This week, we're talking with Scott Feero about his new book, Dressing Stone.
Tell us something unexpected about yourself!
I never learned how to sing, that's the reason I became an artist and writer. Really. I have always been envious of people who can sing. Not singers, but common everyday people, who are able to express themselves and find camaraderie in song. I was always too shy to join in. And although the shyness has pretty much evaporated—it's too late to change, I prefer solitude. I always have. That's probably why I never learned how to sing.
Why do you write?
Because I'm not much of a talker. I have no ability as a raconteur whatsoever. I started writing because I could never think of the right thing to say in the moment. The perfect phrase occurred to me later, after it was too late. Before I started writing, this used to really bother me. I would be haunted by regrets when the elusive bon mot, the witty quip, that scorching comeback, the jaw-dropping anecdote would come to me, useless and limp, long after the moment had passed. I coined the term ‘Regretro-eloquence' to describe this disease, and began keeping a journal and ultimately cured myself of this lumpen trait.
In writing you always have time to think of the right thing to say. You always have time to find the right words. You always have the chance to revise and elaborate. No matter what you want to say, it's never too late. I absolutely love writing because it provokes the blossoming of ideas in me that I otherwise would never have had.
Where did you get the inspiration for your current book?
From a lifetime of witnessing, and on occasion participating in crude conduct and bad behavior. As an artist living in NYC while supporting myself working in the construction trades, there were plenty of odd characters to observe. I have known a lot of artists and a goodly amount of my clients were either artists, or worked in the arts in some capacity. There's all the other clients and tradesmen I came up against on the job. And then there's the rest of the city's inhabitants.
Living in NYC I witnessed a lot of acting out, some of it stupid, much of it neurotic, a lot of it inspired, but too much of it dissipating, desultory and delusional. The specifics of these experiences, did not so much make their way into the novel, as much as just sort of reaching a critical mass, and provoking me. You could say the sum total of the art-scene's madness really set things rolling. The somewhat crazy client met in Chapter 2 started out as an amalgam of several real people, but ultimately Cynthia Kohl took on a life of her own, as did all the characters in Dressing Stone—which is as it should be If I'm going to call it fiction.
What do you enjoy the most about your genre?
There's a question. My genre is Literary Fiction, which to a large extent is just a pigeonhole in which every novel that does not fit in with any of the other genres gets stuffed. That the term sounds highbrow and snooty appeals to me, but I often use the term Contemporary Fiction to let people know I'm not an ardent elitist—that I'm also a man of the people, who is if nothing else, their contemporary. But I'd be dissembling if I didn't say that what really appeals to me about the genre is the name. The word ‘Literary' smacks of culture and the cultured, and evokes precisely what all writers wish to create—no matter what their genre—compelling literature.
How would you describe your writing process?
Like most writers—except during those most exalted moments—it's fairly tortured. There's the struggle to sit down, the struggle to concentrate, the struggle to stick to the day's plan, the struggle to stay awake, the struggle with the distractions of social media and on and on… I'd consider all this something easily managed if I could just tick them off a simple list, but they constantly gyrate about the room, attacking throughout day.
Then there's the exalted moments. The moments of vision. The moment's of possession and trance, where pure concentration focuses your mind so precisely on the spot where the rubber meets the road that nothing can break you from your revelry—not the bark of the phone nor the barking of the dog—you cannot even bother to scratch your nose, you do not remember to restart the circulation in your legs, because all feeling and complaint is removed from your body as you are born aloft by the unfolding narrative vision. The concerns of the entire world recede into an inchoate blob, the blur of fingers dances over the keyboard, extruding as effortlessly as if squeezed from a tube of toothpaste a chapter's worth of scene and story in twelve pristine pages of clear and concise prose until you—until you simply must stop.
You tear yourself from the keyboard—yet you cannot—still held fast you must nail down the last flickering threads—you must capture those last-gasp wisps of the fading idea—con brio—now without regard to spelling and punctuation or even entirely making sense—pleading con agitato—that you can capture even a crude simulacrum of those barely perceived thoughts still lying encapsulated in that now dying ember which will provide the key insight for what happens next—before it all goes out in a puff of smoke.
Surpassing four hours of non-stop typing your fingers are cramping, your throat is parched and your tongue is clamped between your teeth, because if you do not stop this instant, your bladder is going to burst…
So yeah, in the main, the key part of my process is to minimize the distractions.
What do you think authors have to gain from participating in social media?
If I understand what I have learned from the Books Go Social courses, the idea is to use it to create buzz, and generate a following. Using Twitter has most certainly increased the exposure of my novel Dressing Stone. Before I took the BGS course I was completely out to sea on how to work with Twitter.
Regarding email I do not yet have much of a mailing list, but I do have a growing list of subscribers to my blog which I will certainly try to leverage in future promotions. If not for taking Laurence's course on blogging I never would have known how useful—how essential it was for an author to have a blog. I have gained a couple hundred subscribers after only three weeks, and I am really enjoying writing the posts. So hat's-off to BGO for that.
