Last year, while I was posting THE HEALING on Andy's website and thinking about posting LOVE NOTE, I wrote the following letter to the New York Times Ethicist:

"I am a writer who has failed to find a publisher. I've finished two more or less non-fiction novels, each autobiographical, the earlier in the third person, the latter in the first. I'm also a quadriplegic. I'm now posting the earlier novel serially on a spinal-cord-injury (SCI) website message board and intend to follow up by posting the second. The central character and some others appear in both books.

"My ethical dilemma is whether I should self-censor and not post the second book. Scar tissue in the spinal cord causes not only paralysis and incontinence but also ends normal sensation in those areas served by the part of the spinal cord that is below the break, including genital sensation. To understate, this has profound sexual implications. During my mis-spent youth (my forties) I discovered that when using cocaine and marijuana I had extraordinary genital sensation. Worse ("worse" because a "good reason" to do coke is dangerous), five years after the initial discovery, I discovered masturbation, masturbation not a common pastime, I think, for quads. I gleefully and exhaustively indulged, knowing the seriousness of my endeavor comical and my sense that I must write about it comical and fraught. But write about it I did, and now, some fifteen years after my romantic liaison with me ended, I find myself with a book I quite like, even admire, and want to have read. I do not, however, want to induce other quadriplegics and paraplegics blithely to do as I have done. Should I risk it?"

The Ethicist did not comment publicly but did answer. He wrote: "Your obligation as a writer is to tell the truth as best you can not to reform the character of your readers. As Oscar Wilde wrote. there are no moral and immoral books, only good and bad books. And in any case, as most writers can tell you to their despair, there is little chance that your book will change much of anything, even your bank account."

I replied: "I think you did in the strawmen but ignored the gorilla, so let me try one more time to pose my concern. If I post my book on a spinal-cord injury message-board it is not far-fetched to imagine that a lonely and credulous teen-aged paralytic or an unhappy couple whose marriage has been unalterably changed (to suggest two) will be tempted by my story to experiment unthinkingly with coke. I seem willing to risk the consequences to them but question the ethics of my self-serving decision. Do you? I gather your answer is no, but I think that if you printed my original letter and your response that your readers would be interested and that many of them would disagree."

I do not think that coke and pot (and the disinhibition described in Chapter 1 part ii of LOVE NOTE) will let most SCI feel as I did. My cord, I was told by the surgeon who had looked, had been macerated, and I have always assumed my scar-tissue block is complete, but the genital sensation and occasional at least partially psychogenic erections described in LOVE NOTE made me wonder. Autopsy, I guess, will tell, but I'm in no hurry for that. I thought it reasonable to have the first post here on the discussion board concern my doubts.

As of March 13, 2006, all four parts of Chapter 1 and the first half of Chapter 2 appear on the LOVE NOTE Forum. I'll be posting Chapter 2 part ii March 20, 2006 and four or five type-written pages (more or less) on each succeeding Monday until the whole book is here. I hope that it will be read and that some of you will take the trouble to post your comments and/or questions here on the LOVE NOTE DISCUSSION forum. "And hey," as Esterhaus used to say at the start of every episode of Hill Street Blues, "be careful out there."

I think that if you packaged the two stories together as auto-biographical and stopped trying to get the publishers to pick it up and instead went to the media maybe and tried to start a buzz about your books you might have some great success. People will want to read an autiobiographical story by a quad, not a story written by a quad. those are my cynical thoughts. its worth a shot, they are well-written and you obviously spent a lot of time on them.

Hope this helps,
David

David,

Thanks for the suggestion. I think you're right about interest existing, unsuccessful as I've so far been in arousing it. Posting here on Simon's board and over on Andy's is another of my attempts to do so, and posting has the added benefit of getting the books off my desk and out in the world, whether or not they ever make it between the covers of a book.

I have spent a lot of time on them, and my attitude toward both is often quite positive; not always, but often. I think I'd have a better chance of getting a newspaper or magazine interested in my having written them if I were a higher quad. If I'd typed them holding a peg in my mouth instead of in my hand it'd be a better story, but I guess all things considered I prefer my relatively functional obscurity to that. In the meantime, I hope you keep reading Love Note, and thanks again for your response.

I write.

I guess that most simply describes what I do. I write for young people for fun, because I have stories which float through my head and bring me some kinda joy when I write them down. I don't really make any significant money with what I do, but I don't really need to either.

Writing involves a lot of research and procrastination, which I guess, eventually brought me to this board.

