When Trying to Simplify, It Became Complicated
My first novel, Barely Missing Everything, was complicated—complicated to read, complicated to write, and complicated for me to talk about. It has three main characters, with the plot unfolding in alternating points-of-view. There is also an epistolary section, which was essentially a fourth POV, along with different literary elements throughout. One chapter is written as a math quiz and others as text messages and one section is a death row database.
(4 Advantages of Writing a Novel Using Multiple Narrative Forms.)
During the writing stage, the multiple points-of-view made the project seem totally unmanageable. I had timeline issues, there were places where my characters all sounded the same, and the overall plot was a mess. I created a calendar to keep plot points and events straight. With multiple main characters and all the different literary elements I’d used to craft Barely Missing Everything, I felt—and still feel—like I never found a succinct way to describe all the different parts that make it a pretty unique whole.
So, it’s not surprising that I was really focused on doing something stylistically different when approaching the writing of The Broke Hearts, the companion book to Barely Missing Everything. I was nervous about writing another stylized and intricately crafted book that would again be hard to describe—at least for me—and that it could be a barrier to finding its way to a large group of readers. I wanted this new story to have returning characters and take place in the same fictional world, but I also wanted the basic story to have a much simpler structure.
I had been looking to change how I write and approach stories for reasons that had nothing to do with my own growth or creativity but instead from doubt and my own insecurity. I doubted that readers would like my weird books about Mexican-American boys growing up on the border. I worried that if I didn’t write something more immediately accessible that I wouldn’t have an audience or readers to write for at all. Of course, this was me over-thinking, not about the act of writing, but about being an author and publishing. About finding an audience and hoping people like my work—all things writers want and hope for but ultimately have no real control over.
But, when the story of The Broke Hearts began to unfold it became clear that I would end up with an even more experimental and complicated book than Barely Missing Everything. The original plan was, take Danny Villanueva, a secondary character from Barely Missing Everything, and tell his story in a very straightforward way. Danny is a recent high school grad and the first person in his family to go to college.
Check out Matt Mendez’s The Broke Hearts here:
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Danny is also losing connection with his old life. His best friend JD—one of the main characters from Barely Missing Everything—has joined the Air Force and they don’t have much in common anymore, their lives going in very different directions. As I wrote the first draft of The Broke Hearts, JD’s voice began to grow so loud on the page that I knew I would make him a main character as well. So already, it became more complicated.
As a writer I’ve learned what I value most is craft and how to use what I’ve learned to experiment. I’ve written screenplays and flash fiction—I’ve published a collection of short stories. Being able to combine all the different types of writing I’ve done to tell one story was not only challenging but completely satisfying, and all I can do is hope that audiences will love and connect with it as much as I do.
The Broke Hearts is a unique novel. It has multiple points-of-view. There is an entire section of vignettes. There is also a three-act screenplay and accompanying artwork inside. Once I decided to trust my own instincts, I leaned hard into writing all the other experimental things I really, ultimately, wanted to do. I did the work of a writer and didn’t think so hard about being an author.
In the end, my insecurity only wasted my time—it didn’t stop me from writing the story I knew I needed to tell.