Matthew Dicks

Dedication for UNEXPECTEDLY, MILO

I’ve been pondering the dedication to my new book for about a month now, and just yesterday, I came up with an idea.  My wife doesn’t like it, and her instincts are usually correct, but I thought I’d see what others thought. 

It would read:

For me, damn it.

Thoughts?

Hometown appearance

I spent Saturday in my hometown of Blackstone, MA, speaking about SOMETHING MISSING to audiences in the Blackstone Public Library and then down the road at Renaissance Books in Uxbridge, MA.  There were great turnouts for both events, thanks in part to Stacy Juba, a local author who arranged the appearances, promoted them aggressively, and spoke alongside me.

Oddly enough, the library stands on the former site of my middle school, and before that, my father’s high school.  It was quite surreal to return to a space that I once occupied as a student in order to share my novel with an enthusiastic audience.  I have many memories from that AF Maloney Middle School, which was raised in order to construct one of the finest small town libraries that I have ever seen.  One of my most distinct memories is of the playground, which consisted of a patch of blacktop that was backed by a dirt field.  A white line was painted across the pavement, dividing the playground into a boy’s side and a girl’s side, with the patch of dirt in the back reserved for the boys who used it for football and soccer games. 

The fact that we still enjoyed recess in middle school is incomprehensible to my current students.

The fact that boys and girls could not play together is still incomprehensible to me. 

The fact that boys were allotted twice as much space than the girls was incomprehensible to me even as I enjoyed this unfair benefit as a ten-year-old. 

I also had a science teacher (Mr. Morin) who required you to raise your dominant hand (left for me, right for most) and a math teacher who played Dungeons & Dragons with students during study hall.  Lunches were cooked at the high school and eaten in the classroom, and as a member of the top group of third graders (students were sorted by academic ability back then), my class was sent to middle school a year ahead of the rest of kids in our grade.

Strange times indeed.  

One of the most enjoyable aspects of Saturday’s visit was the number of old friends and teachers who were kind enough to attend, some of whom have actually played a role in the writing of SOMETHING MISSING and UNEXPECTEDLY, MILO. 

Mr. Compopiano, the high school English teacher who is mentioned in the Acknowledgements of SOMETHING MISSING, stopped by prior to my appearance to say hello.

Laura, my high school sweetheart and the girl from whom Martin’s girlfriend, Laura, derives her name, also stopped by with her sister and mother.  I haven’t seen Laura in years, so it was great to spend some time together.   

Wendy, whose last name is used for a minor character in UNEXPECTEFLY, MILO, also attended the reading.  Wendy and I attended our Sophomore Semi-Formal together (she brought photos from that evening to show my wife), and she was also kind enough to bring a photograph of me and Patty Catalano, on stage during the elementary school spring concert.  By order of our music teacher, Mrs. Carroll, I kissed Patty at the end of our song and dance number while Wendy was being kissed by a boy named Danny.  This turned out to be my very first kiss, onstage of all places, and it was probably Patty’s as well. 

I’m sure it’s all been downhill for Patty since that fateful spring evening. 

I also saw my high school friend, Jim, who actually appears, alongside his mother, as a minor character in UNEXPECTEDLY, MILO.

Later on in the afternoon, during my appearance at Renaissance Books, I was greeted by Mrs. Allan, my middle school social studies teacher.  Mrs. Allan’s classroom was formally the middle school’s undersized auditorium, and as a result, she had a stage in her classroom, which was one of the most beautiful and unique classrooms that I have ever seen.  Mrs. Allan’s classroom, and specifically her stage, served as the inspiration for the stage that I now have in my fifth grade classroom.

Little did she know how much influence she might have on one of her former students. 

In addition to former classmates and teachers, I met a whole bunch of new people, many of whom have read SOMETHING MISSING and enjoyed it a great deal.  I met a woman whose book club just met about the book last week, as well as a man who is currently reading the book to his 85-year old father. 

Many thanks to Stacy Juba and her husband, a teacher at my former high school, who were kind enough to make the day possible.   

Admitting my failure

I’ve been reviewing the copy edits to UNEXPECTEDLY, MILO this week, and as I reach the halfway point in the manuscript, allow me to share some of my more frequent mistakes have been brought to light thanks to this process. The list so far includes:

1. A failure to realize that there are two different spellings for the words vice and vise, depending on the meaning. I always thought that vice was the only correct spelling for both definitions. I didn’t even know that vise existed as a possibility.

