Last Friday at 11:00 PM I emailed the finished manuscript of my book to my agent and editor. At this point, it is hard to know how long it has taken to refine this book from the first gleam of an idea to completion. But it has been almost three years since I finished my last book and started to develop this idea. The story has been through several iterations in that time. At one point I got so frustrated with it I even set it aside to work on something else. So it is obviously an enormous relief to be done with it.
The story in its final version involves a 14-year-old boy accused of murdering a classmate in a comfortable Boston suburb. My film agent described it, in perfect filmspeak, as “Presumed Innocent” meets “Ordinary People,” which puts you in the right ballpark at least. But the story began life as something quite different. The germ of the idea was simply: father watches his son accused of murder and wonders, “Who is this stranger I have raised?”
What first caught my imagination was the sight of defendants’ parents sitting stoically in the back of a courtroom during a trial. What is it like for them? I have seen crime stories told from the point of view of criminals and victims, but here was a player whose misery goes unnoticed. In a way, they are blameless victims, too.
The parents’ situation also gets at a question that was on my mind, not about crime but crime novels: why do good people who would never dream of stealing a piece of gum read with pleasure about bloody murder? The question is not limited to crime novels. Stories about crime dominate the news, too, for the simple reason that people watch them. We have always been fascinated with crime dramas. Some of the oldest stories we have are crime stories.
I think that in crime stories we must see some reflection of ourselves. Just as the Oedipus story — the first detective story, reputedly — enacts a primal instinct, so do other crime stories resonate with us by touching fantasies and fears we only dimly understand. “Bad men do what good men dream,” as one observer puts it.
The audience’s fascination with crime is especially poignant in the case of the murderer’s parents. Here the identification with the criminal is more than an imaginative projection, because every parent identifies so closely with her child. Genetically and socially, the child is made of the same stuff as the parents in some mysterious combination of nature and nurture. So, when those parents sitting in the back of the courtroom ask, “What does this story say about me?”, they are asking the same question as the reader curled up in bed with a crime novel — they simply have more at stake in the answer.
These were some of the ideas I wanted to tease out in this novel. Now, finally, it is written. There will be more work to do, of course. What I have handed in is just a draft. There will be rewriting. Depending on what my editor thinks of the pages, there may be a lot of rewriting. But the hardest part is done, not just the writing itself, going from a blank page to a finished manuscript, but the conceptual work — going from that first dim inspiration to seeing the story before you. Some of the hardest work is done, invisibly, before you write that first sentence.
I envy you. I am still in that hardest part: committing a multitude of stories floating in my head and scribbled on paper to a unified whole. To eliminate all the alternatives, all the what-ifs is for me toughest part.
It is a brutal part of the job, it’s true. And you get no credit for it (let alone money) because you don’t seem to be doing anything. It doesn’t look like you’re working. If you were, the pages would be piling up, right? All I can say is, I’ll be rooting for you. Which doesn’t help much, I realize. Also, don’t envy me — the reward for finishing one book is starting the next one.
Congratulations! Does it have a title yet?
I should have mentioned the title, shouldn’t I? I submitted the manuscript under a new title: “Mean Streak.” It was suggested by my friend Maura Driscoll, who is always one of my first readers. The phrase comes up a few times in the book, and I like the sound of it. I am still hedging a little because the other working titles — “Cold Spring Park” and “Line of Descent” — are still in the running. But as of today, it is “Mean Streak.” Thoughts?
Thank you for rooting for me, I sure need it.
Mean Streak is good – something mysterious about it, I like it. On the downside, the “str” in streak may sound a bit harsh.
Cold Spring Park shouts “paperback crime novel” or even “spy novel”, I don’t know why.
Line of Descent: deep, literary. Depends if you want to be more “literary” or simply be Mean-Streak-cool. I kinda like Line of Descent.
If you’ll allow a random fan to comment on potential titles, I think Cold Spring Park is my favourite of the three. It’s got the continuity with MIssion Flats in that its (presumably) a place name, but one which sounds slightly intriguing – one of the reasons I picked up MIssion Flats in the first place was because of its title and wanting to know what it meant.
Mean Streak sounds too much like generic crime fiction – perhaps too unsubtle?
And Line of Descent sounds too cold – like a evolutionary tract by Darwin or something.
But feel free to ignore me! I’ll be picking up the book whatever it’s called. As long as it’s available in the UK. Actually, even if it isn’t, I’ll just import it. 🙂
Andrew
Andrew, all opinions are welcome always. Don’t hesitate. I agree with all your comments, in fact. I have problems with all three candidates, unfortunately. But then, better to have a book and no title than the reverse.
Keep the comments coming. We’ve got a regular focus group going on here.