Chapter 19 is posted.

You can read it here.

I had a blast writing this one.

On Dead Poets Society and writing Chapter 18

My relationship to Dead Poets Society is exactly what I attributed to Joe. I never cared for the movie. But I get restless late at night, and end up watching a lot of HBO, even when I'm trying to work on this project.

Dead Poets Society happened to be airing. It was probably ten years since I'd seen it. What struck me right away is that the Robert Sean Leonard seemed very plausibly gay, for all of the reasons that I put in the story. By the end, it seemed blazingly obviously, and the only coherent explanation for the movie.

It also hit me that this seemed like a movie that a person like Chris Riis would love. Chapter 18 was extremely difficult to construct. There were plenty of scenes that I'd been working through my head for at least a year -- Matt's embarrassing speech performance, Joe's walking away, the ensuing fallout, the farewell e-mail and Joe's reaction. The party with Kevin Berger: that actually was going to be its own chapter. At various points, I thought about constructing it like The Hangover, and for most the planning, I thought that Joe and Kevin would hook up. But that no longer seemed consistent with the characters' motivations, and you might have noticed that this story is a little protracted, so another long party sequence at this point in the story probably wouldn't have been a good use of our resources.

But for having mapped all of this out, writing it in a way that built tension, and where the characters' emotional peaks and valleys felt credible, was very, very difficult. I found myself omitting information and buildup because it was unwittingly taking the characters too far. As articulate as Joe and Matt are, they're not going to be at ease in confronting and talking about their emotions for each other. Trying to pull that off: extremely difficult.

I'd had in mind that I was going to alternate passages about The Divine Comedy with Joe's narrative, and then Dead Poets Society clicked. Poetry became the chapter's unifying thread. When I finally had a finished draft, I was watching James Franco's Howl, and threw in an Allen Ginsberg line. Did anyone catch it? Then it hit me: What I should have done is bury all kinds of lines by gay poets -- Michelangelo, Whitman, Frank O'Hara, Ginsberg, Auden -- throughout the chapter. If I weren't writing this in a serial format, I could have moved on to the next chapter, and over the course of months, tracked down and inserted suitable lines. Having waited so long to post a new chapter, though, a plan like that seemed self-indulgent.

I've floated my Dead Poets Society observation to a couple of friends (both gay) who immediately dismissed it. I'm going to guess that's only because they haven't watched it as adults. Here's a wonderful write-up on the theory, which goes beyond the movie to touch on how we're haunted and affected by the formative movies of our adolescence. I didn't grow up with that kind of connection to the movie, but I have something like it now.

Chapter 18 is posted.

You can read it here.

I'll come back in a week or two with a little post-game analysis about writing it.

Note: The comments to this post have spoilers -- not quite in the way that "Lost" was vulnerable to spoilers, but they'll give away what happens. Proceed at your own risk.

The weirdness of writing

It's been a couple of months since the last chapter, so I thought that it was time to update. Originally I thought that Chapter 18 was going to write itself, because I knew exactly what was going to happen. It would be a matter of carving out time to write. That was it.

Number one, the holidays intervened, and January has been socially eventful, so I haven't had much time.

Second, and more importantly, by posting as I go, I don't leave myself room for error. Once I post a section, I'm stuck with it. If someone acts out of character, or a moment doesn't live up to my expectations, I can't go back and fix it. There are continuity issues. I was writing at a good clip, and then when I re-read the chapter halfway drafted, it just wasn't working. When I re-read it this past weekend, I liked it. How do I know when something is done? Instinct, I guess. Deciding is hard.

Third, even though this is an anonymous story and I don't get any kid of compensation or ego gratification from it, I like the puzzle and the challenge of building it. I think I'm in love with my characters. There are times (not often) when I dream about them. It's enough that I don't want to force a scene just to finish a chapter. Sometimes, I need to let these guys have breathing room, and let their actions sink in.

The next month is going to be busy for me. I know the story that I want to tell in Chapter 18, but I'm not totally sure of how to tell it. I'll figure it out, but it takes time.

When will it come out? It could be 96 hours. It could be March; that's probably a better estimate, but I can't predict. I almost never know.

The comments and e-mails occasionally remind me to buckle down, but I'm learning to write as I do this, and one thing I'm learning is that I can't rush the finished product. Meanwhile, thanks for your patience. I know that I have readers, and I don't take that for granted.

Chapter 17 is posted.

You can read it here.

