Typically sharp thoughts from you and MJE both on Queer. "nostalgic for a time when men wore hats and slacks and sock garters, nostalgic for cigarettes and alcohol, nostalgic for a time when men read serious books, nostalgic for the American century as lived in America’s torrid periphery" - guilty as charged, I suppose.
When I think about great plots, which is pretty far from what I usually care about in novels, I usually think of genre-ish novels like Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy or The Friends of Eddie Coyle, the latter of which I would say has a truly perfect tragic arc in the Greek sense. But there's only so much you can care about that. Howard Hawks said a great movie is one with "three great scenes and no bad ones". Basically the same holds true for novels; I find it hard to remember what actually happens in sequence in anything but will always remember Ahab and the doubloon, Darcy's confession, the airborne toxic event, etc.
Thanks! Yes, I never remember plots either! I probably should have mentioned that. I do think a strong plot can help propel one through the great scenes, though.
I think that at least in litfic, the plot is merely the skeleton that supports everything else. I remember being puzzled by an interview with a current litfic author who said "When you think back on your absolute favorite novels...it’s the plot you think of." No way! When I think back on favorite novels, I remember vividly drawn characters, individual episodes, striking phrases or descriptions, and the like. The plot is there to support all this.
You seem to have revised your view of "Tom Jones" upward since your review of it a few years back. Personally, I think it's a great book, regardless of whatever faults it may have.
As for this: "Another piece of creative-writing advice I’ve always liked: begin as close to the ending as possible." This reminds me of a piece of wisdom I took away from a writers' group I once belonged to: "If there's something wrong with the ending, that's because there's something wrong with the beginning."
Yes, and I was just replying to Julianne Werlin on Substack Notes, the connection of beginning to ending is what makes TJ as sophisticated as it it. It's still not my favorite novel, but I concede its greatness!
I don't know that my point was that Substack can't sell novels, just that its much easier to grow your substack than it is to get readers for your novel. A bit like how it's easier to get readers for a romance novel than for a literary novel, or for a novel than for a story collection.
All else equal, if I can devote my abilities to many forms of writing, I would prefer to write stuff that it's less work to convince people to read. I never actually devoted much effort to trying to get my substack readers to read my novels. I thought of the Substack as simply the next thing I was doing. Its like if I had written and published two novels in two different genres, and one took off while the other didn't.
The only reason for me personally to insist on the fact that my novel is somehow superior to my essays and stories is because there is a prestige environment in which novels are worth more than blog posts. But that prestige environment has already judged my novel as being not worth paying attention to. So given that I have failed in that prestige environment, why should I hold onto a vestigial belief that novels are the highest form of literature? That's kind of what I was trying to get across
I see what you mean. I agree that novels are not inherently higher than all the various forms of writing that exist on Substack, but I personally don't want to give up on the book. I figure the internet will disappear someday, which the book is less likely to do. Also, the prestige economy of novels doesn't always provide a reward right away, sometimes not even before one dies, alas, so one could always succeed with the same book later.
I think what you're doing makes perfect sense. As I wrote in my post, I do think it's important to publish books, as a record of what you did--something recognizable that people can understand and read in many contexts.
But for me personally I realized over the summer that the default world wasn't going to happen. Whatever success looked like for a book like this--it wasn't going to materialize.
For you, your Substack audience and the audience for major arcana are very overlapping. But for me, letting go of the default world allowed me to build a much bigger audience, and one that (not to put too fine a point on it) generally does not read queer literary fiction. If I was building an audience of the kind of people who would read the default world, it would need to look much different from the readership of my substack, because most of my Substack audience would never read a small press queer trans book. Hopefully my next fiction project will be a better fit for them.
I’ve pre-ordered Major Arcana. But if it has a speculative element(s) (even ambiguous), I’d be happy to review it for Locus Magazine. ETA: Having read footnote 7, I see it does have a speculative element. So, um, message me if you’re interested.
