06May

It Always Seems Impossible Until It’s Done

• Saved in: Book Promotion, Chris Orcutt Books, Computers & Software, Craft, Fiction Writing, Novels, Personal Essay, Process, Rewriting, Writing Experiences, Writing Life, Writing Tools
• by Chris Orcutt
• with Comments Off on It Always Seems Impossible Until It’s Done

Greet­ings, Dear Read­er. I’m dic­tat­ing this blog entry while walk­ing on my tread­mill, so please excuse me if I ram­ble or my “smart” phone sub­sti­tutes incor­rect homo­phones (e.g., “there, their, they’re”). As you’ll soon read, I have a lot going on and need to mul­ti­task.

I think it’s been over a year since I last wrote on my blog, and I’ve done so much work dur­ing this peri­od that I can’t enu­mer­ate every­thing I’ve done. Here are the broad strokes:

I fin­ished the fourth draft of all nine episodes of my teen epic or episod­ic nov­el Boda­cious­ly True & Total­ly Awe­some (it’s one gigan­tic nov­el of 1.2 mil­lion words split into nine parts); I reread and made the final revi­sions to Episode I: Bad Boy; I cre­at­ed and con­tin­u­al­ly updat­ed a detailed spread­sheet with check­lists of all of the tasks to be accom­plished for each book; with my wife and Muse’s help, I launched a crowd­fund­ing cam­paign to raise mon­ey for the pro­mo­tion and pub­li­ca­tion of the books; I hired and gave cre­ative direc­tion to a phe­nom­e­nal graph­ic design­er, who has cre­at­ed all nine eBook cov­ers and will be cre­at­ing the cov­ers for the hard­cov­er books and the trade paper­backs as I com­plete the type­set­ting of each one; in the past 5 weeks, I taught myself Adobe InDe­sign (with some large­ly use­less “help” from AI), cre­at­ed a book tem­plate for all nine books, and type­set the first episode (which is look­ing frig­gin’ mon­ey by the way); con­tact­ed mul­ti­ple pub­lic­i­ty, mar­ket­ing, and oth­er book pro­mo­tion and sales pro­fes­sion­als, one of whom ghost­ed me and anoth­er who proved to be a moun­te­bank sell­ing a one-size-fits-all mar­ket­ing for­mu­la that I dis­cov­ered is not a secret at all but rather a very com­mon mar­ket­ing con­cept that any­one can glean from the inter­net; and I’ve done all of the above, and much, much more on an aver­age of 6 hours of sleep a night, work­ing 12 hours a day, work­ing out in the gym much less fre­quent­ly than I’m used to and com­fort­able with, stress eat­ing at a lev­el I nev­er knew I was capa­ble of, and not tak­ing a real vaca­tion in three or four years.

I don’t mean for there to be vio­lins play­ing in the back­ground while I tell you all of this; my aim is not to get pity from read­ers and future read­ers of Boda­cious­ly; I sim­ply want to com­mu­ni­cate just how inde­scrib­ably hard writ­ing and putting these nine books togeth­er has been. All of my oth­er books have been like Wikipedia entries com­pared to this 9‑book episod­ic nov­el. I real­ize now that every­thing I’ve writ­ten before this has mere­ly been train­ing for this one—the big one.

Let’s take type­set­ting or lay­out of the book in InDe­sign for exam­ple. Before I start­ed the lay­out process, I read books on book design, typog­ra­phy, fonts, and a primer on basic prin­ci­ples of graph­ic design. Then, I had to teach myself the pro­gram, rely­ing only on LinkedIn Learn­ing videos which tend to be very good, or YouTube videos, many of which are pro­duced by self-pur­port­ed experts in these fields, and I’m here to tell you that the ones who are good at this, that is the ones who are not just good with the appli­ca­tions but are also good teach­ers, are rare.

