I don’t know if I was aware of how hard this week was. I said it out loud, I posted about it, but after work today, and honestly probably about two hours before my work day was finished really, my entire body started to revolt against me. Erin is pretty sure she has a Fibro flare-up coming on and is trying to get ahead of it. I don’t think this is anything like that, but as soon as I was able to turn off my work computer, I headed downstairs, gave the cats their food (which unfortunately put Gaiman in the bedroom since I’m still trying to keep him and his kitten food only eaten by him), and fell hard asleep on the sofa. I woke up just after Erin got home, probably a quarter to nine. Not my longest nap, but it could have gone much further if I didn’t push myself to come back up here.
So my brain is groggy. i just had some leftover mac and cheese from yesterday’s lunch because, lord help me, it was easier to make than a quesadilla right now. I was thoughtful enough to make us more iced tea at lunch, when I made Erin a burger to send her off to work fed. So I’ve got what I need except inspiration.
I talked with Phil a little today (who I am proud to say I see on the leaderboard here on Skwerl tonight, and I’m certain will be ahead of me still in word count by the time I’m done here). We talked about the writing I’m doing, and the writing he’s doing. We’re basically commiserating that neither of us are sure we’re doing our best as far as story. We can knock out the occasional short piece, but I think we’ve each got loftier expectations at this point. I’m going to be hitting my first 50k of the new writing exercise soon, possibly tonight, but it’s been almost exclusively stuff like this… Journal bits. Talking shit in my head out. Some of it entertaining maybe, but just the same things I would say out loud to anyone unfortunate enough to be in hearing distance. Not terribly creative. The couple of bouts of writing fiction were nice, but not terribly inspired. I’m trying to talk myself into something, but I still don’t know what that is. And last night, after continuing on one thing, Erin and I watched a documentary (“Class Action Park”) and I felt a surge of, “It doesn’t matter what you write, the whole thing is worthless. Here, in front of the TV watching other people be entertaining, is where you belong.” Because my inner monologue loves a recliner and wants to keep my ass in it as long as possible.
But Phil, aside from being one of the most genuinely kind people I’ve had the pleasure to know in my life, is also a very brilliant creator in a lot of things. He does art, illustration mostly is what I’ve seen. He plays guitar, something he’s passing down to his sons. And he writes wonderful stories. One of the things he did about a year or two ago (time is getting away from me) was something I adored.
He’s also gone further than I have in that he has books he’s made. I own a couple and they make me incredibly happy. Not just because they’re wonderful books in and of themselves, but because Phil is someone that I love seeing making things. He’s someone I want to see succeed at it too, and, at my level, having those things done, published, available to people to get… That is a success. But to Phil, I guess because he’s done it, it’s not where he wants to be. It doesn’t feel as important because he’s accomplished it already. He wants to move on to the next thing. The bigger thing. And I’m sure I’d be the same way. Heck, I am the same way, because it’s very easy for me to forget or ignore the things I’ve done. I wrote Baujahr for a while, and it was published in a monthly print ‘zine that I have some copies of. I co-wrote a story with John Stanley for Peri Toth’s See-Thru Baby, which they put into a beautiful hardcover that Levi was kind enough to gift me. It’s funny how most of the stuff I’ve succeeded at includes Levi, or is directly because of him. But that’s what friends do.
It would be a pretty shitty move as a friend to let Phil talk himself down from thinking he hasn’t done incredible work already. Or to let him wallow in the idea that he can’t get to the next thing. But the next thing isn’t easy to track. There’s not a direct path to it. Sometimes we’re not even sure what it is or if it exists. I don’t know what my next thing is. At all. Doing NaNo again would just be an exercise in writing, not really a goal in moving forward from what I’ve done. I think, other than the comic, my next thing would be moving up to Phil’s level. I would like that a lot, I think. But seeing how Phil feels right now, I can tell that it would only make my subconscious think, “Well, you only made it this far, asshole. You didn’t achieve what you really want. You didn’t hit that level yet.”