Typically sharp thoughts from you and MJE both on Queer. "nostalgic for a time when men wore hats and slacks and sock garters, nostalgic for cigarettes and alcohol, nostalgic for a time when men read serious books, nostalgic for the American century as lived in America’s torrid periphery" - guilty as charged, I suppose.
When I think about great plots, which is pretty far from what I usually care about in novels, I usually think of genre-ish novels like Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy or The Friends of Eddie Coyle, the latter of which I would say has a truly perfect tragic arc in the Greek sense. But there's only so much you can care about that. Howard Hawks said a great movie is one with "three great scenes and no bad ones". Basically the same holds true for novels; I find it hard to remember what actually happens in sequence in anything but will always remember Ahab and the doubloon, Darcy's confession, the airborne toxic event, etc.
Thanks! Yes, I never remember plots either! I probably should have mentioned that. I do think a strong plot can help propel one through the great scenes, though.
I think that at least in litfic, the plot is merely the skeleton that supports everything else. I remember being puzzled by an interview with a current litfic author who said "When you think back on your absolute favorite novels...it’s the plot you think of." No way! When I think back on favorite novels, I remember vividly drawn characters, individual episodes, striking phrases or descriptions, and the like. The plot is there to support all this.
You seem to have revised your view of "Tom Jones" upward since your review of it a few years back. Personally, I think it's a great book, regardless of whatever faults it may have.
As for this: "Another piece of creative-writing advice I’ve always liked: begin as close to the ending as possible." This reminds me of a piece of wisdom I took away from a writers' group I once belonged to: "If there's something wrong with the ending, that's because there's something wrong with the beginning."
Yes, and I was just replying to Julianne Werlin on Substack Notes, the connection of beginning to ending is what makes TJ as sophisticated as it it. It's still not my favorite novel, but I concede its greatness!
I don't know that my point was that Substack can't sell novels, just that its much easier to grow your substack than it is to get readers for your novel. A bit like how it's easier to get readers for a romance novel than for a literary novel, or for a novel than for a story collection.
All else equal, if I can devote my abilities to many forms of writing, I would prefer to write stuff that it's less work to convince people to read. I never actually devoted much effort to trying to get my substack readers to read my novels. I thought of the Substack as simply the next thing I was doing. Its like if I had written and published two novels in two different genres, and one took off while the other didn't.
The only reason for me personally to insist on the fact that my novel is somehow superior to my essays and stories is because there is a prestige environment in which novels are worth more than blog posts. But that prestige environment has already judged my novel as being not worth paying attention to. So given that I have failed in that prestige environment, why should I hold onto a vestigial belief that novels are the highest form of literature? That's kind of what I was trying to get across
I see what you mean. I agree that novels are not inherently higher than all the various forms of writing that exist on Substack, but I personally don't want to give up on the book. I figure the internet will disappear someday, which the book is less likely to do. Also, the prestige economy of novels doesn't always provide a reward right away, sometimes not even before one dies, alas, so one could always succeed with the same book later.
I think what you're doing makes perfect sense. As I wrote in my post, I do think it's important to publish books, as a record of what you did--something recognizable that people can understand and read in many contexts.
But for me personally I realized over the summer that the default world wasn't going to happen. Whatever success looked like for a book like this--it wasn't going to materialize.
For you, your Substack audience and the audience for major arcana are very overlapping. But for me, letting go of the default world allowed me to build a much bigger audience, and one that (not to put too fine a point on it) generally does not read queer literary fiction. If I was building an audience of the kind of people who would read the default world, it would need to look much different from the readership of my substack, because most of my Substack audience would never read a small press queer trans book. Hopefully my next fiction project will be a better fit for them.
Brilliant as always, John! Very excited to see Major Arcana out from Belt in April.
Thanks, Ross!
I’ve pre-ordered Major Arcana. But if it has a speculative element(s) (even ambiguous), I’d be happy to review it for Locus Magazine. ETA: Having read footnote 7, I see it does have a speculative element. So, um, message me if you’re interested.