EPIC FAIL

A Post-Mortem on an Exercise in Futility

You cannot tell the world that somebody they've never heard of is important if you cannot tell them why.

That is the conclusion I arrived at over this past weekend after receiving a message from a literary agent who spent the past six weeks reviewing the material I submitted late last year in the hope of finding representation -- and ultimately an actual publisher -- for a book I have been researching and writing for very nearly six years. 

The book is (or would have been) Defying Gravity: The Parallel Universe of T. Townsend Brown, which I once whimsically described as "the biography of a man whose story cannot be told." I might have been better served if I'd recognized the truth in that whimsy sooner.

Townsend Brown discovered an anomalous electrical effect -- known now as the "Biefeld-Brown Effect " -- as a teenager in the 1920's.  The effect is regarded in some unorthodox scientific circles as an "anti-gravity" effect, though Brown himself never much cared for that terminology.  The effect was heralded at the time as the physical evidence of Albert Einstein's Unified Field Theory, the proof of a connection between electricity and gravity not unlike the symbiotic relationship between electricity and magnetism.  It has since become regarded variously as the manifestation of "zero point energy," as proof that there really is an "aether," and has been given credit for enabling every science fiction fantasy from inter-dimensional communication to time travel.  Since engaging this enterprise, I've had my own hand in extending some of those fantasies.

But the truth is, all we really know about Townsend Brown is that he spent one half of his life engaged in classified military research, and the other half of his life conducting covert intelligence operations designed in part to conceal the classified research.  That is really the entire 80 years of Townsend Brown's life boiled down into a single sentence.  Beyond that, we really dunno shit.

Nevertheless, drawing largely on information supplied by my own "covert" sources, I managed to forge my way through the "first draft" of a manuscript last March.  The intent of that first draft was to simply find some path through the mercurial material.  I was not really sure what the true essence of the story was, but I decided in the fall of 2005 that if I just started the work, the thematic heart of it would eventually materialize.

It's hard to tell sometimes when you are neck deep in wishful thinking. 

After completing a voluminous (nearly 600 page!) first draft and taking a few months to get some distance from material, last summer I compiled a detailed book proposal.  This is the reverse of the usual procedure; It is more customary to write a proposal first, secure an advance, and THEN write the book.  But because I felt I needed to write the book before I would be able to effectively convey what it is about, I put that cart in front of the horse. That might be when I started seriously "pushing" in the absence of any "pull."

Once the proposal was finished, I slowly and methodically began submitting query letters to a carefully culled list of literary agents whose past experience commended them for this particular and unusual project.  More than half the the queries generated no response at all; most of the other half replied that the material was not right for them.  Two agents requested to see the full proposal. 

The first agent who read the full proposal arrived at this conclusion:  "The proposal didn’t work for me – I had trouble following Brown’s story and couldn’t see how the book would convince a skeptical readership to take the story seriously enough to sustain [the] narrative."  That was not exactly the first time I'd gotten that sort of feedback.

But, you know, in any creative endeavor, you're not supposed to listen to the critics or take their rejections to heart.  You're just supposed to, in the words of Townsend Brown himself, "go forth." So I persisted through the fall, sending queries and receiving rejections.  Finally, in November, another agent -- we'll call him "P.R." -- wrote back that he felt the project "shows promise" and asked for the full proposal.  He also asked for a period of up to five weeks to consider the material exclusively, meaning no more queries submitted or proposals sent out.  I agreed to wait until the first full week of the New Year to hear if P.R. wanted to take the project on.

The exclusive period gave me a lot of time to think about where I am with this project -- how much time I've put into it, how I feel about the material, how I feel about its future prospects.  And, rightly or wrongly, I found myself putting a lot of stock in the response of this one agent.  Coming as all this was on the cusp of a New Year, I began to recognize in myself a high level of exhaustion from pushing on this string: if there wasn't some indication from the larger Universe that somebody besides myself and a handful of others was interested in this story, I didn't think I had the will to persist any longer.  I needed some kind of "pull" on the other side of my "push."

Last Friday, the last day of the exclusive period, the prospect of some kind of "pull" pretty much evaporated when P.R. finally wrote back.  The essence of the response is embodied in the opening paragraph:

*"The promise is there, the possibility is there, but there is no meat on the bones ... there is still no detail as to what he actually did discover."

And that, I have concluded, is the end of that.

It's funny how suddenly the truth glares out at me.  "No meat on the bones" is all he needed to say.  The simple fact is: in one, in ten, in a hundred or six hundred pages, we still don't know "what he actually did discover."  The book is, as Ralph Kramden might say, "a mere bag of shells." And, I must finally admit, a bag of empty shells at that. 

There may indeed be a pearl in there somewhere, but I must now confess that I have been unable to find it.  In lieu of that kernel of truth, I have conjured substitutes.  I built a shell around a non-existent story using a firmer narrative of related characters.  I injected my own story, using the metaphor of falling down a rabbit hole. 

