One day, I start writing a book. I open up a blank page on the computer, and I just begin typing whatever the hell pops into my head. The year is 2008.
“I’m writing a book,” I announce cheerfully to my family and friends and to total strangers I encounter at the grocery store. “And it’s soooo much fun!”
Everyone is enthusiastic and supportive but about three weeks in, I start to lose steam. What do I know about writing a book? And why does my story suck so much? I decide I need to plan it out more, to draft an outline. I quickly realize I passionately hate outlines, I hate them so very much.
“I don’t get why you have this hostility towards outlines,” my good friend Stephanie says to me, over lunch one day.
“I don’t have hostility,” I laugh.
As soon as I’m done with the outline, I stick it in my paper shredder at home, and watch the machine chew it up. It is very satisfying.
I finish the book. It’s a love story that takes place in Istanbul. The main characters spend a lot of time sailing up and down the Bosphorus, staring at each other lovingly. Then, someone gets murdered and — spoiler alert — the Taliban did it.
After this, I write another story that takes place mainly on an alien planet called SNORK. As far as alien species go, the SNORKS aren’t very friendly. And that’s putting it mildly.
Next, I write a story about a Syrian refugee fleeing Aleppo, trying to cross seven borders illegally, in order to get to Berlin where his brother awaits. The last one, I just finished, is a love story, too. That one takes place over a single night inside the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport.
Four stories. Hundreds of thousands of words. A bazillion hours. Approximately.
I write the stories, and they are bad. I edit them once, and they’re enh. I do a second pass, and they become OK. Not great, not even good, just okay. I print them out and stack them on the top shelf in my closet. My closet is basically where stories go to die. It’s very sad. Sometimes I take the stories down for no reason other than to dust them. One thing I’ve learned is that manuscripts collect dust quickly. You’d be surprised. Manuscripts and TV screens.
No one has ever read any of the stories except for me. Not even anyone in my family. I won’t let them. I went home, to my dad’s house in Ankara, when I was writing the first one. My step-mother wanted to take the manuscript to the Haji Bayram mosque in downtown Ulus so that the Haji could bless it. I thought this was adorable and touching and hilarious, especially as there’s a graphic sex scene in the book, and the Haji has been dead since the year 1430.
But maybe the blessing of a holy spirit is exactly what I need. In fact, when I go to Ankara next, I might just take everything over there, ask the Haji for some kind of combo deal because as it is, I’m not sure what happens now. What is the fate of all these stories? If a story sits untouched in a closet, does it make a sound?
I think we all know the answer to that.
After I finish the last story — I decide to call it ‘One Night Standby,’ which may be part of the problem — I make myself a smoothie, and watch a motivational Tony Robbins video on YouTube. I love Tony Robbins, I really do. I recently read his excellent book UNLIMITED POWER. The book is filled with helpful, easy tips on how to reprogram your neurons and hypnotize people. I’ve secretly been trying to hypnotize members of my family for several weeks now. I don’t know if it’s working, but one of them did spontaneously shout: “I LOVE YOU SO MUCH, HILAL!” the other day, and I’m taking this as a sign that Tony’s methods are effective.
Anyway, Tony stresses the importance of finding your true calling, and honoring it. For me, the calling is writing, there is no question. And because there’s no question, this makes me lucky. I am lucky I’ve found something I enjoy so much. When I’m writing, hours pass — literally like, four, five hours — and I look up and realize I haven’t moved from my notebook, and I am bursting with pee and also on the brink of starvation. Writing does that to me. It is the only thing that does that to me. It stops time. This is the important thing here.
It’s not up to me to decide what the fate of the stories in my closet is. Maybe it’s up to Haji Bayram, I don’t know, but definitely not me. And I’m okay with that. I’m okay, as long as I can return to the page, as long as I have it in me to start all over again. What’s that saying? Wherever you go, there you are. Yeah. It’s like that. It’s exactly like that.
So here we go again.
This is going to be soooo much fun.
November is National Novel Writing Month. Get involved!
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