Today’s blog feature is a guest essay by one of The Centrifugal Eye poetry journal’s past contributors—Colin Dodds. Colin has a new novel coming out, slated for May 2017. No easy journey to publication, his novel, Watershed. This is the story of Watershed’s stymied processes, but also, it’s the story of its progress, despite—and even due to—Dodds’ trials.
Dodds also shares his experiences involving test readers (aka beta readers, and a topic I’d contemplated reviewing for several weeks now, so Dodds’ mentions seem serendipitous to me), the need for revisions, and the surprising stipulation of his new agent.
Here are some teasers from recent press releases to introduce you to Dodds’ upcoming book:
Brave young men and women hiding from wireless signals, prostitutes in parachutes, and the ceremonial re-destruction of the World Trade Center. The future's about to be born, but who will change the diapers?
Watershed (ISBN: 978-1-54424-003-9) is the story of a troubled, pregnant woman, and the two men—a snake dealer with a sideline in secret messages, and a billionaire living under a false name—who vie for her. As their struggle leads them through a near-future America of anti-technology enclaves and illegal hospitals, where stockbrokers moonlight as assassins, and nurses procure obscure pleasures, a deeper and deadlier mystery emerges.
"The masterfully dystopian Watershed unpacks the future of a modern America that, while
spectacular, nobody was expecting…It’s a future that, as Leonard Cohen sang, ‘is
murder.’ The revelations of prose in Watershed makes that murder enjoyable…one of the
few things worth believing in.” ~Two Thirds North
“The world of Watershed is a vibrant one, packed to the gills with absurd and yet oddly-
believable detail — everything from a September 11th memorial service that involves a full-scale
recreation of the original terrorist attack, to a man who gets off on being locked in a coffin with
a bag full of cats...Dodds manages to make all this and more seem not just possible, but vivid
and tangible too....It’s the real deal…a strong contender to be one of the most interesting books
you’ll read this year.” ~Krishan Coupland, IndieReader Reviews (4.7/5 Stars)
Watershed: The Story of the Story
By Colin Dodds
The time I spent writing, revising, and editing my novel, Watershed, was a personally tumultuous one. It’s almost impossible to separate the process of writing it from the upheavals, reversals, and wonderful events that took place. In no particular order, during the writing and editing of Watershed, I was laid off; a good friend died; my wife became pregnant with our first child; we were priced out of our apartment; I released another novel, and my Achilles tendon snapped.
As Ray Bradbury more-or-less said, you have to write to keep from being destroyed by the world. That gets truer with the years.
Watershed started with a bang. The first scene popped into my head fully formed. I won’t spoil the opening, but I’ll say it was fun to write. And once I recognized who the people in that scene were, I was off to the races. The action cascaded in a natural, sensible way from there, with each scene giving clues to the ones that followed.
From there, I sketched out the characters, the setting, the larger plot along with most of the smaller stories and gambits that’d make it all come together. This was toward the end of 2012. In early January of ’13, I ruptured my Achilles playing pickup football, and underwent surgery a few weeks after. I wrote the bulk of the first draft of Watershed during the 3 ½ months I spent holed up in our apartment. I’d type until the foot swelled up, then elevate and ice it, while I outlined the particulars of the next chapter in a notebook.
By early May 2013, the first draft of Watershed was finished. I was ambulatory again. My wife and I took a tropical vacation. Things were good.
Then the pendulum swung back. That summer, I lost my job. Not long after, an old friend of mine finally succeeded in drinking himself to death, and my charming landlord raised our rent by more than $500 per month. The job hunt, though dogged, dragged on for months.
During that time, Watershed became confidant, life raft, and refuge. I worked through a second draft in just eight weeks that summer.
Watershed takes place in the near future, about 5 to 10 years from now. While I was working on it, I didn’t have the sense that the future was smiling at me. That frustration informed the book. But I wanted to tell a story that was hopeful, and whose action centered on a noble impulse, desperately pursued. By the end of the summer, I felt that I’d accomplished that. All the pre-writing and outlining and sketching seemed to have paid off.
Next, I sent it off to a few close friends to poke holes in it. Some of these test readers are writers, but mostly they’re just avid readers and people whose opinion I respect. Working with test readers, especially friends, can be tricky. If you’re writing for anything other than pecuniary reasons, then the work likely lives very close to a very severe part of yourself. It is not a part that plays well with others. If you’re like me, even the mildest and most reasonable edits can throw you into a small muttering fit.