I think I have read all of these two books now, and although the format makes them seem really disjointed at times, I'm amazed by quite a lot of things.

I think at times they are absolutely, drop dead, crushingly brilliant. At other times, I'm sorry, I think the content is crap. I think all good writers suffer from this, the job is to find enough brutally honest friends to read your stuff and weed out the crap.

I don't always listen to my friends, but it's my job to fight with the book until they can understand why that content was so important to me, to the story, in the first place.

I amazed that there are over 300 views of these books and almost 0 replies. C'mon, if you all hate them say so. If they strike a chord tell us why. Coach has to learn how to make you understand his story.

I'm starting the CPR. Don't let these die on his computer.

Ploof,

Thanks for your comments and appreciation, including your mentioning that you didn't like parts of the books--it makes your appreciation more believable. I kind of hope that in relation to the crap, one man's crap is another's manure, but in the past it's much how I've felt on returning yet again some months or years after the most recent rewrite. I'm happy the books are getting the hits they are--even though the first chapters have more than ten times the hits of the least read ones.

The silence has surprised me a bit. I expected a few attacks for irresponsibility and that a few readers would affirm or doubt my experience. So far only v1nc3 has done either of the latter, fairly recently, and no one has either agreed or disagreed with my doubts of the wisdom of posting. Again, thanks for your comments.

Hey no problem.

I'm full of potentially annoying discussion if you need some. I just though that perhaps some other folks could be incited to comment.

With these books, you're at the point where you've raised teenagers. The teen years are tough. Teenagers leave the house and come home with all kinds of crazy stuff they learn from others. If you're not up for the fight, your books will either be embryonic and crummy or they will die.

This isn't going to be pretty...

Who exactly do you see as your audience? Regular old Oprah-type reading folk? I'm not sure they're up for a book with so much self-lovin' as Love Note. The Healing would be easier to find an audience for. Flush it out, steal from parts of Love Note if you need to. It's a really cool story, it has a beginning, a middle and an end, but it's not done.

Arthur is likeable enough, but he doesn't do much for others. A whole lot of drug use and self love make for kinda a dull guy. Oh, I'm sorry, it's autobiographical. Shoot, um, well, Arthur has loads of friends so I'm sure it really isn't as bad as it comes off. Why do others love him?

Ploof,

There is no question that to be a successful professional writer one is well-advised to have an audience in mind, and, too, maybe even more importantly, a venue.

My idea of the former, for these two books--the only ones I've finished, which is to assume they are finished--, was indeed regular old Oprah-type readers, though as you can imagine that's not how I think of them. Books of creative imagination--which these two books arguably are not, but which I aspired to make them--create their own audiences (build it and they will come) and it was my hope these would. But my first and absolute audience, the audience I insisted I try to interest and please, was me. I assumed that if I did the best I could, it might be good enough to arouse a certain interest.

Books about trying to write are a genre in themselves, and these two are in it. In high school I objected to novels that centered on the narrator's attempts to write. I no longer do. I find reading almost any meticulous description of effort is moving, including descriptions of trying to write. Too, I felt that even were my effort to fail, making it was good, at least, for me.

For LOVE NOTE to make any sense, Arthur has to be attractive or at least attractively repulsive. His certainty of his friends' love must be justified for the stress between his certainty he will talk to them and his persistent on-going failure to do so to work. If you didn't get a sense of him, it's surprising you persisted; if I come to rewrite LN again, I'll try to keep an eye on that.

Too, it's no surprise you found Arthur's self-love dull. It's part of the joke that as Arthur lives and then writes LN he is very much aware that masturbation may be fun and even meaningful to the masturbator but is very likely to be profoundly--at least deeply--boring to anyone else.

Among what I like about Arthur is his enthusiasm for his newly-discovered feeling, his risk-taking, his failing again and again but trying over and over to communicate verbally, the ridiculousness of the situations into which he thrusts himself, and his perseverance in writing LN, a dubious enterprise. I also like his metaphhysical speculation and uncertainty. Readers have also mentioned the absence of anything like self-pity, which they have liked.

THE HEALING may, as you say, remain unfinished. I was appalled at how unfinished I found it as I was preparing to post it--and it's exponentially more finished, thank God, fate, whatever, than it was then. Next time I read it, if I do, I well may be appalled again.

Lastly, I do very much appreciate your encouraging others to comment. Message boards need posters, and Simon's thrive. I like to feel my books add some small something to the mix that he provides, and were a discussion to now and then break out here it might tend to reenforce the feeling.

