A Man Writes A Novel

In 2001, I went away to write a novel. I stopped writing one book to start writing another because I believed that the first book would work itself out. It did work out, but only because I put the whole thing together and pushed for it to get published nearly three years later. Anyway, that’s for a later post.

In January, I drove down to Mississippi and began working on the great American novel.

Before leaving, I’d tried to get an internship at a famous literary journal. But I didn’t realize that I had no qualifications for the internship. I had no history working in anything besides public relations. I had nothing published, no evidence I was a person of letters because I wasn’t.

I arrived in Oxford, Mississippi, moved in to a new abode, and began working on the novel immediately. My house was a ramshackle, carpeted dump that sat on a dusty plot of land next to a big rig that was for sale.

I had a friend who lived there, and through him I met people. I did spend a lot of time hanging out, getting to know the redneck side of life. But mostly, I worked.

Every day, I’d wake up, listen to NPR, drink a pot of coffee, and write. Sometimes I’d write a lot; sometimes I’d write very little. I took a lot of breaks to smoke cigarettes on my front porch. But I wrote.

Writing, as any writer knows, usually doesn’t come easy.

Writing is birthing an idea and then getting that idea to make sense on paper. Writing is an art form, sure, but like any other art form it just requires time to get better. One doesn’t become a great artist or writer overnight.

During those months in Mississippi, I thought of my writing as a lifestyle. And I made it a lifestyle. There was no separation between me and the writing. Even when there were bad days, with little production, it didn’t matter. Getting down a few sentences mattered. Getting down pages mattered. Getting down a chapter was great. But so was just writing a few words.

I birthed a novel in about three months.

I did it! I did it! I completed a story in a couple of hundred pages and it made some sort of sense.

But, it was a draft. Just a draft. A first draft.

And I felt like I’d conquered the world.

In that moment, those weeks after, that wonderful feeling of accomplishment turned to fear.

I knew there was more to do on the manuscript. It needed lots of work. And no one had read more than a few paragraphs.

I panicked, thinking about the work I still needed to do. Writing wasn’t a profession, it was a lifestyle. Was I ready for the lifestyle? Was I ready to go all in?

No, clearly, I wasn’t.

So, I took a job. With my old camp director, a job that was to take me on a journey around the American south.

But that’s for another post.

What happened to the book? It’s somewhere on my computer. It will never see the light of day. I looked at it a few years ago and I was impressed that it wasn’t terrible.

Those months were the first time I’d ever allowed myself the daylight to take time away and write. I did it. But I didn’t continue with it. I didn’t pursue it doggedly.

As everyone told me before, and which I’ve seen since, writing is not about fame or glory. It’s about using words to lay down stories and ideas. That’s all. Sometimes your stories and ideas will do well. But, most ideas and stories are going to be popular. And that’s okay.

But this book was important for me. Not only did I go away and learn how not to live, but I also finished the first draft of a book. It was important for me to learn that I could get work done if I put in effort.

I just needed the time and the will.

I never wanted to be a bureaucrat. But I never made a promise to myself, never told myself that I would write until the wheels fall off. However, I always thought that my love, my passion, no matter how hard it was, would carry me away to some unknown future success.

But it didn’t.

I put in effort. But, I didn’t persist.

For a long time, I remained scared. I didn’t show my work to people. I thought they’d laugh or dismiss it out of hand.

As a result, I didn’t put writing above everything else. In fact, I thought that if I put it above everything else, I’d never have the life I wanted to have, though I didn’t know what kind of life I wanted. Maybe I wanted approval from others. And perhaps that’s the lesson — don’t work to appease those in your life who think they know what’s best for you.