tomeubanks.com

                           you know that you can count on one thing 
                            i would never let you down 
                            as crazy as this world may seem 
                            the thing that keeps it spinning `round 
                            is always there 
                            so close and yet so far... 



            For the last couple of months I've been posting a chapter from my novel, The Plunge, on Fridays.  I haven't received any feedback until recently.   My childhood friend and fellow writer/photographer/blogger Bob a.k.a. Fundamental Jelly has has excited me with some great criticism--99% negative.  That's right.  And that's what I want.  I don't want to know what's right, what's good.  I want to know what's confusing, stupid, run-on, boring, mundane, inane, stilted, wilted, and jilted.

        I wrote The Plunge over a seven-year period from 1995 to 2002.  I knew then that it was a good story with lots of surprises and interesting characters.  But I also knew it had some problems structurally and in some of the details.  So I let it sit for seven years.  In mid-2009, I got it out and began re-writing it.  I finished my first re-write and then "edited" it.  I even gave it to another writer, who read it, liked it and wrote several pages of criticisms, which I considered and integrated into a third draft.  And then I began posting it.  The story unfolds slowly, because I chose to tell it from two points of view every other chapter.  I don't know if that works.  There are many minor details throughout the book that trouble me and, yet, I have not changed them.  

        When I began receiving Bob's pin-point accurate criticism--mostly things that are easy fixes--I started to ruminate over how I could:

        1) Miss obvious weaknesses in my choice of names and other details; 
        2) Know that something didn't work and yet let my pinky finger stray from tapping the "delete" key; and 
        3) Actually begin posting chapters of a novel that needs more work than simple "feedback" can correct.

        Remember the song by the band Agent Orange called "So Close and Yet So Far"?  So close...so close and yet so far?  That's the answer the Writer God beamed down to me.  I'm still too close to the story.  Even though I let it stand for seven years.  That was too long.  I've let things I've written stand before, usually for a few weeks or months, and I come back to it with a clear eye and some distance between my first writing and my new intentions.  

        But seven years?  First of all, it's really 14 years from the time I began writing it.  Letting something ferment is fine.  But I let this book--to some degree and in some ways (not all)--turn to vinegar.  And I have to find those bottles and dump them out.

        I'm too close to the book and yet so far from turning it into what it will be.  I'm going to continue to post the chapters for awhile.  I'm working on it.  But I really hope others will give me their feedback and criticism about the story, characters and structure.  I am not thin-skinned about this.  Like I explained to Bob: I enjoy re-writing.  It's like polishing a tarnished magic lantern.  As I rub it (edit), it begins to shine, and, in the end, maybe there'll be a magic genie leaking out to tell me:  So far, so good.

        Onward.