The Big Lie-dea: Dave Bessom

John Scalzi, notable science fiction writer and knower of things (both sf/f related and otherwise), has a recurring post on his always-interesting blog, Whatever, called The Big Idea, and it features published authors as guest bloggers, writing about their work, and the Big Idea behind a particular piece. Recently, John posted a request for Big Idea contributors (published only, not self-published, not aspiring, not wishful thinkers). A bit more recently, he posted a "How To" type article, all revolving around "how to" (get it?) write a Big Idea post. Now, those of you who know me know I am nothing if not unpublished, so obviously, having my own guest spot on Whatever is a fair spot of work away. With that in mind, I decided to write my Big Idea article, anyway, only I wrote it about a book I have not written. I did this to amuse myself, and I think it worked. At least, I stopped spending my time poking shapes and words into my arms with a straightened-out paper clip.

Here it is:


Dave Bessom:

I've always been an advocate of facial hair, in all its incarnations, and the first thing I do when I start writing is to stop shaving. It's not really something I ever consciously decide, it just happens. When I set out to write my fourth novel, I knew I wanted to do something different. I wanted to take my writing in a new direction, challenge myself. I just wasn't sure how. As I began and discarded draft after draft, some containing as many as 100,000 words, my discontent seemed inversely proportional to the growth of my facial hair: the thicker my beard grew, the more morose I became.
After a while, as my beard came in, a redder brown than the hair on my crown, flecked with premature grey, I began to think of it not just as an accoutrement, but as a physical embodiment of my failure to write. I named it, spoke to it (shouted invective, mostly), I referred to it around my friends, as if it were that elusive "other friend" they had not yet met, and, gradually, it began to take on a life of its own.
I imagined the challenges one might face, playing host to a sentient beard. Throughout history, beards have embodied the essence of many things: wisdom, virility, authority. Inversely, beards have, at the same time, also epitomized dirtiness, despair, filth, and corruption (think evil twin's goatee). Naturally, a sentient beard would be made up of these same characteristics. It was immediately clear which end of this spectrum my own beard inhabited. Once I had decided this, my beard's personality became much more profound, and thus was born Reginald, the sociopathic antagonist in my novel, The Madness of Christopher St John (tentatively scheduled for an October 2008 publishing date, under Imaginary Press).
Aside from being slightly concerned over attributing sociopathy to what is, essentially, myself, I was faced with the obstacle of writing from the point of view of a beard. Would it refer to itself by name? Would it have a gender identity (beards are, in my mind, intrinsically male, but who says this is an undeniable law of the universe?)? I could have avoided the trouble by telling the entire story from the point of view of Christopher St John, the hapless protagonist, and host to the evil Reginald; but that seemed too much of a copout. I would feel cheap if I took the easy way out, and it would (I felt sure) set my story onto a path to ruin and, perhaps, result in my own madness. To save my sanity, then, I set out to find a voice for my beard.
I kept a journal, "written by" my own beard, wherein he would recount his exploits around my neighborhood at night, while I slept; and also filling in some of his background as I went. As time passed, and I wrote more and more of these journal entries as Reginald, slowly his personality began to assert itself, and I heard his voice in my writing. Some of those journal entries made their way into the novel, in the flashback chapters, or are mentioned in passing during several of the exchanges between Christopher and Reginald, who, it turns out, is much older than his human host.
During the course of writing the novel, I began to understand I was writing, not so much about the physical conflicts of hero v. villain, but about the internal struggles we each face every day. Reginald merely provided an externalization of Christopher's inherent conflicts. This had not been my original intent, but once I saw the correlation, I knew that was the story I had been trying to write all along.
Everyone has their own personal version of Reginald living inside of them, just waiting for an opportunity - be it a drunken rage, a personal tragedy, or merely a few days without a shave - to emerge, and begin their slow conquest, first of their host, and then, of the world. We must overcome our inner beast, our Jekyll, our Reginald, in order to fully embrace our own lives.
The rest of the novel flowed easily from fingertip to keyboard, and when I finished typing "The End" at the bottom of page 971, I knew this was my most personal novel yet. I may not be the adept sociology student Christopher St John is, I may not have the trigger-happy recklessness of Sergeant Ackton, I most certainly do not exhibit the libertine elegance and savoir faire of Grace Noelle; but, at the same time, perhaps I do?