My advice is to play carefully. Show only early drafts to test readers. They may recommend big, book-changing notes. And, unfortunately, they may be right. If you show them what you consider a nearly finished book, you’ll resent such big notes, and you may still have to go back to the drawing board on a book you’ve already put through several drafts.
Another word of advice—only show your manuscript to people whose notes you really want to hear. Recommendations from someone whose opinion you don’t value are a bitter waste of everyone’s time.
Lastly, send it to as many people as you trust, because most won’t have the time to read it, and you want as many good edits and notes, early on, as you can get.
In this case, the test readers had some great notes. There were subplots that needed explanation; motivations that needed clarification; characters needed to be expanded or cut down; whole elements of the near-future world that needed to be elaborated upon or eliminated; plot inconsistencies, and so forth. These readers also came back with suggestions for books to read to either deepen my understanding of some of the ideas I was touching on, or just to help me keep from plowing someone else’s plot.
Watershed owes a lot to its test readers.
With the edits of my test readers worked into the book, I sent Watershed off to a few agents. This was early 2014—I had a new job, and my wife and I had moved to a cheaper place on the other side of town. At that point, I was focused on releasing another novel, Windfall, to the public, with all I could muster in terms of a full-tilt, full-fledged, marketing blitz; it recouped the book’s costs, plus a couple bucks.
But I’m not a natural marketer, and the process hollowed me out more than I’d like to say. I got back to writing, and spent the rest of that year on a book-length poem. By the beginning of 2015, I was ready to get back to Watershed. My plan was to put it out myself. I set to work, banging away at drafts 4–6 in my down time at work, while better-paid men traded treasury bills and made currency swaps behind me in the open-plan midtown office.
I finished the book in April, about two months after my wife told me she was pregnant.
Shortly after, I took a job I shouldn’t have. The uncertainty of my situation left no room in the household budget, and no time on my calendar to publish Watershed myself. Those uneasy months, I’d spend weekends in my closet-office sending out resumes and query letters to agents in tandem. I lost that job and found another.
In between, my daughter, Miriam, was born.
In December of 2015, an agent expressed interest in Watershed, which was nice news. The agent had a few small notes and edits, all of which were reasonable, and indicated that we were on the same page, by and large. But she also had one rather large caveat—that at least one more major character in the book be a woman.
At this point, Watershed had lived for three years in the blustery magma of whatever it is that writes books nobody asked for. And it had been a more-or-less-finished product in my mind for more than 6 months. I had to take a deep breath and count to 10.
There are obvious issues involved in swapping out the gender of any character, but especially a major one. Some of the characters in Watershed had a previous life in my novel, Windfall. For other characters being considered, a gender swap would have changed them to the point that their actions wouldn’t quite make sense. At first, I offered up a less-prominent character, a best-buddy type, as an alternative. But the agent said no, that wouldn’t cut it. And in hindsight, she was right. It was a half-hearted move on my part, and I think that would’ve shown up in the final product.
Going through my email, I see now it took me 4 days to come up with a solution. What solved the problem wasn’t an adult recognition about the expectations of publishing professionals, or the demographics of the average book buyer. It wasn’t a sober acquiescence to the compromises required of even the most creative, human endeavor. It was inspiration. And I think there was drink involved.
When it came to me, the solution made me laugh. It made my agent laugh. And it worked. It did more than work. It really improved the book. I don’t want to give away which character’s gender was changed. But when you read Watershed, see if you can figure it out. There’s a pretty big clue in there.
The result of the writing, rewriting, and editing process is a better book. And having a book I’m proud of, and believe in, is a necessity as I begin the crowing and general promotion that’s required to place a new novel into the hearts and minds of readers.
For more information about Watershed—
IndieReader Review:
eBook Pre-Order:
Indiegogo Project:
Colin Dodds is a writer and poet. He is the author of several novels, including Watershed, Windfall, and The Last Bad Job, which the late Norman Mailer touted as showing “something that very few writers have; a species of inner talent that owes very little to other people.” Colin’s poetry has appeared in more than 270 publications, and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net Anthology. His book-length poem, That Happy Captive, was named a finalist in both the Trio House Press Louise Bogan Award and the 42 Miles Press Poetry Award. And his screenplay, "Refreshment," was named a semi-finalist in the 2010 American Zoetrope Contest. Colin grew up in Massachusetts, and completed his education in New York City. He now lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his wife and daughter. You can find more of his work at https://thecolindodds.com/
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