Last night I came to one of those conclusions I never like to come to, but which are like a gate which walls off progress: if you don't go through the gate, you never get to the next level.
It is simply not possible to finish The Underground Sun on the schedule I have set for myself and make it a good book.
Trust me, this doesn't thrill me in the slightest.
I started working on this book back in 2008, put it aside to work on Tokyo Inferno, and came back to it over the course of this year to try and finish it. At each stage it changed — sometimes drastically, sometimes incrementally — and as I pushed on through the body of the ms. I tripped over and fairly broke my nose against a whole gaggle of obstacles that weren't going to be apparent to me from an outline, or even when I was part of the way through a first draft.
By the time I realized I had maybe a month left to put the book to bed before AnimeFest (which is when I've traditionally debuted new works), I had accumulated several pages of notes that flagged endless little problems with the book. Questions of logic, loopholes other readers would surely chew my ear over, and issues with the setting all leaped out at me like those stray kernels of corn that finally pop themselves and fly right into your face.
Last night, after struggling through a particularly stubborn section very near the end, I stopped and pushed my keyboard away and just looked at the list of Things To Fix I'd accumulated. The first draft wasn't even done, and I was dead certain a rewrite would take more than a few weeks. And the more I looked, the more I found things that I simply could not ignore.
This is not shaping up to be a cosmetic rewrite; this is a full-blown dismantling and reworking.
But this has to happen. If I don't take the time to do this, and do it right, I will not have a book worthy of my name.
I'm fond of the romance inherent in putting out a book a year — look, Ma, I'm "productive"! — but not when it conflicts with the larger goal of putting out well-written books. What I have right now is maybe forty to sixty percent of what it can be, and if it takes me past the end of the year to get it to the 80-90% mark, then so be it. Georges Simenon, I am not.
I've been grousing about this to myself for some time now, but it's really not all that bad. I have two — three — shows coming up that I've never sold anything at, so I'll still be able to release "new" material there. New to those respective audiences, that is. So it's not a total loss; it's just a minor jab.
To that end, I'm going to take a break from working on the book for at least the rest of July. I've got a few other things demanding my attention — real-life stuff with friends and family, a software project I've been neglecting, the Really Great Thing I Still Can't Talk About Just Yet (which could seriously affect my writing and sales activites), a stack of books I owe it to myself to read, and just a whole extended family of other goodies.
The worst part is that the damn book still isn't finished. It feels now more like a tumor to be excised than a creative product to be completed. It's not the kind of feeling I want to have about something that's been so close to my heart for so long.
Follow me on 
Friend me on 
Friend me on 
Also on 
Sorry to hear about this. Still, though, if you gotta step back and away, you have to do it. Better to step back, break things down and rebuild, if the end result will be something better, more robust. Hell, I've done that with my artwork many times.
I think I remember reading about Terry Brook's experience with his second novel (the follow-up to THE SWORD OF SHANNARA). He had pretty much nearly finished it, and yet he hit a brick wall. He struggled through it, finished it, but when he gave it to Lester Del Rey, his editor, Del Rey tore it apart.
Brooks was upset, frustrated...and yet, looking over Del Rey's comments, he realized that the man was right. He went back to the book, broke it down, re-wrote the thing, and what emerged was THE ELFSTONES OF SHANNARA. Personally, I thought that the book was fantastic, and after reading about its troubled history I appreciate it even more.
At any rate, good luck--hope everything works out!
[Reply to this comment]
I actually didn't know about the "Shannara" trivia until you described it here. I admit I'm no fan of Brooks's work; I have this allergy to Epic Fantasy Product no thanks to having way too much substandard, me-too stuff shoved under my nose by fans of the material. "Guin" was one of the very few exceptions, in big part because of the no-b.s. writing style and the sheer speed at which the story unfolded. But I have respect for someone going back, scrapping an entire piece of work and starting anew because something better would come of it.
It's left me a big disoriented, actually. I wondered whether or not the whole project was even worth completing, but I suspect that's just typical authorial self-doubt kicking in.
[Reply to this comment]
I'm not a huge Epic Fantasy fan myself, although I did play some D&D in high school and college and was also interested in the RECORD OF LODOSS WAR anime. Personally, I tend to fall more on the side of science fiction, horror, and technothrillers.
I haven't read a lot of Brook's works (pretty much stuck with Michael Moorecock, and of course, THE GUIN SAGA), but I did read his book SOMETIMES THE MAGIC WORKS (I think that is the title) where he describes how and why he writes. I was more interested in Shannara from a world-building point of view, how Brooks was writing a fantasy tale that was actually a post-apocalyptic story. The book itself was pretty good--very informative. That's where I came across his recollection about the second Shannara novel and what he had to do.
(Interesting point about Moorecock: he said that in order to write better fantasy stories, one should NOT read a lot of fantasy. Read everything else, but leave fantasy alone!)
GUIN I just had to read because I became interested in the character and the series after seeing Amano's illustrations from the novels back at his first NYC exhibit in 1997.
