Writing's Hard

Writing’s hard. It used to be kind of easy.

In high school I’d spend my weekends in my basement bedroom writing plays all the livelong night, some Kevin Smith or Quentin Tarantino proselytizing in the background. Usually, I’d take a break around midnight to hit up the Wendy’s out by all the car dealerships. I felt better than everyone else and whatever the hell they did with their weekend. (I’ll leave out the later scenes of me drinking wine and writing Kerouacian poetry in that same basement under the light cast by a lamp made from a wine bottle.)

My high school—spitting in the eye of virulent arts cuts—supported an annual Student One Act Festival (which I think and hope is still going on), so these chatty, greasy plays of mine always made it to stage, under my direction. The first play was about a platonic couple in a bomb shelter at the end, telling stories and playing Jenga; the second was a clunky, overreaching deal about the afterlife; next was one I still feel some pride for, a Vonnegut inspired romp based on a They Might Be Giants song about an old writer convinced people are stealing his ideas that included a Jehovah’s Witness being bludgeoned with a rifle; last was an art piece about two men who spend their days in a wheat field. There was a small pond cocksureness to this coming of age garbage, and I believe this prolific period was fostered only by a wonderful youthful ignorance. The writing didn’t have to be great; it was more important that I was doing it at all.

Comeuppance is the best gift anyone, not only artists, can receive. “Studying” creative writing while studying literature supplied a much needed shock. I have trouble saying I acquired much from “studying” creative writing—as in any practical information about plot, say, or genre, or sentence structure—but being amongst a mix of amazing and terrible writers made for a great education. As far as the great writers are concerned, the best thing you can do in any field is surround yourself with people who do the thing you’re trying to be with deftness and ease—at least perceived deftness and ease. I find this keeps you on your toes in a way insular gusto can’t quite. An equal but different drive comes from the slackasses and dillweeds that overran my program, people who put little thought and even less time into the goddamn doggerel they expected me to read and critique. The disdain I had for these fuckers made for and introduced me to a fire that propels me still. Every piece of shit I read sends me to my desk to do better, making spite another important fuel. I would never make any claims to the worth of my work, but I feel good saying that I work very hard at what I do, and strive not to waste anyone’s time.

Few salvageable pieces survived my three years of university. I spent a lot of time there trying and failing to write like Italo Calvino and Jorge Louis Borges, but did manage, in my last semester, to find a voice and approach that I’d go to bat for. In an Editing and Publishing class I produced a chapbook called You’re Stupid, I’m The Best that included a few stories that wound up in Pardon Our Monsters—a book that about 700 people actually paid real money for.

The other Monsters stories were written the year after university while pushing a broom and scrubbing tanks at a brewery. My friends were going into masters programs, and I was determined to do without that support, working a job that made me pretty tired and kept me kind of drunk. The work I did was without aspiration, though. I only wanted to write well. I had to be urged to submit a story, and so did so—to The Malahat Review, to name names—and after hearing nothing back I didn’t aspire to magazine publication until a few years ago. The same person who recommended I submit a story to a magazine, a former professor who continued reading and helping me with stories, recommended me to the captain of Vehicule Press. I sent sample stories to the editor of the Esplanade imprint of said press, was asked to submit a full manuscript, and about a month afterward I was told I’d be allowed to make a real-life book. I was twenty-three and this is not how the world works.

The few reviews that Monsters received were enthusiastic, but for the most part the book was quickly forgotten about, I’d thought. And I didn’t mind, or at least wasn’t worried. Having a book, however, made me eligible for grants, one of which I got, and made me interesting to agents, one of which I got. So I set out to write a novel for this agent, supported by this money. And it didn’t go well. For the first time, I found writing hard. Shit was expected of me. Every stupid day I sat down to work, I felt completely unable, irrevocably in over my head. In the midst of this daily dread, the agent who I was letting down informed me that I was short listed for and then won an award I’d never heard of for a book I hadn’t known I was writing. From there, writing got exponentially difficult for me.

I continued to not write a novel, instead writing some stories on the side that exist now as The Cloaca, which, as far as I know, not a whole lot of people know about. I gave up not writing that first novel, and started writing and throwing out another novel, which some other people gave me money for and which I’ve promised to that same agent. I should be writing that book right now, but I’m writing this instead. And this feels pithy, not as good or thorough or funny as it could be. But it’s free and for the internet, so who cares, right?

Failing’s the worst, but it’s the only result that I can ever count on. Every fucking day I sit down and fail fucking miserably. I did this in my basement years ago, with late night softcore on mute. And I failed big time in university, though never as bad as the fuckfaces who were convinced the drivel they’d managed was tops. And when I got a fulltime job, my failure was contained to the pockets of free time I managed. So I suppose writing’s always been easy, but it’s the failure that’s gotten difficult. Somehow I’ve found myself in a place where I say that writing’s what I do and is a thing I’m supposed to be good at. So when, out of sight, I spend a day producing plodding, trite dreck, the consequences of that failure feels more severe, intractable, fucking absolute.

Hearts Throb

Hey, kids. There's a story in The Cloaca called 'The Shrew's Dilemma' that has something to do with the suicide of onetime teen heart throb, Jonathan Brandis. Here's a drawing someone did of him:

I found out about Brandis' hanging himself a few years after the fact and was pretty legitimately shaken by it. The description of that shaking is pretty much reported in that story I wrote. I was hit up by the good people of the The New Quarterly to contribute to their Magazine As Muse section. The piece I gave them about my time spent reading Tiger Beat as a little fat kid can be found in their summer issue, which you can see about getting here, or you can track it down wheresoever awesome journals are sold.