With regard to LinkedIn (and I read somewhere it's actually the least recommended of the social media for book promotion) I have had some success directly messaging artists and art instructors whom I have targeted due to Dressing Stone's subject matter. The jury is still out on how much buzz I can generate with LI, but I have seen some movement of the needle.
So yes, without a doubt social media is essential for authors.
What advice would you have for other writers?
“If at first you don't succeed, go suck at something else.” This has been my adage and guiding principle in my artistic life. I don't mean it as flippant as it may sound to some. I certainly don't mean quit writing (so long as you're not putting your health at risk) but being that the putative ‘other writer' is asking for advice, I'm assuming they have some sort of writer's block—otherwise they'd be writing instead of asking questions.
When feeling blocked, I take a break, and do something else creative. I like to draw, because it it awakens my sense of concentration. Concentration is a muscle, but one that is very sensitive to the the creative cramps. I think writer's block is a self actuated construct, an excuse, it's the refusal to let drop the fixation on a specific problem and move on to something else for a while. There are all sorts of things that need doing when writing a book, but sitting there gnashing your teeth and rubbing your temples isn't one of them.
If you're stuck on a particular passage, move on to a different one. If your stuck on the entire storyline, then work an a different storyline. If you can't do that, then try indulging in some other creative activity for a while.
Now, stop telling me you're blocked, and get busy, or I won't give you the rest of my advise… which is to say: Proper time management is half the battle.
How do you select your books’ titles and covers?
This has been quite a painful learning experience. For the first edition I made a huge mistake in neglecting to do a pre-publication title search of ‘Passing Fancy' on Amazon. Including variants such as Passing Fancies and No Passing Fancy there are no less than 16 other books using that title—all available on Amazon as we speak. So that title is a little shop worn, to say the least. At the time I thought Google would be best for the pre-publication title search, but it turned up none of this information. Later, once the book was on Amazon, it was quite a sickening realization as it all donned on me.
A shoutout goes to Laurence O'Bryan at BGO for his input in helping me choose the new title: Dressing Stone. All before I was even a paid member!
Regarding the book's cover, more mistakes were made with that as well. My first cover was intentionally designed as dark and sloppy in order to reflect the mind of an artist who had lost all discipline. But it was just too ugly and unattractive to make an effective book cover.
Graphic design professionals have told me simple is best. Too many elements, or any attempt at narrative depiction is a big no-no. My second cover is much more eye catching, but some of these same graphics people believe there are too many elements. I have nevertheless gotten pretty decent feedback from this cover. But the response still wasn't where it should be, so on to the third cover. The image is taken from a painting made by the artist Arnold Brooks, an arresting graphic, I believe this cover will prove more successful than the previous two.
I now think of it this way: As the first hook, the cover has to be eye-catching with simple graphic appeal, and as the second hook, the title should be evocative, easy to remember, and incite a sense of curiosity that will cause the potential reader to take a closer look, maybe get hooked and buy the book.
What's your next step?
For the foreseeable future, it's book promotion, full time, all the time. Sadly, this takes away from time spent writing, but right now I've got to give the promotion of Dressing Stone my all out effort because I wholeheartedly believe this book is worthy of wider attention in the world.
Dressing Stone is a tour de force, and suffice it to say, that only some sort of self-absorbed narcissistic shutin would stand in the way of the release of this terrific book. True, I was once that very guy—that guy who was just writing for himself, that guy who wasn’t going to worry about being published, that guy who didn’t care what anyone else thought, that guy writing his novel purely as a labor of love. So yes, I was the guy who heartlessly stood in the way of publication—but all that was before this astonishing work was complete.
Now that it's finished, I'm no longer that insufferable self-centered hoarder of my own text. A new day has dawned and I feel munificent, generous, and wholeheartedly magnanimous—and in this newly found all encompassing altruism I shall share my phenomenal masterwork with all comers. I intend to bequeath (at a heavily discounted price) my spectacular novel Dressing Stone to the world.
What book do you wish you had written?
When I wake up Don Quixote; around noontime Moby Dick; throughout the evening Zola's 20 volume Rougon-Macquart cycle. But at the end of the day I settle on Sinclair Lewis' 1922 novel Babbitt, every time. A spot on satire, and oh so accurate depiction of American materialism and aspirational mediocrity, it was given special mention by the selection committee in awarding Lewis' Nobel Prize.
How do you react to seeing a new review for your book?
I get an adrenaline rush with every new arrival, couched within this of course is a jolt of fear as I wonder if I'm about to be gutted, or about to have my ego burnished. Having said that, reading what people have written thus far has been extremely gratifying. It is definitely nice to know that what I have written, is at the very least comprehensible, readable and entertaining according to a growing number of readers.
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