Inspired by my crazy adventures as a performer on the road,
this is the story
of two performance artists who cook up the ultimate performance: to kidnap their
billionaire boss...and turn him into the wildest
performance artist the world's ever seen.
Alex Madrigal, illustrator extraordinaire, has started work on the book’s cover art. Although my freehand sucks, I did him the “favor” of putting together a rough movie poster-style comp to give him some idea of the book’s zodiac of characters & action. The result was insane, and proof that I probably need my Photoshop examined. But if you look closely, you’ll see Bill, Stark, Mouse, Hank, and Larry (Hank and Larry are the women skating in the tighty whities—it was 1 a.m. and I was too tired to bother looking for appropriate heads, so for now, they’re women; no harm there). Lovely. Brace yourself, then click here to see the whole picture in all its glory.
During what I’d hoped would be my final pass through the novel, I found a few stubborn clunker lines that had somehow survived my past attempts to smooth everything out. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised; 124,000 words gives lame writing plenty of quarter—proof, I guess that a book’s never really done.
I know I could keep tweaking and editing forever, but the end must come sometime, or the pages will never see the light of day. So, after 13 years in varying states of disarray and progress, here it is, in the photo above and on my desk: the very last draft of Two Performance Artists (I swear!). After one more read-through, it’ll head back to the editor for another pre-press read while a second copy goes to the publisher’s book designer so layout can begin on the galley proofs I’ll mail to early reviewers this summer.
Maybe “done” is best defined as when I walk away from the keyboard for the very last time.
*** UPDATE: The prepress edit is back from Charlie, my editor, and finished. OMG it’s DONE! Next stop: advance copies for reviewers. Thank you Charlie, KayDee, and Freakshow Books. Stop by the Two Performance Artists website to follow the madness. It’s gonna be a wild(er) ride from here on out!
“Books are never finished; they’re merely abandoned.”
—Oscar Wilde
After 13 years of plotting, writing, editing, and rewriting the novel, I’ve finally arrived at that predictable point where I can no longer see the words on the page objectively. Ink just runs into more ink. Yesterday I opened my folder of past edits and was shocked to find I’d saved over 1,000 versions of the book since 2000. Is that excessive? Ha. No wonder my brain’s fried. My new myopia is making me a terrible proofreader, which is disconcerting as I claw through my final round of edits.
I read all the time about writers who somehow manage to squeeze out an artful bestseller in under a year. I don’t understand how they’re able to do it so quickly. When I took cosmology in college (thank you, Dr. Benford), I was the last student to finish the final exam because of all the math, with the quickest students finishing in just 45 minutes; I still don’t understand how they were able to do that, either.
When I think back over what took the longest during the novel’s construction, the story’s plotting stands out—I spent 3 months in a Tenderloin cafe diagramming the action’s timeline in a sketchbook with a black Sharpie (I was unemployed at the time, thank God, or it would’ve taken me a year). Writing the performance art scenes, though, took the longest. I wanted them to have the detail of real performances, but with rapid POV cuts to move a reader between the points of action in a cinematic style. Each performance piece took 2-3 weeks to conceive, then 1-2 months to actually write, which is about twice as long as I typically spend on creating a solo performance art piece I’ll perform live.
Hemingway supposedly finished draft one of The Sun Also Rises in under two months. Clearly I need a faster muse.
“The faster I write, the better my output. If I’m going slow, I’m in trouble—it means I’m pushing the words instead of being pulled by them.”
—Raymond Chandler
I’m sharpening the pen on the strop as we speak. Just got the novel back from my U.K. editor Charlie. Fantastic, painstakingly detailed feedback. Really, if you want a smart critique, hit me up for Charlie’s contract info. It was less brutal than I’d expected, but I’ll admit it: I’m dreading having to tear at my narrative threads. But that’s the path, right? The finery’s in the edits, at least for me. Maybe Hemingway shat gold on every first draft. Not me. I shit shit. And then I work it like Play-Doh.
I still remember being in college and asking a poetry teacher/friend if he knew of any writing contacts or gigs he might hook me up with over the summer. You know, something easy—slip into the warm bath for 3 months as an intern with the inside track. No dice. His answer to me: “Want to be a writer? Hit the streets, fucker.”
My novel about two gonzo performance artists, which somehow survived 6 months of plotting, 6 years of writing, 1 year of editing, 1 year of 42 rejections by NY agents, one divorce, 10 years of San Francisco fog, 3 jobs, 5 deaths, 5 relocations, the chance discovery of my dream girl, 3 years of desk drawer darkness, followed by another year of editing, is finally in the hands of an editor. I can’t wait for you to read it! Stay tuned!
“A writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it.” —Samuel Johnson
NIHILISM UNLEASHED! Creator of the Nihilist Olympics that attracted world press in 1984, and the only Presidential candidate ever to run on the Nihilist ticket, ELISHA SHAPIRO is arguably the most famous living Nihilist on Earth. Find out how he became a Nihilist when he and I chat this Sunday on the JIMMY’S POTPOURRI show. (And if you need more Nihilism in your life, come to Elisha’s annual NIHILIST FILM FESTIVAL to be held in L.A. Friday, December 7 at the Echo Park Film Center at 8PM — the entry fee is a whopping 99 cents!) Hear it all this Sunday 9am-noon on JIMMY’S POTPOURRI—listen anywhere online at www.killradio.org
I built this little toy years ago, and it still cracks me up—a poetry generator that draws upon the vocabulary and syntax culled from works of Charles Bukowski. The generator can emulate Bill Gates or your average joe too, but the Bukowski ones are my favorites. Here’s one it made today (capitalization & punctuation added afterward):
Losing, she breathes through dogs like shriveled dictators lapping, the high heels, tongues swatting cautiously I am of the rundown Dickens—— she is divorcing blue, or a scroll cumming, flakes are mumbling orgasms; could I utter inward, a snake, or whack these cloven singers? Cumming they are, guzzling when they're around, a shakey aroma, watching . . .
