You might have noticed a bit more poetry on this blog of late. There’s a reason for this.
If I’m to be brutally honest, these past four years I haven’t been much of a writer. My last novel came out in late 2012, and since then — aside from the posts, vignettes, and poetry on this blog — I’ve only written one short story.
A lot happened to us in those four years. All of our parents died which meant funerals and family strife and estate stuff. We invited a young woman in need to stay with us for a year while she reestablished herself. I had an emergency appendectomy and my wife had an emergency cholecystectomy. Our only car died and needed to be replaced. I grew deathly sick of my job and tried to switch careers. Not all of it was bad (we paid off the house, and for our 30th anniversary we bought a classic sports car), but all of it, even the good stuff, sucked up a lot of time and energy, and brought a great deal of stress into our lives.
All of which sounds like a bunch of excuses and, for a long time, I viewed them as such. Now, though, I see them as reasons.
Am I splitting semantic hairs? Perhaps, but hear me out.
I know some writers who, despite massive workloads and high stress, still manage to write a book in under four months. They create work — best-selling, award-winning work in some cases — under the most trying of conditions.
But that’s them. Not me.
The fastest I’ve ever been able to write a novel is about ten months, and that was when I was highly motivated by advance payments and contractual deadlines. Writing a novel is a very immersive experience for me; it takes over completely, fills my brain, and consumes every free moment of my waking (and dreaming) life. For me, the words come slowly — just sentence by sentence when I’m “in the zone,” but only word by stubborn, recalcitrant word when I’m not — and despite years of practice, I’ve never been able to improve upon that pace. That’s just the way it is.
More to the point, to write a novel I require a low level of ambient life-noise. Some writers say: Just suck it up and do it; if you aren’t writing, you’re not trying hard enough. After all, that’s what works for them.
But that’s them. Not me.
My requirements are not an excuse. My requirements are not designed to put off the work or as a way for me to still feel like a writer even though I’m not actively writing a book. My requirements are just that: elements I require in order to perform a given task. I have tried to write a book amid high ambient stress. I’ve tried to force myself into the zone. I have tried to write a novel in a month.
I have tried, and I have failed. Repeatedly. I simply require a different set of conditions in order to write a novel.
That’s me. Not them. I shall no longer apologize for it, nor shall I judge myself as somehow lacking because of it.
Currently, my wife and I are in relatively good health. Our cars are running well. In June, our young friend will be out of the house and on her own again. (My job still sucks, but hey, you can’t have everything.) In short, I can see not only the light at the end of the tunnel, I can see the land beyond it. I can see the conditions shaping up.
I can see writing, ahead.
And so, to prepare myself, I’ve been putting more effort into writing creative pieces. Poems. Vignettes. You’ve seen a lot of them here. They’re my way of blowing out the carbs, plowing the row, clearing the decks. Pick your metaphor. Again, it’s not procrastination. It’s what I need to do to get the juices flowing, to build back my own eroded confidence.
My thanks go to you all, too, as your response to recent pieces (especially Future Imperfect) have been incredibly encouraging. I’m always gratified when my writing strikes a chord with readers, and often surprised by which ones receive the most attention.
And so, softly, softly, I am creeping up on the writer that lives inside me, in hopes of catching him and bringing him once again to the forefront.
So far, so good.
k
PS. The phrase “softly softly catchee monkey” is reported to be a pidgin version of an old Ashanti proverb, meaning “proceed gently to achieve your objective.” No apologies for being an old man with useless trivia muddling his thoughts…
[…] since publishing my last post, in which I stated publicly that I was gearing up to break my four-year-long novel-writing […]
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Well said. My lack of book-length material is more procrastination-based coupled with an odd sense of dread that I’m still trying to understand. Your words are encouraging to this struggling wordsmith. Thanks.
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The dread I know well. I never experienced it until after I completed my first novel (Dreams of the Desert Wind). After that, I knew what an arduous task the next one would be and, frankly, it took me a year or two to build up the courage to try another.
Your dread is your experience showing.
Follow me. The writing is this way …
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