I spent hours upon hours seek­ing out straight­for­ward answers on how to do cer­tain basic things in page lay­out using the pro­gram, and what I dis­cov­ered is that if there are straight­for­ward answers, for the most part the peo­ple in the know don’t want to share their knowledge—even if you offer to pay them for it. I couldn’t even find resources on the Adobe web­site instruct­ing me on how to do some of these lay­out func­tions, which brings up an entire­ly dif­fer­ent top­ic, which is how the cre­ators of com­put­er appli­ca­tions have uni­ver­sal­ly absolved them­selves of teach­ing peo­ple how to use their prod­ucts by slough­ing them off to the soft­ware product’s “com­mu­ni­ty” and hav­ing them give unclear and self-aggran­diz­ing answers, mere­ly to show off their mas­tery of this ulti­mate­ly recon­dite and mean­ing­less lit­tle fief­dom that is Adobe InDe­sign or any oth­er com­put­er appli­ca­tion.

This all reminds me of a brief peri­od some 20 years ago when I tried to par­tic­i­pate in a “writer’s forum”—think of it as a pre-Red­dit online com­mu­ni­ty where would-be writ­ers got togeth­er osten­si­bly to share their knowl­edge. What I dis­cov­ered back then (and was remind­ed of recent­ly) was this: while there are a few very knowl­edge­able peo­ple on these forums, for the most part the forums are con­trolled by peo­ple who just like being the expert—the lords of their lit­tle fief­doms, the big fish in their own lit­tle ponds. Most of these peo­ple aren’t actu­al­ly writ­ing books or at least books worth a damn, and I know they aren’t because if they were, they wouldn’t have the time to be seem­ing­ly ubiq­ui­tous on these forums, vocif­er­ous­ly argu­ing the mer­its of InDe­sign vs. Quark Xpress, and whether to write on their Mac­Book or Freewrite Trav­el­er “smart type­writer” when they’re writing/making per­for­mance art in their local Star­bucks.

They remind me of a favorite quote by Ernest Hem­ing­way: “Back when I was learn­ing to write, the big debate was on the spelling of altogether—should it be ‘alto­geth­er’ or ‘all togeth­er,’ one word or two? How’d that turn out any­way?”

God, how I love that quote.

Here’s the deal: I’m a guy who grew up with com­put­ers, at a time when com­put­ers were tools, and the func­tion of a soft­ware application—they were called busi­ness pro­duc­tiv­i­ty appli­ca­tions, like word pro­cess­ing, data­bas­es, and spreadsheets—was to get a job done. In oth­er words, just frig­gin’ work, bitch. What I’ve learned, not just in the five weeks I’ve been work­ing with Adobe InDe­sign, but also in the 30-plus years that I have been a user of Microsoft Word, is that increas­ing­ly soft­ware com­pa­nies are becom­ing like casi­nos; they just want to keep you at the table; because the longer you’re in their casino—this case their online uni­verse, the greater their application’s legit­i­ma­cy, and the greater con­trol they main­tain over the prod­uct. I don’t want to get too much into this, but the bot­tom line is, for a guy like me—a writer who spends a decade writ­ing a book first on type­writ­ers and then in a word pro­cess­ing program—I’m not inter­est­ed in the minu­ti­ae; I don’t get my jol­lies from know­ing the arcane nomen­cla­ture, syn­tax, func­tion­al­i­ty, key­board short­cuts; I just want to get the thing done and done right.

These com­pa­nies have made these prod­ucts so insane­ly com­pli­cat­ed when they real­ly don’t need to be, that I pre­dict with­in 5 years AI is going to be doing 90% of all book lay­out func­tions. As I’ve often said to my best friend Jason Scott, who enticed me out of my writ­ing cocoon about a year ago to intro­duce me to AI graph­ics and music, and even­tu­al­ly AI like Chat­G­PT and Claude, the day that these com­pa­nies come out with a rea­son­ably priced AI/robot assis­tant (about the cost of an ear­ly Mac­in­tosh, let’s say, which was about $2,500 in 1984)—I will be among the first peo­ple in line for such a prod­uct.

