Skip to main content

Messages in a bottle

I think there must be something wrong with me.

The other day I passed ten thousand words on my new novel.  It's a milestone for me; it means that the new book is a real thing, not just an idea for a book, but it is becoming a significant piece of writing (and a good one, I think).  I'm excited about it, and the words seem to come out of my head and onto the page pretty easily so far, and a few magical times I have had that experience where things just seem to flow out from some external source as if I'm just a conduit, and the direction and concepts that are happening on the page don't even seem to be coming from me at all, that writing sweetspot where things work better than I could have planned for...

And it is awesome.

However, I still have an unpublished, unrepresented, largely unread novel that is just hanging out on my computer, waiting.  And I think: Why are you sacrificing all of your evenings, all of your lunch hours writing when nobody cares?  I sometimes feel as if I'm on an island, writing messages, and putting them in a bottle, and throwing them into the ocean, hoping that someone somewhere will read one, will like it, will in some way give a shit that I do this.

I think of Poe dying penniless and forgotten, John Kennedy O'Toole, the suicide, if it weren't for his mother harassing literary people to read it, we would never have gotten Confederacy of Dunces, it would have remained in a drawer somewhere until someone threw it in the burn barrel doing spring cleaning.

I read somewhere that every writer lies, either about how hard it was or about how easy it was.  For me, the writing is easy, the idea generation is easy.  I've heard of writers block, but that has never been my problem. 

What's hard for me is forcing it into my life, finding the time to do it, finding a reason to do it.  What's hard  for me is finishing anything.  Whats hard for me is seeing it through to the end.  I just got an idea for a new novel, one that I'm certain that I will take a swing at someday.  It is an exciting concept, and one that I'm very excited to explore.  What's hard for me is not abandoning my ten thousand word manuscript to start something new.  What's hard for me is nobody caring.  When Antiartists sees print someday, and someone feels compelled to tell me everything that is wrong with it, that will be crushing to me, I'm sure.

What is really hard is being patient, and waiting for a bottle to come back to me on my island.

Meanwhile, I'm still here, and I've got a (hopefully) endless supply of messages and bottles.   

Comments

  1. If a tree falls in the woods.... I CARE! If you never get published does that mean what you wrote is not there and does not matter? Does it mean that the people who have read it and like it don't matter? Does not your children not have it for life? You say you love to write and love the ideas. Will only being published give your writing value? Do what you love even if you can't do it for money.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

We Would Be a Song

I seem to define my life with soundtracks, playlists that encompass epochs or periods of change or development.  My earliest music was my mother's: Van Halen and Judas Priest, Def Leppard and AC/DC.  I remember a friend of hers explaining to second grade Ralph that the big balls that Angus was singing about were parties, but even then I didn't buy it.  My teen years were heavy on grunge, Nirvana and Alice in Chains and Soundgarden, and that was the first time that music ever felt like it was mine , that I discovered by myself or through the radio, or like minded friends, that was the first time that I took it and owned it and loved it, and even now I'll hear Black Hole Sun or Rooster or Smells Like Teen Spirit on the radio and back I go. In the fifth grade, I moved to Kelso, Washington. I want to say that it was hard, but what I remember mostly from childhood is just this sense of taking every day as it arrived.  What else do we have except our own experiences to measure th

The Terrible Darkness

Out there in the darkness, something is circling us. something cold, something terrible.  It circles us, and sometimes, it takes one of us. Punks tend to have a short lifespan. We die early, through overdose or violence, through neglect or disease.  And we die of suicide. It happens. Way too often, it happens. It is patient, this terrible thing, it waits.  We huddle together around the light we created for one another. The thing hates the light, but there is just too much darkness, and the terrible thing whispers, and sometimes, one of us, we listen. We come to punk in self defense; in many ways it is a reaction, a response to a hostile and uncaring world.  Hardly anybody comes to punk as an adult. You don't come to punk because you are well adjusted . You come to punk because you're fucked up. You're fucked up and angry and young, and then you hear a song, and the sound sounds like you feel, and the words speak like you feel, and you realize that someone out t

Fighting for Clarity

There's this to be said about fighting: while you're doing it, you don't have room in your head for anything else, not your busted ass car or your worries about your family, not the leak under your bathroom sink, or how you're going to pay your bills.  There's only breathe one two, step out of range, shift off the center line, move breathe one three two slip the jab level change three to the body check the low kick counter one two...  it is a better escape than most, and I've tried most of them, believe me. I don't know what the fuck I'm doing here. I get humbled and beat up at every session, I don't understand why I even go. I'm feeling defeated; everything is so fucking hard for me, and I don't know why I'm doing it. I should just quit, right? Fuck you.  I'll show you motherfuckers what I am capable of. I'll show you-  And then I go and I try and my knees give and I get pummeled and twisted and what the fuck man how humble do I