Starting a business. Bankrupting a business. Selling a business.
I’ve had a hand in all of that.
Chasing VCs, appealing to lenders, debating tax audits.
A lot of it—most of it—was hard work.
Getting my accounting degree. That, too, was hard work. So hard that I still, too often, have nightmares over it.
My dream—no shit—is I get notified, there’s been a mistake, they want the diploma back!
My dream is, I’m one credit short and I have to take another class, write another exam.
Then I wake up in a sweat, my chest heaving; my heart beating out a drum roll.
Christ, I hate that dream.
But the hardest thing I’ve done? You know what that is?
If a university degree is a jog around the block, if managing a business is a marathon, then this thing—this other thing—is like running through the eternal fires of hell.
So, what is this other, all too infernal, thing?
Writing a novel, that’s what.
Writing a novel is like opening your soul, revealing your fears and exposing your most secret embarrassment. Writing a novel is like being seventeen again and asking the prettiest girl at the prom to dance with you. It’s like setting yourself up so that everyone can point and stare. And then laugh at you.
Writing a novel is like disabling your shields, while Klingon warships lurk about. And you’ve got no cloaking device either.
Writing a novel makes my head explode. Writing a novel, I’m left imagining that soon—very soon—there’ll be nothing left. When I’m writing, I can picture every braincell burning up, dying before its time. I picture all that grey matter shrivelling up, drying up, leaving my head vacant—a vacuous, empty space. And leaving me crying, please, no more. I don’t want to do this anymore. Please! I’ll do anything, rub my face against sandpaper, crash my car into a building, watch an episode of Glee. Please! Anything so long as I don’t have to go back and work on this novel anymore.
Writing a novel is hard. And that’s before I start piling on all the other crap. The self-doubt, the self-recrimination. The little voice inside my head that keeps admonishing me, Why are you wasting your time with this? This is stupid. Close Scrivener, for crissake, and do something fun, like a tax return or something.
Then there’s all of that having to deal with other people. People I’d love to talk to, but who won’t give me the time of day—the booksellers, the reviewers and the press. And people I don’t want to talk to. Those people—the friends, family and colleagues. The ones who, for example, return a wry smile when I tell them I’m writing a novel. The ones who leave me wondering Are their eyes rolling? Are they laughing at me? Maybe they’re onto something. Maybe they know I’m no writer. Maybe they’re right, maybe I’m not a writer. Am I a writer? Am I a fake? Am I getting paranoid? How the fuck do I know? I bloody well used up all my braincells! I can’t even think anymore. Why? Why? Why? Why the fuck am I writing another novel? Oh for crissake, my head hurts. Man, I need to take it easy. Do something else, something fun. Like add up a column of numbers, or prepare consolidated financial statements. Yeah. That’s better, that’s way easier.
You know what I love? Sometimes, when I’m writing, you know what I love?
I love for telemarketers to call. Interrupt me.
When that happens, and when I’m in the mood, they get it—both barrels—verbal buckshot.
All that frustration, that self-doubt, that concern over dying braincells. It all pours out. That little voice inside my head? It gets louder, hostile even. And it gets directed at them. You little shit! Can’t you tell I’m busy? No, I don’t want pet insurance. No, I don’t care if I won a free alligator and a condo in Bora Bora! No, I don’t need a twelfth credit card. Now go away you slimy, sorry, tree-dwelling primate. Go away and lay your slimy primate ass across two lanes of autostrada traffic.
And, if the above explains the hothead I can be. It also reveals the liar I am.
Because the truth is, I’m never aggressive with telemarketers. Though I’d like to be.
Because the truth is, a telemarketer just called, while I was writing this, and after politely telling her I didn’t need an extended warranty for my Rambler, I couldn’t help imagining how good it would have felt to tell her—uh—all that stuff I wrote up there.
OK back to this novel thing…
Why tell you this?
Why spill my guts—like some hapless drunk to a heard-it-all-before barkeep?
Because, as it turns out, I’m writing another novel—yes, a second one.
Why, you might ask, after such self-inflicted torture, would I bother with another novel?
The answer is simple.
The answer is, even if it’s hard work (the hardest work I’ve ever suffered through), writing remains, paradoxically, the most fun I’ve ever had (with a computer keyboard, of course).
The truth is, many mornings, writing my first book, I’d jump out of bed and run to my computer, so eager was I to get back at it.
The truth is, some days—riding my bike, sitting in traffic, chatting over a coffee—an idea would hit, a great idea. Something, say, about my protagonist. Some clever thing my protagonist just told me.
Because sometimes, when the flow’s, er, flowing, that’s exactly how it feels. It’s like my characters are fully-formed, and talking—telling me important shit.
But that’s not happening to me right now. Not yet anyway. My characters are still, like Frankenstein’s monster, lying on a gurney, getting their act—and their psychological and physical components—together. They haven’t come to life yet.
It’s early days you see. I’m just a few chapters in.
And—for me—these are delicate times.
The characters are only now making themselves known—their strengths, their foibles, their secrets.
At this point, scenes and back-stories, events and plots are almost lava-like. They’re bubbling and cooling. Oozing and solidifying.
And because—for me—these are delicate times, because I’m amortizing grey matter and braincells at an alarming rate, I’m not sure I’ll have any left over for this blog. At least not for the next few weeks.
What I’m saying is… my presence here might be sporadic.
Or it might not.
The truth is, I don’t know.
The truth is, I want to put a dent in this new writing project. I want to develop the characters, bring ‘em to life. I want to, you know, super-size them.
Plus. I need to develop the story, bring that to life. I need to work on scenes, backstories, relationships. I need to set the whole thing too. Like, what city? Where does it all happen?.
Right now I’m thinking, hmmm, maybe Montreal. Or Ottawa, even. Not Toronto though, that’s for sure. Hey! What about New York? Just about every great (and not so great) novel is set in New York. Salinger’s people—his characters—lived there, for crissake.
So, what it means is, on the writing front, this new novel jumps to the front of the queue (Christ, I can’t believe I wrote queue without having to look it up. I mean, how often do you use that word, queue?).
OK, your turn. Is writing hard? Would you rather rub sandpaper against your face? Would you rather talk to a telemarketer? Tell me about. Tell me I’m not alone. Please!
