My upcoming novel, Still Life, took 33 years to write. That’s not a typo. With half a dozen published novels already behind me, my average time from concept to conclusion was about two years—one year for a first draft, another year for a bunch more drafts.
So what the hell happened this time?
In a previous century, in the year 1992, I wrote a short story titled “The Painter’s Son,” in which an adult first-person narrator (named David!) looks back on his childhood and the challenging relationship he had with his father. It was published in Storyquarterly, a prestigious literary journal. Naturally, I was honored, and excited about launching my writing career.
I was such a beginner then. This was my brief bio published in the contributor’s section at the back of the journal: “David Klein teaches fiction writing at Cabrillo College in Santa Cruz, California. He has written a novel, The Petting Zoo, and is at work on his second novel.”
Unlike “The Painter’s Son,” the novel I wrote was awful. The second novel I claimed to be working on might have been even worse.
Still, I persevered, and I turned my attention again to “The Painter’s Son.” I sensed something was missing from the story. The arc of the character felt unfinished. Although we learn plenty about the character’s childhood in the story, we learn nothing about the adult version of him.
Shortly after the story’s publication, I moved to Geneva, Switzerland, where I had plenty of time to write and decided to expand “The Painter’s Son” into a novel. Character name change from David to Vincent, title change to Still Life, fill out his young adult life (age 27) by giving him a love interest (Jane) and an artistic passion (painter), and build a narrative around the impact the complex and traumatic relationship with his father has on his current life. Easy peasy, right?
In fact, the writing went well. I had a solid framework in place from having written the short story (I would use the same ending), I had a handle on the narrative voice, and in about six months I wrote the novel. It was short, 60,000 words, but there were plenty of great novels on the shorter side: The Great Gatsby, Of Mice and Men, The Catcher in the Rye.
I quickly had several offers from literary agents to represent me, but Still Life never sold. Such are the vagaries of the publishing world.
I pressed onward as a writer. I penned another novel—An Uncommitted Crime. A new agent I approached said it wasn’t quite right for the market, but asked if I had anything else. Yes, I had Still Life. He was interested and took me on, but again, the novel didn’t sell.
Then I wrote Stash and found a new agent, which resulted in my first major publishing contract from Random House. Clean Break, The Culling, In Flight, and The Suitor all followed. Get your copies here!
But over the years while writing those novels, Still Life stayed with me. I kept thinking about it. I kept tinkering with it. The story of Vincent’s relationship with his father seemed solid, but something about Vincent and Jane still felt incomplete. I added a subplot (and about 20,000 words) that reflected Vincent’s current state and deepened the nature of his and Jane’s relationship.
Finally, I was satisfied. Still Life was the best it could be—or at least the best I could make it. But my literary agent is retired now, and the traditional publishing world wants little to do with me, and so I’m publishing Still Life on my own.
I’m targeting the end of January for publication, some 33 years after I’d published the short story it’s based on. Here’s the cover. You can read the first chapter here. I hope you will give it a try. I can’t fully explain how much this novel means to me.
