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There is an old saying in Texas, “When the horse is dead, it’s time to get off.”

As an artist and a writer, that’s good to remember. Sometimes, one must admit that things are not working out as planned. What began with clarity of vision has now become murkiness of purpose. One must finally acknowledge that there isn’t ‘just one more little change’ that will salvage the project. The work is fundamentally flawed. It’s time to set it aside and eventually return to start over.

And often, starting over is warranted. Truly bad ideas die quickly. What briefly seemed clever falls apart when put to the test. In such a case, the wastebasket is your friend. Little is lost by an early exit.

What is much harder to deal with is a sound idea that isn’t working out. The promise is there, but each attempt to fulfill it falls sadly short. In my experience, the problem lies not in the basic idea or premise but in the approach. That’s why setting the work aside to ‘cool down’ and returning later with fresh eyes is so important. Hidden flaws become apparent, and solutions emerge.

I worked on a short story, titled ‘Dynaflow,’ last week. It is based on an event in my high school years when I went in with some friends to buy an old car. The plan was to fix it up and use it to date girls. We were, after all, adolescent boys with raging hormones, so our plan seemed not only brilliant but perfectly feasible. Our vision was ‘The Ultimate Makeout Machine.’ Of course, that’s not how things turned out. Our horny little dreams were dashed on the rocks of reality. I thought the story should be comedic, and what would drive the comedy would be ever-increasing problems and threats (the car had once been stolen in the fictional telling), rising to almost absurd levels.

Except that isn’t what the story wanted to be.

As I ramped up my plot devices and stoked the laughs, my story became increasingly forced and artificial. Tweaking those things didn’t matter because those things weren’t the source of the problem. The actual problem was that I was trying to take my concept in a direction I didn’t have an emotional inclination for. Another writer might have made a laugh-a-minute romp out of the idea, but I am not that writer. I couldn’t use an experience that was as sweet in its way as it was misguided, as a farce. When I strove for laughs, I lost the humanity of the thing.

So now it waits in a drawer. Or rather, it waits in a file labeled ‘Rework’–we don’t use drawers anymore, do we? It waits for a different me that can better work out the humanity of the thing, letting the comedy, and I do think there is some, take care of itself. Then maybe the horse will rise and walk as I had hoped.

I’ve been drawing all my life and painting since middle school, so it should come as no surprise that my goal was to become an artist. Yet in college, where I studied art, I took all the history courses I could and came to enjoy writing term papers. Yes, you read that correctly. I suppose those 20-page dives into the past became a ‘gateway drug’. Though over the years my creative focus remained on art, specifically painting and selling through galleries, I began to develop a growing ‘writing problem’. It started with articles about gallery and museum shows. Then came artistic interviews and bios of local artists that tried to explicate their work. Some of these pieces can still be found on my art website: www.jacksonpointart.com.

Nevertheless, I considered writing about the arts and other artists as a sideline to my work as an artist. Then I hit the hard stuff — fiction. Oh, along the way, I’d flirted with it. I’d attempted a couple of novels in my salad days, but they remained suitably unfinished and forgotten. Then, sitting in a coffee shop in Mobile, Alabama, my wife and I sketched out ideas for a novel set in Atlanta in 1866. After years of work and many drafts, An Uncertain Peace will be published this fall. Jennifer Chesak, my editor at Wandering in the Words Press, played an indispensable role, prodding me for changes, calling for rewrites, pushing me along as a good idea was shaped into a novel worthy of it.

But frankly, I would have abandoned the project without my wife. Indeed, I did abandon it more than once, but she believed during the times when I didn’t. You see, I saw myself as a painter, and when the frustrations grew too great, I could flee to the studio, confident I was making the right choice–a man running from the opium den of fiction back to a more sensible way of life. My wife always gently nudged me back to the den.

Once you’ve managed a novel, there isn’t any literary thrill that’s out of bounds. Courses on the short story and flash fiction have come and gone. Indeed, I’m currently working on a book of short fiction. A largely completed novel set in Italy and France has been discussed with the good Ms. Chesak. A follow-up to An Uncertain Peace is banging around in my brain. But still the painting goes on. I need that. Art and I have been lovers for too long for me to walk out the door forever, and she always understands and welcomes me home.

