The Good and the Bad
I understand that being a writer is not a science, and it is not certain, and it is all sorts of crazy and annoying and weird to make your hair fall out/thin/grey/spread down your face. I understand these things and I go in willingly. All’s fair, and what have you.
But sometimes, man, sometimes I feel like writing is that chick that you just don’t know how to take. One minute she’s all coyly asking if you’re going out that night. Then she’s dancing with every guy in sight and you haven’t spoken to her in hours. At the end of the night, after you’ve bombed out on a few other girls and dominated a few jugs of Illusions to yourself, except for that one friend who always carries the middy glass that you top up but never joins the shout of jugs, and you are just into your second bite of possibly the best kebab with mint yoghurt sauce you have ever found (and you’ve hunted them, oh yeah, like the holy fucking grail and saucer set) she appears again. She happens to bump into you at the bottom of the stairs on your separate ways out. You all share a cab, with others, you never get this mistress alone, and after splitting the fair you finally talk to her. It’s awesome, but it’s only talk. The weeks/months roll by. Eventually it spreads into more, sometimes into one of your beds, sometimes into a hallway wall, often times it’s every place and none all at the same time. You never go out with this girl, but you always share something. Something special and it doesn’t need to be spoken. It is what it is.*
This is how it feels for me to write. It has its ups and downs, but it is always interesting, and always what I want to do. But sometimes this girl is each new project. This last week has been a case in point.
In my career, as an unpaid writer who spends his bill-paying hours teaching kids how to live and spends his sleeping hours writing instead, I have completed the text on two novels. I started a third, and planned it out completely, and have now started a fourth and am planning pieces of it.
The second novel has been proofed, polished and sent around to a few places of interest. She is a stayer, one to keep in the stable at all time. I wait with baited breath to see how things work out, but have also armed myself with a heavy heart full of pragmatism and self-preservation defense mechanisms.
The first novel completed writing six months ago, and finally last week I read it all and made corrections to it over three long working days. This is the girl that weighs on my mind and I will never be able to get over, but I will always find something wrong with it when we try, even though it’s always better than it is bad. I read it quickly to see how the book flowed for a reader. How did it flow? What do you expect me to say? It’s going to make House Party look like House Party 2, of course. I will go through this coming week and see what holes I can block up overall, or simply putty over.
The third novel is a sci-fi book that will be my Philip K Dick Valentine. I have it entirely planned and chaptered out, and I think the over planning, the engagement, the kids, the death beds next to each other has freaked me out a little. Or else it’s taken the spontenaity out of life, it’s taken the zing out of the between-sheets dances and I don’t know how to get it back. Perhaos one of us needs to get a haircut…? I have written about 15k or words, but no more seem to be coming. Even though I have a simple plan to follow, like a Treasure Map that takes me from my office to the fridge. It is simple. But. The words do not flow. So I am putting this on the back burner. What else can I do?
In the interim, my fourth novel has come out of the shadows and seduced me like a saucy temptress with the finest knowledge of how to get me into bed. Hint, it involves asking me, nicely or not. I wrote 12k of words in just around 50 hours last week. I love the characters, especially the main one, I think the premise is a winner and it is flowing completely. This little beauty is my main love, so what should I do? I don’t feel it would be right to force myself into the third novel, when things just aren’t right for us right now. Maybe later, who knows, it’s probably not the novel, it’s me. But this new firecracker. Everytime I sit down to write there are stars in the sky and I always leaving screaming ‘my god!’
I am going to go with the one that sparks my heart and makes my soul soar. I am going to give all my energy to the current love of my life. And once I’m done, maybe I’ll go back to the other one, maybe the time will be right. Or maybe we’ll see how right for each other we truly were not.
Only time will tell. But until then, I plan to enjoy myself thoroughly.
* I am actually happily engaged and would never consider indulging in such shenanigans with any form of female. I am a devout religious zealot and praise women so highly some days I barely speak to them, finacee included.**
** Most of that footnote was lies, you guess which parts.
Posted on July 12th, 2009 by ryan
Filed under: Writing
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