Now, it's not that I'm about to drop this year's worth of short stories project and start working on a novel. Far from it. I'm probably more committed to this short story project than I was when I started it. That's part of the problem. Now that I'm working on a story that pretty significantly seems like it desires to suck, really bad, I'm feeling this thing called the pressure of responsibility, even as I take any opportunity I can to dodge it. I've got the rest of this week to take this story and turn it into something I won't feel bad about sending out, and I've got the pressure of knowing I've managed to get three stories out in three straight months, and those were wintry months when the desire to exist let alone produce is at its lowest--surely, April, the month that single-handedly brings us May flowers, a month of fertility and warm spring rains, a month that has the first two letters of the word "production" right there inside it--surely, April isn't going to be the month I choke, is it? No. Won't be. Won't let it be. I'll be at least tentatively happy with this story by the time the clock strikes done Saturday night, even if I have to spend every moment between now and then being unproductive and angry at life to do it.
It's not just that pressure that's keeping me in this. I mean in the long run I'm the only one who will notice if the string of months gets snapped into pieces at some point. I'll be the only one who will realize it when every single other story I write this year gets published on the backs of birth certificates. Everything truly wrong that might happen here and now will be only and most felt by me, and I've already got enough reasons to take umbrage with myself, which I freely capitalize on at just about any given moment of the day, occasionally for the humor and delight of those closest to me, so really, having one more reason to distrust myself isn't going to hurt anything.
No, what else that's keeping me going on this story--or, talking about how I'm going to keep going on this story--is the knowledge that, this being the story I feel the least connection to--the story that I feel is the least story-ish of the stories I've written so far this year--means--the way "one" means "uno" and the way "Sleater-Kinney is playing live in Cleveland in June" means "Darby's mind will be filled with happy thoughts for the next four months straight"--is, is that this story, above all the others, the stories I felt pouring out of me like pieces of my soul, will be the one that gets published first. The logic of this is inescapable and beyond the attacks of logic and luckily for all of us, the complete proof goes well beyond my abilities to cram HTML tags into the mark-up of Advanced Footnote Technology, so you're mostly going to have to take my word for it on this one. But just let me say: superscripts that shine like stars and derivatives first served at the Last frickin' Supper, man.
Of course for it to get published I'll have to leap the hump of this week and, like, finish it. What can I say. Even Jesus had to wave his hands at the water when he wanted to turn it to wine.
Well, not that he had to. But he did, anyway, I bet you.
I'm sure there's a lesson to be learned there.
It might not be so much that I miss working on a novel as that I miss working on something that I'm so completely sucked into that two years can pass without much fuss to it. I guess that might mean it's more of a psychological game than a matter of what I'm writing or how I'm writing it. The last two short stories--the current one and the one before--I've hit points where it's like, "Yeah, okay, that's nice. Hey, I thought you were going to finish yourself for me while I nipped outside for a spell of fresh air and a couple bottles of joy at the local bar? You little bastard."
At heart, I know what it means, when the accusation or claim is thrown, that some people enjoy having written more than actually writing. That some people want to be a writer without doing the writing. Or so forth. There's all sorts of levels to that. You can make it as sardonic or as innocuous as you wish. But the truth is though is I actually enjoy the writing itself very much. I mean, there's lots of other ways I could be spending my time. I go through my video game phases. I admit. I enjoy beating up hookers and casting magic missile and stomping out evil mushroom people as much as the next guy who's named Darby. But that's a different sort of enjoyment than I get from writing. I really do like sitting down at the laptop and making something appear on the screen. I enjoy taking that something and turning it into something else, making it into something better than it was when it started. I like the process, I like the time I spend on it. It's a good thing to be doing. I'm cool with it. I don't feel the need to skip steps.
Of course I'm speaking in terms of the "usually". Sometimes it really would be nice to just, you know, be famous already so I can hire ghostwriters while I have deep intellectual conversations with my groupies while playing Tetris on my extremely loud and incredibly close wide-screen high-def television set. And sometimes, after as much as I've done, which I know on the grand scale of things isn't really all that much, and by isn't all that much I mean is like absolutely nothing, I think this would be so much easier to keep doing if I could just have some kind of tangible proof in my hand, like, say, a nice acceptance letter that happens to be wrapped around a huge fucking stack of hundred dollar bills. I'm no sell-out or anything but I think that would spark the whole believing-in-myself fire that sometimes seems to want to sputter out. But, usually, though, everything's cool, and I'm content to haggle over commas with myself, to debate the value of introducing religion into a story, to wonder if my female narrators sound at all like women or if they sound more like People magazine photographs, to wonder at the value of a well-placed single-sentence paragraph, to stretch that climactic scene to the breaking point, to make like Jerry McGuire and snap the straps on that story's black dress and know with sudden Bruce Springsteen-soundtracked clarity that this is true love, baby.
Usually.
Mostly, right now--er, hang on, telephone.
Sorry. The Gilmore Girls just called. Wanted their witty-snap dialoguish pop-culture referencing routine back. I said a vaguely po-mo bloggerus interruptus probably wasn't the way to prove the point, and they were all like, nu-uh, and I was all like, but, hey, really, rock on, Lauralai & Rory, I'll catch you next time I'm visiting my girlfriend. Really. Rock on.
Anyways, where was I.
Mostly right now--today, here, now, this instant--I feel like I'm falling into the trap of looking ahead while the ground beneath my feet turns to broken glass and flowers. Give me an ounce of knowledge of the publishing business and suddenly I'm all oh-crap and uh-oh out the ears. But I figure it's tough to regain the naivete one once had. Not that that's a bad thing. I got enough naivete to go around. Seriously. Drop me a line. I'll give you a great deal.
But yeah. Looking ahead. Wondering when this story will end so I can move on to the next one. Wondering what all the stories from this year will look like when I'm done with them and I've got them all printed and waiting in envelopes, ready to go out the door and into the mailbox the moment an older copy of themselves gets dismissed, returned. Wondering, if when this year's done, published or not, I'll start working on a new book, which the tentative plan seems to be. Wondering how it'll feel to finally get something accepted, to have that chance to feel like this isn't all a joke I'm playing on myself. Not, mind you, that a punch-line would cause me to stop. I've never been one for stopping bad behavior.
Looking ahead, when there's a clinically depressed woman in my care; her husband just took her off the meds, rather suddenly. But I guess there isn't so much wrong with that. I mean, it's all about the dreaming, really, right?
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