The Story Behind Forests

My first novel would never have existed if it hadn’t been rejected first. That sounds weird, but it’s true. It’s fairly common for those of us who’ve published something to sagely advise novice writers that rejection is part of the process. That’s true as far as it goes, but the reality is deeper than the trite phrase implies. Rejection is not merely part of being a writer, in some sense can be a part of writing– a part of the story itself. My first published novel, Forests of the Night, began life nearly ten years before its eventual publication. Its first incarnation was as a 15,000 word story titled “Dark Horse.” ”Dark Horse,” was finished in 1984, when I was still in high school. I was already a veteran of rejection by then, having written stories for publication (hopeful me) for nearly three years. I had been writing, just for myself, for much longer, but it took a while before I had the nerve to submit anything.

Like everything else I wrote at that time, I spent some years trying to sell “Dark Horse” to various markets. Occasionally an editor might even scribble a note on one of the form rejections– mostly about cardboard characters working at the mercy of the plot, and of exposition overwhelming the narrative.

Eventually I lost interest in it in favor of marketing other stories, all with equal (or lesser) success.

It wasn’t until I was in college when I had the epiphany–
I wasn’t a short story writer!

In college I tackled novel writing. The first hurdle was completing a 150,000 word fantasy novel. It took me months, but writing the last scene gave me the greatest high I’d ever had in my writing career to that point.

Of course, that first effort was total dreck.

However, it was a tremendous learning experience. I was a much better writer at the end of the novel than I was at the beginning.

I spent two years trying to revise that novel into a publishable form. Eventually I decided that hacking it into shape was more trouble than it was worth, and I was better off by starting fresh with an entirely new novel. After completing one, the second didn’t seem nearly as daunting.

I turned to what I thought was one of my better short story efforts. By now it had dawned on me that my stories had been way too compressed. In fact, they were reading like novel outlines.

So I rewrote my story “Dark Horse” as a novel. I didn’t actually refer to the text of the story as I wrote– by then, with the one crappy novel under my belt, I was scared of what the story would read like. I didn’t want to discourage myself.

Instead, I wrote from my memory of how the story was supposedto go. The novel form freed me to indulge in all the plot I wanted, and have all the background I needed, without sacrificing the characters, or the action of the story. (i.e.. showing, not telling.)

It is amazing, in fact, how much of “Dark Horse” survives in the novel Forests, in a much more comprehensible form. I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that, had “Dark Horse” been published, my novel Forests of the Night wouldn’t exist.