Portrait of the Author as a Young Man, Part III

It was the Willamette Writers conference of 1994. I sat across from the editor who had read my opening chapter. He was a senior editor at a major New York publishing house. He did not look dangerous.

This is a short version of what he wrote: "Every once in a while I come across a situation like yours. On the one hand, I like your writing; on the other hand I really feel the plot is not commercial... What I can say definitely is that you write well enough to be published... Might I suggest a Japanese detective story?"

What was my brain screaming? He likes my writing! He thinks I write well enough to be published!! Of course I'll write a Japanese detective story. I'll start tomorrow.

Which is to say that getting validation like that from a publishing professional is the greatest adrenaline rush imaginable. Of course your family likes your writing (it would be dire if they didn't!) and your writing group thinks you're a great guy who can turn a phrase or two. ("But what do they know?") Buoyed by this one short note, I threw myself into Mustang Mori, a Japanese p.i. novel and completed a first draft within a year. (The first chapter was later to win an honorable mention in the Kay Snow Writing competition.) http://www.willamettewriters.com/1/kaysnow.php

But then life knocked me off kilter. My first son was born at only 24 weeks gestation, weighing one pound and six ounces. Marie and I stood vigil in the neonatal intensive care unit for four months. And the Japanese detective novel, forever tainted by this traumatic event, withered on the vine. Looking at it brought back flashbacks of this life-or-death time. Even at 13 years of distance, I still cry when talking about what we went through.

I was thirty three when my first son was born. No longer a young man. My writing life changed considerably. But that is for a later post: Portrait of the Author as a balding, middle-aged man. (Hmm, doesn't have quite the same ring, does it?)

Portrait of the Author as a Young Man, Part II

I met Marie during my first few months in Japan. Originally from Oregon, she was teaching at a women's college in a city called Wakayama, about an hour by train from where I lived. She was (and is!) enthusiastic, energetic, passionately committed to her ideals, and an amazing ideas person. The upshot is: we were together for three years in Japan, traveled through Asia, and became engaged on the rooftop of a hotel situated in the middle of an Indian lake. The fact that she was American and I was British wasn't insurmountable. In our plots and plans, Marie made it known that, when I moved to Oregon and we got married, she would go out to be the bread-winner and I would be able to write to my heart's content.

That's what happened.

Looking back over the span of 20 years, I have to chuckle at my 20-something chutzpah. I firmly believed I would write a novel, send it out, delight an agent, cause an editor to salivate uncontrollably, and be published with fanfare. I'll give it a couple of years, I believe was the mantra.

Writing for hours a day was the easy part. I wrote the usual coming-of-age bildungsroman, shipped it out to publishing types in London, and got big fat raspberries. I seem to remember one comment to the effect of "we'd all love to be published, but it behooves us to have something publishable first."

I did one thing right. After a number of negatives, I enrolled in a novel-writing class, taught by a grizzled old veteran. He was free with the red pen and urged me to toss out my ms. for something less full of adolescent angst. I remember his surprise when I returned the following week with a completely rewritten first chapter, with a completely different tone. I was now writing a farce, and he grudgingly showed some appreciation for it.

Once again, the writing came fast. Once again, I sent it out. One agent actually requested the whole ms. The rejections came again, but this time there were encouraging notes appended to the slips. That novel never did see the light of day, and neither did its subsequent sibling. The more I read about the trials of aspiring writers, the more I realize that I'm not alone in having several manuscripts gathering dust in a bottom drawer.

The important thing was that I soldiered on. I began a third novel, this one set in Japan. I also joined the local writing organization, Willamette Writers, and volunteered to help at their annual conference. One of the perks of being a volunteer was that one of the editors attending would do a critique of first chapters. I sent mine off. What that particular editor said has kept me writing to this day... (And those comments will be revealed in part III).

Portrait of the Author as a Young Man, Part I

Lots of writers claim they know they wanted to be writers in utero. Not me. I wanted to be a nun.

Blame it on early exposure to The Sound of Music. I mean, who wouldn't want to foil Nazis while singing "Climb Every Mountain" at the top of one's lungs? When it was pointed out that being a nun wasn't gender-neutral, I flirted with monk-hood. But really, when I dissect these early career cravings, it's clear that what I fell in love with were the costumes. And, as any good American can tell you, you have Hallowe'en in which to dress up to your heart's content, without having to take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience.

As a youth, I liked writing well enough. I just never thought of it as a career path. I borrowed shamelessly from Nancy Drew and got published as a fourth-grader in the school magazine. Later, I enjoyed writing a saga about a family in my school who were Anglo-Indian. But English classes become more the study of literature than the composition of story. And the study of literature is really the study of "critical theories," rather than a pure enjoyment of story itself. I got a first class degree by learning how to deconstruct Milton and evaluating Marxist critiques of Dickens.

I flirted with going into diplomacy, my father's profession. I even had an interview (set up by him) at Britain's spy agency. But there was no way I was going to pass the math component of the civil service exam. So I opted for two more years of postgraduate work, and then interviewed for a job teaching English in Japan.

While all this was going on, probably as an escape valve from having to think about careers and their consequences, I entered a short story competition. You had to write two stories. My first was an imagining of the poet Matthew Arnold giving up poetry for love while on a trip to Switzerland. (I was way too immersed in 19th century literature!) The second story--"Scab"-- was very short and had to do with an autistic child, whose welfare was causing his coal-miner father to work during a strike. I didn't win, but the judge's comments were encouraging. I forgot all about them, and left for Japan.

A couple of months after arriving in Japan, my parents forwarded a letter from an agent at Curtis Brown in London. Somehow--had she been one of the judges?--she'd seen my stories and was wondering if I had anything else?

Of course, I didn't. I was too busy sampling sake and crooning karaoke. I wrote her back a short note, hinting at my dissipation, and that was that. (Man, was I a twit!)

But a seed had been sown. If an agent was interested, perhaps I could write a decent sentence or two. I was 23 and the world was my (fried) oyster. In the odd moment between carousings (oh yeah, and teaching) I started to write stories. Then a woman entered my life. She would make me an offer I couldn't refuse.

But that story will have to wait for Part II...