The Curse of the Unfinished

an ongoing story

The Unfinished in question isn’t the puzzle you never cracked or the books you never managed to read to the end. Like most people, I dropped out of some big ones after a few chapters—Moby Dick, Don Quixote, Bleak House are my Great Unread. Maybe I’ll go back to them someday. I lugged Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo on a trip thinking I’d have the leisure to see it through. It didn’t happen. The siren song of a Robert Harris paperback was too loud. There’s so much fun to be had out there and so little time. This newsletter is not about reading, it’s about starting to write a book and not completing it.

Every writing advice column shouts: You have to finish writing the damn book! No excuse. It may suck, it may be the worst thing ever, but you have to finish it. That stern commandment is usually followed by a dismissive wave of the hand: whatever is wrong can be fixed in revision. Right. I doubt Franz Kafka, who was a chronic non-finisher and obviously a perfectionist, would agree. He didn’t complete The Castle, The Trial, and Amerika. Other famous writers left books unfinished, mostly because they died before they could type The End. A personal favorite is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Last Tycoon. A fascinating read that leaves you with nagging possibilities. A better example, because death didn’t cause the standstill, is Ralph Ellison’s 40-year struggle with a massive and untitled manuscript, pieces of which were published in 2010 as Three Days Before the Shooting … Or Mark Twain writing and rewriting The Mysterious Stranger, and never finishing it.

These unborn books are not failures.

Three years ago, I abandoned a project two-thirds down the stretch. I had spent quite some time on it and I hit a snag. I thought a break would be good. Refresh my eyes, get back to it with new ideas. It wasn’t to be. Another story seduced me and gathered speed. Some writers can work on multiple books at the same time (who are these freaks of nature!), I can’t. I was completely immersed in Street Song—coming out this year from TouchPoint Press—then Catch me on a Blue Day ensnared me, then short stories, then … the incomplete book sat in a folder aptly named Box.

Poking around for this newsletter, I wondered why Box ground to a halt. Common wisdom would say I ran out of gas. Fatigue, lack of interest, yes. Falling out of love, as Bradbury would say? Definitely. I dumped Box like a lame blind date. What was wrong with it? In hindsight, it suffered from overload. I’m the first to complain when a story line is too thin, but this one was so convoluted it lost its way. A family feud, a wily matriarch, murder, blackmail, money laundering, drug trafficking, a land grab, a gorgeous West Texas desert setting, a doomed love story (two doomed love stories in fact), too many antagonists. No wonder I couldn’t pull all the threads together in a coherent narrative. I imagined a few endings and none of them clicked.

I believe the book can be rescued but it will need a lot of pruning.

In retrospect, the time spent on Box was not wasted. I used to be a pure improviser (pantser in writerly jargon, from flying by the seat of your pants), starting a story with a character, or a situation, or a location, even a line of dialogue, and finding out where the plot was going as I wrote it. I love the surprises along the way but the rewriting is murder. Box was all surprises and no resolution. I’ve learned my lesson even if I haven’t turned into a true plotter. Mapping a book chapter by chapter, scene by scene fills me with dread. Where’s the fun in that? Chastened by Box, I now write a rough outline of the story, a few pages, with character snapshots and a timeline. It’s a growing working document, with links for research, even picture inserts. The final book inevitably diverges from that crude synopsis, things happen, characters say and do things I didn’t plan for, subplots pop up. The end might be something else entirely. Still, there’s that initial storyline to fall back on if I get in trouble. No more dead on arrival, locked in the Box!

For this issue, instead of a short story, I’ll give you an excerpt of the dormant work. In this sample, Declan Shaw, my PI protagonist, goes on a desert drive… Enjoy.

And don’t miss my book recommendations, under the picture. They are exceptional.

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Here’s that piece from Box:

As they went further west and steadily up, the landscape turned dramatic with rocky outcroppings and tumbled mesas. Creosote bushes and yuccas were now mixed with the occasional mesquite and juniper.

