“Those who can’t, teach.” John Marks is one of those who can’t. Or at least that’s what he thinks…

Piano teacher to prepubescent video game addicts…driver of a jalopy that might once upon a time have been a Honda (though no one knows for sure)…prematurely balding…divorced: hardly the life of sophistication and beauty John Marks envisioned when he embarked on a music career. He’s no catch, yet he catches the starry eye of Laura Lovelace, a music student at his old university who initiates their relationship by making fun of his name (which has something to do with a famous nudist and an American president) and disagreeing with his favorite maxim. Though he swore off singers after his ex, John’s nosey pastor’s wife urges him to step into the dubious role of mentor to Laura. Which, apparently, involves playing sheriff (literally, in costume, complete with fake guns) at the parties of substance-abusing music students–but with the bonus of securing his place as Laura’s knight in shining armor–until she discovers that his heart is protected by an entirely different sort of armor, which hid the identity of his ex. Leaving him with yet another ex–and more broken career dreams–unless he can learn to accept himself (receding hairline, rattletrap car, and all).

Ever wanted to read what I spend all that time holed up in my home office writing?  (Ever wondered if I really write anything at all?)  Now you can, because I’ve published the first 16 chapters of my novel, Songs for Piano and Voice, at Authonomy. I’m hopeful this site will help me get published or find an agent, but at the very least I expect I’ll get some helpful feedback. Which is where you guys come in.

Authonomy was set up by the HarperCollins publishing company to help emerging writers get noticed. The way to get noticed is to appear on the bookshelves and watch lists of members, and, of course, to get lots of comments. Each month, an editorial board from the publisher selects the top five rated books to be professionally reviewed. Not only is this a source of invaluable feedback, but it has even led to publishing deals.

You have to register at the site in order to comment on books posted there, but if you could spare a moment to do that (it’s a simple matter of registering your email address and creating a password and screenname) and leave a review saying you loved it, hated it, or have an idea that would make it better, I would be extremely grateful.  And if you’re an avid reader who enjoys promoting the work of aspiring authors, take a nose around the site and read and comment on other books.

Above all, I’m delighted to give this sneak peek of my work.  I hope you enjoy!

Since it took me 80,000 words to have my star-crossed lovers meet, fall in love, and break up, I was figuring on it to take me anywhere from 40,000-80,000 more words to put them back together again.  (I called the king to ask for all his horses and all his men, but they were busy with this egg chap…)

However, now that I’m a few chapters into the getting-back-together phase of the story, my characters are quickly showing me that they dislike being apart every bit as much as I dislike writing them apart.  (Actually, I enjoy writing lovers’ quarrels, it’s just that it’s a lot easier to write flirtation.  But if writing novels was easy, more people would do it, and it wouldn’t be a job, would it?)   My characters still have lots of issues to work through and even more pain to deal with, but they surprised me today by doing things that indicate they want to get back together sooner rather than later.

Now, I understand that as Author, I wield phenomenal cosmic power over the characters I make up.  In the life of a fictional character, there is no concept of free will.  Yet as you write characters, a strange thing happens.  You’re not simply making up everything about them and everything they do.  They take on lives of their own.  It’s almost as if the act of writing is like chiseling away at a block of stone in which a human form already resides.  You’re not making so much as finding — finding out enough about these characters that you know what direction their stories should take even if it deviates from your original plan.

That’s why, even though I swear by planning what you’re going to write before you write it, I also swear that you have to be flexible to be a writer.   Where you might have planned for a character to retain the emotional control and distance of a Vulcan until the very end, she might tell you instead that she needs to be vulnerable.  After all, even though your characters aren’t real people, you want your characters to be like real people.  And real people aren’t (usually) Vulcans.  (Unless you’re writing, you know, Star Trek novels.  Which I’m not.  Although I am, clearly, a geek for making the reference at all.)  Real people are vulnerable.  And said character is going through a situation that would definitely leave a real person vulnerable and lowering her emotional guards.  So I think the new direction I took today was, though completely unexpected, the right one.