But in six years, I have not found the bottom to this rabbit-hole, and I have grown endlessly weary of the falling --along with various forms of psychological abuse I've had to endure during the fall.  But I know how to stop the abuse.  I just did.

In all this time, I insisted to myself that I could fabricate some way to tell this story.  It was really all up to me, I told myself.  And If I could not tell the actual story, then I'd tell the story of trying to tell the story.  But the story of telling a story only works if the first story is actually told.  Which, in this case, it is not. 

I spoke at length last week with a mentor of sorts who has stood by my side through this whole undertaking; this was Thursday, the day before I received the letter from P.R.  In the course of describing my growing ambivalence, and my need for some form of "external validation," I came up with an interesting metaphor:  As a writer, I imagine myself to be a cannon; my secret desire is that my material will prove to be a cannon ball, which, upon launching, will land somewhere and have some kind of an impact.  I think that's all any artist asks for.

But for as long as I've been working on this story, I have avoided the realization that has now weighs heavily on me:  This story is not a cannonball. It's mush.  I've tried to wrap the mush up in a more solid shell.  But absent a clear grasp of "what he actually did discover," this agent has seen the mush for exactly what it is, and now I simply must face that reality. 

I have indulged myself for entirely too long in the belief that by the sheer force of my will, by the "scheming of my ego," or by some manner of clever verbal alchemy, I could turn this narrative mush into solid iron.  This agent has done me an enormous favor, by simply and effectively demonstrating for me the power of my own self-delusion. 

I know that there are some of you reading this who are surprised and disappointed -- if not downright outraged -- by this conclusion.  Sure, there are alternatives.  I could  persist in my persistence.  I could continue working on a revised draft.  I could edit and proofread and self-publish.  But the first draft is already "out there," circulating in unknown ways through the cyber-ether.  And the inescapable fact of the matter is that there is not any amount of re-writing that is going to reveal any more than what has already been told, what has already been launched into the firmament. 

Maybe the sadder fact here is that I have reached the limit of my own faith in the power or appeal of this material.  I know what some of you are probably thinking, that I'm copping out, giving up, throwing in the towel, pulling the plug.  And maybe you're right.  But like I said, absent some "pull" on the other side, I've pushed all I can. 

Maybe it's unreasonable to expect an agent or publisher to believe in material that I have myself lost faith in.  I can't expect somebody else to believe in material that I don't believe in myself.  The bottom line is:  I don't believe in the material because I really don't know how much of it to believe.  I've wrestled with that conundrum long enough. The passion is unrewarded, the effort is unrewarding, and there is little to add.

I put on 20 pounds sitting down every morning for 2-1/2 years with coffee and dark chocolate; that was the glue that kept my fanny in the chair long enough to cobble together nearly 600 pages of mush.  In the past few months, I've paid closer attention to my diet and shed the extra weight.  Now maybe it's likewise time to jettison the rest of the baggage -- the baggage I've been hauling around inside my head.

Best to start the new year with a clean slate.

Comments

[Rose]

You gotta bend, not break, Amigo. It's all good, if you just look at it from a different perspective.

The book is OUT on Lulu! Let's post that link EVERYWHERE.

Leave it up for sale to us nerdy types and start work on a version that has more formulaid popular audience appeal. If you must. But I'm casting my vote for moving on to the movie script.

[skyfish]

I always saw it as a Steven Spielberg production.

Oh forum where have you gone?!?!?!?!
Where are we going to discuss things
like this??? http://discovermagazine.com/2009/feb/13-is-quantum-mechanics-controlling-your-thoughts

Omega!

skyfish

[Nate Cull]

Wow. I'm pretty stunned by this, Paul.

I know I haven't been reading the forum lately because I needed some time away too, so I understand - sort of - your sense of futility about this all.

But I'm surprised that you didn't already realise, going into it, that this was NOT a story that 'conventional publishing methods' were going to be able to handle. It's a fringe story; you won't GET a lot of mainstream, reputable publishers wanting to publish it. This is always the case when reporting on any kind of 'out of the way' phenomena.

But you've already done a huge amount of good just by digging up the confirmed facts you have. Okay, so there's speculation in there. We all know that. But please, please, PLEASE don't let that work be wasted by just turning the lights off and throwing it all away. There's so much goodwill you will sacrifice if you do.

Just knowing that Linda Brown is a real person and being able to exchange forum posts was huge for me. As I'm sure it was for others. I'm not sure that you realise how important the forum was as a place to meet, and how much damage could be done by evaporating it and throwing it into the memory hole.

At least let someone download a backup copy of the forum database so that we can extract and save the text. There are still a lot of potential leads in there, and even if they go nowhere, it's a fascinating record of a time and a place.

This is my plea to you. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE DON'T LET THIS DATA BE LOST.

I'm not asking for you to pay the bills. Just let the data be archived, and if you're not going to run it, at least let someone else do it.

