Our Research Notes series invites authors to describe their process for a recent book, with “research” defined as broadly as they like. This week, Bob Katz writes about Waiting For Al Gore from Flexible Press.

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Al Gore, Michael Keaton, and a Time Machine: How Does This Story End?

It’s shocking how long ago I began writing my novel Waiting for Al Gore. I am not patient, persistent, persevering, or any of those commendable qualities ascribed to authors who doggedly toil away, draft after plodding draft, year after year. 

Instead, I am antsy, opportunistic, partial to shortcuts, ever angling for a favorable tailwind. That’s why, in the mid-1990’s, I began working on a novel I cannily titled Winded. The stiff breeze I felt whisking me onward was the previous book I’d written. 

That novel, Hot Air, had recently been optioned by the actor Michael Keaton and MGM had signed on to produce the film. An Oscar-nominated screenwriter had been hired for the adaptation. A successful TV writer was added to bolster the effort. Although not yet officially greenlit, a seductive greenish glow nonetheless aroused my thoughts. 

Why not make my next novel a sequel? I’d been turning over ideas about what to write next – a novel about prohibition-era Chicago, or perhaps a narrative nonfiction about college sports – but none came close to matching the box office promise of a book tailor-made to piggyback on the marketing momentum created by a boffo Hollywood production. Plus, the plot of Hot Air actually allowed for a sequel. 

It’s the story of a mystical Latin American revolutionary recruited by a wily talent agent proposing a cross-country US speaking tour of college campuses. Unfortunately, the enigmatic Zapatu develops a sweet tooth for the gringo undergrad lifestyle – frisbee, beer, liberated ladies –  that jeopardizes his dubious credibility as a radical firebrand. Things go swiftly south. 

The screenplay went through several iterations, each more stunning in its outlandishness than the one before. The South American revolutionary was replaced by a deranged physicist. The college lecture tour remained a component but its purpose was entirely revamped. Earlier in the physicist’s career, it seems, he’d invented a Time Machine. Suspecting that his precious invention is being warehoused at a major research university, he isn’t sure which, the physicist undertakes a speaking tour as cover for touring campuses in order to find it. He is desperate to find the Time Machine because – how can I say this without sounding crass, condescending, churlish? – his beloved son had died a decade earlier at age eleven. The Time Machine is the physicist’s last, best chance to reconnect with the boy.

Okay, Okay. Maybe this wasn’t going to be a film I’d want to watch. Maybe it wasn’t going to be a story that had much relationship to the novel I’d written. Maybe each character would be a complete stranger to me. So what? Hot Air remained the working title and that was the only prize that mattered for the development of my writing career. Prospective publishers wouldn’t need to see the movie. From what I knew of the screenplay, I prayed they wouldn’t. All that publishers would need to know was that my forthcoming novel could be legitimately promoted as a follow-up to Hot Air, soon to be a major motion picture. 

There was, in fact, a pass-the-baton continuity between the way Hot Air (my version) concluded and the central premise at the heart of the novel I’d begun writing. In the final scene of Hot Air, Zapatu vanishes just before he’s scheduled take the stage at an Ohio college. The agitated talent agent is thus thrust into the role of last-minute substitute. To everyone’s astonishment, including his own, the agent lets rip with a cascade of soaring oratory that leaves the audience dazzled and hungry for more. 

Which is where the sequel, or what I originally intended as a sequel, picks up. There’s been some metamorphosis over the years. And it has been quite a few years.

The title evolved from Winded to Two Birds One Stone to One Bird Two Stones to Waiting for Al Gore. The Hot Air talent agent who’d been commandeered into the limelight is now a popular self-help guru (Creating Your Own Finish Line is his primary schtick) specializing in corporate conventions and sales conferences. Yearning for a greater relevance, Henry “On Your” Marks, encounters a hapless environmental group that’s so desperate they are willing to consider his services. 

The plot takes off from there. Rachel Seagrave, EarthKare’s stressed-out leader, is at the end of her tether. Al Gore, their top choice as keynote speaker, may not arrive in time. Henry could be the solution to EarthKare’s problems. Or he could make them much, much worse. 

In struggling to construct a satisfying ending, I ran into a dilemma. Many fiction writers do. To wrap up with a neat denouement? To let it soothingly simmer down? To go out with a bang? What will readers want? What makes sense? 

Then it hit me. A Time Machine! Anything can be finessed, improved, rendered poignant by diving back to an earlier time, no questions asked, and re-calculating, right? Maybe transport my entire cast of characters back to the Garden of Eden? Those were the days! Or, speaking of Gore, splice in a dramatic return to the 2000 Florida recount before it all unraveled? My writer’s brain began churning with wildly inventive scenes that proved, every one of them . . . to be utterly preposterous. 

I’m not that kind of writer. 

Neither, it turns out, were those reputedly talented Hot Air screenwriters. Somewhere along the way MGM soured on the project. Did anyone suggest, you know, ditching the physicist and the Time Machine and the deceased boy and the Quarter Horse – did I mention that one version of the script had a character storming into a meeting on horseback? – and reverting to the basic contours of my novel? Probably not. That would be admitting defeat. My option agreement, after several renewals, was cancelled.

Oh, well. Their loss. And of course mine. 

For old times’ sake, I recently leafed through a hardback copy of Hot Air. And there it was, smack in my face, mocking me, taunting me. “You stay afloat long enough with your head above water,” reads the novel’s final sentence, in reference to the agent’s improbable ascension to center stage, “there’s always a chance you’ll wash up somewhere interesting.” 

Damn, maybe I am that kind of writer! I’ve certainly stayed afloat long enough. Perseverance, of course, is no substitute for the magic of a Time Machine. But it too can result in an auspicious ending. 

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Bob Katz (BobKatz.info) is the author of six books, both fiction and nonfiction. His most recent novel is Waiting for Al Gore.