AGS Johnson

Putting a book together and out into the world is proving way more complex than simply writing and re-writing for years, perfecting a story by way of believable, compelling characters (that’s number one for me personally), strong plots with no holes, building tension, creating the atmosphere, and a thousand other important if not critical considerations to good story.

There’s choosing a title that both intrigues and somehow encapsulates everything mentioned above.  Then the cover design that does its share of encapsulating and intriguing.  Each page within must be individually laid out, which surprised me.  And there is the truly endless job of proofing it all.

There are marketing and PR campaigns to bookstores, libraries, and readers.  Websites and internet campaigns to devise and keep up.  Blogs.  And if you are inclined to want old-fashioned hard-cover books to hold in your hands, and hopefully put into thousands of others’ hands, there are printers and bids and distributors and wholesalers to work with and coordinate.  At the same time, one cannot afford to forget about formatting for all EBooks and the new mobile technologies rushing our way.

Suffice it to say, each one of these pieces could take months of research on its own, and by the time those months had passed, each piece would have changed as technology marches ever forward.  It all comes down to: time or money.  To do it all myself was impossible for me personally, and luckily I’ve been able to engage experts to fill in my knowledge/experience gaps.  Others I know have done lots of research themselves and made sound decisions as to how to move forward.  I applaud them—all that on top of being a good writer.  Wow.

One thing is true no matter how one chooses to put a book out: at some point, just jump in, make the best decisions with the resources available, cross fingers and/or pray, and go for it.

Allow me another digression before I return to the publishing process, whirling along at top speed toward the release of my novel, hopefully, next month. 

I recommend an article to all writers and wannabes in the October issue of Vanity Fair magazine titled, The Book on Publishing.  It enables us non-New Yorkers an insider’s view of the mystifying world of traditional publishing by following the evolution of a new novel called The Art of Fielding from its earliest stages of writing all the way through to finishing, procuring an agent, a publisher, and getting a large advance for the novelist via an auction among publishers, the biggest for fiction in recent memory.  Each piece of the puzzle is explored as well as how it all comes together.  I hope the book is a smashing success.

It struck that the article’s author seemed shocked that the novel took 10 years in the writing.  Doesn’t someone say that it takes 10 years to become expert at any new thing?  The writer does make the point that in long-form fiction, by the time you finish one rewrite, your writing has progressed to such a degree that the beginning is no longer as strong as the end.  And so you start again, but the same thing keeps happening.  Uneven writing it’s called.  One hopes that eventually the rewrites take less and less time and that the writing evens out.

So I’m embarrassed to admit that my novel, The Sausage Maker’s Daughters, from first written words to today, has taken 12 years – although three-some in the middle were spent on other things (more on those much later).  Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that both the novelist in the article and I are Wisconsinites.  Too much beer, cheese, and bratwurst slowing us down?  Don’t forget the dairy state’s justly famous frozen custard?  Weekly fish fries?  I’m getting hungry now.

We may be slower than normal, we two novelists who grew up in Wisconsin, but one thing the harsh climes does bring out in people is something we’ve both just demonstrated through our writing: stubborn determination.  I’m pretty sure that trait burns up lots of calories, too.

I thought I’d include today an excerpt from my novel that we decided not to use as originally planned as an epilogue.  My protagonist, Kip Czermanski, reflects on what she’s learned, the hard way, about life.

“I have to concede that on this one thing my dad was right: timing is everything—who we are, what we do, what we think and why, and what we believe. 

Dad also used to say, we are of a time for a time.  It sounded too fatalistic to me, even trite.  But life can be both fatalistic and trite, I’ve since learned and learned the hard way.

Timing encompasses who we chance to meet and those we miss meeting, the relationships in our lives forming the skeleton on which everything else takes form.

When you think about it, all we have during our allotted time on earth is how we take it all in and how we act and react.  That’s it, those three things—our interpretations, our actions, and our reactions.  Those are the only choices, the only expressions of our individuality, we will ever get. 

How wise were we aware of choices and their consequences before the directions of our lives were forever altered.  Before who we became as a result was relentlessly, irrevocably, and unforgivingly cast out into the universe.  Before the colliding ripples in our interconnected universe churned up only more chaos. 

But I suppose, in the end, the harshness of those few choices makes those rare moments of truth and caring, and those of comic relief, all the more precious.”