Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

Typing. Deleting. More typing. More deleting. MOAR typing. Delete delete delete. Delete it all. Every last word, comma, and period.

That was yesterday.

I was working on an essay for this blog and … it wasn’t going well. I was working on a topic that had been rolling around in my head for a month. All my arguments and counterarguments were lined up. I even had a catchy title … well, I thought it was a catchy title, until I googled it and found a hundred thousand other uses of it (including one by Garrison Keillor, which I discovered in a moment that was both uplifting and depressing).

Anyway, for hours I wrote and deleted in precisely equal measure, and in the end I was left with the same blank page I’d started with.

At which point I stopped and wondered: why was I having so much trouble?

The answer was obvious: I had no passion for the topic.

Not anymore, anyway.

Oh, when the idea first struck me, I was all fired up and ready to unleash my staggering intellect upon the world. See my reasoning and despair! But now, a month later, things have changed. Not externally. The premise still stands, the argument still works, and I can find no flaw in my logic, but internally … I just don’t care about it anymore.

This is not a bad thing.

You see, the reason why I don’t really want to write a blog post about that topic is because I am slowly becoming more engaged with another topic: my next novel.

My long hiatus, these past few years of non-writing, this extended episode of creative writer’s block, recently it has been under assault. Slowly, very slowly, brick by brick, I’ve been chipping away at the wall I built between myself and my creative desire. I’m making progress, too.

Like most writers with a block, fear plays a primary role. I’m afraid of … well, a lot of things … failure mostly, but other things, too. But “fear of failure” is, in this context, the height of silliness. I mean, what’s the worst that can happen?

(A) I might write a book that stinks. I might “waste” months of my life on something that has no lasting value.

(B) I might spend those months sitting around and moaning about wanting to write a book without actually doing it. Oh, yeah, that idea is so much more attractive.

(C) I might write half a book and give up. At least I’ll have tried, right?

(D) I might write the best book I can, work on it for a year or more, send it to workshops, readers, etc., shop it around, and still never sell it, never see it in print.

And there, ladies and gents, is the rub. That’s the bear waiting for me down in the pit, the dragon in its lair, the troll beneath the bridge: not being read. That is my wall, my block. That is the fear that keeps my fingers from typing Book One, Chapter One, Page One, Word One.

Why write if it’ll never sell? Why write if no one will ever read it?

You see, I have a story in my head, and it keeps getting better with every brain cycle I throw its way, but I also have a big, big problem: the story exists only in my head. I mean, what if I am able, by some stretch, to gather the moxie, the time, the discipline, the drive, the sheer gall to put my thoughts down on paper in the crazy, arrogant, wholly egotistical, reality-denying hope that some agent will like it enough to show it to an editor who will like it enough to show it to a publisher who will like it enough to actually print enough copies of the damned thing that it might actually, somewhere, somehow, be read by regular people, by strangers, by people not on my Facebook friends list, what if I’m able to do all that but none of the other chips fall where I need them to fall? What then?

What then?

Here’s where I might have a leg up on some other writers because, you see, I’ve already done that. I have nine novels to my credit. Five of them saw professional publication, but four did not. Four of them were unwanted, literary orphans pleading for a bit more gruel, only to be shoved aside, forgotten. What about them?

Do I love those books? You’re bloody well right I do. Could they be better? The early ones, sure, they could be better; I’ve learned a lot in the last — lordy — twenty years… [boggle].

Do I wish I’d never written them? Do I consider them a waste of my time? Do I regret them?

Not on your fucking life.

So, what’s the problem, then?

Nothing. No problem.

I’m on it.

k