Writer's Block

"The night was sultry."  And so begins - or ends - one of my all-time favorite movies.  That's right.  Throw Momma from the Train.  It's a fantastic movie, and if you haven't seen it, I highly recommend it.  It really is hilarious.  The premise behind that line is the whole notion of writer's block, and for the writer who finally manages to craft it, it's a struggle to come up with the perfect word to describe the night.  He's finally indebted to a woman he's been conscripted to kill by one of his writing students for the perfect word, and it's enough to get her thrown from the train.  I don't seem to have that kind of difficulty with my book.  No, my own problem is that I'm drowning in the middle, and can't seem to get beyond the first moments.

The other problem, one which I've recently discovered, is that I don't like how my book begins.  It starts off very slowly, and tries to explain entirely too much.  I think, and I'm not sure how I feel about this, because it literally means throwing away almost five years of work, but I think that what I really need to do is to start the book with a climactic moment, and then tell the rest of the story in flashback.  I can see so many dangers inherent in that, but I know that I'm not happy with how the book currently takes three chapters to build up momentum, that I'm willing to take the risk, and dive right in.  I remember having this conversation with a professor awhile ago, and he cited William Gibson's Neuromancer as a stellar example of a book which just plunks you down in the middle of a situation, and leaves you to figure it out.  That was, of course, just what I objected to in the book, and I consciously strove to avoid that kind of thing in my own book.  The downside of that conscious striving, though, is that despite the prologue's violence, and an interweave of similarly violent moments, the first three chapters proceed so slowly that I feel I'm dragging the entire book down into a morass of sludgy time.  There is an urgency which is lacking, and which is so necessary to the book's successful telling of the story, that I'm willing to attempt a Gibson-esque style.

Of course, a further, not inconsequential, problem with the book is that I've been writing it over the last five years, and that the original premise on which the book was based has shifted and changed substantially enough that I'm not sure I'm still writing the same story.  I began it as an undergrad, and my disgust with the systemization of education in a way I found problematic was the catalyst for a book where higher education as it now exists is destroyed (along with organized religion, yay!).  Since then, I've sort of drifted from that premise, and I began to think a few years ago (while I was out of higher education as a student) that the way in which education was systematized wasn't really that problematic.  It's ironic that now that I'm once again well indoctrinated into it ("it" being higher education) - as a grad student - I'm once again seeing the things that irritated, frustrated, and catalyzed me as an undergrad, and they are irritating, frustrating, and catalyzing me anew.  I think, though, that I'll be able to write a more balanced book, one which acknowledges the virtues (few as they are) of systemization, while still destroying education as it currently exists.  (Another benefit of writing the book from a middle-point is that I'll be able to avoid all those beginning moments where any resemblance to Harry Potter might potentially exist, simply because the book is about institutions of magical learning.  I'm not venerating or celebrating them, people, I'm fucking destroying them.  If I go into the story with a few of those institutions already destroyed, I'm fairly certain no one can accuse me of aping good old Harry Butthole Pussy Potter (thanks, Cartman).)

Writing has again become something I want, but in a much more focused and substantial way.  I've been thinking quite a bit recently about where my life is going, and what I'm doing with my time, and I realized that - for the first time in my entire life - I'm truly free.  Absolutely, completely, and thoroughly free.  And the words of a song by Powerman 5000 - "Free" - have been haunting me lately: "Living so free is a tragedy, when you can't be what you want to be."  I am free, in a way that I've never before been, and if I'm free, why am I still hanging on to an ideal of living to which I no longer truly subscribe?  More Powerman 5000: "All the time wasted, stolen back, innocent,/ You won't get a second more, so move it along."  Why not risk everything I have for what I truly want, when I have nothing to hold me back?  (Side note: if I were to ever get a tattoo with words (an idea which I've been against), then it would be either that line about living free, or a line from Seal's "Crazy": "We're never gonna survive, unless we get a little crazy."  (And another side note: while I do like the original, I prefer Mushroomhead's cover.)  But those are just side thoughts.)

The thing is, graduate school, professorship, the quintessentially safe route - it no longer really appeals to me.  While part of me still craves stability, and security, and all that other biologically-driven crap, I'm beginning to feel again.  Really feel.  Actually feel.  Of course, feeling for me can be a very dangerous thing - it has the potential to lead to very stupid decisions - and I have to question the impulses that feeling creates.  But at the same time, I have to wonder - now that I've intellectually validated myself (which, let's be honest, is in large part what grad school has been for me), what am I doing?  I won't argue that it might be a very stupid thing to throw away security on a risk so great that it has almost no redemptive value, but . . . well . . . why the hell not?

I'm 31.  I'm not getting younger.  I remember thinking that I'd definitely be published by now.  And not in some musty academic journal that will only be read by a handful of scholars, but published in proper books, sharing bookshelf space with Terry Pratchett and A. Lee Martinez and Raymond Feist.  And I'm not even close to being there.  All of my time is being spent on a pursuit which is becoming, daily, less palatable to me.  Do I really want to spend the rest of my life thinking about what might have been, or should I just chuck it all in, and really go for it?  Especially since, and this is incredibly important to me, no one can be hurt by this decision except me.  If I fail, then the only person that I take down is me.

Of course, I'm terrified.  The thought of chucking it all in, of getting rid of safety and security and a clear professional path with tiered levels of income and a degree of freedom and intellectual appeal, and of stepping off the path into the wilds, without a map or even a compass, is truly terrifying enough to send me scurrying back to the path gratefully and obsequiously, willing to lick the boots of even the most arrogant, god-complexed professor (don't get me started).  But then I look at what I'd accomplish on that path, and balance that against the possibility of fulfilling a dream in the wilds, and the path's accomplishments pale in comparison.  Just the knowledge that I'd be doing what I truly love, even if I'll never be as successful as I could be in academia, is enough to push me further into the wilds.

So now I'm balancing terror against safety, of a dream against what is my current reality, of only potential success against actual success.

Of course, all that potentiality depends on me getting past my sultry night.