Upon Completing "The Mantle"

Please allow me to shriek into the void because that’s what blogging feels like these days…

Thanks for that. So recently I recently finished the “final” draft of my novel The Mantle. I’ve been working on it about three or four years now. For an idea that came to me off the cuff it’s got some nice legs so to speak. I’ve written either seven or eight novels now (I’m sure I’ve got one I’m forgetting). 

There’s a learning process with each one of them. I don’t think you’re aware of this until maybe the third or fourth? Not for me anyway. While I don’t remember them all this one is pretty fresh in mind, thankfully.

When I began it, this novel sprung from a passing thought, they were not the good times. We were in the waning years of Covid and my father had passed a year or two previous. At that point as I’d stopped writing for a while. I’m not really sure what else I’d written around then but it wasn’t good. A lot of short stories started and to make it worse I rarely left myself notes on what they were about (I literally have a word file named after an Alaskan island used as an army base but no notes, not even a link to the wikipedia page!) Not sure why I’d stopped. Partly I’d been focusing on making music for several years. Though I’m confident it a combination of numerous rejections and life getting in the way led me to take a pause.

Then this weird idea for a story hit me and I began to write. I allowed myself to write more freely, more from a stream of consciousness than I ever had before. I guess I thought no one would ever see it so why not. It took a while but I got about 75% done when I thought maybe this should get a gander from someone else, benefit from a second set of eyes as they say and not the ones in the jar above the desk. 

So I sent it to my guy Nick. I told him I was a big boy and could handle direct, unsweetened feedback. Constructive criticism not evisceration with a side of snark. Helpful, decisive edits. Then I sent off the manuscript and waited.

When his reply came back it wasn’t exactly riven with cuts and exsanguinated. Nico wrote back a very nice letter to accompany it, Essentially saying my main character wasn’t present for most of the book and while the story was okay it wouldn’t work the way I was telling it. He offered a different plot which while inventive wasn’t my story to tell. Naturally I handled it well and like a mature adult ignored his edits and focused on the bad parts of the critique.

For a few days I was absolutely gutted by his reply. I’d expected something more glowing of course, telling me it was going to be one of the classics upon publication. I was certain the way I’d written it was really the only way to tell the story and no other way would work. My beta readers liked it though some had their own deep and incisive criticisms.

One night, maybe a week after I’d received his reply, I sat down to look at my novel. In retrospect I can say I was probably being precious about my baby. And that no one understood it like me. Which is in many ways a rookie move and one that I’ve seen absolutely cripple writers who end up going nowhere.

So that night as I sat there feeling sorry for myself I said screw you to my internal voice and that of Nico and decided to give it a shot. I’d rewrite a chapter with his criticism in mind. I’ll show him! I’ll prove it could only be done the way I did it and… I ended up rewriting the whole chapter in a couple hours. Then I realized he was right.

As I thought about it what occurred to me was I’d written this second chapter from an entirely different perspective. In the original draft it’s a father grieving his missing son who suddenly reappears. There I was in that scene only I was doing the grieving. As I had for my father in real life. Which made me realize I’d written a first draft that was largely noted for the second or third draft and some lengthy explorations on grief.

Not what the kids are into these days and not the story I wanted to tell.

But isn’t it funny how it works? How we as writers get into such a state only to realize when we’ve returned to Earth that we’d maybe never left the ground at all? And we were wrong?

What followed was a better second draft where I discovered a lot more things to integrate as I told the story I wanted to tell. In a bigger, better, bolder way even. Shockingly I finished the novel and love it even more than I did before.

Now that it’s done I’m in that post-novel ennui stage. Think of the meme of Vincent Vega looking around the Wallis mansion in “Pulp Fiction.” Part of me wants to leap right back in and start revising before it goes off to Uncle Nick’s. The other part wants to me smash the laptop to bits and flush it down the toilet piece by piece. Another part of me wants donuts. Circle of life. 

Anyway it’s weird being in that post-novel stage. I have other stuff I can work on but my head is still firmly in what I call Mantle-space. The characters, conflicts and situations I put them in. But as much as I may want to have at it, the few times I’ve given in to the impulse I’m left staring at the first line thinking “WHAT?” Which tells me now is not the time. Put it away, let it simmer then go revise at a later date. Maybe Monday? 

Monday’s a great day to edit a novel. 

Sounds like a plan. 

See you ‘round!

- CHANG