Writing the Novel_ From Plot to Print - Lawrence Block [79]
I’m sure I was inclined to take a stand against revision on some prior occasions because of simple laziness. I didn’t want to do the work, so my mind obligingly supplied reasons why the indicated changes were not a good idea. I still have a tendency to think this way, but I’m more inclined to see it now for what it is, and thus have trouble mistaking it for artistic integrity.
Your own decision, then, is your own decision. You’ll have to make it yourself when the time comes. It may help you to know that almost all novels require some work after they’ve caught an editor’s eye, and a great many of them require considerable rewriting. While John O‘Hara might snarl that the only way to improve a story after you’ve written it is by telling an editor to go to hell, you probably won’t want to be quite that quick to suggest travel plans to the editor who asks you to make changes. And a look at O‘Hara’s correspondence shows that he wasn’t either—not until he was so well established that he could afford to.
But this is all cart-before-horse stuff, isn’t it? First you have to find a publisher who’s interested enough to want changes in the first place.
Which, conveniently enough, brings us to our next chapter.
Chapter 14
Getting Published
Once you’ve written your novel, you’re probably going to want to get it published.
It’s a curious fact about this whole business of writing that the preceding sentence almost goes without saying. The great majority of us write with the absolute intention of publishing what we have written.
This isn’t generally true with other artistic pursuits. The man who paints as a hobby doesn’t necessarily aspire to gallery showings. The woman who plays the cello once a week in an amateur string quartet doesn’t call herself a failure because she’s not on her way to Carnegie Hall.
The writer’s different. For him, publication is seen as part of the process that begins with an idea. His manuscript, unlike an artist’s finished canvas, is not in final form; his novel will only be in that condition when it has been set in type, printed, and bound.
This is unfortunate. While writing is unquestionably a profession, it is also a hobby, and functions very nicely in that capacity. Of those who write, I suspect it will always be the case that a relatively small percentage will be able to produce salable, publishable work, while the greater majority will be writing essentially for their own amusement. There’s nothing wrong with this; about the same ratio obtains in all artistic occupations. What’s tragic is that the amateur writer is so likely to consider himself a failure because of his inability to publish.
I elaborated on these thoughts a while ago in a Writer’s Digest column on Sunday writers, suggesting that we needn’t publish in order to consider ourselves successful writers. A heartening number of readers wrote to say they’d drawn encouragement from my observations. Suffice it to say now that I feel anyone who manages to complete the task of writing a novel ought to consider himself a success whatever its merits or publishability. If you’ve written a novel, you’re already a winner. Whether you try to publish it, whether you succeed or fail in your efforts, you’ve run a marathon and finished on your feet.
Congratulations.
That said, let’s suppose you’ve decided to make a few tries for the brass ring before stuffing your manuscript in a trunk. What are your chances of success? And what can you do to improve them?
Let’s not kid ourselves. It’s not going to be ice cream and cake all the way. Like a dime-novel hero, you’re going to need luck and pluck—and plenty of both.
I might be tempted to offer the bromidic message that every novel will get published sooner or later if it’s good enough and if you work hard enough at the business of offering it to publishers. It’s the conventional wisdom,