Control: I Wrote a Bad Book and a Good Book…
I, Dalton Lewis, wrote a bad book and a good book. First, the good: The Philosopher’s Guild was a novel about the greatest philosophers of all time. Gotey was the Buddha, the founder of a religion about moderation, peace, and doing the right thing. He fought a battle and hated it, hated hurting people and hated his soft and easy life of nobility. Philip and Sammy were Plato and Socrates, who asked questions to determine right from wrong and find a philosopher-king to benevolently rule the people. Carly Marksian was Karl Marx, a person who fought desperately to help the commoners above all else. Mina Beauvoir was Simone de Beauvoir, a woman who fought for women’s rights in a fantasy city-state which needed such a hero.
To prepare for this novel I read a book about the Buddha and his life. I read some Plato — some of the Republic which I had read in college. I brushed up on it. I also looked at The Communist Manifesto and read entries from several books on the most famous philosophers. I did research. I prepared. I used situations from the lives of these philosophers as scenes in this novel.
The bad guys were philosophers, too. Hobbes became a serial killer who believed that life was short and brutish and that he had to kill people because no one was innocent in life. Nietzsche fought to prove himself the best and tried to take over. Nicky Machiavelli became the king’s adviser and gave him brutal and oppressive advice which turned everything into a political game — a game that Machiavelli wanted to win.
The characters had conflict between themselves, too. They disagreed in interesting ways. They didn’t just fight bad guys; Carly Marksian disagreed with the characters most of the time and rebelled against the city-state that the rest of them were defending. I wrote a book with a lot of good elements.
I got three ratings upon the initial release, and they were all five stars. I sold more copies than I had for a long time and had over 1500 downloads of the book. I had a hit.
Then I wrote another book, flushed with success.
I wrote a book without a firm outline, without much planning to develop the characters or arcs that they had. I wanted to write a book about twenty-eight years in the lives of two writers. I had a black female writer killed in high school and the characters would obsess over the murder for three decades before solving it — which sounds solid. They would make the midlist as writers and try to write the great American novel.
First the novel was going to be a horror/slasher type thing. Then it was changing into a book about two writers. Then it changed from a Joyce-ian feel to an Ayn Rand-ian feel to it. I don’t know why I changed my mind so many times during the planning of the story, but I did…it didn’t help anything. I didn’t plot out very much of the story.
I thought that I included some wonderful scenes. The scene where the bad guy gets caught shows him as broken and flawed and sad and very human. The scene where the two writers are finally together is nice and romantic and shows a side of me I rarely put onto the page.
That should be great, right? I showed racism. I showed the difficulty of a writing life. And I showed the reality of a slow, twenty-year mental health breakdown — a writer descending into madness and depravity. I don’t know how I could have done the novel differently or better. And the audience hated it — hated it. I don’t know why.
I had barely 1000 downloads of this one, a significant downturn from other recent efforts. I sold virtually no copies and had two reviews. Both reviews? One star.
I wrote a good one and a bad one. I hope that I learned something. I think I did. I’m not sure what that is, though.
Thanks, and take care, friends.
