Part 6, while wend: Call for Feedback
With a reader survey, a thought about villains, and an interview with Anders Carlson-Wee.
Since everyone will be busy in the coming week, I won’t publish a new novel chapter. The next chapter, “Phantom,” lands on December 5th. Happy Thanksgiving!
Reader survey
Substack provides me with statistics about site traffic at Singular Dream, but I find them rather opaque. Rather than make guesses about what they mean, I’d like to hear directly from my readers. So I’ve put together a little survey. If you would, please take a few minutes to leave me a comment answering these questions:
Are you still reading Quibble?
If so, are you caught up? That is, have you read everything up to and including the newest chapter? (Newest now is chapter 32, “Kindness.”) If you’re still reading but not caught up, what was the last chapter you read?
If you stopped reading the novel and you don’t think you’ll come back to it, where did you leave off and why did you decide to stop reading? (You can be candid.)
Are you reading my reflection essays, too? If so, which one(s) did you like most? What did you like?
Recently, I began corresponding with
, who writes serial sci-fi and fantasy fiction at Greyburne’s. Discovering Jeremy to be a smart reader with some good ideas for improving Quibble, I enlisted him as a beta-reader.One thing we’ve discussed is the novel’s “barrier to entry” for new readers. Quibble is a challenging book — for years, my beta-readers have called it “esoteric.” I feel obliged to write what I enjoy reading, but the novel might be easier for readers to approach if I reorganize early chapters. I asked Jeremy to read them in a new order and offer his feedback about it.
The verdict from Jeremy is that too little is to be gained from a major reshuffling and, after all the time and thought I put into the book, I should leave the order be and trust it to work for the readers who will appreciate what I’ve written.
This spurred me to think about my process some more, so I think, once I finish publishing “Infinite Lock-In” (the current essay series), I’ll write a reflection about craft before diving back into theme with the two-part essay “Social Media Made Me an Asshole.” The topic for the craft essay will probably be “productive mysteries.”
Part 6, while wend: Call for feedback
If the plots of novels simmer and thicken, the plot of Quibble is now split pea soup. In the next part, “run,” I’ll add pepper, and then we’ll see this thing boil over.
As mentioned previously, the romance between Quibble and Definition has a rough road ahead — it’s already suffered a setback in chapter 32, “Kindness.” That chapter gives Nish’s side of the story. In the coming chapters, we’ll get Quibble’s side.
Chapter 30, “Spy,” is a new addition to the manuscript, written only a week before it came out. I felt the story dragged in “while wend.” So I hope this chapter supplied a sense of foreboding, hinting at action to come. And I hope it made you curious about Quibble’s foe, Asuja, who’s trying to win his freedom from utter control.
Villains are fun to write, and of course readers love them, but I’m wary of overusing them. In my experience, they can wear out their welcome, and a writer who leans too much on them — especially on a cunning villain like Asuja — risks telling the reader too much about what’s to come. So I prefer to sprinkle my villains in, and I just try to make their appearances count.
I’m eager to hear any feedback or questions you may have about the chapters in “while wend.” Or about “Infinite Lock-In,” my ongoing essay series.
A reminder: parts 1 and 4 of “Infinite Lock-In” are available in full to free subscribers.
Part 1: Cybernetic Totalism. What does it mean to reduce human beings to information?
Part 4: Digital Heaven. Who thinks we can mind-upload? What scheme is being proposed for the Singularity?
Interview with Anders Carlson-Wee
An interview I conducted with the poet Anders Carlson-Wee about his collection Disease of Kings (Norton, 2023) is out now at Michigan Quarterly Review Online.
At the heart of the book is a touching friendship between two young men, an odd couple living large on dumpster-diving. As its speaker’s every emotion burns, Disease of Kings paints an intimate, tenebristic portrait of an artist who chooses material poverty only to unearth spiritual wealth.
In the interview, Anders and I discuss formal limitations, hard craft lessons, dialogue between the book’s poems, how a writer enters expansive consciousness and what can be found there, and loneliness.
Many thanks to Anders for giving the interview and to the folks at MQR Online, especially Diepreye, for giving it a home.
Read the interview here: https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/mqr/2024/11/gratitude-in-the-margins-an-interview-with-anders-carlson-wee/