What is “that level?” What makes you feel like a success. Our friend J-F this week has one of his books (a book I am a crazy fan for) translated into French, his native language (I’m pretty sure, but he’s very natural at English so I don’t know if one really stands over the other in his case). This book came out a couple of years ago, and it wasn’t even his first. Both books, as I recall, came from him winning contests or campaigns to garner interest from readership before they got published. So he gets the interest, which is a huge accomplishment. And then he writes the books. Again, gigantic. And they they are published, he gets the physical copies in his hands. All incredible stuff. And this week he holds up one of his novels translated, giving it an ability to appeal to a whole new audience.
These are some of his victories in writing, and even then, not all of them. And you talk to J-F and he plays it all down pretty well. I know he doesn’t feel like he’s “made it” yet. And again, none of us know what that is. None of us can define what that means to us, I think, unless it’s to compare ourselves to someone else. I guess if you’re a Grisham or a King that you feel like you’ve done it. But they keep writing. It can’t just be for the money or the glory at that point. There’s got to be a compulsion. I don’t know that I want to be a King, but I’d probably love to be a Barker. Barker’s stuff seems (to me, not a huge reader of either, but definitely have leaned further into Clive’s work) to be more aimed at making himself happy. He explores ideas into each other, but he has kept his output more controlled, more focused, and it’s maybe not allowed him the same broad fame that King has (but he has enough). Does Clive compare himself to Stephen? I know there are fans that do, like I just did. Compare and pick a favorite. Mock Dean Koontz while you’re at it. It’s all for the laughs and doesn’t mean anything (and I’m totally kidding about Koontz).
When it comes to writers I’m a fan of, I don’t think about bestsellers lists or any of that. I find a style or a voice or a character that draws me in, and then I want to read more of it. I loved Adams most for Arthur Dent (or maybe for his narrator), even though I did enjoy the Dirk Gently stuff. But there wasn’t a comparison for me between them. I loved Asprin for his Myth Series, and could barely break away from those books to try his other things. Melinda had gotten me reading Poppy Z. Brite years ago, and I adore Ghost and Steve in his stories and would’ve gladly followed them around to as many books as he wanted to do of them (I am going off of Wikipedia’s statements about Poppy’s gender, so please know that I mean the utmost respect to him and hope I’m not getting things wrong). I certainly read more of his stuff that wasn’t related to them, but other than Exquisite Corpse, I can’t remember the rest of it as clearly, and I know Poppy’s work change genre for at least a while. And I respect that, a lot, as a person who believes a writer should be able to write anything they want and, hopefully, find success in it. But we know the industry isn’t exactly giving when you genre hop.
You put me in the seat of anyone up there (Adams would have a ridiculously high chair) and I’d have to think that I’d “won,” right? These are master storytellers. More, they have avid and loving audiences who crave their work. They must all know that they were successful. They must have all felt or feel like they did what they sought out to do.
But, again, when it comes to creating, the goals aren’t linear to get to, or defined in what they are. It’s more like a cat chasing a red dot from a laser pen. It seems to move faster and farther than you can reach, and even if you catch it, it turns out that it wasn’t ever really there to begin with. And you would think that you’d learn that the chasing it doesn’t matter, that it was the actions you were doing, while entertaining to someone else, that ultimately did. But as soon as you see that light again, you’re up and back to bouncing around the furniture.
What I asked Phil today was, “What do you enjoy writing,” or, “What kind of story do you want to tell.” Because, fair or not, that’s where my head is at right now, so it’s all I could think of to ask. You ask me what book I want to have written, I could pick up a couple of dozen off my shelves and say, “I want to do this!” But that’s not going to get me anywhere. One, those books have been written, by someone else, someone that did the hard work. You ask me though, “What do you enjoy doing when you write. What makes you want to sit down and put in that time instead of playing a video game or doom scrolling on your phone.” That’s a challenge. That’s a hard answer. But it’s probably the only question that’s going to motivate me further. I don’t know if this was the advice that Phil needed or not, but it’s the best I could offer from where I’m sitting today. And I hope it at least gets him a little closer to where he’s trying to go, even if it’s just after a little red dot. Because I love watching Phil bounce off the furniture.
Oh, but I’m sorry, Mr. Rood. I think I kicked you down a notch on the Leaderboard after all.
