I finished the first draft of “Bloggers” a novel this Sunday afternoon at about 4:45 Central. It marks the end of a mad dash: the 95K word project took about the same six weeks to compose that “Boston Tales” did, but the composition happened in the middle of a busy semester. Also, the idea for it, almost the opposite of “Boston Tales,” which is a pseudo memoir that examined life as a music student 40 odd years ago, this piece was at least in part, written from life. Things happened around here as the result of meeting a blogger, and as a result of perhaps too much Bacardi drinking, and these things, when relevant to the plot, went into the book verbatim. That’s what, from where I sit, laptop in lap, writers do. A first draft is not a sellable book. I have to now actually read it, consider it, revise it, line-edit it and then, at the end of all of these processes, I will publish it as an ebook somewhere. It will need its ‘book of demons,’ ie., illustrations. It will need some cover art. Yada yada yada.

In the side trips, the searches for this and that bit of info that will make the story at least somewhat believable, I ran into the most amazing synchronicities. Perhaps one of the most amazing of these was the discovery of “THE INTERN.” It was news I could use in the construction of the “Bloggers” text, which involved things I know nothing empirical about, such as having a best seller, selling a book, negotiating an advance, and even securing an agent. All of these things had to happen to my character, and more, since my character had a blog that went viral despite her relative disinterest and external interference, and THE INTERN (her caps) was an invaluable source. Beyond that, she was a marvelous, hilarious read. That lovely in her bones blogger that inspired my novel is the opposite of this fiesty gal. She’s got a lot of Amy (my character) on her shoes, and she tracks that mud all over the carpet. She just wails on the topics of the publisher’s suite, from the opposite perspective of my old friend, the New York literary agent. THE INTERN is (or maybe was) an intern in a publishing operation. In order to not get herself dooced (and I’d say that’s a possibility for her) she is vague about the imprint. Others, in comments, seem to know which of the biggies it is. She and Konrath should get together for a coffee date. Speaking of wanting to be a fly on the wall. Let the odd duckling that wants to tell you how to write and sell your book, and yet confesses her beautiful insecurities about writing her novel in her most recent post, sit down opposite the man who wants to tell you how to sell your book after you’ve written it right (he’s sort of like Papa Hemmingway in that regard: all macho swagger about the rituals and insecurities of the actual writing process), and let them duke it out. Konrath’s about 50 and this kid’s about 25, maybe 30 at the outside. Not that I care about age. The stuff of fiction is ageless. If it’s not, it will fade as of no worth.

So I emailed the THE INTERN. Whereas that last blogger got promptly back, THE INTERN took a look at my blog and decided I was not worth the trouble. Whereas that last lovely blogger gets my gossamer attention regularly, though both she and I have our rules, whether or not she admits it, THE INTERN, holed up in northern California, will need a tank pulling up on her virtual premises armed to the hilt with armor piercing ammo to be induced to emerge from the rubble of her defenses, blasted all to hell by my insistent attention waving the white flag of whatever. It’s refreshingly bloody unlikely this woman will get back to me. Even my famous old friend, the New York agent, got back to me after much pestering. She will take her a while to realize that I concur with her analysis and will submit to her advice. And I will take me awhile to realize that she doesn’t give a shit. So to be, like, totally ignored by a twenty or thirty something: that’s golden. It’s a sign that despite climate change, all is right with the order of things. But I read with some alarm THE INTERN’s description of her torturous process. My experience of the writing of 100K words under the rubric ‘novel’ is somewhat different. You (I) get an idea. I (you) might do a bit of research; but at a certain point, as Arthur Miller said of writing “Death of a Salesman,” I hear them talking. It troubles my sleep. I wake up with the scenes complete in my mind. I sit down and type them. It might go other than I imagined in my outline, because the characters, as they develop, develop a mind of their own as to how they might act in a certain situation. So, without any effort, it pretty much writes itself. When I read it back, it sounds like it did when I wrote it. So what’s this crap about rewriting a scene? I get the impression that many people are giving birth to novels that shouldn’t be.

That was also Ezra Pound’s impression as expressed in “Moeurs Contemporaines.”