The communal experience of reading
Author of The Archaeologists explains why he’s putting work out in serialized format
Not many authors give their books away free. But Toronto writer Hal Niedzviecki is doing just that with his new book The Archaeologist. Here’s a look at the time-honoured tradition of serializing and why at least one writer thinks it’s a good idea.
Naturally, people have been asking me, “Why would you just ‘give’ your book away?” Because I’m lonely. I’ve been working on this novel, on and off, for more than six years. From the kernel of an idea it’s been pretty much me, the characters and the solitary process of figuring out how to get out of their way and let them show me how the story should unfold.
The book became the characters’ attempts to solve the problem of what community and family and individuality can mean in the fragmented 21st century. It became a book about loneliness and how disabling it can be. Ironically, by that time it had become a very lonely project, a book I just had to keep plugging away at and believing in, despite creative roadblocks and a decent measure of rejection.
At the same time, I reached a point in the process when I realized the story would make a great read in serial form. The bare bones plot of the novel had developed into a multicharacter episodic whodunit revolving around the possible discovery of human bones in the backyard of a house in fictional edge city Wississauga. What if, I wondered, it was parcelled out slowly but steadily the way the great storytellers of the Victorian age did, Dickens putting Pip through his paces one week at a time?
That vision gave me new energy and kept me going. I didn’t fantasize about book sales and awards. Instead, I imagined people; people like my characters, people like me who desperately want to have communal experiences, who badly need to be part of something that makes them feel less alone. But, and here’s the rub, they want that experience on their own terms.
To stave off the long hours of lonely isolation, I tried to convince myself that I was working on more than just another book, another bar code seeking that momentary flash of laser light. What if I joined forces with a group of magazines, collaborating with them to bring together people who hate the idea of togetherness?
I chose five magazines that I’ve long admired for their commitment to the idea of building community. These are magazines — two in Vancouver, two in Toronto (one of which I publish) and one in Waterloo — that have sought to break down the barrier between writer and reader. They’ve tried to replace that barrier with interaction and accessibility: they organize events and contests and actively encourage people looking to write to make the leap. At the same time, they maintain high standards: everyone has a story to tell, but the telling remains a lonely process, a commitment to the craft of probing one’s deepest fears and desires for the often unsavory truth.
So rotating magazines, each one publishing a chapter a week on their website. Moving the chapters from magazine to magazine is, I’ll happily admit, a calculated strategy. Like someone who tweets, updates their Facebook status and posts to Instagram all with the same photo, I’m trying to maximize eyeballs by using not just one but five magazines.
I just want to be able to imagine, as my 34 chapters unspool, that at any given moment someone, somewhere, is reading this book about loneliness and the ennui of postmodern urbanity and feeling a little bit less alone.
Not part of some mandated communal celebration of eat-your-spinach literature or anything like that. Just less disconnected.
You’re out there. You’re with me. Are you? Hal Niedzviecki’s novel The Archaeologists is being serialized on the websites of the magazines Broken Pencil, Geist, The New Quarterly, SubTerrain and Taddle Creek and will be published in Fall 2016. Follow along at archaeologistsbook.com.