I would love to have my very own assis­tant who would not write any­thing for me, or edit any­thing for me, but to which I could give my fin­ished man­u­script and have it proof­read the entire thing, give me a report on mis­takes in spelling or punc­tu­a­tion, and not fix them for me but inform me of where they are in the text so I can do it. I would also like this robot / AI assis­tant to han­dle a num­ber of the mad­den­ing aspects of pro­duc­ing books like, as I am dis­cov­er­ing, type­set­ting and lay­out.

I would love to be able to give my robot / AI assis­tant the com­plete­ly fin­ished man­u­script and just say to it, “All right, Jeeves (how I address Chat­G­PT, as an homage to the Wode­house nov­els and the long defunct search engine), here’s my fin­ished book. It’s going to be in a 6 by 9 trim size, I want it to have three-quar­ter-inch mar­gins all around, it will have foot­notes and run­ning head­ers that alter­nate between my name and the title of the series, and my name and the title of the episode, and I want the copy­right page to say such and such, and here are the ISBN num­bers, and here is the text for the about the author page at the back, and just go frig­gin’ type­set the book so that it’s moth­erf-cking per­fect. I want you to do all of the cal­cu­la­tions about hyphen­ation, jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, word spac­ing, track­ing, glyphs, all of that mad­den­ing crap; I don’t want to know how you do it, I don’t want to have to learn how to write GREP expres­sions; I just want you to churn and burn, Jeeves, and take my fin­ished man­u­script of gor­geous prose and turn it into a beau­ti­ful, emi­nent­ly read­able book.”

Sigh. Alas, maybe some­day.

In the mean­time, I’ve had to learn all of this stuff myself, and while I have enjoyed the chal­lenge of it, in that it’s like learn­ing a new language—something for which I’ve dis­cov­ered I have a nat­ur­al aptitude—it’s been incred­i­bly frus­trat­ing to have to fer­ret out the answers of how to do basic things in Adobe InDe­sign, rely­ing on a lot of mediocre videos by so-called experts, and hav­ing to ask ques­tions of Chat­G­PT because ask­ing those same ques­tions in a Google search prompt gives you lit­er­al­ly a google of irrel­e­vant and use­less answers. But I’ve dis­cov­ered that with Chat­G­PT and oth­er AI sys­tems, they’re wrong more than they’re right.

For exam­ple, I would ask one of these sys­tems to give me a step-by-step process for trans­fer­ring styles between InDe­sign doc­u­ments, and time and again, even though I asked very pre­cise, very clear ques­tions (I stud­ied phi­los­o­phy in col­lege, where clar­i­ty in writ­ing is para­mount), it would often send me down the incor­rect path, forc­ing me to dou­ble-back and change every­thing to the cor­rect way of doing it. I don’t want to bore you with every detail of every exam­ple of every prob­lem that I encoun­tered; all I want to say is this: any­body who thinks AI is going to take over the world any­time soon is a 100% unmit­i­gat­ed moron. (These are prob­a­bly the same peo­ple char­ac­ter­ized in this bon mot by my friend Jason: “Stephen Fry is a dumb person’s idea of a smart per­son.”) The only way I can see AI tak­ing over is if there aren’t ade­quate gov­ern­ing con­trols put in place to pre­vent a high-IQ tod­dler from wreck­ing the inter­net.

(By the way, to any would-be snarky troll/hater/jealous wannabe writer out there who attempts to insin­u­ate that a sin­gle word of Boda­cious­ly was writ­ten by AI, I have three things to say. 1. I wrote 95 per­cent of this book before AI was pub­licly avail­able or even viable. 2. If you libel me in any way, I will sue you so hard, your great-grand­chil­dren will have to sell their hair in order to eat.  3. AI could­n’t do what I’ve done; Boda­cious­ly’s 1.2‑million words would moth­erf-cking BREAK AI.)

