Writing Life; or, I Live Rent Free in My Own Head

"It dawns on me that being published is secondary to the act of writing, so after the fact and unncessary...except for the pleasure of the possible reader."
-- Michael Moriarty

J.K. Rowling once made the acidic observation that few people respect or even understand the writing process. When she was still working on the “Harry Potter” series, she was often dragged into interminable meetings with studio executives who wanted to know when the next book would be finished – not seeming to grasp that every moment she spent traveling to, attending, or returning from such meetings was time away from the typewriter. She wondered, not entirely facetiously, if the executives thought the books wrote themselves, through some kind of organic process that did not require her presence.

The creative process is admittedly not well-understood in any of its forms. Science has failed rather miserably to explain why one person turns out to be Mozart or Tolstoy or Michaelangelo, while others, intelligent as they might be, have not an atom of creativity within their souls. Indeed, the ordinary, non-creative person either spares creativity no thought at all, or views it with a kind of mystical reverence. Neither attitude is credible. Those who do not create art benefit directly from the process of creation and probably ought to show it proper respect. On the other hand, those who do create have no right to pretend, as the martial artists of yesteryear did, that they are in control of awesome, mysterious forces; strange, arcane magicks that allow them to write music, or pen novels, or paint portraits, or craft comedy routines or sculpt marble. Creation is work, and my own particular specialty, writing, is goddamned hard work indeed. Few people grasp how hard it is, or how unrewarding it can be in a financial sense, or the sacrifices the writer who must maintain a job, or jobs, must make to keep writing. A mixture of apathy and awe have prevented people from seeing the gritty, ugly, often half-farcical reality. Like the executives who bored and badgered Rowling, the non-creative type (and please note I offer this description merely as a description and not as a criticism or an insult), simply does not understand the process.

If you interject at this point and ask, “Well, why the hell should they?” I must confess the question is legitimate. I can employ a surgeon, an electrician, a plumber, an accountant and a lawyer without grasping the intricacies of what they do: after all, what I'm paying for is the result, not an explanation of how someone arrived at it. Indeed, one does not need to understand a process to enjoy its end product, though speaking, a basic understanding will probably increase your appreciation for both. But if one does not care about how the creative process works, it's still worth taking an interest in what might be called the Creative Life, if only to avoid sounding like the sort of clueless Hollywood executive who believes "Harry Potter" novels grow on their own, like so many stalagmites.

Now, when I chat with friends who haven't seen me in years, and complain (as I inevitably do) about my finances, I am always asked the question, “But what about all that money you make as a writer?” This is sometimes augmented with: “Didn't you just win another award? How can you be poor? What's up with that?” Believe it or not, I have conversations like this at least once a week. So, for those of you who are curious about what life is like for a creative person trying to make a living off their creativity, or who are creative types yourselves who have not yet embarked on a quest to turn a profit from your talents, I offer the following. I do not know if it is truly typical of my breed, but I have a lot of anecdotal evidence to support my belief that it may be.

MONDAY. Awakened at 8.12 by hungry cat. Hung over to the point of paralysis, rise and feed said felis. Enter bathroom. Swill mouth wash. Attend to nature. Check for messages about work – any work. There is nothing. Check for messages about fiction submissions – also nothing. Check for announcements about literary awards – still nothing, even though you have, at present, one book and three short stories in contention for same.

8.40, still unshaven and clad in pajamas, walk down the street to buy coffee. Reflect on need for coffee-maker: it will save money in the long run, but right now you can't afford the expense. You just bought that blender, which cut $17 deep into your meager savings.

8.45, examine bank balance at ATM. It's worse than you thought, only $89.60 to your name. Looks like you won't be paying any bills anytime soon. You check your Unemployment account: $1.46. They were supposed to start paying you three weeks ago but they haven't, and who knows if they ever will. Complaining is useless. The Unemployment office is like a landlord, or the police: they only take interest in you when you've done something wrong.