2. A chronic overuse of the word upon. I have so far encountered nearly two dozen instances in which I used the word upon when the word on was sufficient and grammatically correct.

3. An under-utilization of hyphens to an extraordinary degree. My copy editor has inserted dozens, and perhaps hundreds, of hyphens into my manuscript where there were originally none.

None I tell you!  Not one!  I conducted a search for them in the original manuscript and found not a single, solitary hyphen.  Not even a dash.  Lots of commas and ellipsis, but not a hyphen to be found.

4. Thanks to The Grateful Dead and their only chart topping hit, “Touch of Grey,” I am never able to remember the American spelling of the word gray/grey. Even after correcting the error this evening, I still cannot remember at this moment which is correct.

5. A persistent confusion of the words All right and alright, with a strong and apparently mistaken leaning toward alright. Is alright even a word?

6. An ongoing, nearly lifelong use of the British spelling of theatre, a mistake I have been making since high school. I have no idea why.

My copy editor, whose name I am currently seeking, was also kind enough to point out that a Jeep Cherokee does not have a convertible top, so the top-down Jeep in my book needs to be a Jeep Wrangler instead.

This is why my copy editor will be getting a mention in the acknowledgements of the book.

He or she (I’m guessing a woman based upon the occasional comment in the margin) is damn good.

This artificially-flavored book is not dedicated to you.

Sandra Boynton has become my favorite children’s author. Nothing makes me happier than reading one of her Pookie books to my daughter.

One of our new favorites is her non-Pookie board book, BUT NOT THE HIPPOPOTAMUS.

I think the story and illustrations are incredibly cute, and Clara seems to be enjoying the taste of the book a great deal, which led me to this thought:

Artificially-flavored board books. Awesome… right?

I’ll have to see what my agent thinks.

My favorite part about BUT NOT THE HIPPOPOTAMUS is the dedication, which reads:

For Ash and Kyle but not Paisley

I’m not sure who Paisley is, but the dedication is clearly a play on the title and probably not meant to offend. But as I ponder the dedication for my second book, I find myself thrilled with the possibility of not dedicating the book to someone as a means of retribution, cruelty, or mean-spiritedness. Rather than honoring someone with a dedication, now I have the potential to dishonor someone instead, or perhaps as well.

Opens up a whole new spectrum of options and puts a brand new spin on choosing the perfect dedication. Don’t you think?

Credit to the copyeditor

UNEXPECTEDLY, MILO has entered the copyediting stage of production, in which some clever editor with a keen understanding for the English language, an outstanding eye for detail and an unbiased red pen will read through my manuscript line by line, proposing changes here and there to eliminate redundancy, clarify ideas, streamline sentences and make me sound a hell of a lot better than I really am.

It’s a reassuring process that allows me to sit back and wait for smart people to clean up any mess that I left behind.  And it’s one of those aspects of publishing that I once feared but now adore.

For the most part, the red pen of the copyeditor represents suggestions, and most often good ones, but I am free to reject any edit that I do not like. When going through this process for SOMETHING MISSING, I rejected few of my copyeditor’s suggestions, and when I did, it was usually in an attempt to maintain the rigidity and precision of Martin’s life by adhering to unnecessarily formal and obtuse language.

I recently read an interview with Mary Norris, copyeditor at The New Yorker, and what struck me most about her job was the lack of recognition that she receives for her work. She helps to polish dozens of stories each week, and yet her name never appears on a single one.

I wonder how this feels. Reading through her interview and getting a sense of her personality, I would guess that she is not in the publishing business for the glory or the recognition. She likes good writing and enjoys making it a little better.

But still, a little public acknowledgement might be nice.

And this led to me to realize that the same thing has happened with my book. Someone whose name I have forgotten copyedited SOMETHING MISSING, making it a better story in the process, and yet that person’s name never appears anywhere in the book. In fact, had I not acknowledged my editor, Melissa, my agent, Taryn, and my friends, all of whom helped to shape the book, their names would have never appeared in the book either.

Perhaps this should change. Maybe there is space on the page containing the book’s copyright information for the names of my editor, my copyeditor, and anyone else instrumental in the crafting of the book. Regardless of whether or not these selfless individuals desire acknowledgment of their work, shouldn’t there be some kind of recognition of their efforts?

I shall look into this.