As for the novel I have yet to read it. But, just off of what I've been through as a young Quad (26yrs old 7.5 yrs post injury) it's refreshing to hear that there are others in this world that have taken the bumpy road to maturity. Sex, drugs, Rock, and keep Rollin! (Yeah that's patented). What i am tryin to say is, who cares about what's moral or immoral as long as it's true. It's not your job to parent or rolemodel everyone but as a writer it is your job to be honest to your reader. Take it for what it's worth.

Shawn "Wheelz of Steel" Hall

I agree with you Shawn, except for the honesty part.

To my mind, a writer,s first ( and, in truth, only) obligation to the reader is to be interesting. And I don't mean to yourself, Coach, but to the reader.

I managed to struggle through two postings ( chapter 1, parts i and ii) before recognizing it as the sophomoric drivel that it is.

Surely someone as adept as you seem to be with the language arts, could find better subject matter and present it properly.

The closest analogy I can think of to describe it would be of using the finest paints, brushes, and canvases to paint a picture of a turd. A stunning likeness, but still a piece of ............!!!!!

It's not my usual nature, to be so abrupt, but you expressed a desire for honest feedback.
ed

Wheelz annd Edlee,

I've been pleased at how many people seem to have been reading here, and a little surprised that no one till you, Wheelz, has responded to the moral question I think/thought posting LOVE NOTE poses. For a writer I think truth does, as you, Wheelz, insist, trump, even define, morality. A writer, whether a reporter or a poet or a novelist, has to try to get it right and trust his or her readers to deal with it.

Edlee, I think it's okay for a writer to attempt to be interesting, but I also think that each of us is potentially interesting when speaking/writing about what we know the best. I was brought up to believe I should read only the best of what has been written. Life is short, and there's not enough time to read everything, so why waste time on the second rate? But to ignore Melville or Marvell because neither is Shakespeare or Anne Tyler because she isn't Toni Morrison or Morrison because she isn't Faulkner I think a bad choice. Each of these writers is very much worth reading. Am I? You and the few publishers/agents to whom I've offered LOVE NOTE or THE HEALING think not; happily, a few of those who've read the books disagree. I don't know. I do know that when I have reread my books, I have usually been disappointed and felt the need yet again to rewrite. (I've read neither since I finished posting them here in 2006, so as of today my attitude is fairly positive toward each.) I also think that even if I've failed as a writer, my trying has made me a better person.

My responsibility as a writer is I think to try to be honest, as Wheelz asks, and leave how interesting I've managed to be up to the reader; I also assume that to about the degree I am honest I will be interesting, not to everyone, of course, but to a bigger or smaller set of readers that includes many of the persons served by Apparelyzed. Of course an autobiographical novel as focused as LOVE NOTE is on masturbation is ridiculous, but it's not, I hope, only ridiculous. There was a time I wondered why so many artists seem to write about such small odd subjects. Must not great books concern great questions? But though no doubt there are writers who set out to write great books and succeed, I found I could only write, yuck, about myself. I was disappointed but tried to make the best of it, and hope in fact that LOVE NOTE in particular transcends its subject matter.

Hi Coach

Quite some time back I popped in to taste your two writings but until now I've missed this thread. I can't give you a comprehensive criticism because I haven't read them but I can recall my initial reaction.

For me personally, the third person style of The Healing doesn't attract me. If I'm on a forum and the subject is SCI then I want straight factual info.

I started reading both stories and didn't get far with either. Firstly, I'm an impatient person when it comes to reading. Not everyone is like that. Neither of these immediately caught my attention. I was expected to wade through scene setting and vague background with no meat.

To be honest, I don't know what constitutes good literature. I can comment only on what keeps me reading. To please me you'd need to have something captivating from the start and I would like your writing to be much much tighter and I also had a few stutters where it didn't flow. I reckon you woulod benefit greatly yourself and probably come up with something more exciting if you were to work on each story by reducing them to a short story. That will really test your skills and keep it to a manageable size. That's what I would want to do.

As for your ethical dilemma, I agree with the others. It's about your honesty, the way you see life and you should write it to please yourself. The complication with that is that it's got to be attractive to others if you want them to read it. Just how far you go in making it readable is up to your skills as a writer and reader of people.

I'm wondering what your is motivation. Is it to write a book because you should or for fame or for money or success or because you have a story to tell? I don't expect you to answer that but you might check yourself which might clarify your expectations.

Having said all that, I take my hat off to you for the work you have done. Many people talk and talk about the book they never write but you've done it, twice.

