’t describe it in detail; what is on the left, what is on the right, the oven on the wall or next to the sink. I don’t describe it in detail because I want the reader to bring his own history to play and fill in the detail. Describing a man as ‘tall, with many chins, a gaping shirt and straining buttons’ says more about the character than a page of physical description and personal behavior. Jane Austen knew this.

All a writer wants from a reader is to read well. A good time – TV off, kids in bed, and a good place – comfortable chair, good light. And the reading has to be active, not passive. The best way to describe what I mean is with an analogy: read a text the way you actively listen to music. Do not let the music wash over you, passively, unless this is your intent, to fall asleep; listen ‘into’ the music. Follow the guitar for a while, then the vocals; find the violin and follow it; trace the melody across all the instruments, find its shape, marvel at its colors. And so with reading. It’s an active task, not a passive one.

An artistic endeavor is a work of art when it challenges itself. Language is not perfect. Writing is the transference of ideas and images from one brain to another via little black marks on a whitish page. It isn’t as perfect as a photograph. Showing a photograph of Portifino is far more accurate a transference of images and feelings than writing about it. When a writer understands this and tries to stretch the limitations, add to the palette, broaden the techniques, build on the work of others, and expand his own boundaries; and it is appreciated, then this is a work of art. Ulysses is a work of art because it attempts to do all these things. It is difficult to read now, especially the final monologue and even more difficult to understand; but other factors also come into play. Obscurity in art was popular at the time of Joyce’s creation, more so then than now. But this stretching of the limitations was what Joyce was trying to do; it’s what Virginia Woolfe was also trying to do, and so was Conrad, Wilkie Collins, Christina Stead, Steinbeck, Marques, Llossa, Patrick White, and it is what contempory writers are trying to do now; well, the really good ones anyway.

These days reading is for enjoyment, in fact it really always has been.

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