When death interrupts the writing process

I passed the manuscript for UNEXPECTEDLY, MILO onto a friend who has yet to read it. When I asked him what was taking so long to finish, he admitted that he no longer was in possession of the book. “I gave it to my aunt, who was afraid that she might die before the book was published. She loved SOMETHING MISSING and wanted to read your next one now, just in case.”

That’s quite a compliment.

The Wall Street Journal recently ran an article about the new wave of novels being published posthumously from writers like Vladimir Nabokov, David Foster Wallace and Ralph Ellison. Having experienced my own legitimate brushes with death in the past, I think quite a bit about the prospect that I might be hit by a bus in the middle of a book and never have the opportunity to finish.

It’s an unsettling thought, leaving characters frozen in time, their stories untimely cut off. And perhaps it’s a sentiment that Stephen King also battled with when writing his Dark Tower series. In that series of novels, King inserts himself into the story, becoming both the writer as well as a character who must be saved by the very characters about whom he is writing. When King was nearly killed after being hit by a van (an incident that occurs both in real life as well as the book), the protagonist, Roland, warns his maker to finish his tale and to stop dawdling. One cannot help but wonder if King is exorcising his own fear of death and the unsettling prospect of an unfinished novel when issuing Roland’s warning to the fictional version of himself.

But unless an author retires, I guess that he or she will always have an unfinished piece of work. Right?

And even when an author does retire, this is not always the case.

After publishing TIMEQUAKE in 1997, Vonnegut announced his retirement, causing me to begin a purposely slow and methodical reading of his final novel that has taken me into my eighth year. Knowing that no other books were coming from one of my favorite writers, I decided to read about a page a week, re-reading constantly but stopping myself from ever finishing the book, fearful of what life might be like without a new Vonnegut sentence in my future.

Since he died, however, one collection of stories and essays (ARMEGGEDON IN RETROSPECT) has been published and another (LOOK AT THE BIRDIE) is due out later this year. Though I’m not sure how I would feel about someone purging my computer for all my unpublished stories and essays, I’m certainly pleased that someone has taken the liberty in the case of Vonnegut.

And so I am honored that someone has requested my manuscript in fear of her eminent demise. In fact, the same thing happened to Stephen King in the midst of writing his Dark Tower series. A woman in Vermont who was facing terminal cancer wrote to King after the publication of the fourth or fifth book of the series, asking if he would share the fate of Roland, Eddie, Jake and Susannah with her before she died. Unfortunately, King writes in much the same way I do, waiting for the story to flow from his fingers, absent of planning and arduous forethought, so he had no idea how his series would end and therefore could not grant the dying woman her request.

As long as my friend’s aunt does not request my current manuscript, I can keep at least keep her happy.

First peek at UNEXPECTEDLY, MILO’s cover

I got my first peek at the proposed cover art for UNEXPECTEDLY, MILO today, and I love it.  There are a couple of tweaks that I think need to be made, but overall, my first reaction was quite positive.

This is good.  My initial reaction to the cover of SOMETHING MISSING was less than favorable, but I’ve come to like it a lot as well.  

When the cover is finalized and I’m permitted to share it with you, I’ll be sure to post it here. 

Prior to becoming  involved in the publishing world, book covers meant little to me.  I do not have a good eye for design and my attention to the visual realm is sometimes nonexistent.  While I can often remember every word spoken in a conversation from days ago, I often cannot tell you what color pants I’m wearing without looking down.  But ever since I saw the cover art for SOMETHING MISSING, I’ve started to pay attention, and while the cover of a book would still not influence my purchasing decision, I can now see how one book might stand out above another because of the appearance of the cover.

Recently, the miserable cover to WUTHERING HEIGHTS received a refresh after the book was featured in the plot of TWILIGHT.  Attempting to capitalize on Stephanie Meyer’s success, the redesigned cover attempt to capture some of the essence of the TWIGHLT cover, and while it feels a little cheap and commercial, anything is better than that original art. 

Instead, I have always been drawn to the titles of books rather than the art.  Intrigue me with a good title and I’ll give your book a shot.  Titles such as EVEN COWGIRLS GET THE BLUES, THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHTTIME, and THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE have caused me to purchase these books without any knowledge of the story inside, while a bad title is likely to keep me away.  My wife is a huge fan of Sharon Creech’s YA novel WALK TWO MOONS, but the title (and cover art) is so lousy that I cannot bring myself to read the book, despite my wife’s ardent recommendations.

