One of my primary progressions as a novel-writer—I blanch at calling myself a novelist, because it’s never been my full-time job—has been to go from writing novels on the fly to outlining them, or as it’s more commonly known in the biz, from being a “pantser” to a “planner.”
Besides some basic note-taking on Devil’s Jukebox, I would be a panster for my next two novels and the first draft of my fourth, The Island Circus Part Two. I’m an ardent advocate for outlining, as I think it helps defray my weaknesses as a writer—I’m terrible with plotting—and generally makes my initial drafts a lot stronger. Me, I think outlining can help detect a lot of problems well before you’ve put pen to page and committed ten thousand words to the wrong idea. It’s much easier to delete a paragraph of outline than an entire chapter.
Famously, Stephen King is a lifelong panster. In his lovely book On Writing, he argues it’s the best way to capture the magic and wizardry of the process. (I’m paraphrasing, but that’s my memory of it.) With all respect to King, his insistence on pansting is a little like Michael Jordan pointing at a basketball hoop and saying, “It’s not high! Just jump up and dunk it!”
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Later in this series, I’ll speak more about why I’ve come to be a planner and why I think it makes for a better experience, but for now, I’ll admit that I miss my pansting days sometimes. I don’t think you ever completely lose the “pansting” lobe of your creative brain, but for me, it’s definitely withered as I’ve gotten older.
Magic Spiders, my second novel, is (in its current state) entirely a product of pantsing. As of now, it remains in the drawer. It’s also the only one of my novels—published or otherwise—that no one else has seen.
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I completed the initial draft of Magic Spiders when I was twenty-three or -four, roughly a year after moving to Los Angeles. I miss those days. I was working a shitty swing-shift job in South Bay—an hour commute from my place in Silver Lake—and could function on almost no sleep. I rose at five o’clock almost every morning and went to my favorite coffee shop, Silver Lake Coffee, to work.
And man, did I work.
I’d wind up writing two and a half novels, a pair of novellas, and a few short stories while I was there. Two of my short stories, The New Color and Dream Blossoms, would be published in tiny magazines. (I’m especially proud that Dream Blossoms, a magically realistic account of an elderly man’s final moments, would appear in a newsletter for a community of retirees.)
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Magic Spiders follows two high schoolers, Seth Aegis and Barry Stix, from freshman to senior year. The backdrop is the Appalachian foothills of north Georgia and a prep school, Montmarnass Academy, that would later appear in my eighth novel, Strong Bones.
I attended the McCallie prep school in Chattanooga, Tenn., which is located on the site of a major Civil War battle, Missionary Ridge. (You can throw a rock in East Tennessee and hit a major Civil War battlefield.) Somewhat infamously, McCallie resides above a network of old Civil War tunnels. Today, these tunnels are merely a dangerous curiosity, but for me, they provided the inspiration for a school riddled with as many secret passages as Hogwarts—and which was hiding a host of dark secrets about its past.
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As with Devil’s Jukebox, I re-read Magic Spiders recently and was pleased to discover that, at least in terms of prose, I’d run out some of the brown water in my first novel, but even more encouragingly, I detected the beginnings of what is commonly known as a “voice,” though I don’t think I’ve ever developed an actual voice. Nah, at best, I at least know what I’m trying to say, and in Magic Spiders, that skill was coming into focus.
I’d originally planned for Magic Spiders to be this massive, multigenerational epic on the order of my literary idol, John Irving, but over the years, I’ve come around to a more humble ambition: this is a simple coming-of-age story about two young men whose friendship deteriorates as their personalities mature, their rivalries deepen, and their grudges fester.
I’ve had a lot of toxic friends over the years, and I’ve been a toxic friend. Magic Spiders was one of my first attempts to reckon with those relationships. Seth is an amalgam of several friends—some of who I’m still friends with, others I’m not—while Barry is a fairly close proxy for me. Re-reading the novel revealed an angry young writer whose sympathies were, unsurprisingly, clearly on Barry’s side, though not as much as I thought they’d be going into it. Seth comes across as a manipulative gaslighter, but he’s also incredibly kind and protective of Barry. Meanwhile, Barry is basically a sweet kid but an angry one with a broken homelife and an incredibly abusive mother.
