RE Bunch

Writing has been a passion of mine my whole life. I have been reading and writing from a very young age, maybe three or four years old. I had bounced with many different career ideas in my life but most have been communication focused. Being indecisive about what I wanted, has made for some stuttered starts in my goals. I felt uncertain most of the time. Most people write what they know. They write about their interests and hobbies. They write about their life and events in it. It takes experience to write. As one my favorite authors Flannery O’Connor said, “Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.”

And up to a certain point, I thought I had not lived enough life. I thought I was still a child and learning. Life was throwing me some real fast pitches. I had to react or get pummeled to death from the weight of it all. Changes in the economy meant finding a new job. New jobs meant climbing up different corporate ladders. New climbs meant more money and less time for anything. I was taking classes on-line and working full time. I was not really dealing with anything, so I was usually just drinking. I would half-heartedly work on short stories to pass the time. Like coffee, just passing minutes as I waited to be finished. So, in early 2018 I had made the decision to stop focusing on little short stories and work on something big.

By mid-2018 I had decided to work on my first novel. Since the job was not helping me to gain any stability in my life, I quit without having a real back up plan. I had made the decision that I was going to pursue writing full-time, and I was going to hit it out of the park with my first novel. Because drinking in no way, EVER, distorts your actual reality. Much like Terra Nova Expedition, mistakes were made with dire consequences.

Mistake 1: The Subject

I had set out writing a horror/crime-drama novel about a girl that meets a serial killer. She is beguiled by his charming personality, and yada-yada-yada. The plot was not the problem. The plot is interesting all by itself. It is still a plot line I wish to explore. The problem was the subject and base material I was drawing from. I was drawing from own my relationships to build the characters. And I was forced to evaluate them at end of it.

I was forced to evaluate one relationship in particular I never have fully resolved. And I have come to terms that I will never stop being angry over how they treated me and how I allowed myself to be treated. I was too young at the time to see it happening, but now it makes me sick to remember it. I wanted to write a story about how the protagonist got a way and went on to live a happy life. But the story I had written ended in a much darker tone. The protagonist was changed by his cruelty and in turn became cruel and jaded. And art, no matter how commercial, always imitates life. I had not prepared myself to hear that repeated back to me in my own words.

Mistake 2: The Intention

Unlike Alex Jones, I do not use alcohol to feel less empowered by freedom—God, I wish more people appreciated satire to see how scary of time we live in. At the time I was drinking more so to mask life. It was more like the Little Dutch Boy sticking his hand into the dam. Was it going to save the town for the night, maybe? Is it the long term solution I was looking for, no. Was I eager to find a new solution for the problem, no. People get comfortable with what they know and are okay with things half working if their favorite parts still work. If there is a small pay-off in the end, people are willing to do most counterproductive things.

I was riding high off the belief I could totally do anything I wanted as long as my main man Jack Daniels was backing me up. So I was doubling down on my novel and quadrupling down on the whisky. The intention was to be like Gabriel García Márquez. To put everything I had into this first novel and get successful that way. Which is not an actual plan. It’s a post-it note on a vision board. It makes ZERO fucking sense.

The people who are able to achieve their goals that way are special because they are fluke. I have found for myself, I am not happy unless there is some complication or pain happening. I need a screw in my side that I can turn to keep my sharp. I thought that screw was whisky, and nothing was going to have to change that. I wrote that novel drunk and read it sober. I was disgusted by that fact in the hard light of the afternoon—10am often did not happen in those days.

Mistake 3: Editing

The first two mistakes culminated into 40,000 words of unabated fear and depression. When I picked up my red pen the only thing that felt right at the time was start at the source. I organized my notes and my plot points. I printed out the behemoth, organized it by sections, and placed everything into an expanding folder.

In 2018 I could not finish editing that novel. It was too hard to look at the mess I had subconsciously been keeping organized. That novel had kicked opened a tightly sealed room in head. The room that I reserved for the elephant foot from the reactor melt-down. A room so toxic I thought it would kill me if opened. In reading the draft aloud I realized it was never contained to begin with. It was seeping out and there was no stopping it. The thing I had to edit and change for anything to happen was really myself. I had essentially written a get-help note and for that I was pissed off.

I felt so let down. How could I be so shady? Could I have done this any more dramatically? I had set out to write a novel and instead had staged my own intervention. I was livid and felt betrayed by myself. After editing the first quarter of my novel, I told myself to ‘get-bent’ and set the work in a drawer of my writing desk.

What Went Right

My first attempt at novel writing was disastrous. It was an unabashed reflection of my current state, and the glimpse into a future I did not like. It was like being visited by ghosts of Christmas Present and Christmas Future, and then having them both ask me if they could crash on the couch. But some good came out of it:

• I bravely sucked at trying something new. It is still important to try, even if the outcome is not what you wanted. It helps to find your strengths and how to improve on what did not work.
• I finished the first draft. I can not tell you how good that felt just be done with the project even though I had to put it aside. It just felt great knowing I could pull it together.
• I learned the value of being uncomfortable. You feel uncomfortable for a reason, see it and move on from it. You do not have to sit there to prove you can endure it. If it is not working, fix it. If it is broken beyond repair, move on from it and start fresh.
• It made me see how unbreakable and resilient I am. I do not worry about whether I will survive something, I know I will. I worry about how I will consume it into myself. The only way out is through, so I worry about the journey on the way out. I find it more productive to worry about what is happening to me in the moment and not what is going to happen. Because in truth, it usually does not happen.
• I also met some interesting people who helped give me more clarity on my situation. It also provided me with immediate insight on who was already in my life. It is okay to make changes with who is and is not in your life. It hurts at first, but gradually you see the difference. Sometimes it is yourself that needs to be cut out. It is okay to make those huge changes.

Someday I will pick it up again and try again with it. There were some quality ideas mixed in with all the nonsense. But right now: I feel like I have other stories to tell. I have other things to do and work. Things that are bit more wonderous and mysterious. I love horror and weird fiction stories. I want to tell more stories that inspire or change people, than a sad bleak one that remains the same. There is enough of those stories happening right now.