And titling a book isn’t always easy, as I well know.  Neither of my books were titled by me, and I have no title for the book that I am writing other than THE CHICKEN SHACK, which will surely change upon completion. 

And speaking of changing titles, The Guardian had an interesting list of rejected titles for well know books that I found quite intriguing.  My favorites include:

Trimalchui in West Egg, the original, and I might argue better, title of THE GREAT GATSBY.

All’s Well that Ends Well, the unbelievably upbeat original title to WAR AND PEACE.

High expectations

I was reading through my contract for UNEXPECTEDLY, MILO, preparing to sign, when I came across the section entitles Description of the Work.  It provides a basic summary of the book, probably included in order to prevent me from slapping the title UNEXPECTEDLY, MILO onto the cover of my 900-page volume on the various mating habits of dyslexic earthworms and submitting it in the place of the real novel. 

All fine and good, but the first sentence of this description begins:

“The Work shall a funny novel about…”

Funny novel?  Amusing, perhaps, but funny?  That’s a lot of pressure on me.  Don’t you think?

The Ugly Duckling is uglier than I thought

All of my pathetic and inane fears about my manuscript being a mess were for not.  Just three days after submitting the latest version of UNEXPECTEDLY, MILO to my editor for review, she replied with glowing remarks, several bright and shiny compliments and just a handful of minor, consistency-centered suggestions for revision.

The six weeks of torturous editing and revising have apparently paid off. 

I’m currently in the process of completing a final read-through of the book before sending the manuscript back off to Melissa, who will review it one final time as well before initiating the copyediting process. 

At that point, things really begin to get rolling, and I can turn my attention back to THE CHICKEN SHACK. 

One disappointment, however.  In reviewing the manuscript, Melissa noticed that I lumped in THE UGLY DUCKLING with the tales of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Dumbo, citing all three as stories in which the protagonist learns to appreciate and celebrate his oddities and differences.  Melissa pointed out that THE UGLY DUCKLING is actually a story about conformity, a process that I very much despise.  And she’s right.  In the end of the story, the ugly duckling transforms into a swan, thus unburdening itself of its problems through a blending in with those around him. 

Through that awful and pervasive process of conformity.  No celebration of differences here.  No glorious victory of the strange over the common.  No big-eared, red-nosed act of heroism.  Just a swan who finds happiness by emulating others, and through no real effort of his own. 

I found this utterly depressing.  This classic children’s tale is nothing more than a treatise on the conformity of appearance and breeding. 

Nevertheless, I am pleased.  UNEXPECTEDLY, MILO is nearly done, and I am happy with the results.  And all references to that dreadful ugly duckling have been removed.     

My little boy, or girl, is all grown up (I hope)

On Sunday, I sent the revised manuscript of UNEXPECTEDLY, MILO off to my editor for her review.  What I had hoped to be a two week process quickly expanded into a six week marathon as issues with continuity and decisions over what to eliminate and what to retain plagued me like never before.  The longer the process became, the closer I got to the manuscript, and soon I was not able to see the proverbial forest between the trees.  I had lost all sense of perspective.   

I can’t remember the revision process for SOMETHING MISSING ever being this hard.

When I finally sent the document along to Melissa, it was time to take a step back and allow someone with a fresh pair of eyes to take a peek. 

Still, I worry. 

And I like Melissa a lot.  In fact, as we negotiated the sale of SOMETHING MISSING, I fought to retain her as my editor even though she had been transferred to another division of Doubleday.  It’s not that I’m concerned about what she will think or what she might suggest.  I have great faith in her skill and ability as an editor.  We work well together, and she is flexible in terms of her suggestions. 

She adheres to James Thurber’s memo on editing from the New Yorker in 1959:

Editing should be, especially in the case of old writers, a counseling rather than a collaborating task. The tendency of the writer-editor to collaborate is natural, but he should say to himself, "How can I help this writer to say it better in his own style?" and avoid "How can I show him how I would write it, if it were my piece?"  

Instead, I fear that I am letting my book go, allowing it to once again spread its wings and fly off into the wider world.  And like a parent, I worry that I have not yet done enough to ensure its success.

Have I tightened up the plot enough to keep the action moving?

Are my characters jumping off the page?

Did I make any glaring omissions?

Is Milo’s story just plain good enough?

Now comes the worst part.  I sit and I wait.