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On this note, I’ll add: I’d mostly forgotten about the mother, and — phew, she’s a beast. I had a contentious relationship with my own mom but was exploring a totally different dynamic in this book that I don’t think should, would, or will make it into any future drafts. I’ll further add that … well, I had some pretty mixed-up ideas about women and romantic relationships at the time. I suppose a lot of chuckleheads in their early twenties do, but if I were to try and place this book for publication, traditionally or otherwise, those elements would need to be revisited.
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On the plus side, the book has a wonderfully vivid sense of place and a goofy, headlong tone that, if I’m being honest, I’d have a hard time replicating at my current age. One supporting character, a local kid—or “townie” in prep school parlance, I suppose—named Cody Rayder was a particular surprise. (It’s so weird to have completely forgotten about whole entire characters you conceived and wrote.) I’ve known quite a few Codys in my time: fast-talking good-ole boys who’re always up for a good time; it’s a character type I’d later explore with the lead of the Island Circus novels, Oda McGaw.
Another character type that cropped up again, the “evil football coach,” is Coach Claxton, except in this case, he’s a good guy. I have a complicated relationship with sports and the coaching profession. (I’ll speak more about that in my entry on Omegaball.) But by and large, I’ve liked more of my coaches than not, and Coach Claxton amalgamates most of the good ones—he’s loud and funny and addresses everyone as “Mister.”
He’s also something of the kids’ nemesis. One storyline followed Seth, Barry, and Cody as they throw a series of increasingly rowdy parties. Cody has the hookup for booze, which attracts most of the campus. A dogged Coach Claxton finally discovers where they’re holding the parties, which leads into this moment that still makes me laugh after all these years. (Another character, Brett, is a football player who befriends the core three guys.)
We’re busted!” Seth screamed. “Fucking Claxton’s on his way!”
A second of stunned silence, and then, in unison:
“Oh, fuck!”
Everyone ran into each other at full speed. Beer flew everywhere in glittering golden arcs. Cody elbowed several guys aside to protect his beloved stereo with his person. Barry stood amidst the havoc, face still red, screwdriver clenched in his hand. Seth leapt from the dresser and, in a surprising burst of coordination, landed on his feet by the door and started directing traffic out. Drunk prep schoolers streamed out the door in a great torrent of Duck Head, Polo, and L.L. Bean. They got jammed on the stairs, but Brett, who had risen from his stupor at the first word of being busted, lowered his shoulders and plowed through it like he was lead-blocking on a student-body right. Bodies slid down the mud- and beer-slick stairs.
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But the driving action for this novel, along with Seth and Barry’s dying friendship, is a treasure hunt. After Coach Claxton busts this party, the kids vanish into the secret tunnels and get separated. Cody and Barry find their way out, but Seth stumbles onto what he thinks is a stash of lost Confederate gold. He spends the rest of his time in prep school trying to find it, slowly coming unglued in the process.
I still need to work out the kinks in that storyline, but I think it’s one worth pursuing. Someday. Maybe.
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There’s also the matter of my original conception for this novel, that of the multigenerational, John Irving-style epic. I ran across an outline I’d written for that chunk of the book, which would jump ahead several years and revisit Seth and Barry as they return to Montmarnass to right some old wrongs. There’s a scope and structure to this new material that was clearly inspired by Stephen King’s IT, a work that looms large in the imagination of Gen-Xers and Generation Catalanos everywhere, I suppose.
This new material is some of the darkest I’ve conceived—less John Irving and more Chuck Palahniuk—and I’m not sure if I’d want to write it. I’ll say this for it, though; it’s got the best working title ever: Magic Spiders 2: Magic Spidier.
Robert J. Peterson, Author 