A Most Unusual Calling

Now that I am immersed up to my elbows in trying to get the second book in this series, Crass Casualty, finished and brought to market by my self-imposed deadline of November 2014, I find myself once again struck by what a strange job this is.

I'm not covering any new ground here; thousands of novelists have ruminated publicly on the profoundly personal nature of our unique occupation. It's the ideal creative outlet for introverts. To be successful, one must read, read, read (a solitary activity) and then lock oneself in a dark room for ten hours a day doing research (two hours), writing (two hours) and finally proofreading, editing, revising and re-revising (six hours).

On one hand, it is inexpressibly gratifying to drag something up from the deepest recesses of your mind and soul and manipulate it into a form that others outside the impregnable fortress of your brain can (hopefully) enjoy. It requires patience, discipline and a buoyantly irrational faith in yourself and your project. On the other hand, however, if your psyche were a garden with a fish pond, and self-doubts were fish, the act of writing a novel would be equivalent to feeding them a generous daily portion of highly nutritious pellets laced with growth hormones, causing them to mutate into sea monsters straight out of Greek mythology. Sometimes you just find yourself staring dolefully at the computer screen thinking, "this is literally the stupidest thing anyone has ever written in the history of any language."

Writing is an intrinsically bizarre process. It requires insanely private musing and introspection, yielding a result that is then thrust out into the world. Essentially, one sits alone and speaks to an unseen multitude in one's head. There is a very fine line between writing and insanity.

It takes a peculiar type of masochistic courage. As David Mitchell (author of Cloud Atlas) put it, when you “show someone something you've written, you give them a sharpened stake, lie down in your coffin, and say, ‘When you’re ready’.” That's why when a kind stranger gives my book a five-star rating and a favorable review, I want to buy a plane ticket, rent a car, drive to his or her house and give him or her a thank-you hug. I can hardly imagine anything more validating. The point is, I love my readers. I'm grateful to each and every one of you.