Writing The Great American Novel

When I retired, a slice of my identity died. For the first time in 40 years, I was unemployed.  What would I do the rest of my life? The question lingered for months while I over indulged in my favorite pastime golf. Soon almost daily rounds of golf became too much like a job. Now what? 

Then one day a thunderbolt of inspiration struck.  My passion has always been writing.  No longer shackled to an office desk, I could pursue my dream of becoming an author.  Fantasies of a best-selling novel danced in my head.  Book tours.  Autographs.  A blockbuster movie.  I was smitten. 

My first move was to gather data.  I pored over books on how to become a published author.  I boned up on what themes and genres appealed to publishing houses. Along the way, I discovered the odds of getting a novel published are astronomical.

Consider the facts: there are a few thousand literary agents.  Each one receives an estimated 10,000 queries from aspiring writers.  Do the math.  About 65,000 new books are published annually, most by established authors.  A new writer has a better chance of winning the lottery.

Undeterred, my fingers flew across my keyboard as I drafted my first novel.  It was exhilarating as the shape of a book appeared on my computer screen.  After I completed the masterpiece, I handed it to Dianna to read, expecting breathless praise.  Instead, she uttered the sad truth.  It reeked.  Skunky.

My ego shattered, I stewed over her assessment.  In reviewing the work, I arrived at the same conclusion.  It lacked drama, empathetic characters, structure and a few colons.  It was consigned to the trash along with leftover pizza.  In hindsight, I had little enthusiasm for the subject matter.

Being an author was harder work than I imagined.  Just before admitting defeat, we were vacationing in New York City when Dianna announced she had a dream the previous night about diamonds.  She thought it would be a good subject for a book.  I politely smiled and nodded absently. Whatever.

While she shopped, I ducked into a book store and scanned the shelves for tomes about diamonds to satisfy my curiosity.  I flipped the pages of a few books.  Then I spotted a magazine with an article speculating that Bin Laden had been peddling raw diamonds to finance his terror network. 

Arriving back in San Antonio, I researched every news article, book and archive for information about the Bin Laden story.  There were tantalizing tidbits but mostly hearsey.  That meant, as a novelist, I had a license to write my own fictionalized story based on a smidgen of facts.

As I dug deeper, I discovered evidence.  According to news reports, Bin Laden's jihadists had struck deals to acquire $30 million in so-called blood diamonds before the attacks of 9/11.  The diamonds came from mines in Sierra Leone.  The stones route from Africa to Bin Laden remained a mystery.

I pounded the keyboard for nearly a year, writing chapter-after-chapter.  The pacing of the book was much faster than my flawed original.  I wanted a page-turner no reader could snooze through. The copy was littered with facts about diamonds, ruthless dealers and secretive diamond trading.

The finished product in hand, I began the process of marketing the book, contacting a carefully researched cadre of agents who handled new authors.  A one-page letter and a one-page synopsis of the book was shipped to a dozen literary highbrows.  Then the waiting game began.

Agent replies dribbled into the mailbox.  The first to land were a couple of form letters with the salutation, "Dear Author."  That was the certain kiss of death.  Then a few brighter notes showed up.  One agent praised the idea of the book, but declined because she wasn't accepting new clients.

Just when my hopes were fading, two agents dispatched encouraging letters seeking the first two chapters of my book, titled "Terror Diamonds."  My pulsed quickened.  My ego soared.  I dashed off the chapters and waited.  And anxiously fretted.  Finally, two emails dropped into my inbox.

There were platitudes about the writing style, the plot and the research.  But the two agents passed.  No reasons were given for their decisions.  I fumed for a couple of weeks before working up the courage to query the agents for explanations.  Both declined.  "We don't do that," was the answer.

In a last ditch attempt to salvage my book, I fired off another round of letters to dozens of agents. More rejections knocked the stuffing out of my ego.  Deflated, I reluctantly surrendered my dream. I wasn't going to be a best-selling author.  I wasn't even going to get a single word published.

Today I have reconciled myself to treasure the experience of writing a book. Lots of folks talk about penning a novel.  Not many actually finish one.  I feel better for having tried and failed.  I never have to regret what might have been.  That provides a scintilla of balm for my journalistic self esteem.

I remain a voracious consumer of books.  Once in a while, when I read a novel I discern a fuzzy plot or misplaced comma.  I think, "My book is better than this dribble."  But so what?  This writer won the publishing lottery. That's something to admire because most of us will never experience it.