...and it's really bugging me. It's an original idea, it could be an entertaining and scandalous satire, and it might even interest a publisher (despite the current dire state of the publishing industry).
But I'm resisting it.
In my 20s and 30s, I used to privately groan about my mortality and the likelihood that I would leave nothing behind to show I'd been here. So when I got an idea for a novel, I'd drive myself to write at least a paragraph or two every day, and novels emerged with remarkable speed.
Now I'm pushing 70 and the prospect of mortality only makes me want to get out for another walk with the dogs, while I can still do it. I'm outliving my earliest novels; when I get out a copy of The Empire of Time or Eyas, I'm delighted at how well they stand up as stories. But I'm appalled at what the acid has done to the pages in 30 short years. So much for literary immortality. Besides, I've got Henderson's Tenants to finish, not to mention my alternate-history novel about a very different 20th century.
Still, when I go to bed I keep thinking about the world of this new story. It's like Los Angeles, only exponentially worse. My hero is in really awful trouble; death is the least of his worries, because he's already dead. I would love to find out what happens to him and his world, and I know just how to do it:
1. Write a letter to myself about the idea, the character, the setting. This will make me think through some of the images I deal with when I go to bed (and those I deal with when I wake up at 2:30 in the morning). It will also give me a sense of where the story wants to go.
2. Do some periscope writing, to teach myself something about this world—what it looks like and feels like to my hero. Just describing him walking down the street would be helpful.
3. Put together a rough outline so I learn who my hero's friends and enemies are, what he's dealing with, what the stakes are for him. I know, I know—he's dead. So is everyone else in his world.
4. Build some résumés for my hero and other characters, so I understand where they're coming from and what might happen to them as a result.
5. Write the novel.
That's all the easy part. The hard part would be marketing it. When I look back at the SF/fantasy world of the 1970s, I can't believe how lucky I was to break in at that time. The bean counters had not yet taken over mass-market publishing, teenage girls were not yet into vampires, and franchises like Star Wars and Star Trek were just getting going. Editors and publishers could still take a chance on a mob of unknowns, hoping that one or two would be the next Asimov or Heinlein.
Those days are long gone.
My only real reason for pursuing this new idea would be the technical and psychological challenge of working out what happens after my hero dies and instantly wakes up in a poky little apartment in what looks like West Hollywood, 1957. That would be fun. But it's also fun to walk the dogs, to write articles for The Tyee, and to sit in the kitchen reading books about Globish and cosmology.
Well, we'll see. Maybe, while walking the dogs, I'll get a further idea about this idea, and that will make me junk everything else and write this new novel. Or dementia will strike, and I'll write it under those conditions. Who knows? Written that way, it might even be better.
As I recall (since at one point you were posting the development stages of "Henderson's Tenants"), Henderson is dying at the beginning at the novel. He also lives in a futuristic, decaying urban environment. So perhaps, the new idea, parts of it anyway, is more germane to "Henderson's Tenants" than it seems. In your mind it probably feels like a completely different project right now. But from the outside (and afar), the new idea sounds more like a complement to what already exists. After tweaking, it could perhaps find its way into HT, or a sequel of it (decaying Vancouver being a prequel to ruined LA).
Posted by: JPh | December 21, 2010 at 07:54 AM