No Experience Necessary

For friends and followers who’ve assumed I’ve tossed my hands in the air and said nope to my novel, good news: Nope!

I haven’t given up.

Granted, I completed a first draft of what I thought my story was five Novembers ago. Partly thanks to a sheer force of will inside the self-imposed structure of the (now defunct) NaNoWriMo, aka National Novel Writing Month, but mostly because of Ramona DeFelice Long. My roommate at a writing retreat in the 90s, an outstanding cheerleader and developmental editor for so many writers, she was stricken by an incurable cancer in that awful, no-good, horrible year of 2020 and died. She knew I was trying so hard to switch gears to fiction for so long.

I wanted to prove to her I could. So I gritted my way through an exceptionally crappy first draft and patted myself on the back by providing those updates you kept applauding on Facebook.

The novel I called Chicken Feed sucked. A few of you who offered to read it were kind enough to point that out.

I dug into its guts and pulled out a backstory that interested me more, the story of the generation before who’d been part of the early U.S. space program. Pre-NASA. Called it Star Struck.

And here I am, five years later. Fifteen drafts later.

In those five years, I saw two editions of The Florida Trail Guide to publication and two contracted guidebooks for University Press of Florida. This one’s my last! While co-authored, they remained front-burner projects and took a lot of fieldwork.

I couldn’t get back to my novel in earnest until a few weeks ago.

What I have learned about writing a novel:

There is zero correlation between being a reliable, respected, and—dare I remind myself, award winning—nonfiction author and being a competent novelist. None. None.

Knowing how to frame a narrative, set boundaries, and write to word count on a schedule doesn’t tame the slippery beast called fiction. Those tools I’ve honed might make publishers happy, but the story doesn’t give a damn.

Storytelling is an art.

I won’t get into how tough it was to learn to write dialogue after twenty-five years of nonfiction writing. That deserves its own essay. Instead, I’d like to share my struggle to find an opening sentence. It sets the tenor of the story. The timbre. The tone. It is meant to draw the reader in.

As is every other sentence after it.

If you’ve spent—as I have—forty years reading advice by successful novelists (or from those who teach “how to write fiction,” whether published or not), so many say you must, absolutely must, introduce your protagonist first. Right there. Start Of The Story.

So what happens when you have an ensemble cast?

Star Struck hinges on the tension of three World War II veterans reuniting to work towards a common goal. To do so, they must grapple with the ghosts of their pasts. Each has secrets the others are unaware of. Each has worked in tandem with one another, but never as a team before. In turn, they’re surrounded by dozens of scientific colleagues who rely on them.

Assumptions are made. Tempers flare. Egos puncture. Sympathy is offered. Each of the trio experiences growth that could have only happened by relying on each other.

Unlike most first-time novelists, I chose to construct a tangled web from a third person perspective. Sometimes close third, sometimes not.

My opening:

Expecting to meet a mermaid in the bowels of the Capitol building in Tallahassee, Senator Mark Bradley was waylaid by a chicken.

Bradley is NOT one of my three veterans. He’s a bit player on the page, a key driving force behind the scenes. A catalyst. An antagonist. The man behind the curtain whose offstage actions force my guys to jump through many, many hoops. Because we all know about pork barrel projects in Congress.

(Did someone say bacon?)

In earlier openings, I tried to frame the story to introduce one of my main characters.

If not for the tug of a beak, Bob might have tumbled through the looking-glass, so intent was his focus on the mermaid four fathoms below. (Jan 2024)

Springtime in Florida, a sensory banquet for Bob Dobbins: the fading notes of orange blossoms on the breeze, the wigwag of azalea blooms in pink and purple, the fiery bursts and soft kerplops of missiles off Cape Canaveral. (Mar 2023)

As he closed the sliding doors at Hamer Feed & Seed, Ulysses T. Hamer calculated the number of piano-playing chickens he and Lacie needed to train. (Jul 2021 / Nov 2023)

But I kept coming back to Bradley

Now in his fourth term, the Honorable Mark Bradley, U. S. Senator from Pensacola, had a christening on his calendar. (May 2022)

After four terms in office the U.S. Senator from Pensacola, Mark Bradley, had a christening on his calendar for the biggest baby he’d ever brought to Florida. (June 2022)

In the bowels of the Capitol building in Tallahassee, the Honorable Mark Bradley, U. S. Senator from Pensacola, stepped into the office of the head of the Florida Tourism Board. (Oct 2022)

All too verbose. Not succinct. And frankly, none of them as fun as the one I finally settled on last month.

It finally hit me. Who says I have to introduce my trio of main characters in the first chapter? I’m the narrator. This story is bigger than all of my POV characters. And it’s all Bradley’s fault.

Do you want to know more about the Senator, the mermaid, and the chicken?

I promise you, they did not walk into a bar. But a piano was involved.

The first sentence of a novel is the hardest sentence. Knowing where to start a story is harder than finding its ending. I “pantsed” my earliest drafts, that is, made things up by the seat of my pants. Then I went back and did the historical and scientific research to ground my story in reality. That’s when the magic happened. While that’s another topic for the future, friends who know me well know why I must get this story in print. The serendipity I’ve had with research makes me giddy.

My story arc, even now, is too long. John’s pushed the idea of a trilogy since I first mumble-mumbled my excessive word count to him. Earlier this year, inhaling Mary Robinette Kowal’s most excellent duology kicking off her Lady Astronaut series, The Calculating Stars and The Fated Sky, the idea of two books rang true.

My first volume is done. But the project isn’t. Having cleared the deck of guidebooks, I’m losing myself in my fiction again.

Experience. I’ve gained it.