Hey Nomis,

I've never tried writing THE HEALING in the first person. The earliest drafts of LOVE NOTE were third person and rewriting it in the first was a huge improvement. I'm an incredibly patient reader, expect to give a book 100 pp., finish almost everything I start, and tolerate not knowing what's going on to a fault. It was not, however, my intention to bore at the beginning, and you are not the only person to find LOVE NOTE starts slowly. Darn, seemed pretty brisk to me last time I worked on it.

I wrote THE HEALING because I was dissatisfied with all I'd done before and, when I was told at a seance I'd be healed in 90 days, and when my friends seemed almost all to assume it would be so, I recognized a beginning--the prediction--and an end--I'd walk or, rather likelier I thought, wouldn't. I had been keeping a journal and by continuing to write day-to-day in ninety days had a rough version of a middle. Bingo.

I wrote LOVE NOTE also because I could. I'd been writing pretty much daily for years when I realized its story (discovering masturbation in my mid-forties and being unable to express my love as I knew, nights, I could but then, days, couldn't) offered me a subject I could use. I tried to use it for years with unsatisfactory results, but I kept trying and eventually finished a draft I liked (until I reread it), which a friend read and criticized. Among his other suggestions was to switch to first person. I cut 100 pp. and let Arthur narrate. I didn't write with a specific audience in mind, thought if it was good enough it would get read. I still think that, and still don't know if it's good enough; that its least read chapters (THE HEALING's too) here on the Apparelyzed boards have about half the hits the opening chapter does I hope means that a sizable number of people are reading the whole book, and that the least-read chapters are getting more than two hits a day means to me I have a growing, if hardly huge, audience

The person I wanted my writing to satisfy was me. I suspect if I yet again were to reread either book, I'd again be dissatisfied and want to rewrite, though I've rewritten each probably upwards of a dozen times. But I have tried, which, as you kindly mention, is something. For a time I retitled LOVE NOTE as A HUMAN BEING, then as ANOTHER HUMAN BEING. Each risked pretentiousness, but the book is about being human, an extraordinary and perplexing thing to be, always in the moment and forever-changing, formed by the past which is gone forever and going into the future, never to be reached. Failure's a huge part of the human experience. Too, many excellent writers, Steinbeck comes to mind, die feeling they were failures. My life's worth is not dependent on the quality of my books (except, in ways, to me). I would have had me write more and better books, depend less on the detail of my day-to-day life, but the living itself, not its product, is what I believe most matters. I think my job in relation to my books is to write them, period, though an enthusiastic readership, a publisher, and maybe a big advertising budget and a last rewrite would not be to be sneezed at. Not be to be sneezed at? Oy.

Coach,
I have yet to read either book. I'm rather new to this website and just tonight started reading this thread, topic. Whatever it's called. I'm an artist, been one all my life, though never made much money from it.
I've so often felt that if I'm going to create a piece of work; it must be "important" Ground breaking.
Having great social impact. And because I've never been able to find that kind of subject matter, I've created nothing more than a lot of pretty pictures, devoid of any real content. Banal images done in a fairly skilled manner that look nice, hold the eye for a while but are forgotten as soon as the viewer moves on.
Sometimes I must know my limitations and understand maybe I'm not the Picasso I'd like to be.
Creator of world shattering images, but just another hack artist with some but not enough imagination to do something of lasting value.
This kind of thinking will stymie the artistic prossess to no end. I mean why bother to create if I'm not going to create something of true depth and meaning? But not all of us are cut from the cloth of genius and must accept that fact early on or we'll waste our lives away frozen and unable to do anything at all.
Maybe it's enough to take trite subjects and present them hopefully, in a way that is at least somewhat new and different.
There's nothing wrong with autoeroticism as subject matter."Portnoy's Complaint" being a good example. If it can be done in an interesting way, from an interesting viewpoint. Something really entertaining. If you've done that, then you've done enough. There's room for only so many Faulkners, Steinbecks etc. As long as you can write something that entertains and helps to pass the time, then you've done your job.
I know every time I take another look at a piece I've already finished I want to do it over again. Life's to short to be redoing that which is done. I must take that energy and put it towards something new. Otherwise potential for growth is thwarted big time, and I can't allow that.
Now I must read what it is that has created all this hullabaloo!
Zeit Gezunt my friend and partner in creative crime.
e-dog

edog--

I hope you try the books--and find some words you like! Paint on. After I finished posting the books here I took a few years off, was delighted one day a few months back to find myself writing again.