It should come as no surprise, then, that the book launch for An Uncertain Peace will be held on Friday, October 10th, at In-Town Gallery in Chattanooga, the gallery that represents my art. Two of the loves of my life (my wife and kids, excepted) will be there, sitting together for a change, sharing the evening.

As writers, we must have a critical feedback loop. Rather like the body’s immune system, it must be strong enough to ward off what is destructive or unnecessary, but not so strong that it stifles healthy growth. That balance is essential. If the feedback loop is too weak, a writer can’t develop greater facility in the craft. If it’s too strong, a would-be writer will be rendered silent by the shriek of self-criticism. Still, as tricky as it can be, this loop is the first stage of editing.

However, for most of us, the internal loop is not enough. We need the critical eyes of others. Passages which we think are crystaline in their clarity may be baffling to others. Good sections might be too lengthy, while others are too brief. The material might be just right for us, but our preconceptions, interests, and biases can cloud our judgment. Other eyes see our prose without our unique lens, and so don’t see it the same way we do.

That is why a critique group is helpful. As others read and comment on one’s work, one comes to see it through their eyes and sensibilities. Good critique groups are a blessing for serious writers, but they are damn hard to find. The problem is that everyone wants praise, and no one wants to hear that what they’ve created has fallen short. Such emotional needs cause a writer’s group to slide into a mutual praise society. You wax ecstatic at my work, and I will swoon over yours. We will justify this joyride by telling ourselves we support and nurture one another. We go home happy—but no wiser and no better. When I find myself in such a group, I don’t stay long. The feel-good drives me away.

Recently, a member of the Chattanooga Writers Guild, of which I am a member, started a new critique group. I waffled on whether to attend the first meeting, but in the end, I gave in and went. I’m glad I did. After addressing the early ‘teething’ issues — too few people at the first meeting, too many at the second, too much time spent on one piece and too little on another — we have now settled into a stable, meaningful group. The critical comments are insightful but never cutting. They focus on the work. I’ve presented short fiction that I felt was ready for submission to journals, and was able to refine it based on the feedback from the critique group. I hope we can maintain this delicate balance. I hope we can avoid the slippery slope of ego enhancement. I hope we continue to reach ever higher, driven forward by honesty.

My wife and I went to Atlanta to meet the newest addition to the family, baby Violet. While we were there, we stopped by to see our brother-in-law, and he gave us an old Underwood portable typewriter that had belonged to my wife’s dad. It had been in his basement for years, protected by a sturdy leather case that could withstand a hit from an artillery shell. He referred to it as “an old piece of junk,” although he had never opened it up to take a look. Not to hurt his feelings, we left with it.

When I opened the case, I found a fully functional four-bank Underwood Standard Portable. I looked up the serial number in the typewriter database (yes, such a thing exists), and it was manufactured in 1929. It looks like it was made yesterday. My wife thinks this typewriter may be her father’s from when he went off to college.

I gave the Underwood a try. The action was stiff, but no stiffer than the Sears portable I used when I was a student. The type size was elite, and aside from the slugs needing a cleaning, none were damaged. The fact that the ribbon was usable meant someone, perhaps my sister-in-law, had replaced it more recently. Whether that is the case, we do not know. I was surprised to find I could still bang along at 35-40 words a minute. The action of the keys, so much stiffer than on a computer, gave a satisfying physicality to writing, though the little finger on my left hand wasn’t strong enough to adequately strike the ‘a’.

I started to extemporize a story about cowboys watching and worrying about their herd as a storm approached (yup, ‘It was a dark and stormy night’). What I wrote was, of course, garbage. What interested me was how, even in that short time, I felt more emotionally linked to the words as they appeared on the page. Maybe it was my imagination. Maybe it was the novelty. I don’t know. Still, it was an interesting experience. Am I going to dump my computer and go back to 1929, embracing the world of Ernest and F. Scott? Nope. Not on your life. But it was nice to visit.