Semi-Urban Cartography

Time is short to write one of these. Yesterday was my birthday but that’s not the pressure’s source. Time is short because while I see a lot of music and video, hear many video game strategies discussed in the gym locker room, scarcely any of those young people talk about novels. Two days in a row I saw the same man reading a book while his children rinsed off after swimming. The plight of the novelist’s drive was never more clear to me than right then: I am writing for him, at 40, more so than I am for his children at four and seven. Their coming of age will be in first person arenas, their bildingsroman something they download from You Tube. Bitterness doesn’t enter it. Urgency does.

I’m printing a 12-page short story today, The Beautiful Room Is Empty and I anticipate sending it out in the afternoon mail, if not today then Monday. As described before, it’s science fiction, a genre I’ve never written in before but (as previous posts point out) one that I feel has some potential should this and a few other stories work out. I’m anxious to enter this sort of exclusive group of writers who are able to make fiction, but feel that tamping myself into the literary hole right away isn’t the most adventageous. I’m no fool — literary is boutique, a publisher’s luxury. Yesterday at Guapo comics on Foster there were kids reading comic books and high adventure. There is still a lot of interest there and my hope is that The Beautiful Room toggles me a foothold there.

My novel ideas however are not science fiction. I won’t spill words describing what they are (not pertinent to this post) but it’s becoming clear that, once again, I’m working in one medium to feed another. For ten years I wrote screenplays under the delusion that getting noteriety there would translate to being a fiction writer. As I stand looking back, that logic is like saying going to church gets you your cows milked and your pigs washed for free. It simply doesn’t translate. I must mention another feeling that doesn’t quite apply: anger. Writers at 24 direct themselves the wrong ways all the time — I’m no different. They do, however, have to get themselves re-tracked or risk losing precious time. I’m 34 and have little to show for my last decade as a writer other than a lot of record reviews, a few published poems and near misses galore.

What in the world do we do now?

I still think of that interaction in the gym locker room: father, 40, reading his book and sons playing and talking about video games. Wisdom would be to find a way to grab both of their attentions: write a novel for my aging contemporaries while feeding the young on whatever those stories are. Their tales are strident, splashy, they like “Avatar” and “LOTR” the same way we liked “Star Wars” and “Flash Gordon” only now the candy is sweeter. Novelists when that 40-year old father was a baby bemoaned the television and it’s pull but he would have given it all up to advertise cigarettes if he’d seen the internet, 3-D ca. 2010 and felt how easy it is to download, watch and dispose of art today. Still there are writers. There are Kindles. No one is “giving up” per se as they are modifying expectations in light of reality.

How do we write for father and son?

In the interest of spilling too many words on an old topic, I’ll simply mention one factor: time. Dad is forty. His reading years are dwindling while his sons have the full crest and fall in front of them. Any business man would tell you to write to the younger part of the market. In 10 years, Dad will have more time (perhaps) but in 20 he’ll likely lose his eye sight right about when his sons are at the peak of their buying power. They might rifle through the antique section and get Dad some audio books but on the way to his care facility, I imagine their conversation:

“Dean Koontz?”

“Never heard of him.”

Then they’ll be back to their devices. Those boys take in 6.5 hours of digital media each day — 8.5 if you consider multi-browsing/tasking. Our youthful attention is fractured and what in the world indicates they’ll want to pick up even a 250-page novel and read it (roughly 6 static, undivided hours) when they can simply stream something that if they don’t like it, it’s deleted, art and narrative no more than wasted hard drive space.

My wife says I’m too attuned to where things are going. I look at the newspaper and wonder if its my last. I hold books and feel like an ancient. She sees it all coming but is characteristically optimistic: there will always be a niche. Just like with theater? I wonder when all of what I’ve conserved my energy to create — books, short stories, poems, plays and films — is thrown to the margins, who will be the audience? Simple question, neither negative nor doe-eyed. Who is the audience?

Next time I’m in the gym, I’m going to encourage that 40-year old man to push it an extra 10 minutes on the exercise bike. I need him sharp for a while.