About Books: Schism

 

 

The very first book I ever completed was Schism, which at the time was classified as Gay Fiction, but now would come under the heading of GLBTQ+ fiction.

When I competed it, I knew there was something wrong with the writing, but couldn’t quite figure out how to fix it. It was one I sent to publishers that accepted unsolicited manuscripts (those presented without an agent), and everyone said it wasn’t what they were looking for.

The time was 1989, about 10 years after AIDS came into our consciousness, and gay fiction was definitely a hot topic. I had just finished reading the non-fiction book, And the Band Played On by Randy Shilts.

Shilts’ book made me angry for the people who had contracted AIDS, and how the government tried to shove the subject under the carpet, effectively saying it only affected gays and gays didn’t matter. Both of those sentiments were lies.

His book also introduced me to Anthony Fauci, the doctor who did so much to bring the AIDS crisis to the fore and investigate its cause. No matter what you think about him because of Covid-19 – and I, as a health care professional, understand that science is real, it takes time to understand many aspects of disease, and as new scientific information becomes available, recommendations may need to change – he definitely did a great deal to advance our understanding of AIDS.  Because my story timeline was the 1980s, and the main character was gay, AIDS required at least a mention.

One of my problems with writing is that I often get various ideas for a story, and if I don’t write them down when they occur, they disappear. For that reason, I don’t always write the scenes in order. I find it difficult to start on page one and write in a straight line to the end. For the most part, however, that is exactly what I did with Schism. I still don’t understand how I managed it.

I recently decided to re-edit the book. I immediately discovered a main problem: it doesn’t grab the reader at the beginning. This is essential. But my story had a rather tedious beginning, with a lot of description.

When I was in elementary school, our teachers told us that descriptions were necessary in novels, and one needed to wade through the first two chapters or so to get the setting and characters of the story set. After that, the good stuff would happen.

Then I had writing classes in college, and the instructors there said that if you didn’t grab your reader by the throat in the first sentence or two, you’d probably already lost them.

I suppose in the 1800s and early 1900s, in the absence of television and other distractions, and definitely without the instant gratification of streaming services and the internet, long-winded descriptions helped wile away the hours between dinner and going to bed. In the 1960s, I found the Bobsey Twins books and Nancy Drew too much of a slog to put up with. Even Louisa May Alcott had the sense to give us an interesting sentence to start her stories, and she wrote in the mid-1800s.

Determined to free my story of a dull beginning, I began a rewrite. The story, as it stands now, is about Matt Nelson, as TV news reporter recently returned to the Philadelphia area where he grew up.

Where the story starts – which is actually at the end – Matt is in the hospital undergoing surgery, his life on the line. The story then moves, using flashbacks and a timeline from his arrival the in Philadelphia area, when he’s a beat reporter through to his becoming the anchor of the evening news.

Matt is definitely closeted, believing that his coming out would jeopardize his career. He has his personal life that he goes to great lengths to keep private.

Flashbacks give us his childhood, his relationship with his older brother, Michael, who becomes a priest, and at times not his best ally, his two older sisters and eventually a younger brother.

People in Bucks County, particularly the village of Oakford, will recognize many of the place descriptions. Some of the settings in Philadelphia, alas, are no longer there. One of the restaurants mentioned burned down in the 2000s, but was definitely a popular place in the 1980s. The same is true of two bars mentioned in New Hope, Bucks County.

Of course, his family discovers his sexual orientation, with explosive results that divide the family, making way for a good bit of guilt when a near-tragic accident happens.

I’ve been asked why I chose to write gay fiction. My first answer is, why not? But I had more pressing reasons. Many of my friends at Penn State were gay, and they allowed me to ask questions. I tried not to be intrusive, but I didn’t want to make assumptions that were wrong.

Another reason was because of a book I read. Said friends recommended I read a book called The Front Runner, which centers on a gay man. While I learned a lot from that book, I was also upset by it. It was * spoilers* once again a story that ends in the gay character getting killed. It made no sense to the story, as far as I could tell. To me that murder only happened because the author didn’t know how to end a book that would allow the gay man not to be punished for his orientation. When I discovered the author was a lesbian, I was doubly disheartened. She should have known better. Yes, people get killed over their sexuality, but what about the boys who live? It was a cheat, as far as I was concerned, and I was determined that I would not end my novel the same way.

In fact, there are four sequels.

To Blog or Not to Blog – Is That Even a Question?

 

To say I’ve always known I’d be a story-teller is probably not entirely true. It stems from something that happened when I was three or four years old.

My mother read me a bedtime story every night. Sometimes they were from the big fairytale book, and sometimes they were Little Golden Books of my choosing.

I chose my book by the cover. I don’t think I ever chose The Happy Little Dump Truck because the truck driver looked like the bad guy in Popeye, and I thought he was ugly. The one I picked most often was called A Day at the Playground. I didn’t pick it for the story. For all the times my mother read it to me, I couldn’t have said what it was about. I only knew there was a cute blonde girl and two little boys on the cover.

My mother hated that story, mainly because it wasn’t really a story, merely a string of possible activities to do at the park.

I didn’t know that. I had my own idea what the story was about.

When she started to read one night, I stopped her to tell her that’s not what the story was about. She handed me the book and told me to read it, then. At three or four I was unable to read.