I appre­ci­ate your bear­ing with me as I unload myself of these frus­tra­tions that have been weigh­ing on me for the past year. I guess what I’m try­ing to say is this: I love writing—creating drafts, revis­ing them at my draw­ing board, proof­ing them, con­sult­ing the­sauri, dic­tio­nar­ies, visu­al dic­tio­nar­ies, copy editor’s hand­books, Fowler’s Usage, The Chica­go Man­u­al of Style, and oth­er ref­er­ence works, just doing every­thing to get the words right—that is what I love. What I don’t love are all of these things that have noth­ing to do with get­ting the words right, like try­ing to con­dense your 1.2 mil­lion word, 9‑episode epic nov­el into 150 words so it fits on the back inside jack­et of a hard­cov­er or the back cov­er of a trade paper­back, or hav­ing to parse mar­ket­ing gob­bledy­gook from anoth­er mar­ket­ing moun­te­bank, or lis­ten­ing to hyped-up bull­crap from a pub­lic­i­ty per­son who talks a big game but then doesn’t have the decen­cy to get back to you with a quote.

As I dic­tate this blog entry while walk­ing on my tread­mill, I real­ize that I’m going to have to let this oth­er stuff go and just focus on the words, and mak­ing these nine books the absolute best I can make them. Years ago, when Leonar­do DiCaprio was com­ing out with his labor of love movie The Revenant, the morn­ing after its release I was read­ing the news­pa­per in the Mill­brook Din­er and came upon a quote by DiCaprio about the movie. I’ve since been unable to find the exact quote, but it made such an impres­sion on me that I wrote it down in one of my note­books. He said, “All you can do is pro­duce the best work you can. All the rest of it [awards, sales, etc.] is out of your con­trol.”

Late­ly, I haven’t been sleep­ing very well because of wor­ries about all of the aspects of book pro­duc­tion; the fact that I have eight more episodes to fin­ish after this one; the fact that I need to send out advance read­ing copies (ARCs) to review­ers this sum­mer; the fact that as a result of my Oper­a­tion Boda­cious Best­seller fundrais­ing cam­paign I have received tens of thou­sands of dol­lars from peo­ple who believe in me and whom I do not want to let down; and the myr­i­ad oth­er details that go hand in hand with being a mav­er­ick, an auteur with incred­i­bly high stan­dards. It’s a lot.

And I’m not ashamed to admit, that I haven’t done it by myself; call it God, the Uni­verse, Spir­it, the Force, or Bob’s Big Boy, but I’ve prayed every morn­ing for the past 10 years, espe­cial­ly in the past 2 years, for answers on how to do such and such relat­ed to the book, and whether or not you believe in Bob’s Big Boy or the Force or God, or whether or not any of these enti­ties exist, when I’ve asked, the answers have come.

I’m not try­ing to pros­e­ly­tize any­one here; I’m mere­ly point­ing out that I have not done this by myself; indeed, had I had to do it all myself, I would have kept drink­ing and not got­ten sober as I did sev­en years ago.

So, what’s next? Well, the pho­to shoot for my author pho­to is in two weeks. I need to find a cred­i­ble, accom­plished pub­lic­i­ty firm, a dig­i­tal mar­keter, a book­er, and a social media per­son and get them lined up. (If you are such a pro­fes­sion­al, and not anoth­er fast-talk­ing flim­flam man, please Con­tact Me.) I need to final­ize Episode I and send it to the print­ers to pro­duce ARCs to get advance reviews. I need to send my back­ers a report. So … I can’t back out now. There have been some morn­ings when I’ve want­ed to throw the entire book into a 50-gal­lon drum and burn it. There have been oth­er morn­ings when I’ve thought that I want to sim­ply fin­ish it, put it in a foot­lock­er, lock it up, and leave it for my heirs to pub­lish and deal with (these have tra­di­tion­al­ly been referred to as “trunk writ­ers”).