9.00 – 10.00, return home, sit at desk reading the news and scanning social media feeds. Post on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram because that's what everyone says you have to do: be active on social media. Make your presence felt. Let the world know you exist. OK, here goes: a quotation here, a meme there, a photograph over there. You have a stash of photographs taken over the last ten or fifteen years with various celebrities and athletes, but the stash is dwindling. You've posted pictures of you with Carl Weathers, Lance Henriksen, William Shatner, Val Kilmer, Michael Bisping, Fabricio Werdum, and Mike Tyson. You've got Mel Gibson, Martin Landau, Cary Elwes and Burt Reynolds in reserve, but the photos are of dog-shit quality. Note to self: get more and better pictures with more celebrities. It's a shallow undertaking but it makes people believe you're more important than you are. Now, with some reluctance, examine what you wrote last night under the influence of 10mgs of high-grade marijuana and four glasses of Point Rider whiskey ($8.99 a bottle). It's not too bad, actually, but there's too much of it: even though the chapter isn't finished you already feel the need to make an editing pass. Change some word choices. Tighten up that loose prose. But you know if you start now you'll get sucked in for hours and your blood will turn into syrup and you'll get grumpy and irritable. So, stiff and sore and still hungover, you get ready for a hike. This will burn off your excess energy and allow you to concentrate later. It will also give your unemployed ass a feeling of accomplishment.

10.27, arrive at Wildwood Canyon Park. It's an ugly day: cold and damp and smoggy. You're stiff and sore and dehydrated, and every step up the long, winding, overgrown trail cut into the side of the Verdugo Mountains is a tax both on your muscles and your will to continue. But if you don't keep in condition you're bound to get fat, and a fat writer is a cliché. So up you go, 1,000, 2,000, 2,500 feet. When you stop to take a gulp of water you see the whole Valley before you, drowning in smog. Only the upper stories of the office buildings in Glendale and downtown Los Angeles are even visible: they look like the masts of sailing ships emerging from heavy fog. And this is what you are putting into your lungs every day. Note to self: question of why writers often die young has been partially answered.

10.49, while listening to Four Star Mary's EP Pieces, Part 1 on your headphones, you experience a minor epiphany, not about the novel you're presently writing, but about one you finished years ago and never tried to publish, because you didn't like the first act and didn't know how to fix it. You can't trust your leaky memory, so you pause and breathlessly mumble the idea into the recorder app on your cell phone. As you do this you notice that there are 27 other “notes to self” on your phone, some of them years old, and you realize you've never once listened to any of them. So you make a 28th note and then a 29th, this last one being a reminder to listen to the other twenty-eight.

11.08, you get a text message about possible work. It's a low-paying gig helping make video game trailers for an outfit headquartered in Hollywood. The hours will be bad and you're not crazy about the company in question, and in any case it's not a hard offer, just a heads-up that this outfit may be looking for warm bodies. Well, you're a warm body: damn warm at this point. You continue climbing.

11.30, still slogging, you recall another celebrity photo: you hoisting a beer with Tad Looney, the lead singer of the band you are presently listening to, who supplied so much music for "Charmed" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Party of Five" and various MTV shows. Of course, Tad is not really a celebrity because Four Star Mary is not really famous. They're too damn good to be famous. Note to self: quality may actually be a bar to fame. Fuck!

12.15, on the downward leg of the hike, another text comes through: another possible gig, this one in make-up effects, running foam latex for an outfit based in the Valley. You know and like the people involved, but the thought of returning to make up effects tightens your guts, because your nervous system cannot tolerate the toxic chemicals you will be exposed to every day, and despite about 200 IMDB credits, this field is hardly your passion. You're reasonably comptenent, but you'll never be great the way you are at (ahem) writing and (coughs) making love.
Note to self: you need to be pay the rent anyway, shithead, so be grateful that in Hollywood people tend to fail upward. Or at least sideways.

12.27, while driving home your car begins to handle sluggishly and make strange noises. You pull over and discover your right rear tire is flatter than a pancake. Your car is seventeen years old and has 260,000 miles on it and if it isn't one thing breaking or falling off, it's another. Too physically tired to be angry, you leave the car on the curb and begin the walk home on sore and blistered feet (note to self: you need new shoes. You can't afford 'em, but you need 'em). No sooner have you made it a hundred yards, however, than a third text jangles your phone. To your horror, you realize the sit-down interview you've got with “X” Magazine, which you thought was scheduled for tomorrow, is actually today – now, as a matter of fact. You haven't shaven in a week, you smell like a pile of panther shit and you're dirty and exhausted, but you turn around and walk down Buena Vista to Magnolia Park, to the coffee shop where the interviewer awaits you.

12.45, because you look like shit and smell worse, the reporter turns out to be a very attractive female in her middle twenties. She buys you a cup of iced coffee and asks polite questions about how you became a writer, what you write about, the awards you've won, the sales you've made, what you're working on now, and your advice for other writers. You answer all the questions, realizing as you speak that you never actually brushed your teeth this morning. It makes you feel important to be interviewed, though, so you nearly forget you have a flat tire that has to be dealt with before you can take the much-needed shower you're longing for. As you talk, you reflect on the interviews you've given in the past – four or five at last count. Note to self: read through them again to see if you're coming off as a pretentious fuckwit.

