Slow Bewildered Avalanche, A Primer
Wherein I Introduce that Novel I'm Always Talking About
When I started the Week in Words, there was no way for me to reasonably and succinctly catch you guys up on four years of work. Trying to do that would’ve halted me from even starting.
But now, a month in, it feels like it’s time for a pause before these updates devolve into exercises in solipsism.
So, then,
Avalanche.
Where do I even start?
How about with a quick summary?
Avalanche is…
a literary fiction novel about four generations of the Greenaway family, their establishment of New Judah, and the people whose influence traversed the years.
1874: The prophet Levi Greenaway leads his followers from Wales to rural Northern California. God had spoken to Levi, and said that a field of gold would allow them to establish their kingdom.
Upon final arrival in the redwoods, they were met with weeks of meager searching. Their guide had run out of ideas. During a night spent in roiling fervor while his followers conferred against him, Levi is visited by the stranded Maribel. She and her party don’t have much, but they do have a gift.
She offers not gold, but copper. Levi, who saw his Father’s light made electric while laid over in New York, awakens to true purpose. In exchange, she seeks protection for those that travel with her. Through their lenses, we explore the founding and the trials of New Judah and the Leviticus Institute. Until one day when the rain became unceasing and the world seemed to stop.
1954: Llewellyn Greenaway is faced with a choice: sell his father’s institute to the newly founded state of Jefferson, or keep it in the family and remain destitute. In the balance are ownership over the final acres of Levi’s kingdom.
Virginia Redman arrives in New Judah, set on preventing the sale for reasons she hopes Llewellyn will understand. She intends to reveal the greater purpose of the Institute to him, but this only leads to a trip to the hills beyond the campus, he with a can full of gas and a handful of matches, “Why not be utterly changed into fire” on his lips.
2010: By virtue of alphabetical closeness, Sam Greenaway is seated next to Edith Harrison in their senior English class. The voice of God—travelled now down across the years—calls to Sam to become a pastor. He is not sure entirely, though, if this is something that he wants. Through Edith, he is awoken to the fear and awe that comes when beliefs expand beyond the gray-haired God of Childhood.
Through the entanglement of these stories, a portrait of the Greenaway family and New Judah brightens across the years.
“And You May Ask Yourself, ‘Well, How Did I Get Here?’”
In February of 2020, my friends Peter and Silas and I started recording the second season of our podcast What if but Good? We were fresh-faced off the success of completing the first season’s writing challenge, without a care about pandemics in the world.
The original premise of the podcast was to complete a feature-length screenplay in 16 weeks. However, between completing the first season and starting the second, I decided to stop writing screenplays and instead focus on fiction. I felt like the grizzled detective being pulled back in for “one last mission.” They knew going in about what I was focusing on, but I didn’t say anything because we already had a good thing going with scripts.
But luckily the What if but Good Boys were way more about expansion than I expected. During our first episode, Silas said something along the lines of, “A screenplay… or something else?” I could present a fiction piece, it’d just be a matter of getting it to fit into the format.
So I pivoted. The nascent idea I had about ghosts in the attic, ever full of green, became the foundation for a novella rather than a screenplay.
During the harried, brash determinism of completing the second season that crazy locked-down year, the idea grew from a simple little piece into something bigger and wider, the shelf I reached for getting higher and higher until I was on tippy toes.
More than anything, the Good Boys blessed me with permission, which is something it seems that a lot of young fiction writers seek. Every week I’d come to them with something that was like, “I’m not sure I’m supposed to do this but…” Their response would always be, “Hell yes, make like Britney Spears and Gimme More.” I was throwing footnotes and thought poems and formatting experiments at the wall to find their limit. Yet their encouragement was unceasing. They pushed me to expand and to grow.
As did Sam’s father, also named Levi, saying, “My father pioneered a scientific frontier, led on by the voice of God. My grandfather created this state we live in because of the Lord, only for it to get absconded and set ablaze. And, as I’m sure you’re well aware, my great-grandfather, the man I’m named after, well, this whole New Judah thing was his idea now wasn’t it.” A heavy, nasally, exhale, “Do you know what that means for me?”
It was their permission that led me to that line in the first place. They encouraged me to perform a high-flying trapeze act that helped me mature into an assured fiction writer. By the end of that second season, I had about 60 pages of what was then being called Somewhere inBetween. It wasn’t a novella anymore, but I’d accomplished the goal of writing the page-length equivalent of one.
Following the podcast, I spent a good year and a half expanding and exploring and constructing the first draft. I was throwing pickles at the window to see what sticks.
With the way the idea was erupting organically, it took on a fractal nature as I bounced between storylines, writing everything that came to mind and doing my best not to fall in love with any of it—I knew that the contraction and the pulling of focus in the second draft would be coming. But I needed to first push and push and push.
