We had a terrific discussion with Nick DiChario tonight about his Campbell Award-nominated novel, A Small and Remarkable Life. We talked about his thoughts behind the story, which was focused on the theme of alienation. He told us of his desire when writing to completely the questions in a story that were most strongly related to plot, yet leave some things ambiguous, like whether the preacher's vision of the deceased Tink Puddah charging him with a mission was real or a delusion. He told us of the processing that the novel underwent, including extensive re-writes, the elimination of over a hundred pages of backstory, and three years of complete dormancy which gave him a wonderfully fresh look at the work when he picked it back up again.
Nick also told us of his adventures with the publishing world which included those same three years with his novel sitting on the desk of an editor that wanted to publish it, but wouldn't at any particular moment actually do it. A different editor had told him that there was no way for a large publisher to market the book because it wasn't easily categorized. And that led us to some of our repeating discussion themes; the disrespect and disappearance of SF as a genre, entertainment that leads readers away from the printed word, and the limitations placed on stories by publishers. It was a joy to explore those a bit with all the new folks that joined us tonight. In talking about genres, we also hit on the different ways that Nick's book could be categorized, mainly SF or historical fiction and how it hadn't worked for him as a murder mystery.
We talked in more depth about his characters, about his troubles he had had writing Jacob Pearsall and surprising Nick with a comparison of Tink Puddah to Superman.
Nick also gave us some wonderful techniques that he uses, like printing a story in a different font for a new perspective while editing, working in longhand on paragraphs that just don't work on the computer screen, and writing with a typewriter to discourage backtracking to edit when forward progress is needed. I know that my children will definitely be learning what that a typewriter sounds like!
Thanks for a great meeting and hope to see you all at November's meeting which will be discussing the 2007 World Fantasy Con in Saratoga Springs, November 1-3.
