Strip clubs, meth labs and teenage life in rural Oklahoma are all topics central to the senior thesis of Mark Lawley '04: a novel titled "Strip Club of God." After a year-and-a-half of revisions, he finished his work on March 13, 2006 and has sent the manuscript to his agent, who Lawley hopes will agree to shop the book to publishers.
"I was expecting some big relief, but that wasn't the case. You don't even really realize you're finished," he said. "I suppose it took me several months to realize that the book was out of my system."
According to Lawley, his "literary novel" deals with a family in Lawton-Fort Sill, Okla., Lawley's hometown. The parents are divorced, and the mother owns a strip club while the father runs a competing bar and collects money from methamphetamine labs. The teenage son is "caught in the middle."
The novel's title alludes to, among other aspects of the book, the tension between the strip club and the Bible Belt Christian community that surrounds it.
When he entered Dartmouth, Lawley planned on majoring in math. It was only during his sophomore fall that he decided to pursue creative writing, and he contemplated writing a fantasy novel. But after taking more English classes, including Advanced Fiction Writing with English professor Ernest Hebert, he turned to writing something that was based more on his own life experiences.
"It began as a long poem during a creative writing class," Lawley said. "I think it was probably professor Hebert who suggested I write something having to do with my own life, and then I sat down and started writing a chapter and cast of characters."
Hebert, who himself has published eight novels and one non-fiction book, was awed by his student's coming-of-age novel. He said Strip Club of God was marked with an intensity that matched Lawley's personality and a realism that could only come from someone intimately familiar with the novel's setting.
"Let's put it this way: he knew what the hell he was talking about," Hebert said. "So when he talked about the strip club, I believed it. When he talked about what it's like to play high school football, I believed it. When he talked about his confrontations with his father and his mother, I believed that too. So I thought it had a feeling of authenticity about it."
Impressed by the novel, Hebert set Lawley up with an agent.
"I've been here since 1988 and I've had two honors theses that I'd recommend to an agent," Hebert said. "And his was one of them."
After a falling out with the original agent with whom he had worked for six months, Lawley sent the full manuscript to another agent who expressed interest. As he described it, the process of turning a manuscript into a published novel is lengthy and trying. Once on board, the agent shops the novel to publishers in hopes of securing a contract and finding editors.
Editing is a give-and-take process between the editor and the author, Lawley said, adding that an author must strike a balance between being stubborn and relenting too much, and should not let an editor drastically alter the essence of the book.
"You hold to your guns on things you really believe in," he said. "I plan to not give up very much editorial control."
Lawley called Hebert his mentor. Even since Lawley's graduation, the two have kept in regular contact and recently had lunch.
"He introduced me to the ropes of the publishing world," Lawley said.
Hebert, on the other hand, said he warns students of the difficult life of a writer.
"I've always tried to dissuade people from a writing career because so much of it is sh*t luck -- being at the right place at the right time," he said.
As for Lawley, he has started work on a second novel, which he described as "totally different." This fall, he will attend New York University as a graduate student.