1.16, having decided to leave the car where it is, you arrive home on foot, strip, brush your teeth twice, and take an enormously long shower. Then you look at your mail. It consists of three bills, three royalty checks, and five letters from the unemployment office. The bills come to $247.50, the royalty checks to $17.79.

1.30 – 3.00, you eat lunch at your desk, and look at the sales of the two novels, one short story collection, one novelette, and 17 individual short stories you presently have for sale on Amazon. Not very good, not very good at all. The first three months of the year you were selling like the proverbial hotcakes, but this month – just a trickle. You peruse your master list of promotional services and try to remember which ones have been working for you lately and which are merely taking your money. You double check the announcement dates for the literary contests you've entered, and then get out The Writer's Market 2019, because you have four unpublished novels looking for a home.

3.00 – 4.30, watch DVDs of 70s – 90s television shows and avoid calls from debt collectors. Watching shows like "Magnum, P.I." makes you remember when you were growing up and felt safe and loved and confident about a brilliant future. Watching "Highlander" makes you remember how fit, handsome, popular and sexually potent you were when this show was on the air. Turning the player off makes you remember that it's 2019 and you're now a middle-aged man with expensive advanced degrees you can't use, crushing debt, and a long list of relationships that didn't work out. But hey, your cat loves you. Unless he's just faking it until he can push you down the stairs. But the joke's on him. This is California and your house has no stairs! (It doesn't have any insulation, either.)

4.30 – 5.30, work on a freelance writing assignment which is due the following Sunday. You're terribly behind because the assignment is boring and pays poorly, but poorly is better than zero, and writing for money has its own pleasures. It gives you the same glow 5mgs of marijuana or a couple of glasses of Point Rider do, because you're actually getting remunerated for your craft – something damnably few writers ever experience. You personally had been published in magazines four times before anyone paid you anything.

5.30 – 6.30, nap. You only sleep for 30 minutes but the cat has passed out on your feet, so you have to lie in bed for an extra 30, reading. You remember you're supposed to read 30 books this year and it's now June and you've only read nine, so you'd better find time to catch up on your reading, because writers who don't read are like quarterbacks that don't practice. As you read, you glance over at your pile of unread books. Like all writers, you buy way too many books and they often sit for months or even years before you crack them. There are ten books in your “immediate” pile and about twenty more in your “I'll get to it eventually” pile. Some of these, of course, you will never in fact get to. Others you'll begin but never finish. Note to self: be more selective before you buy books.

6.35, go down the street for coffee. Rehash the interview in your mind and ask yourself if you dropped too many names while doing so. It's okay to picture-drop on social media: hell, it's expected. But when you drop names in conversation you look like an asshole. Note to self: you probably looked like an asshole. Curb the impulse next time.

6.55, dissolve 2.5 mg tablet of marijuana in coffee, pour two ounces of whiskey in after it, make another note to self to visit the marijuana dispensary on Magnolia over the weekend. Reflect briefly on your law enforcement career and the people you locked up for possessing marijuana, which is now as legal as rotisserie chicken. Experience guilt, self-loathing, and a vague desire to buy each of those people a drink – or a joint. Now consider the problem of reviews. The more people who review your works, the more you figure in Amazon and Goodreads search algorithms and the simpler it is to convince promotional services and publishing houses you're for real. Unfortunately, it's easier to play water polo with the fucking kraken than it is to get the average Joe or Jane to write a review. They'll buy your book, they'll even send you a DM on your author page telling you how great they think it is, but when you thank them and politely ask 'em to leave even a one-sentence review on Amazon, the sound you hear after that is (crickets). You've tried a number of tricks to increase your rate of reviews vs purchases, including direct appeals, book giveaways and whatnot, but nothing works consistently. It's exasperating. Especially because the reviews you have are excellent.