Happy Thanksgiving, peeps.

Historical gayness

Yes, I'm still working on the story, and yeah, I know it's been awhile, and yes, I know that Chapter 16 left some of you especially eager to see what happens next, and yes, in the back of my head, I suspect a few of you will feel let down. (I mean, Joe is still aloof, detached, weird Joe.) No, I'm not sure when the new chapter will come out. Sometimes these things write themselves; sometimes it takes awhile for the ideas to come together.

While we wait, here are a couple of interesting things to look at.

One is a pretty fascinating Tumblr blog that shows vintage-gay candid snapshots, generally G-rated (PG-13 at worst) with the subjects in unguarded moments of everyday life. Stuff like this:


The cumulative effect is moving, odd, surprisingly comforting -- it's worth a few minutes of browsing.

On a separate note in gay history: I knew that some scholars have argued that Abraham Lincoln is gay. But it turns out that Lincoln was really, really gay. And wait until you read about James Buchanan!

Awfulness

This is about as fucking terrible as anything I could imagine.

This, on the other hand, is amazing.

Tragedy.

Farce.

The two stories elide with each other, but I don't feel like bloviating about them at the moment.

All is calm, all is bright.

To start with, I haven't really read or thought about my story much since late July, except when I did a quick skim of Chapter 16 before it posted in mid-August.

When the writing goes at full steam, it's approximately as easy as turning on the TV or reading a moderately interesting book. It's more absorbing and a little more exhausting afterward, but I don't force myself. It's nothing like work. It just flows.

The last couple of months I've been preoccupied with work and social life and other interests. My mind's been elsewhere. This has happened before -- I once had a nine-month gap between chapters before the switch flipped -- but I think the audience interest now is significantly more intense than it was then.

So, that's where we stand. I've thought through a few scenes for Chapter 17, and for all I know, I'll sit down this weekend and hammer out 7,000 words. Or it may be a month or two. Or shorter, or longer. I never know! You're waiting on me; I'm waiting on my schedule and my muse. We'll get back on the same page sooner or later.

Meanwhile, I've been working my way through the raft of e-mails I've gotten since Chapter 16 posted. If you were nice enough to write, I'll reply to you eventually, but I always write individually, and some of the e-mails can be fairly detailed. Believe me, your notes are hugely appreciated. I used to think of the e-mails as a tip jar; now I think of them more like a salary. On occasion, they've influenced what I write or how I write it. (Don't submit any requests or demands, though. That's just obnoxious.) So, thanks for your thoughts and encouragements: the messages have been read more than once and appreciated, even if you haven't heard back from me yet.

Anyway, if you're bored while we're waiting this project to get back in gear, you could maybe skim Brideshead Revisited. That probably sounds apropos of nothing, but I came across it right around when I started "Joe College." It changed my story into something more ambitious than the original plan. The storyline of "Joe College" won't track Brideshead, but the tone and pace of it had a big impact on me.

Not that I think I'm Evelyn Waugh, or shit. Just consider it a good read. Or not! I just want to promote literacy, okay?

Q & A

Someone left the following question in the comments to my previous post:

Another question - feel free not to answer it - but how many chapters do you plan to write? While I'll obviously be devastated if it ends, it'd be interesting to know where Joe and co. are placed in the entire scheme of the story.

I've been meaning to mention something about that. My best guess is that we're at about the halfway point. Whether that means 40 percent finished or 60 percent finished, I can't say for sure. I tend to lean more toward the lower number.

From about the fifth chapter I've had a strong idea for how the story plays out and what happens to everybody, but as I write, I come up with new characters and situations, so it continues to draw out. And while I don't expect anything to come along to change my thinking about the overall plot, I can't say for sure. My understanding of the characters and their relationships changes as I write.

It also might be helpful to state that this story doesn't end at graduation. That's not a spoiler. If this were a book you could pick up around the corner, that would be clear on the jacket description. It seemed fair to mention it now, because I don't want anyone to have the impression that if certain plot lines seem like they're in full force as graduation approaches, we're suddenly going to reach the conclusion. It's going to play out in due course.

All that being said -- who knows? Initially, I would have guessed that the story would run about 20 chapters. Maybe this will be 500 chapters long and I'll be writing it into my eighties. I obviously don't expect that to happen, but this format gives me a lot of freedom. Thanks for indulging me.

Chapter 16 is posted.

You can read it here.

I hope it's as fun and interesting to read as it was to write.