A Hack Like Me

A hack writer like myself sure learned a lot about writing over the course of forty years.  How can you not? Just the longevity alone gives you practice. (As Henry Miller once wrote, 'Even a bad novelist needs a place to sit down and type.') By letting the manuscript sit for stretches at a time, sometimes years, makes the material spring back at you in a fresh way. Take it from me, I know. When you take it out again, it’s as if you’re dealing with the story for the first time. But the groundwork is done, what a relief. The beginning, middle, and ending are firmly in place. Similarly, when you age a manuscript like this, you immediately see the upgrades that are needed. You notice verbs that need to be more specific, sentences that should be tightened, ideas that need sharpening, the philosophical thrust which needs to be clarified and deepened. All this wouldn’t have happened if I got the novel published in the 1970’s, like I originally hoped. It would have been a lousy piece of literature, a pale replica of what it became. Henry Miller and another literary heavyweight, Norman Mailer, would have laughed at me.