Any doubts about scrapping the project and starting over...well, that's just being human. And there is always the possibility that some of the material from the previous attempt can be used in the future, can be taken in another direction. It may be the road not taken, but it was not a wasted effort.
[Reply to this comment]
Moorcock's advice re: fantasy is something I could apply to almost anything that has a genre description. If you want to do something interesting with it, you have to absorb things from outside the genre -- you have to be aware of a world outside those borders. If all you do is read inside the lines, then you kind of condemn yourself to recapitulating what you've already read, instead of bringing something new to it. I think we had a discussion similar to this at my table -- you only get better by playing over your head, and that applies to any art or craft.
I actually read all of Moorcock's Elric books when I was young and then later on when I was in my thirties, and I had remarkably different reactions to them each time. The first time I was still hung up on how cool all of that would look if someone made it into a movie. The second time I saw how Moorcock was attempting to write fantasy in the SF New Wave style, something I think has largely fallen by the wayside (or at least become indistinguishable from the product that currently dominates the market).
[Reply to this comment]
I read the Elric books and the Corum novels in my mid-twenties, and was blown away by them. Still, when I lent the Corum novels (the first three) to a friend who was much more into Epic Fantasy, he really went nuts over them--he later mentioned that the books contained elements that he had never read before, and were a fresh take on material that in his view, was getting moribund.
Moorcock's "Nomad of the Time Stream" novels...I read those in my late 20's and early 30's and actually liked them a lot--not just for the steampunk elements but their political leanings.
You know, speaking of an Elric film...Wendy Pini (ELFQUEST) had worked on an animated Elric film that was never finished, but she did show the designs in one of her artbooks. Pretty impressive stuff. There has always been talk of a live-action Elric film for several years now, but so far, it's still in development hell.
[Reply to this comment]
Sorry to add some sad news...just heard that James P. Hogan, noted SF writer whose books included INHERIT THE STARS, PATHS TO OTHERWHERE, and THE TWO FACES OF TOMORROW (which Hoshino would adapt) passed away in Ireland. He was 69.
I have not read a lot of his books--only a handful (ITS, TTFOT, BUG PARK, THE LEGEND THAT WAS EARTH, PTO among them). But his works did have a huge effect on Japanese science fiction, including anime. Plus he was a close friend of Toren Smith, head of Studio Proteus...and they were instrumental in bringing out a large amount of top-quality manga back in the late 80s thru the 90s.
[Reply to this comment]
The bad news reached me just as I was typing up a recommendation for "Tomorrow" to a friend -- which made for some eerie synchronicity. I had to insert a quick addendum to that effect before I sent the email off.
I am deeply curious about what Western SF has been influential in Japan and to what end. I believe Alfred Bester has had a big impact ("The Stars My Destination" remains in print over there pretty consistently from what I can tell); you mentioned Hogan; but I do wonder who else. The folks at Kurodahan Press have several Japanese SF authors in translation who haven't received much domestic attention, and when I get a few more debts cleared out of the way (and if this Exciting New Gig doesn't wind up turning into a time-sink) I plan on snagging a few of them, as further research into how the SF door swings both ways between the English-speaking world generally and Japan.
[Reply to this comment]
What's interesting about Hoshino adapting Hogan is that some elements of 2001 NIGHTS had appeared in works by Hogan. And let's not forget that in the third ROBOTECH arc, "The New Generation" (originally MOSPEADA), Lunk, one of the main characters, is safeguarding a copy of Hogan's INHERIT THE STARS given to him by a friend who had died in combat. When I was assigned the book to read in my Freshman year in college, the first thing I said was, "Hey! That's the book Lunk had!"
Good question about Western/American SF writers and their influence in Japan. I recall seeing Philip K. Dick mentioned quite a bit, as well as Robert A. Heinlein--heck, Sunrise released a six volume OVA for STARSHIP TROOPERS back in 1988, and the director, Tetsuro Amino, dedicated it to RAH, who had passed away shortly before the first volume had come out. And the original GUNDAM series was also influenced by STARSHIP TROOPERS.
Arthur C. Clarke is another name, and also William Gibson could be counted as another US/Western writer who has had a huge impact in Japan. And even though he's classed as a horror writer, one can see H.P. Lovecraft's work having an impact. I did read a collection of Japanese horror stories clearly influenced by Lovecraft and his Cthulhu mythos tales. Another place where Lovecraft's influence appears is, er, in various adult anime. I guess one can count H.G. Wells, since I also remember seeing a Japanese edition of WAR OF THE WORLDS.
As for vice versa...well, with the increasing flow of translated Japanese SF/Fantasy over here, perhaps in a few years, we might see American SF/Fantasy/Horror writers namedrop a few Japanese writers in terms of influence.
(A side note: it would have been very interesting to wonder what would have happened if Asimov and Tezuka had met face to face. Both of them revolutionized science fiction involving robots, and Asimov discussed Tezuka's work at length in one of his non-fiction books about robots--sadly, the title eludes me right now.)
[Reply to this comment]
Leave a comment