I’ve been working on my second book for about two years now. I remember when I was younger and I’d hear people worked on a book for three or four years I would think, WHY DOES IT TAKE YOU SO LONG?!
But back then I was in high school and my life consisted of eating my parents’ food and participating poorly in organized sports. Now as an adult I understand that life is really time consuming and most of it is spent doing things you don’t really care about in a tiny cubicle in front of a tiny screen and LIVING for full days off when you don’t have to be confined to those spaces.
I don’t know if I could ever make money writing, but I’ve reached a point in my life when I don’t care. I’m going to write whether it is lucrative or not. People tell me what to do all day and for a few hours a week I create worlds and characters and put ideas into motion to help me understand the pain and levity of the universe. The current project is a pretentious novel about gay life in Chicago. I riff of the structure and style of F. Scott Fitgerald’s Gatsby and try to cram my verbose style into Hemingway-esque prose.
This would never be published by a main stream publishing house. Even up to a few years ago there was a controversy because a young adult author said it wasn’t a good idea to put gay characters in young adult fiction. All the best-selling gay books on Amazon are romances with bare-chested men gracing their covers, so even my own people don’t really want literature. An agent would be an idiot to pick up this book.
Thank the good lord for Amazon.
A few years ago a woman lectured me over 3 days, numerous times about writing romance novels. She couldn’t fathom artistic expression and exercise without the possibility of making money. I could have argued with the woman about artistic integrity and vocation but I think it would have wasted both of our time. She wouldn’t have understood the concept of how a story can be something outside of you, a piece of you that is more than ink on paper, more than a means to a monetary end. A few years ago I blogged about writing as if it were a Horcrux from Harry Potter. Stories are part of me and have to be lifted out. In the writing process I see unique parts of myself, see characters that I created take on a life of their own. If I could make money off of it, that would be awesome, but I have no expectations. Writing is a necessary part of living for me. I don’t really even feel like I write my stories so much as listen to some radio frequency of stories that exists outside of me. They’re already there, my ear is just able to hear them. My hand needs to record them. I don’t think most people understand that, just like I don’t understand why Drake is a thing. (Seriously, if you understand why Drake is a thing please email me at teddhawks@yahoo.com. I, like, think his music is fine but don’t get why he’s the biggest thing in rap.)
In this most recent work, the whole second section is a break up story. When I re-read it I realized that it wasn’t really about a break up so much as growing up. I think part of that for me is putting nose to grindstone, pen to paper, with the expectation that it may be only sound and fury, but for me that is as important as breathing.
The whole first section is available in PDF from the Dropbox link below. You don’t have to buy it, but hopefully you do enjoy it. If you do buy it, please put your better judgment aside and give it 5 stars and use a lot of florid adjectives to describe the reading experience. Despite my morality about writing, this gurl would prefer at least a three-star average on Amazon.
If you don’t do it for me, please, do it for Drake.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/p69uiodxzl0ikh3/City%20Lights%20-%20Final%20Draft.pdf?dl=