7, 20, You fire up the computer and get to work on your own manuscript, an epic horror novel you've been laboring away at for two and a half fucking years. Your normal turnaround time for a novel used to be a year, but this project is a monster and like most monsters it doesn't take orders well, not even from its creator. It's a bit hard to get into the groove so you put on some music to help you. But listening to Mazzy Star while drinking whiskey makes you nostalgic and lonely. So at 8.15, you step into the drizzle and duck across the street to the pub to have a pint and a cheeseburger and be around other humans. At the bar you get hit on by an English girl with a pretty face but the worst teeth you've seen since Pennsylvania. You just can't get past the teeth, so you make your apologies and slink back home, acutely conscious of the image of yourself as a slightly drunk, extremely broke, increasingly respected yet still largely obscure author. All that's missing is an Irish accent. Now you're in the groove and you write for three hours straight, going so deep inside your horror novel that your heart races as if you're in as much jeopardy as your characters. Egotism, or just good writing? The reader will have to decide.

11.45, open e-mail from traditional publisher, rejecting your submission. Well, fuck you, traditional publisher! Open another e-mail from a small literary magazine back East, which expresses interest in publishing your short story...provided you make certain adjustments. The editor is quite specific that he wants the ending changed, but he doesn't say what he wants it changed to. He also hints broadly that your chances of publication will spike if you subscribe to his magazine for a year. Drum your fingers on the desk-top and ponder the percentages. On the one hand, this magazine pays exactly $50 for a story. On the other, it's fairly prestigious within its own circle, and getting into print is allegedly the reason you got into this writing racket in the first place. You turn over a few ideas for alternative endings, but it's hard to switch from the genre you were writing in a few minutes ago (horror) to the genre you were writing in here (crime): your brain can't turn on that particular dime. So you table the whole thing until tomorrow morning.

TUESDAY. 12.20 (am), sunburned, sore, and slightly drunk, you climb wearily into bed. You're too tired to read and you turn out the lights, but not before you spy the row of writing awards you have on your shelf. You wonder about your obsession with recognition. Not fame: any asshole can be famous. It takes actual talent to be recognized by your peers – which, you realize, is why you crave more awards. You want to be acknowledged and you are being acknowledged. But then you think about your debts, and your bills, and the backed-up drain and the leaky faucet and the flat tire and the cost of promoting your books by yourself, and you wonder for the thousandth time if the decision to publish independently, without the muscle or the money of an established publishing house, was a fool's errand. You consider e-mailing the big New York agent who respects the hell out of your ability but has a nasty tendency to try to re-write -- not edit, but re-write -- your books to suit his own tastes. And that sort of thing, of course, is why you chose to go it as an indie author in the first place.

2.15, you wake up in the midst of a nightmare you realize is a powerful anxiety attack, and the thread of your earlier thoughts becomes a needle: knit one, purl two, knit one, purl two, except the needle is going in and out of your heart. What if the landlord ups the rent again? You'll have to move from Burbank, which has been your home for six years almost to the day. But prices everywhere are skyrocketing and even the hottest, dustiest, dirtiest, most crime-ridden areas of the Valley are beyond your economic reach. When you get bored with that woe, another one looms: Have you become a horrible cliché – the writer doomed to be unappreciated in his own time? Success won't do you much good when you're dead. Please God you're not like Van Gogh or Poe or any of that lot! A third woe appears to get in on the fun: no wonder all your romantic relationships fail. You've got your head so far up your own ass you form a perfect circle. There's no room in your universe for anyone but you and your petty pains and morbid ambitions. Fourth woe: if you don't land a gig or a contract soon, you'll have to borrow money from your cousin again. He doesn't mind, but you do: every request is another chunk of your self-esteem, because a man ought to pay his own way in this world, nicht wahr? Fifth woe ....sixth woe...seventh....

4.40, utterly exhausted by worry, you fall asleep once more.

7.55, awakened by hungry cat, you climb wearily out of bed and plunk down in your desk chair and peruse your social media feeds and e-mails through blood-hooded eyes. As you scroll mindlessly through the spam, the day stretches ahead of you – a blank and a bore. There's no work, and no money, and no response to any inquiries or submissions or news about any contests, and – hello, what's this? An invitation from the So-and-So Literary Awards to attend their annual gala in Hollywood next week? A black-tie, red-carpet ceremony with free champagne and free dinner and free publicity. And you get to take a guest. Fumbling for your phone, you fire a text to Y., your beautiful actress friend, and ask if she'll go. She says yes. So now you get to rock the red carpet with what will undoubtedly be the best-looking woman at the whole gathering, and guzzle Asti and exchange witticisms and anecdotes with the creme-de-la-creme of L.A.'s literary community. You'll have to borrow money from your cousin for the tux and the limo and, well, the whole goddamned enterprise, but hell, he's loaded and he doesn't mind, so fuck it, just fuck it. God, it's great to be an author!