Undeterred, I began telling the story I wanted on those pages, naming the people, and telling a tale of what they were doing from page to page. My mother was impressed.

“You’re going to be a writer when you grow up,” she said.

“No, I’m not!” I replied, thinking that was definitely a boring kind of job.

But I made up stories about my various dolls while I played. I tried to figure out the plot of our play when I was playing with my friends, and even occasionally told them what they should say so that the plot in my head could advance.

My friends resisted. They clearly didn’t want to be told what to say. We weren’t in a play, after all. That was a source of many of my arguments with my friends.

I learned how to write in school. It wasn’t the sort of writing I wanted to do. Creativity wasn’t encouraged beyond trying out synonyms of commonly overused words. Our compositions, though, were precursors of my blogs.

Had anyone told me when I was 10 that I’d willingly write what I knew then as a “composition” or an essay, I would have told them they were crazy. At 10 I was trying without success to write a novel. At 13, I was writing terrible poetry. Only when coerced by teachers did I write essays, and those essays were uninspired, to say the least.

Perhaps if we’d been given the chance to write about something that interested us instead of expecting a student whose parents never took us on vacations to write an interesting essay on “How I Spent My Summer Vacation,” things might have gone better. I didn’t need a whole essay about my vacation; I could have summed it up in one sentence : We didn’t go anywhere.

Of course, if I’d dared, I could have invented the vacation I wished I’d had, and written about that. But Catholic school teachers didn’t want fantasy and invention. They wanted truth, and my truth was, we didn’t go anywhere.

We couldn’t afford it (or we needed a new roof, so our money was spent on shingles, and my dad spent his vacation putting them on the roof.)

I don’t know whether or not my writing is any good. I like my novels because I write what I could never find in the library. I write for me.

But my books don’t sell well. Maybe it’s because people don’t know they’re available on Amazon, or they don’t know just how many of my books are actually there (16 at present). Perhaps it’s just that people don’t know I use a pen name, Bridget McGowan. I’m sure in large part it has to do with my lack of knowledge about marketing. (Nudge me to keep me awake after saying that word.)

One thing that my novels and my blogs have in common is, I don’t know if they’re good or if they’re rubbish. I can’t get feedback from people. A few will say, “That’s really good.” I don’t know what that means.

I think it means people are impressed that I can write because they don’t think they could. No matter what I say, people who don’t think they can write don’t think they have the right to criticize someone who does. (Do they think that's lit shaming?) Perhaps they think I just want compliments, and I’d get mad if they told me what they didn’t like. This is not true. I really appreciate when people are honest with me about my writing.

I’m not interested in someone saying, “That’s horrible,” and nothing more, either. I’d like to know what you liked, what you didn’t, what didn’t work, or if the piece was simply a subject that didn’t attract your interest.

When I can get people I know well to give a critique, I often ask a lot of questions and sometimes explain what I’m trying to accomplish in the work. Sometimes people just miss things. If I know what they missed, I can fix the narrative. It’s definitely not just being argumentative – although, if you tell me the grammar is wrong and I know it isn’t, I will argue with you on that.

I’m not defensive about my work. It’s my baby, but if my baby doesn’t behave as it should, I want to know so I can correct it.

The most honest critique I ever received was from a class of third graders. Eight-to-nine year-olds get it. They were kind and very aware of not hurting my feelings, but they asked questions about what they didn’t understand. They were criticizing a book for preschoolers called I Think I Will Have to Eat You Now, about a tiger that is left behind when the circus leaves town.

I learned what they thought was important. “What’s the tiger’s name?” “What happened to his mother?” “I think your drawings are good, except – and I don’t mean to hurt your feelings, but the bunny looks like a dog.” “Could you maybe have more pictures?”

Based on that, I was able to make improvements. They got to participate in naming the tiger, and I invited them to draw some pictures for me, which were much better than mine.

My blogs seem to be hit or miss. Some attract 30 or 40 readers; others attract fewer than 10. What do people  want to read? After four years, I still don’t have a good read of my audience.

Sometimes I wonder if there’s an advance committee of two or three people who brave the blog and then pass along a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down to the rest of the group, which determines whether or not they read it. Or maybe that’s just a conspiracy theory.

I know I have one reader who reads all of my blogs, and you know who you are.

I have asked whether people preferred short stories or essays, what subjects interest them, and what they would rather not see. I’ve been met with crickets. I’d really like to know.

If I write something that people really don’t like, I want to know so I don’t write something else on a similar topic that will send people away in droves.

I realize summer is difficult. People are on vacations and probably don’t want to read a blog. Holidays are also tough. With decorating, parties and religious obligations, not to mention shopping and dealing with relatives, people don’t have the time. But I don’t have a better idea of what people want the rest of the year.

What I’d really appreciate are comments. There’s a comment section on the blogsite. If it’s difficult to get to, make a comment on the page where you found the link to the blog. I think they have even added a way to be anonymous. Just keep in mind we all need to be respectful of one another. No blasting someone one who didn’t like a blog you thought was good.

If you’d rather a bit more privacy, I have no objection to PMs about the blog.

Just a line or two about what you liked or didn’t like, or what previous blogs you really liked – or didn’t. It doesn’t need to be long, or even in a sentence.

I try to make my blogs humorous whenever I can, unless the subject matter shouldn’t be joked with.

You’ve heard from me; now, I’d like to hear from you.