Authorial Risks (Rayro, 12/5/06)

It really was a tragic thing, Jake. This was an author of great promise who had written a handful of novels that, it is true, had not quite made the big time yet. The reviews so far went from lukewarm to openly hostile, and sales were terrible, but I felt there was hope for this guy if he really kept at it and dropped his lightweight hobbies.

I took him in hand and tried to advise him as an interested reader. I hope I was not the only interested reader out there, if you know what I mean. Okay, how to make the plot go better. Maybe leave out the parts that used foreign languages and alphabets that nobody really understands, even if they hate to admit it. And are photographs really needed? Shouldn’t his words be memorable enough and accurate enough to say what needs to be said, and really stay on target with that?

Sad case. As I think back about it, he really listened politely to my advice, given, I mean, as it was from just a reader, and not really from an expert about this creative process that grew on him, day by day, as his writing was taking more and more of his time and he was trashing less and less of it, as he told me himself. Gosh, once or twice I thought I saw a teardrop, even though I thought I was being a gentle human being and a true friend to him. Maybe his only friend.

I thought that the most important advice to an author I could give him as a reader was to avoid injecting himself into his stories, that they really had to live their own lives apart from his, and not be pushed and pulled and distracted by his own life and personality. Okay, maybe in a movie, once in awhile the director can appear momentarily like Alfred Hitchcock, and even get away with making it a personal signature. Whimsical. But a serious author is a different thing altogether. His signature is on the outer cover for sure, and maybe in occasional quirks of style and subject matter that, however, cannot become too predictable if the author wants to hold an audience. True, a really good author takes risks, but this one is especially dangerous, I would say. But I am getting ahead of myself, as I tend to do. Are you still with me?

Jake, have another one on me so I can catch my breath. Make that two, please, sir. So where was I?

Okay, so here he was in the closing pages of what I think was by far the best novel he ever wrote. Suddenly and without warning he lapses into first person and starts talking about his own feelings about all these fascinating characters he has created and about the situation unfolding around them. The next thing you know, he is in there, tapping one of them on the shoulder and trying to tell him what he should have done, instead of what he is doing now in the story. Jake, do you get my drift? And here he is, stuck in the damn story he should have kept out of.

The following chapter, which was also the last one, was written by his loving wife of thirty five years, who he had left behind. Along with his twelve kids, of all ages and sexes. A real tragedy.

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