Speaking of real people and characters…

I don’t know if this is a common problem, but I’m never able to picture clear faces or features of characters when I’m writing or reading.   They’re just faceless blurs to me.  Yet whenever I see a film adaptation of a book I’ve read, I know whether the actor in a particular role fills in the (enormous) gaps in my imagination.  For instance, when Eric Bana was cast as Henry in the upcoming movie The Time Traveler’s Wife, I said a resounding oh yes. On the flip side, any number of actors in the Harry Potter movies make me scratch my head ask whether the casting directors read the same books as I did. (One of my many complaints about the Harry Potter film franchise, though that’s an entire blog post in itself…)

None of which is to say that I sit around thinking about who I’d like to play my leading characters if I not only get lucky enough to see my book in print, but also to have it adapted into a movie.  (Well, not very often, anyway…)  For one thing, it’s hard to cast characters who you can’t even picture yourself.  (I’ve had vague characteristics in mind for the leading lady, Laura — tall, naturally curly dark hair which she sometimes straightens, dark eyes, wide grin, toothpaste commercial teeth — but since the leading man, John, is the point of view character, I’ve managed to get by without describing him except as having thinning light brown hair.)  For another, I don’t want to base my characters off actors, lest parts of actors bleed into my characterization.  Unless, of course, that’s what I’m going for.  In this case, it’s not.

Recently I came across some reference or other to Anne Hathaway.  I hadn’t even really thought about Songs for Piano and Voiceyet that day, but immediately my thoughts went to it because it suddenly hit me that she looked exactly like the Laura I didn’t quite see in my head.  (Also, as I recalled a recent episode of SNL, she can sing, quite well, so if my book ever does become a movie…) Even more jaw-dropping was when I clicked on Anne’s IMDB profile and saw a still from one of her recent films featuring her in the arms of an actor who looked exactly like I hadn’t clearly imagined John.  (Patrick Wilson, if you’ve seen Watchmen, The Phantom of the Opera, or The Alamo.  Who also happens to be musical…Hmm…)  And again, it’s not like I need actors as reference points for my descriptions or characterizations.  I just think it’s kind of nice, after a year’s work on this book, to see more than blurs when I’m crafting scenes for John and Laura.  So now you can see them, too.

It’s strange to me how you can recognize someone you didn’t even know to look for — how the brain can supply you with only the vaguest of mental images, and yet you can feel very strongly about whether a depiction of someone or something is spot on or not.  I wonder if it’s at all connected to how you can forget the face of someone you know extremely well if you haven’t seen them in a while (sometimes a very little while, some people have told me).

Imagine that last April, almost exactly a year ago from today, you began your current novel project, Songs for Piano and Voice.  A departure from your first novel, it’s a contemporary romantic dramedy about a pianist and a singer who just can’t quite get their relationship in tempo thanks to an ex, a nosy pastor’s wife, a smothering older sister, a drug addict, and romantic rivals.  It’s set at a fictional Methodist church in Waco, Texas, and in the very real Baylor University School of Music, where you yourself spent a semester studying vocal performance — though the story’s not based on personal acquaintances or experiences.  Much.   (Though who knows?   Maybe if you hadn’t changed your major to English literature, it would be autobiographical.  Ah, the endless drama of musicians!)

In a year, you’ve written sixteen chapters, totaling upwards of 80,000 words.  You’re either two-thirds or half of the way finished with your first draft.  You’re not really sure which.  All you know is that you’ve finished the first of two “movements” and at this point  have no way of gauging how long the second will be.  You know the end of the novel — the end was actually the starting point of the whole thing — and you know the major plot points between the first movement and the end.  But only the actual writing will tell just how long it will take to get from here to there. Or how to get from here to there.  Which scares you a little, because writing blind is the surest way to write yourself into a corner, though you did manage to avoid that with the first 80,000 words, which you also wrote blindly till you got to the end.

80,000 words sounds like a lot to a non-writer.  Or even to a writer.  Until you break it down into the number of days you work per year and get something like an average of 450 words per day.  And then you think about the other writers you know, who have written entire 100,000 word novels in 100 days, and then you start to wonder what the heck you’re doing wrong.  (Or maybe they’re doing something wrong?)  So it’s best not to think about other writers or break it down into numbers and averages, and instead just revel in the fact that this year you’ve written 80,000 words that a couple of other writer friends really like, and, even more importantly, that you like (or at least don’t think are utter crap), and oh thank God that terrible eighteen month dry spell that followed your first novel is long gone!

For now, you can spend seven nights and eight days at Walt Disney World, and worry about increasing your average daily word count when you get back.