Getting back to writing after having taken off over six weeks is a lot like going back to the gym after about the same amount of time off. It is excruciatingly painful when you sit down, boot up the computer, top off the coffee, sit down once again, and then start to actually type. Part of the problem, at least for me, is the fear of what will come out. Will I have forgotten the English language entirely? Will I end sentences with prepositions, and use the semi-colon incorrectly? Will I be able to stretch out a blog or a story from the fragmentary ideas with which I built up the gumption to write in the first place? Will I get severe wrist cramps and need physio I can’t afford?
I expect I am not a typical writer. While most writers I know relish in the moments they compose their work, I seem to have to drag myself to the keyboard and agonize over what I’m going to do. I always settle into my groove within the first few minutes, usually after a preamble to which my blog readers are now accustomed. I can write uninterrupted for hours, skipping even food if the flow is steady and the results look promising. If I start a blog, for example, after supper, around 6:30 or so, I can work on it without fail until midnight, long past my most productive hours which typically end around 8 o’clock. By then it’s time for either the news, a baseball or hockey game, and chips. Or reading, which I never seem to have enough time to do.
After my most recent blog entry, which was written in early June, I went on an intentional hiatus from blogging. The goal was two-fold. First, I recognized that after my first full year of teaching, I needed time to de-escalate, to let the year wrap up not just in real time but in my own mind. I think teachers will understand what I mean. When you teach, whether it’s during the work day, in the evening, or over the weekend, you’re always on. Teachers have to take time to just be off, that is to say, away from the academic world for a little while. It’s okay for them to plan, catch up on professional reading, clean out emails, and so on, because they are doing so at their own discretion, and when it suits them best. I was no different.
I basically took July off from all things school, which was a blessing and a curse at the same time. The second goal was to shift my focus over to writing fiction. I have been working on a novel of my own, long-gestated, conceived originally almost nineteen years ago. I never seriously thought about actually writing it until about five years ago, when I returned to my notes as a diversion from my university work. The bulk of the framework of my novel was mapped out as a diversionary tactic in my first university degree, as procrastination from the work I was actually supposed to be doing. I’ve shelved and retrieved it countless times over the years, but finally decided that the story was good enough to be told, and I have since done more stringent research, and begun the manuscript in earnest. I’ll edit and rewrite it over and over before it’s done, but it is finally moving forward. This summer I wanted to get a good chunk of it written, but I have only been able to write a small amount. You see, when you divorce yourself from academics, you divorce yourself from all of it, or at least I do. I was able to read Steig Larsson’s Millenium series, and the second book of George R. R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series, but little else. I couldn’t drag myself to the computer to write. I spent way too much time on Facebook and on TSN’s website, and probably most of my online time on what I call ‘Wiki-trains’, going from one Wikipedia article to the next until I couldn’t remember where I began. As small consolation, I did spend some of that time riding the Wiki rails researching topics of which I know only a little so I can incorporate them into my novel. Some such subjects include sailing, the armed forces and weaponry of various countries, religious ritual and ceremony, and ghost towns or cities around the world. If any of these sound interesting, then maybe my novel will be for you. But I have to actually write it first, so don’t hold your breath.
The greatest barrier for my writing is not a lack of motivation. It isn’t a lack of ideas. I have awakened in the middle of the night and written scatterbrained notes so I wouldn’t forget a potential story. Some of them even made sense in the morning. I think that in my case my own self-confidence is the greatest hurdle I face in completing my novel, and for that matter a handful of shorter stories that are just itching to be finished. Right now, as of this writing, I have my main novel, a lengthy short story which was originally conceived when I was living in Louisiana in 1999, two unfinished blogs for The Fence, three short stories of varying lengths, and even a second novel (completely separate from the first) fully mapped, plotted, which even has names for its chapters. None are finished. I believe that in the case of the novel, I have invested so much time—nearly twenty years, and all of my adult life—in the characters, the world in which they live, and the situations they portray, that to not write it perfectly would be to not do it justice. And I ask myself, who am I kidding? Thousands of people around the world want to be authors. Most of them write something. Most of them send a manuscript to a publisher, and most of them face the rejection that almost always follows. I am legitimately afraid of publishers rejecting the characters that I not only created and developed, but in some ways with whom I’ve grown to really know personally. Talk about voices in your head.
However, there is another side of the proverbial fence, pun totally intended. Because I know the characters so well, I can describe them equally well, and I feel that will be a strength in my story. The best books I have read have really well-developed characters. The same principle of course applies to movies and TV shows. One of the reasons I liked LOST as much as I did was because I felt that the characters were so stringently explored; most episodes were centered around one character specifically, and when shown as a full season or series, the characters were so intimately connected to the audience, it actually hurt when they were hurt. The heartbreak the audience feels near the end of the first Game Of Thrones season (or near the end of the novel) is so poignant because the point of view of the story is told through that character’s eyes. I won’t say who it was in case anyone reading has yet to watch or read it, but if you haven’t, I encourage you to do so, because that series is phenomenal. I want my characters to succeed on the same level. It’s like wanting the best for my own kids.
And like my own kids, for whom I’ll feel that bittersweet pang when they graduate from high school and hopefully college of some sort, and move out on their own, I’ll be happy to see my characters leave the security and privacy of my own thought process and make their own impressions on whoever reads them. They’ll succeed or fail on their own merits at that point, but I’ll always be proud of them. I’ve come to realize that I need to accept the fact that for one, not everyone will like them, including publishers, and for another, they don’t have to make me millions. Because realistically, that’s not in the cards. Nor should it be the reason for creating them. I have to remind myself that the stories I want to share with the world are just that—stories. Writing requires you to take a leap of faith more often than is usually comfortable. It’s not as easy as it seems. You can’t just sit down and compose the next Great American Novel over the course of a few weeks. There is no more humbling experience than sitting down to do just that only to have your own imagination hand you your ass on a platter.
The next episode of the Fence is already planned out in my mind. While vacationing, I had more free time on my hands, and therefore more time to notice things, such as how bad service has become the last few years. That topic could comprise several blog entries, and may yet, but I guarantee it will be more entertaining than reading about an egotistical would-be author making up excuses as to why he hasn’t published his master work yet. What you have to understand though, is that there is a certain catharsis in getting this stuff down on paper. Before I could proceed with the Fence, I had to look in the mirror. And why bother posting it? Here’s a final metaphor. I hate it when artists produce something (a book, a film, or an album), then shortly after it’s released, renounce it as being of poor quality or not up to snuff. Artists have the responsibility to stand by their art, otherwise the art in question was created under false pretenses. So, I could skip posting this piece, or I could throw it out there as a glimpse into my thought process, warts and all. Maybe the next blog will be funnier, smarter, better. Maybe this is as good as it gets. Either way, it was time to quit stalling.