“How do you know where you’re going?” Declan said.

“You see these triangular rocks? They’re trail markers.”

“I was wondering how we were going to find our way back in the dark.”

“Wait till you see the stars. It won’t be dark. Besides, you’re with Scout Pam. I’m the best tracker in a fifty-mile radius.”

She had a little satisfied smile that made Declan grin. It was striking how different she was outside of the house. She had been pleasant but on guard under her husband’s scrutiny. This was the real Pam Cadell, ebullient and playful.

“Here we are.” She swung the Jeep to the left through rougher terrain. “Now we are really off road.” The car bumped and rolled. “That’s why it’s better on a horse.” They went around a large pile of jagged rocks and stopped. “We go up this way.” She pointed at a narrow cut between two enormous boulders. “It only looks daunting.”

An easy walk up a slope took them to the top of the rock formation. A deep and narrow canyon opened at Declan’s feet. It was completely invisible from the trail.

“I had no idea this was here,” he said.

“It’s steep but not very long, about two miles. The trail we took follows the canyon and goes around it. In the dark, if you’re driving too fast and you don’t know the area or how to spot the markers, you could go right over the edge. We’ve lost cattle in there.” She pulled a metal flask out of the back pocket of her jeans, handed it to Declan, and sat down. “Homemade.”

“Is that another of your profit schemes?” He had a sip and gasped, tearing up. “Holy Mother!”

She burst out laughing. “Good, uh? It’s exclusively for on-site consumption. I don’t market it. My crew loves it.”

“Thanks for sharing,” Declan said. “The view and the booze.”

“Nick and I came here often, as kids. We would watch the sunset and camp out. Last summer we did it again, just for the heck of it. We didn’t sleep much. It’s hard on the back.”

The sun was touching the horizon, sending rays of orange light into the canyon. It was a magical sight, a wonder that could lead an unbeliever to prayer.

“The light will line up perfectly with the canyon in a week,” Pam said. “I’ll be here to see it. I come every year. Sometimes I’m alone, sometimes I manage to drag somebody along. Mitch, my youngest, is the most willing. When he’s not playing tough to copy his brothers. Do you have children, Declan?”

“I’m conventional. I believe I have to find a girl first.”

“There shouldn’t be a shortage of candidates.”

“I tend to let the good ones slip away.” Thinking of Edie, he said: “Can we stay after twilight to look at the stars? I’m near city lights most of the time.”

“Maybe I could convince you to come see the canyon lights with me,” Pam said.

Declan stretched out on the smooth rock and looked up. He counted five stars and soon he couldn’t count them anymore. A glittering blanket spread above his head, more points of light than he had ever seen. It was more intoxicating than Pam’s moonshine.

They remained until the last pixels of lingering sunlight disappeared and the sky took a deep blue velvet shine that made you want to wrap yourself into a celestial comforter. It was star-studded, as Edie promised. The thought pulled at Declan’s heart. How sweet this would have been with her by his side. How impossible it was.

When Pam suggested they head back, he was grateful. The emptiness of the desert was too loud.

“I want to come back,” he said, “when I have less on my mind.”

What I’m reading  

I read two remarkable books since the last newsletter.

The first one is Richard Chizmar’s Chasing the Boogeyman. It’s a strange and very clever book: a fictional true crime story. Chizmar uses all the tropes of true crime (interviews, press articles, photographs) and does it so well that although you know from the start that this is fiction, you can’t help doubting. Did this really happen? No spoilers, I will not tell you how it ends.

Next I dived into Charlesgate Confidential by Scott Von Doviak. I’ve read some of Scott’s short stories, he’s a fantastic writer. This book is addictive. It weaves three timelines, a rich gallery of characters, and a daring art robbery that turns into a deadly obsession. If you’ve heard of Vermeer’s The Concert and one of the most famous thefts in history, this is the book for you. Scott is also on Substack, give him a read.

That’s it for now!