Twenty-two
years. That’s how long I’ve been a daily passenger on the Long Island Railroad.
I’ve pretty much seen it all over these past two decades. Crazed commuters.
Yapping yentas. Cell phone screamers. High stakes card games. Reckless
revelers. Ticked-off ticket-takers. I’ve weathered broken trains, busted seats,
overcrowded cars, overheated passengers, increased fares and a world of noise. And
yet over the past 14 years, I’ve somehow managed to complete a full-length
novel on my daily back-and-forth commute aboard America’s busiest railroad.
According to Wikipedia, the LIRR
averages a weekday ridership of more than 337,000. On some noisy days it feels
like there are that many in my train car! The railroad - founded in 1834 - now
has 124 stations, more than 700 miles of track, and stretches from the eastern
tip of Suffolk County to Manhattan’s Penn Station. It’s also one of the few
commuter railroads to operate 24/7. For better or worse, it has been my ride to
and from work since 1994.
Okay, so I’ve got to admit, I didn’t
actually write my novel, Poet Of The Wrong
Generation, on the train. At least not the first draft. That was done over
a three-month span at a desktop computer when I was living in Bayside, Queens in
the autumn of 2002. Then came the re-writes. No first novel by any aspiring
author is ever publication-ready after the first attempt. Dare I say that the
same applies to writers at every level of their career. It’s not just the
discovery of typos and missing quotation marks. First drafts are a writer’s
best attempt to put the story down on paper. Little did I know that this
monumental accomplishment would actually be one of the easier aspects of
preparing my novel for publication.
Re-writes require a great deal of discipline and determination. Also a dose of serious concentration and a more discerning pair of eyes. You find yourself cutting many well-written but unnecessary paragraphs, pieces of research, and sometimes even eliminating a character, or story-line. It can be painful at times, but is entirely necessary.
When I lived in Bayside, my commute to
Penn Station was a mere 17 minutes on average. Hardly the sort of ride that
would allow more than a quick peek at a few pages. I vividly recall printing
out the full 402 page document and tucking it inside my work bag. This of
course was back in the day when tablet computers didn’t exist and laptops were cumbersome
to carry. By the time I found a seat and displayed my ticket for the conductor,
I had time to peruse perhaps as many as five pages before arriving at Penn.
Another five would be read on the way home from the city.
This early round of editing had me
traveling with two different colored pens to make various notations on the
pages. Blue was for corrections and new content. Black was used to cross out
sentences, or even full paragraphs. And heaven forbid the train ever come to a
short stop while I attempted to mark the pages in ink… a discouraging mishap
that occurred all-too-often.
My older daughter, Amber, was not yet
two when I took the plunge into this process of becoming a novelist. Her
evening schedule required my loving participation. So even with
my wife’s very best efforts, I still could not concentrate full-time at home on
whipping this novel into shape on my “downtime.” Being a new Dad
left me to a handful of bleary-eyed late-night hours to plug in my mark-ups
from the train ride home, email the updated document to myself, and print out
the next several pages for tomorrow morning’s commute. This was in an era just
before external hard drives, memory sticks and the like.
It took me a full three years of
polishing (mostly on the train) before I came to the realization that I needed
a professional editor. I had been printing out the document and allowing a few
close friends and family members a gander, receiving much encouragement. But
when I shared it with some publishing professionals, the feedback
wasn’t nearly as complimentary. In fact, it was the kick in the butt that I
greatly needed.
Editor and Author Jeannette de Beauvior |
The LIRR passengers have their
unofficial code of conduct and routines. Morning commutes tend to be quieter.
Especially those prior to 7:30am. Sure, you’ll always get your occasional
conversations, although most passengers are respectful of their decibel level.
I say “most” because sometimes – particularly on summer Monday mornings –
you’ll get some loud out-of-towners who carelessly violate this decorum. And
then there are the groups of friendly daily riders who sit in clusters and hold
boisterous gossip-fests across the center aisle, drawing angry glares from those
trying to rest, or concentrate on work. To be stuck in a four-seater with one
of these groups can prove a fate worse than root-canal.
Afternoon trains tend to be far
noisier. Those in the 4pm hour are often packed with construction workers just
getting off a jobsite. One can regularly find these burly hard-hats drinking
copious amounts of beer, while holding loud, foul mouthed rank-out sessions.
Relocation to another car is strongly recommended, even when one isn’t trying
to edit a novel. Commuters on afternoon rush hour trains also tend to increase
their speaking volume. It can prove an annoyance to those concentrating on work,
although it is more tolerated than the morning westbound rides. An investment
in an MP3 player and a pair of earbuds is a MUST for those who prefer peace of
mind.
Most riders fall into a routine of
catching regular trains home in the evening. Mine became a 6:05 express. I
generally ride at the front of the train in order to be closer to my car when
pulling into the station. Suffice to say, I encountered an interesting cast of
regulars.
A spry quartet of 60-something men would regularly engage
in heated rounds of blackjack with a deck of cards resting on a flattened FedEx
box. Serious money was usually at stake. One woman – a wedding planner perhaps
– would chat loudly and constantly on her phone about catering and flower
arrangements, oblivious to the angry glares of those around her. And then there
is one 40-something woman who would call her family and friends each
evening, routinely revealing generous personal details including her home
address for dinner delivery, and her house alarm code for her forgetful kids to
get inside. It is a testament to the morals of daily LIRR commuters that this
single-mom and her family weren’t robbed, or physically harmed.
The suggestions from my editor were
plugged in at home in my constantly changing
Word document. Re-reads of these revisions continued to be conducted along the
rickety tracks between Manhattan and Merrick. This process took just over four
months to complete. And even after we had deemed it “ready,” I continued to
tinker with improving the pages using techniques that she had taught me.
Meanwhile, the initiation of a “quiet car” program on the train helped to
create a more conducive working environment. It was all falling into place.
Two years later, I landed a literary
agent. I was supplied with a trio of editing reports from the in-house editors
and a two month-deadline to implement them. My daily commute was never more
valuable. Without those 90 minutes of round-trip revisions, I probably wouldn’t
have gotten it completed in time. Not that it mattered in the end.
An impasse with my agent over the
degree of “adult content” caused me to shelve the project for the past several
years. Well, sort of. I never really stopped polishing it. My purchase of a tablet
device in 2011 enabled me to resume daily editing without having to schlep
piles of printed pages in my work bag. It was on the LIRR that I developed a
new ending to the original story. And eventually it became my research
headquarters for various publishing options.
It has been a long and arduous journey
for me in bringing Poet Of The Wrong
Generation to publication. The tracks between New York City and Long Island
are figuratively littered with countless sentences, paragraphs and characters
cut from the original manuscript. I can’t be certain as to whether my novel is
the first to be so thoroughly constructed on the Long Island Railroad. But no
doubt, I can’t imagine of another book in which more time was invested by an
everyday commuter.
Poet Of The Wrong Generation by Lonnie Ostrow is
now available in paperback and eBook format.
CLICK HERE TO ORDER YOUR COPY.
CLICK HERE TO ORDER YOUR COPY.