The first novel I ever published was the second one I wrote.
And first one I wrote was the second one I published.
It happens that way sometimes, maybe even often. An unknown person - in this case, me - tries to get the attention of a publisher, but cannot.
Or he gets a publisher’s attention briefly, then the publisher thinks, ‘Why take a chance on this guy?’ And it’s a very small step after that to:
“Thank you for sending us your fascinating, brilliant, deeply funny, moving, and wonderfully sexy novel! We couldn’t put it down!
Unfortunately, it is not right for us at this time.”
Sincerely. THE PUBLISHERS
Soldiers in Hiding is the title of my first published novel. It came out in 1986. It is 199 pages long and it took me six years to write.
Yes, you read that right… six years!
The saving grace about that long period of time is that the novel was once 600 pages. And telling people I was writing 100 pages a year (though it doesn’t sound great), sounds a whole lot better than 33.1 pages a year, don’t you think?
I mean, 33.1 pages a year! A turtle could write that much. A slug could leave a trail that long when passing through a garden.
My excuse for the 600 pages…?
Well, I blamed it on the 1950 Akira Kurosawa film, Rashōmon, based on Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s 1922 short story “In a Grove."
Rashōmon, as you may know, is a psychological thriller in which a bunch of characters: a woodsman, a samurai, the samurai’s wife, a bandit, relate the events of a crime they all witnessed in a forest but in vastly different ways, leaving movie viewers flummoxed as to which of them to believe, and also asking the universal question, “Does the truth reside anywhere, other than in point of view?
It was a genius idea for a movie, but I still haven’t gotten to why I blame it for my 600 pages:
Because I thought it would be very modern and hip and literary of me, if I were to write a novel that did the same thing! My idea was to create six characters - more than Kurosawa - give them each 100 pages in which to tell their version of the story, and then voila! - I’d be hailed as the reincarnation of the great man, never mind that he wasn’t dead or that he probably wouldn’t think of my endeavor as an homage to him, so much as a novice’s attempt to usurp his idea instead of doing what he should do… which is write his own damned novel!
That is, at heart, the point I was trying to make in my essay on listening two weeks ago: not that writers shouldn’t steal from Kurosawa, exactly, or that they should write their own damned books, but that they should not write to say something, but to find out what it is they have to say.
Did I do that, however, during those unending six years?
No I did not. Not a chance. Not on your life.
For the first three years I insisted - in a stomping-my-feet, throwing-my-toys, sort of way - that having six narrators was innovative and that I was brilliant for inventing it (even though I didn’t).
Yet the very novel I was writing kept saying back to me, in a small and quiet voice, “You are not brilliant and I am not a good book.”
So for the two years after that I said, “Okay, damn it! I will cut it down from six to three different narrators, three people telling that story, but that’s it! Three different points of view!”
This time the book only muttered, “pfft.”
It wasn’t until the sixth and final year of working on the novel - as my page count kept shrinking - that I finally cleaned the wax out of my ears and admitted that the story belonged to one of my characters, that only he would be able to tell it convincingly. And when I finished I was proud of all 199 pages because nothing remained of my literary conceit.
Now, that’s a nice story, but it didn't mean jack to the publishers. I might have written a decent novel but it still garnered twenty-eight rejections before one publisher (Atlantic Monthly Press) took a chance and said “Yes, please,” instead of “No, thank you.”
Twenty-eight rejections!
Lucky for me, there were more than twenty-eight major publishing houses back then, to whom I could send it… I think today there are only about five.
Soldiers in Hiding, by the way, is the story of a Japanese American jazz musician, who goes to Tokyo in 1940, stays too long and gets drafted into the Japanese army when World War II breaks out.
These days publishers would probably accuse me of cultural appropriation en masse.
But I am still of the opinion, as I was back then, that it’s cultural understanding we are after, no matter who is doing the storytelling.
Postscript…
Thanks to everyone who wrote to tell me that they were moved by my essay last week on Ernesto Butcher, a great man who taught me to be a better one, and who moved a lot of us when he was alive.
Post postscript…
Thanks, also, to those who have read my new novel The Grievers’ Group, and either wrote reviews of it on Amazon or told me directly that they liked it. For someone to like a book I have written means as much to me now as it did when that first one came out.
Yeah, I know, I know. For four years I hawked the book at every conference I went to. One editor said he really wanted to work with me on it, but he was over committed. Then 3 in a row responded with nearly verbatim rejections: Love your book, someone will publish it, but we can’t because we have to make a profit. Those were all academic presses. When was profit their motive? When the handwriting on the wall—and in the rejection letters—became so redundant, I turned to Amazon and self-published. Very gratifying, since I controlled everything, including cover design. But still …
Gracious, indeed. I wouldn’t bother if I didn’t love you. 😏