11.13.06
What’s on Second?
I’ve started thinking and writing a bit about what I plan to be doing for my next Big Book.
Note that for me, there are various categories of books. There are Small Books, which are books that I can write with little or no research, usually in a relatively short period of time, where “relatively short” means measured in months rather than years. Some of them are Small Silly Books, which seem to usually be humorous and fictional. Some of them are Small Serious Books, which seem to be mostly essay-oriented, or “creative nonfiction” if you must call it that. (I mustn’t.) Editing an anthology qualifies as a Small Book, and so does putting together a collection of your own previously published work. (Where an anthology or collection falls on the Serious/Silly spectrum depends on its content and style, naturally.)
Then there are Big Books. These are the ones that take a serious investment in every way, but most particularly in terms of time and effort. If it is somewhat more complicated and demanding than your average doctoral dissertation, it is fairly sure to be a Big Book, and that holds true whether it is fiction or nonfiction, and indeed Silly or Serious. (I am sure that there could be a Big Silly Book, although right now I am hard put to think of one.)
I wrote two Small Silly Books during and just after my work on the last Big Serious Book. I am currently toying with several other Small Silly Books, although none of them have really clicked in the way that drives me to hunker down and focus hard and write the whole thing, although I imagine any one of them could, if I put my mind to it. (Which I have not done due to the need to recuperate from the last Big Serious Book, and also because none of the present crop of Small Silly Books in progress are under contract at the present time.)
Anyhow, the next Big Serious book has begun to percolate, and while I’m loath to really get rolling with it or even discuss it too much publicly at this point (a proposal is out to my editors, I expect they will buy it, but nothing is definite yet), it is encouraging to be thinking about another Big Serious book. It’s even motivating me to work up a proposal for one of the current Small Silly Books, the one I think is most likely saleable, so that I can get it to my agent later in the week.
Weird but true: the Small Silly Books tend to grow better when they’re rooted in the mulch of a Big Serious Book. Small Silly Books taken on their own just get leggy and kind of sad-looking. I think I have too much of a didactic, professorial streak in me to write Small Silly Books on their own. If I don’t have a Big Serious Book going on that bleeds off the tweedy thinky explainy voice, it seeps into the Small Silly Books, where it just sounds out of place and sometimes condescending, and that’s no fun.
Back to work on that Small Silly Book proposal, then.