So, I almost quit writing a couple months ago. Close friends
know that I almost quit at least once a month, but this time it was serious.
After fourteen years, I felt I’d gained no return on my investment. Plus, I had
recently made the mistake of reading articles about the publishing industry.
Never read articles about the publishing industry. Either
someone is writing about the death of the novel, or they are writing about fat
cat publishers, or they are portraying indie authors as a barbarian horde
invading the marketplace, getting their grubby fingers and snotty noses all
over everything.
To be honest, I think my heart was a little broken. We’re
taught that if we “try our hardest” then we’ll achieve our goal. I’ve not only
“tried my hardest”, but I sacrificed my twenties (and the first half of my
thirties) to the single goal of publishing. Seriously, I’ve spent 99% of my
adult life in front of a computer giving myself a headache over the nuances of
grammar.
So, on those grounds, I quit. And for a few days I felt a
certain kind of freedom. Anger, yes, but mostly freedom. I didn’t have IT hanging over my head anymore. There
would be no more plot knots, no more self-appointed deadlines, no more worrying
which grammar landmine was going to explode in my face.
I went for a lot of walks during those days. I tried to smooth
out the wrinkles of regret. I listened to a ton of music. I stood at the edge
of the prairie and watched tumbleweeds race across the plain like herds of
buffalo. The wind beat me red, and I loved it. It felt like I was on the verge of
something new.
Then, on the way back from one of my walks, I happened to
pass this old blue fence. It was weathered and peeled and crooked from too many
Alberta
winters. And at the end of the fence was a gate. As I passed by, I noticed that
one of its hinges had torn free from its post. The hinge (also blue) was bent
and curled into the shape of a shoehorn. Beneath the gate, the dirt had been
scraped and scooped away.
I wondered: maybe some small creature, like a leprechaun, had escaped from the yard
behind the fence. And then I wondered why a leprechaun would escape from a yard. Had someone held him hostage? Why would they do
that? And where would the leprechaun go after he’d escaped and...
I paused on the sidewalk. I stared at that hinge. And then I
knew. I just knew I could never stop writing.
Not because of the idea (it wasn’t a very good one), but because
of what I saw as a result of a bent
blue hinge. Most people (those sensible types) would look at the ground and the
hinge and think a dog or a cat had dug under the fence and broken the hinge. Or
maybe they would think nothing at all and keep walking.
But not me.
You see, the damage has been done. I’ve moved past the point
where writing is something that I “do” and it has become something that I “am”.
Fourteen years of neuroplastic manipulation has left me permanently
tripping in Imaginationland. Whether I like it or not, my brain is an idea
generator. I’ll always see leprechauns running for their lives. It doesn’t
matter whether publishers give a hot damn or not. It doesn’t matter whether I’m
read or not. The stories will always demand attention.
I suppose I could ignore it the way that John Nash guy did
in “A Beautiful Mind”. Maybe the leprechauns would leave me alone. Or maybe
they wouldn’t. Perhaps ghosts and aliens and pirates would crowd my brain until
I couldn’t think anymore, and I’d become some kind of babbling moron (moreso).
But that does me no good. If I’m going to babble, I might
as well babble on the page. If I’m going to see poisonous apples in trees and
robotic crows with knowing glances and graveyards full of shivering corpses then
I might as well write about it.
But that raises a new question, and I can't help but feel unsettled by it:
Am I writing these stories for myself? Or am I writing these stories for them.
