My Year in Writing

2015 has been a really strange year. It started when I kissed a girl in a millionaire’s Venice party compound and immediately left because I needed to beat the surge pricing (and it worked! very cost-effective party plan.) While that didn’t exactly set the tone for the new year, it was indicative of making overall better decisions than the year prior. 2014 was best defined by getting, you know, way too drunk to finish a novel or the lengthy profile that probably all of you have heard me talk about in one form or another.

Anyways. 2015.

I moved (back) to New York in February and started working with a ghostwriter and continued doing another job (I don’t want to scoop the essay I havecoming soon) and attending parties. Lots and lots of parties. I had it in my head that this would somehow help. And it did, kind of.

The early part of the year involved a lot of false starts. An editorial job I was sure I was getting, followed by a desultory bit of freelancing for the publication that went a different direction (the guy they hired seems like a fit, no shade on them.) A nonfiction book I was sure I would be signed to ghostwrite before the subject ran out of money. The novel I still haven’t finished.

Somewhere in there, I wrote stuff. I wrote for T. I had a lot of interviews with some amazing people. Briefly, I thought I might freelance for a British music site. It was a weird time. I also wrote about gay bars for the tourism board.

I traveled across the country twice with my mentor. That’s a whole story that someone ought to pay me to write. We met John Boehner and an ex-Marine auto mechanic with bad PTSD, eight dogs, and his own weed growing operation. Our car broke down. We saw Mt. Rushmore. I almost lost my wallet. More stuff happened. Seriously, pay me to write this.

Over the summer, I supported myself by dogsitting. It’s a strange experience to be dead broke in a multimillion dollar apartment. I have thoughts about this, too.

Then, somehow, things improved. I made a series of jokes on Twitter that ended with an editorial staff saying, “We think you’re great! No chance in hell can you write for us.” Of course, because I’m an idiot, I wrote a piece for them and said they could publish it if they wanted. They did. Now I’m the Male Feminist. It’s silly, but maybe not as silly as I think.

(A small story: Someone talked to one of the site’s editors at the bar and told her he was embarassed to call himself a male feminist after reading my piece. Progress!)

I got handed a novel to edit. I got an amazing gig with a fashion website seemingly out of the blue sky. I got handed another book to ghostwrite. Out of the Male Feminism thing, I started working with a few amazing editors at a website I’d wanted to write for for nearly a decade. (Sue me, I grew up in Los Angeles.)

2016: Recently, someone contacted me about a project so exciting I can’t even believe it’s real. I have some pieces in edits that I think are the best things I’ve ever done. I have others on my desk that will be even better. I still don’t have health insurance.

There’s a lot left to do, but the work is the point. On a date, someone asked me what my hobbies were and I laughed. Who has time for hobbies?

I’ve been lucky this year. But like Seneca said, “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.” I’ll put my five favorite things I’ve done down below. You may have read them, or maybe not.

Top 5 in 2015

• The Male Feminist Guide to Christmas Movies in Broadly. Someone sent me a picture of his nude ass out of the blue with the caption, “Male feminist at your service.” Moving on.
• Kylie Jenner and Chemtrails in Paper. Such a strange tweet, a less strange article.
• Hot Sugar and the Rotting Skull in The 405. Walking around the Natural History Museum with Nick as Tessa sort of trailed along behind us seemed like the start of something. It wasn’t.
• Clancy Martin in Interview. I had to do this interview twice. Some little shits mugged me for my recorder (and everything else) while I was walking to dinner with Ilya. They did leave me my copy of New American Stories, which was nice of them.
• John McManus in VICE. I loved John’s Fox Tooth Heart so much. When Porochista and I were in a cab on the way to the launch, I saw this man dancing on the median of the Henry Hudson Parkway. Traffic all around him and he was just dancing.