And the best part was that, just as I was starting to flounder, the Good Boys were ready to try’n do another season. Peter wanted to get back into comedy. Silas wanted to reconnect with filmmaking. I wanted to finish the first draft of this novel.
That last and final season was a logistical challenge, but we definitely got there. Peter dipped his toes into his city’s comedy scene and wrote a tight five. Silas made a couple fun short films. And, after two years, I finished the first draft.
If that whole part of the process was about expansion, the second was about contraction. Avalanche was full of 150 years of historical events, but there was no clear throughline for all of it—even though the unstuck in time Edith existed throughout the book. And that was what I realized during the second draft: only the stuff involving her matters. She is the true main character, while the Greenaways contextualize her story. I had found the context-cup, and how to approach its reveal. I pared down what I had and rebuilt it with only the scenes that mattered with this in mind. The rest could be sequestered to the Extended Family History, or saved for subtext.
The story of the second draft is otherwise pretty boring. I went to work every day, I did my thing-thing, and at the end of the year, I had a novel with a clear sense of scope and all the historical clothespins on which the laundry of plot hangs.
At the back of my mind was always the general criticism of “young writer uses a unique structure to hide the obvious flaws in his writing.” I didn’t think I was using Avalanche’s structure as a crutch to hide behind, but how could I be sure? Especially when I’d been writing the novel in a scattershot format non-stop for three years? In a novel full of trees, it was clear I needed to step back to see the forests of New Judah once more. I figured some perspective would show me what the novel still needed, and how to approach the third draft.
So I did something that was insanely difficult: I took five months off from working on the novel. I finished the draft in July and was determined not work on it until January. During that break, I worked on honing different skills. I wrote an extended western story to practice sequence structure and a more formal voice.
I also sent it to a mentor. In the process of reading it, he basically went “I don’t like it, but I can’t tell why I don’t like it.” In order to aid in his super-valid criticisms, he did his best to break down the novel into chronological order. This is something I’d never done. I thought that if I worked on it chronologically, it’d get stuck that way. But seeing it laid bare like that made me immediately realize that, yes, I was using the structure to hide my flaws as a writer. I definitely could’ve been disheartened by this whole turn of events.
I saw clearly what the underlying flaws were, how to improve them, and how to approach the third draft. This was a reason to get excited. It may’ve hurt in the moment to hear it all back, but it opened up a very clear way forward. I didn’t see this as a reason to throw away the structure, only to improve its foundations so that it can cohere in the way it demands. It was only September, though, so I held in the excitement and made my notes to come back to.
I started preliminary work on the third draft during the last two weeks of 2023. I was expecting to take about three months per storyline, but boy. There is a lot to figure out now that I can see what the plot was missing. I’m still working through Levi and Maribel’s storyline—which you’ve seen in the updates—but it’s also already longer than it was in the second draft. So, in a way, I completed my goal.
The third draft is about completion. Once I work out each storyline, letting one build on top of the other with echoing resonance, I’m going to put every scene on a notecard and order them out on the floor. I’m glad I’m working through it chronologically, but that’s never been the novel’s final form. I just have to get everything straightened out before I shake the kaleidoscope.
I experienced the greatest progress during our podcast seasons because our weekly cadence lit a fire under my ass. Every week they expected something, which pushed me to keep going. The Weeks in Words is my attempt to recreate this fire, albeit in a more anonymous way. It’ll give a schedule to everything and, while it’s slowed me down at first, is definitely something that will keep me moving forward and accountable.
As Minna said: I haven’t quit.
A Rough Approximation of the First 300 Words
An ability to rectify at least some of what you’ve carried with your pack across county lines, moving from home to home in search of a way back toward the realm beyond the great beyond. Wondering why you already haven’t been allowed to return, wondering what triumph must occur in order to see the passage of time, the disappearance into the Otherwise as cream into tea. Transfer from the bluest nights to the darkest days, a movement of fire above to fire within, a motion away from the predicate life full of missives you once knew—the Liturgy of the Last Time. Through all these years running, it is guilt, it is shame, it is embarrassment—it’s a reason to return. How you left him standing on the threshold of the wet and the cold, rising forevermore. How you allowed him to set the town ablaze. How you returned but never went to face them. Rising forevermore, the promised-to-flourish town brought to its knees by the sky and the earth working their destructive forces. You left. That is your guilt. You didn’t warn them. That is your shame. You returned as an embarrassment. You. You upon you upon you could aim forth and etch ever forward across generations, keeping track and revealing Light if only you didn’t dis ap pear at the worst possible time. The sin we know in our heart of hearts that we’ll repeat and when we do it’ll be downright shameful when it happens. We didn’t cause anything, laid out as we were like laundry on the line. Drift apart and dream ever forward, leave gaping voids and questions wide as chasms with only the slightest hint of evermore imbalance— that creaky gate to the great beyond passed through, a way to etch ever forward.