Writing, The Stupid Internet, and You

In some German TV interview, Pulitzer Prize-nominated author David Foster Wallace is asked about his relationship with television. He says he doesn’t have a set, and then quickly broadens his answer by saying that this is not some smug declaration, but the equivalent of an alcoholic saying that they don’t keep hooch in the house. I watched this hour-long interview in instalments on YouTube when I probably should have been doing something else.

I own two computers, one with the internet and one without. I write on the former and mouth-breath on the latter.

Today on that latter computer, I downloaded two eagerly anticipated episodes of American Pickers (one of which is titled “The Return of Hobo Jack.” I seriously can’t wait.), read a fake and hilarious letter Werner Herzog wrote to his cleaning lady, watched a clip of Werner Herzog being shot during a BBC interview, then a clip of Werner Herzog explaining that he only just realized that his friend of 30 years, Pink Flamingos director John Waters (whose name Herzog can’t remember initially), was gay, then went to IMDB to see what movies Herzog has coming up, after which I made snide comments on my friends’ Facebook status updates, read articles about things and listened to bands they recommended, the lot of which I can’t, four hours later, remember anything about. This while checking my email a fucking bazillion times. The whole time my writing computer was open to a project on the desk to the left of me—did I mention that I have a work desk and an internet desk?—and I would reach over and wiggle the mouse every time the machine threatened to go to sleep. I was going to get back to work in just a sec.

My idea to get the worst computer I could find, one which would tolerate the presence of nothing more than a Word program, never mind the internet, came from Oprah’s new Gail at the time, Jonathan Franzen. I can only assume that he manages the tomes he does because he has no internet access. Franzen made no mention of being in a house where there was no internet, or not having other gadgets capable of roving and roaming the kitten-riddled ether.

Of course I read this Franzen interview on the internet.

In the past I’ve been able to manage some scintilla of creativity while having a TV on in the background. The trick was not to watch. Knowing that it was there and on was somehow mollifying, and all I had to do was turn my head if I heard something interesting happen. The bitch of the internet is that my participation is required. It can’t be ignored because to have it on means that you are, to an extent, at its helm.

 Internets have helms, right?

Wallace’s problem with the TV was surfing, compelled by this worry that there was something better that he didn’t know about on some other channel. This must have been in the days before digital channel guides. I don’t much bother with TV anymore because, viewing the channel guide, it’s robustly obvious that there’s nothing better anywhere. It’s all garbage, or it’s about people living in garbage, or rooting through other people’s garbage finding garbage that’s worth something. The internet, however, is some bullshit Borgesian Babel, where every one item you view or read comes with oodles of suggestions for celebrity nudity or fat kids wiping out on their bike or revelations about what Facebook does with your birthday and religious views that you might find interesting. There is no end to relevance in whatever the internet is.

Getting an internet-less computer didn’t, I admit, do much to dash that Rear Window-esque urge to peep through the connected machine still in the room. I still have hooch in the house; I’ve just hidden it from myself in some inconvenient place. Writing this now, I’ve got the wigglies, wondering what’s on the other machine that I might be missing. For all I know, “The Return of Hobo Jack” is done downloading. Werner Herzog might be getting shot somewhere else as we speak. Stephen Harper might have accidentally used the term “in a coon’s age” at the opening of a new Tim Horton’s where a used bookstore used to be. And I want to be the first one to post a link to these things, so other people can drop whatever important thing it is there doing and have a look.

I’ll be honest with you: the only reason I got up from one chair and sat down in the other to prattle about this now—yes, I have a separate chair for each desk—is that, while surfing, I was given an option to see a picture of Whitney Houston’s dead body. The prospect of seeing some probably blurry, cell phone shot of that misery broke whatever spell. I’ll give the internet this: every once and a while its cumulative repugnance drives me back to productivity in a way that nothing else has ever managed.

The fact that you, whoever you are, are reading this on the internet while you should probably be doing the thing you’re supposed to be doing, is not lost on me. I’d tell you to get back to work, but I know that wouldn’t do much good. Google “Whitney Houston’s Dead Body” and decide for yourself how much more aimless clicking you feel up for.

I Work In A Brewery Called Garrison Sometimes

Cleaning House

Oh, hi there. I guess it's been a while--not that anyone noticed.

So, The Cloaca came out way back in April and a little tour ensued. Sorry I didn't tell you about that--not that you (whoever you are) would have cared. Upon my return I launched into full-time work/procrastination on the novel that I've been claiming to be writing for a few years, went to Arizona to research, and sort of forgot that I put out a book back in April.

Here's what the thing looks like:

And here's what it looks like in a baby's mouth:

A few people in the media have been putting the book in their mouth also, and here's what they say it tasted like: The Coast, The National Post, Quill and Quire, Steven W. Beattie, The Chronicle Herald. If you've stuck the thing in your mouth-brain, I'd love to hear what you thought about it. Email me, if you want, with questions, comments, or condemnations.

And a bit of extra news, it happened that the first and last story in The Cloaca were nominated for this year's Journey Prize. "Manning" was published in last summer's PRISM International, and "I'm Sorry and Thank You" was published on the Joyland site--that story you can read here, for FREAKING FREE,

Lastly, it's not like I'd forgotten what blogs were. I was doing some of that on Joyland for a while. Here's what that looked like.

That's all I've got! See you in a few months, I'm sure.