Put Me In, Coach. I've Got Ironic Detachment Coming Out My Ears!

The path of the modern novelist is a lonely one.

Their personal genius is apparent to them but only to them, so they neither invite nor accept the advice of loved ones, casual reviewers, colleagues, the guy here to give an estimate on the new guttering out back, the cleaning ladies, the mailman, the garbage guys, the parish priest, the church ladies putting together a pot luck lunch for after the funeral in the church basement, the guy delivering cardboard boxes to the door, the neighbor to the left and to the right, the tax guy down the street, and the garbage guys again.

They each have an opinion, these fine people, or they would have if he let them read his copy, which is exactly why he won’t let any of them read a page.

He know how they will be!

They will say “a Norwegian fishing village as the setting, and as a stand-in for the whole glorious complicated mess of the human heart in conflict with destiny and desire? Are you kidding me?”

They will stroke their chin, consider deeply, and note, “These deep dives into the soul of human nature, it’s been done, my friend, it’s been done.”

One fellow, chewing on the stem of his pipe, objects to the occupation of your main character, the make of his car, his height, the color of his wife’s hair, the décor in their dining room, and the nicknames he has given the children.

“Bud and Jane? For God sake’s, man, give it up! Can’t you see your words are dead on the page?”

These are hard things to hear and a hard process to put yourself through, so instead, the novelist relies on her own instincts and just dives right in, punching out one page after another on the old Remington typewriter up in the attic, in the manner of a boat on the water, heretofore bobbing quietly on the surface, suddenly jamming the motors up to ramming speed.

There are problems with this approach as well, though.

Maybe those are lackluster nicknames for the kids.

Maybe the main character’s occupation, make of car, height, wife’s hair color and all the rest somehow do not add up to a convincing portrayal of reality.

They may each be perfectly fine on their own, but once placed in the same laboratory beaker with all the other telltale signals of setting and character and swirled around a bit, the end result may be either noxious or explosive or inert.

And this Norwegian fishing village thing. Perhaps worth a second thought, perhaps worth a second thought indeed.

Feedback has its benefits after all. And when all is said and done, it is these same fine people – the tax guy down the street and all the rest – whom you are dependent upon to buy your book when you have finally typed The End at the bottom of the last page, sometime in the middle third of the current century at this rate.

This is where the novelist coach comes in.

He is your own personal, dedicated trainer, similar to those gals who come to your house to tell you the calipers show that your body fat percentage exceeds the going average and nudges you towards good diet choices and portion control.

This individual, in the manner of a baseball coach – in fact, let’s call him Skipper – has  the attitude that can nudge the novelist towards a winning season.

He has seen it all, has Skipper, the sloppy character development, the references to medieval philosophers and their texts that no one has ever heard of, the flat dialogue, the insipid scene setting.

Standing behind and to the right of the novelist typing madly away he sees every word as it comes out.

He is not shy with his opinions.

“These two opening pages have got to go, rookie. No one cares these days what the color of the sky is or if some damned bird or other is tweeting in the distance. You’ve got to get to nitty gritty in the early going or you’ll lose your readers in the first innings.”

He goes on.

“It’s gonna say on the back of this baby that here is a writer that isn’t afraid to grapple with the most explosive existential issue of the day, so if you’re gonna grapple, baby, get in there and grapple!”

He illustrates this principal by acting out the movement of a wrestler, or maybe it is a boxer, moving towards the center of the ring.

“You’ve got to identify your white whale, my friend, and go after him with the only harpoons in your armory…the English language.”

On character development he is equally pointed.

“These female characters of yours, walking in and out of the rooms at the funeral home after the scion of the family, big, brawling, boozy Tom Clayton, quick with his fists and all around man of action, has brought them all together for the reading of Ma Ramsden’s last will and testament, right before he dies.”

He goes on.

“You’ve got them gazing off into the distance ‘as if startled by reality.’ You know what happened to the last writer whose characters were still gazing into the distance as if startled by reality on page 5? That’s right. He’s writing the back of breakfast cereal boxes now and glad to have the work. These women need to be fighting and scratching at each other’s faces in the first three paragraphs, son! Otherwise you’re gonna lose the folks in the cheap seats up there in the nosebleed section! ”

These are the tidbits of workaday advice that the aspiring writer can use.

This fellow might even have guidance on the best way to yank an offending page of typing paper out of the typewriter, balling it up, and tossing it into the trashcan.

“A little more fury in the balling up stage, and pay attention to your follow through when you toss it. It can make all the difference. There you go, there, that’s a lot better.”

The novelist, by nature a somewhat retiring creature, can also use the Skipper to interface with his public when necessary.

At the front of the room he stands before a bouquet of microphones and takes questions and volleys answers.

“I think he’s gonna have a good season. He showed good form when he was in the minors writing comic books, and we’re confident he’s ready for the big leagues. His ironic detachment is in good shape as far as I can tell this early in the season, and he’s got good control of the omniscient voice.”

“His arm? Oh, I think he can go the distance. He loses a little something in the middle innings where he starts to repeat himself and seems to forget the names of his characters, but we’ve been working on his endurance on the off season and I think we can get him to the big finale at the end where the protagonist finally stares down his personal demons and really dives into the whole sad state of reality.”

Or sometimes the news isn’t so good.

“Well, he’s young, there’s a lot of risks that he’s been taking that can lead to some permanent damage down the road that he’s just not aware of. I caught him breaking training and reading romance novels in his off hours, and we had to go back through the entire first third of the book and take out a lot of characters dressed in ruffled shirts that had somehow found their way in there. Me and the training staff are working with him, though, we’re working with him, and we think we can pull him out of this mid-season tailspin.”

“He’s fallen into some bad habits, overblown metaphors, big dense paragraphs on the meaning of life in the middle of perfectly fine cat fights between the main female characters, stretches of purple prose describing storm clouds and what not. There’s no point in risking his talent this early in the season. We’re gonna pull him for a few months and let him recover in the minors. There’s a league out west where all the novelists do is write the back of wine labels for wines they never taste. That ought to get this purple prose problem out of his system.”

A very valuable addition to the novelist’s bench, Skipper is.

And as to his qualifications, as to what makes him such an expert on the novel, well, not much at all, or even nothing at all, which makes him fit right in with all the other commentators.