I've argued all along on this forum that this is a huge trap that happens with every X-Files-y project out there: data gets sucked into a proprietary black hole, whether it be patent or NDA or copyright or exclusive book publishing deal. Then the backer gets burned out, they burn the files, and we're back to square zero. And a generation's worth of hard data goes down the toilet and that's where rationality goes away and the urban legends start.

It worried me when you first took the draft manuscript offline that you might do something this. Please don't let this happen. Let the data be free so those who care can save it.

[Nate Cull]

Oh, thanks, I didn't realise the book was on Lulu. http://www.lulu.com/content/5697069

That answers half of my plea already - at least I can give printed copies of the book to people, which has the hard data. The forum would be a 'very nice to have' but if it's not salvageable, ok.

I'm going to buy a copy, maybe a couple, for my conspiracy-minded friends. I just wish Paul could get money from such sales.

[driver49]

>>PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE DON'T LET THIS DATA BE LOST.<<

Fear not. ALL data is secure.

[Corrie Lamprecht]

I can cry for you, but no - I will cry for us. That is for all the people that are stumbling around in the darkness and wish they knew more about the actual work of T. T. Brown. It is not only about the man and his legacy, it is about his lost science - Now we only have much less to try and understand.

[trickfox]

The perfessor said:
"Fear not. ALL data is secure."

What are we to make of this statement Paul?

Have you now joined the "conspiracy" to keep the "unexplainable truth" hidden, or are you now keeping 60,000+ posts and volumes of our combined emotional baggage in your "treasure chest" for some other undetermined purpose?

What on EARTH would this data be any good for if your whole five year adventure has been nothing but self-delusion? (my own personnal worst fear BTW)

Don't get me wrong... I DO UNDERSTAND your frustration, however... You don't seem to be "done" with "Thomas Townsend Brown" just yet...OTHERWISE you would have flushed "all" the data.

Something ELSE is happening here... but I won't speculate any further on it.

TRICKFOX

[Mark Moody]

Mikado,
Could you please try to contact me?
Thanks!
Mark

[vince white]

What you call mush is steel. the life you painfully , with coffee and chocolate , you rescued from a careful national security fog and thicket of guile and still towering , edifice of deception that yet conceals such achievement , many will weep with astonishment and wonder, on that day, as hidden giants are revealed , and minds
that pulled miracles of new tools for man , that will remake the planet , and even will impress visitors from afar, for this story
of TT Brown will be told by you , with faith sustained , or someone else. Triumph is near. vince white

[Ernesto Lacalle]

It is sad that the book is standing by...
In my opinion, you cannot go against the human cultural machine, no matter if it is right or wrong.
If it does not want to know about T T Brown, it will not listen nor read about him, and it will eat any attempt to force it to do so.
But, this does not means that you should give up.
There are ways to give the Cultural machine what it wants, and at the same time do what you want.
This cannot be achieved dirtecly. The straight line could be the shortest way between two points, but in this case it is the impossible way.
You should go through an alternative longer and perhaps full of curves way, to get to your goal.
There will be people that will thank you a lot if you do it!
The Cultural Machine is the strongest thing in this world and there is no man that could win a fight with it, but... at the same time it is way stupid, so that you can do it without fighting it.
I wish you good luck with your project!

Ernesto

[Martha Luczak]

What struck me as most ironic while reading of this amazing project is that Dr. Brown, as you have discovered, spent most of his life covering up his life and work...and he did a hell of a good job!!! Even in death he remains a mystery! Wow. I say very cool movie stuff. I can't even imagine consistently behaving in any sense over such a long period of time!

Besides that, what you have accomplished here says a lot about your character and that you will take with you forever.

[Richard Hull]

Paul,

You are a writer and of artistic temperment. Being of this bent, you sought to make an interesting story out of the life of T.T. Brown, and interestng it is, however murky and gray. It would make a great story of a fully convoluted life filled with ups and downs and bizarre tales.

As you and the publisher noted, there is no real scieitific meat on the bones of T.T. Brown's life. No brilliant discovery that is used or referenced to him by any scientific body or manufacturer of useful things.

There is a great following, however of the ever faithful mostly clinging to the fringes of the WWW. There are books and publications that make claims and counter claims regarding his work, but they all fall short of anything beyond their own hype and open ended suppositions.

You seem to have, belately, realized that there was no end to the T.T. Brown rainbow, thus, no reward for following it in the scientific sense that would give the story closure.

It is a pity that the story you have written about his life was not accepted, just because it has no verifiable meat on its bones.

You probably have done more than any preceding author to get at the truth of what he accomplished in his life. Unfortunately, you found only a whole bunch of dangling threads that attached to nothing in the end.

Take heart friend. You have done a good piece of work anyway. There just doesn't, at this time, seem to be a payday at the end of all the sweat poured into the effort.

Your reward will have to be the realization you did your best in the effort.

R. Hull

[Jim]

more power to you Paul, it's not over

Jim

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