Dan Brown's Writer's Block: A Cause to Celebrate?

[Stewart]

A fun little article from Australia's Courier Mail. Should we be celebrating?

THE world, or at least a big slice of it, is impatiently waiting to hear Dan Brown's next word. But a biography of the failed singer-turned-publishing phenomenon reveals he might not have many words left in him.

Or, at least, if the words are in him, they're having trouble coming out.

It is a rumour that would worry many fans in the month when his Da Vinci Code has finally disappeared from The Courier-Mail's list of Australia's bestsellers after more than a year.

Writer's block, or so those apparently in-the-know say, has struck the author who previously announced he had sketched the outline for 12 novels featuring his famous symbologist Robert Langdon. If he keeps going at his current rate, that 12th novel will come out just in time for Brown, now 41, to celebrate his 80th birthday.

How do we know he has writer's block? His Da Vinci Code sequel, The Solomon Key, has yet to appear. It was scheduled for early this year, but as Brown says on his website, it now has no scheduled date because it is not near completion.

The writer's block theory, first raised in The New York Times, is reinforced by the fact he admits talking to his editor, Jason Kaufman, at least twice a day to work on "every plot point and twist".

One theory is that he is obsessed with double-checking his facts after criticism of inaccuracies in his other novels. Another is he worried how he can write anything but an anticlimax.

While his publisher is keen to not be seen to be pressuring one of the most sacred of literary cash cows, there will be pressure to cash in on the release of the Ron Howard-Tom Hanks film of The Da Vinci Code when it is released next May.

This month Brown created a small storm in civil liberty circles by agreeing to address the New Hampshire Humanities Council only if the media were banned from attending. The council, which has among its goals the aim of making "the humanities more accessible to audiences statewide by forging long-lasting partnerships with the media", agreed.

Clearly, even civil libertarians have been sucked into the Da Vinci cult.
There are some who might rejoice in the idea that Brown may be having an extended rest. Salman Rushdie – who some observers have mused might have felt a bond with Brown for writing a book that has upset more than a few religious folk – says The Da Vinci Code, which has sold more than 25 million copies worldwide, including 1.4 million in Australia, and has been on The New York Times bestsellers list for 134 weeks, is "so bad that it makes bad books look good".

"It's bad to murder writers," the man who once faced a fatwa told a group of university students this month, "except maybe Dan Brown."
He was joking. Possibly.

The Solomon Key will shift Langdon from the Louvre to Washington DC, in a plot that has the Founding Fathers, the Freemasons and an assassination.

Part of the lunacy that has surrounded the Da Vinci Code phenomenon is that while Brown fans are waiting, they can read at least two other books about the book they are waiting for – The Solomon Key and Beyond: Unauthorised Dan Brown Update by W. Frederick Zimmerman and Da Vinci in America: Unlocking the Secrets of Dan Brown's The Solomon Key by Greg Taylor.

A third book, Unlocking the Solomon Key, reportedly will be ready for release within two weeks of The Solomon Key being published.
Then there is the biography: Lisa Rogak is the latest to cling to the Da Vinci coat-tails in the cobbled-together The Man Behind the Da Vinci Code, which is topical rather than thorough.

While lacking in detail, it has enough to make you realise this is a tale that could be told in two chapters: there was life before The Da Vinci Code, and life after.

Before Da Vinci, Brown and his wife were self-promoters desperate to sell books that had barely made a ripple. In the past two years, they have gone into hiding, overwhelmed by the attention and the $62 million Brown has earned in royalties in United States sales alone.

Brown always knew he wanted to be a success. He just wasn't sure what he wanted to be a success at.

He tried singing for a while. His first attempt at a music career was a children's album called SynthAnimals. In 1990, he put out his first album aimed at adults, called Perspective. Later he released a CD of his own songs called Dan Brown, with songs including 976-Love:

Now when I'm feeling small
You're the one that I call
I know you understand
I take you to bed
I push the phone to my head
And you make me feel like a man.

His second CD, released in 1995, was Angels and Demons, and had an ambigram (a word or phrase written so that they can be read right side up or upside down) on the front cover, a sign of the fascination with symbols that has defined his work.

But while his singing career was fizzling, his writing career was just beginning. His first book was a crack at comedy.

187 Men to Avoid: A Survival Guide for the Romantically Frustrated Woman, written under the pseudonym of Danielle Brown, tells women to avoid men who "think farting is cute".

Then there was The Bald Book, which carries the author's name Blythe Brown. However, Rogak asserts it's written by Blythe's husband, Dan, which gives light and fluffy reasons why baldness is good. Bald men, wrote the now fabulously rich but balding author, are more streamlined.

Brown has offered insights into what goes into creating The Da Vinci Code – "liberal use of the delete key . . . for every page in a published novel, I wrote 10 that ended up in the trash".

Of course, some critics such as Rushdie might wish he used the delete key even more rigorously.

Brown starts writing at 4am, does push-ups every hour to keep alert, and hangs upside down in gravity boots to keep ideas flowing to his head.
"Hanging upside down seems to help me solve plot challenges by shifting my entire perspective," he says.
Maybe he needs to sit back at the computer until he finishes his book. There are a lot of fans who don't want to be left hanging around.

[Digger]

Thank heaven for small graces.

[John Self]

Before Da Vinci, Brown and his wife were self-promoters desperate to sell books that had barely made a ripple. In the past two years, they have gone into hiding, overwhelmed by the attention and the $62 million Brown has earned in royalties in United States sales alone.

Brown always knew he wanted to be a success. He just wasn't sure what he wanted to be a success at.

He tried singing for a while.

Holy shit. What other bald crap writer does that remind us of? (For any new members, I'm talking about the egregious Sean Wright, of whom Salman Rushdie might have said, "so bad he makes bad authors look good.")

"It's bad to murder writers," said Rushdie, "except maybe Dan Brown."

Maybe the other reason he can't finish The Solomon Key is that he's been paralysed with a sense of his own worthlessness as a writer? One can hope.

[Stewart]

Originally Posted by John Self

What other bald crap writer does that remind us of?

I guessed you meant Sean Wright but I wasn't too sure. The bit about making $62m threw me.