But … for­tu­nate­ly there have been more morn­ings when I’ve wok­en up and felt I was on a mis­sion, a mis­sion to bring my gen­er­a­tion (idi­ot­i­cal­ly dubbed “Gen­er­a­tion X” from this obscure book on the class sys­tem in Amer­i­ca), an authen­tic, detailed, fear­less sto­ry about what it was to be a sub­ur­ban teen in the 1980s, fill­ing the pages with the music, the fash­ion, the lin­go, the TV, the movies, and the cul­tur­al and his­tor­i­cal events so that that time that we all expe­ri­enced is not for­got­ten. I gen­uine­ly believe it was the best time in the his­to­ry of Amer­i­ca to be a teenag­er. What’s more is, while the books were nev­er going to be as great and as pitch per­fect as my ini­tial vision was for them, they’re pret­ty damn close. They’re fun, dra­mat­ic, adven­tur­ous, spicy, fac­tu­al­ly cor­rect, emo­tion­al­ly true, and no holds barred—in the areas of sex­u­al awak­en­ing, fam­i­ly dynam­ics, and teen roman­tic rela­tion­ships.

I’d like read­ers to know up front here, and by read­ers I’m also refer­ring to poten­tial review­ers of Boda­cious­ly, that because this is one giant nov­el split into nine parts, they need to reserve full judg­ment of Boda­cious­ly for when the 9th install­ment is pub­lished in Novem­ber of 2027. The point is, that there are a lot of long, long, long on-ramps—with char­ac­ters, with sit­u­a­tions, with plot points, with fore­shad­owed elements—things that do not get resolved imme­di­ate­ly, and instead car­ry into lat­er episodes before they’re resolved. What I’m attempt­ing here has not been done since Proust’s Remem­brance of Things Past; although, hav­ing read some of Remem­brance I can say that Boda­cious­ly is pro­found­ly more read­able and enter­tain­ing.

(By the way, my wife calls Boda­cious­ly … Remem­brance of Things Past meets Fer­ris Bueller’s Day Off. I call Boda­cious­ly what you get when you put War and Peace, The Odyssey, and Fast Times at Ridge­mont High into a super­col­lid­er and smash them togeth­er.)

It’s almost May 20, which puts me 8 months away from pub­li­ca­tion of Episode I. Let me tell you, hav­ing been through these self-imposed dead­lines before (I actu­al­ly have a count­down clock that I reset each time I fin­ish an aspect of the project), those months are going to fly by.

Over the past decade, most of the time I’ve felt insane to even be try­ing to do this. It has felt utter­ly impossible—so much so that three or four years ago I wrote a quote on my white­board in my office, a quote by Nel­son Man­dela:

“It always seems impos­si­ble until it’s done.”

I can­not tell you how much I’m look­ing for­ward to Decem­ber 2027 when Boda­cious­ly is done, and I can read Mandela’s quote and know that I did it—I saw it through to the end and accom­plished the impos­si­ble.

 

*   *   *

 

Post­script:

A cryp­tic Post-It note on my com­put­er reads, “H.W.R.M.D.T.?” It’s an acronym for “How Would Rein­hold Mess­ner Do This?” In 1980, Rein­hold Mess­ner was the first man to climb Mount Ever­est solo and with­out using bot­tled oxy­gen. Any­time I get stuck or frus­trat­ed with the book, I look at that Post-It note and ask myself that ques­tion, and the answer that invari­ably comes back to me is that what­ev­er prob­lem he faced, he’d look at it as a chal­lenge, and he’d meet the chal­lenge with joy and enthu­si­asm.

Tagged: 1980s, Adobe InDesign, AI, Bodaciously True and Totally Awesome, book layout, ChatGPT, Chris Orcutt, Claude, epic novel, episodic novel, Hemingway, Nelson Mandela, novel writing, novel writing process, novelist, Orcutt, process, teen epic, teen life, teen romance, teens, typesetting, typewriters, writers, writing life, writing process, writing software, writing tools

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