What doesn't kill you

That old cliche. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

Well I am not dead quite yet.

I may not be ready to face the work for a while, but till then I will read Ondaatje. I have taken on what you said about voice. I don't think I can change my voice. I think voice is as unique as a fingerprint and my strength has been the clarity of that print. But  I can go back to Ondaatje. This is where I began. A kindred soul. I will go back. One day, maybe I will write again. Till then, poetry.

Post from under my bed

So there will be reviews. People will read this thing.Why can't I feel just as I felt a few weeks ago when I loved this book. Why do I feel more naked now than I could ever be without clothes on. Why do I feel like I will never write something beautiful.

I take the books out of the shelf, the ones I love, other people's perfect gems. I arrange them next to my bed like something stolen and exquisite. And beside them I am nothing. Beside them my book is temporary and not made to last the distance.

He tells me my voice is 'samey'. He tells me I write too fast. All the passion that is there on the page escapes him because, I fear he is incapable of seeing passion. Still, I have no core. I am empty of heart. Inside is a hollow place that bad reviews tear through, making a noise like a little hum.

I will not read the reviews and this is why. The bad ones will beat at me like blunt instruments. The good ones I will not believe. I have nothing to hold me up through the next few months.

If you need me I'll be under the bed.

Your good eye

People will say nice things about your book. Sometimes their enthusiasm may surprise you. Surely it isn't as great as their enthusiasm for it. Well, no. It isn't. You knew it was ok. Good. Not great. But ok. It was ok enough for a pubisher to take it on. Good enough for you to let go of the constant, ego-shattering re-working. Good enough for others to spend their money on it and to read it. And some people really liked it a lot, but most had reservations.  You won't hear about these reservations. It is too late. It is done. What point is there for someone to tell you that it lags a bit in the middle, or that the beginning is a bit tedious, that the characters are not fully realised. It is done. There is nothing you can do about it.

The rare friend who will be honest may shatter your composure. You were, after all receiving nothing but praise. What does that friend know? Has he ever written a book? Even if he has, was it any good? Was it perfect? No. And maybe the feedback is misguided. Only you will know, because deep down, you know this book is not perfect, not even close to it. You may be fond of it but your next book will be better, and the one after will be better still. If that tactless friend was right about the glaring holes that somehow you and your editor overlooked, then he is a very valuable friend indeed.

You, my friend, are valuable.

It is an ok book. Maybe it is a good book, but your feedback would have made it a better book. If you had given me this feedback even six months ago I could have done something wonderful with it. I have always respected you for your good eye.

I have a good eye too. I knew there was something wrong with the book despite the excitement of my early readers. I spotted the problem but I was too close to see it. I see the holes in your own work which is also good. Very good. But not great. I am your good eye and you are mine.

The book is forever. It is stuck in print, frozen in time. It will never be better, and each year I am trudging closer to my grave. You were a useful tool just out of my reach. You were my good eye, rolled away from my fingers and stuck there, staring back at me.

Next time. Please. Next time.

I will hear a lot of praise from a lot of people who read this book. Behind my back they will tell each other their reservations. Maybe some of them will also have a good eye but I don't know it because they never tell me what they see.

Next time. It isn't too late for the next book. Next time. Please. Lend me your eye in good time.

synesthesia

I think I have an odd kind of synesthesia. I feel words. When I write it is like sculpting. It feels like motion. I feel like I am running my hands over a scultural form. I can tell when the piece is too flat. I can feel the rise and fall of it. I can feel it when I am reading too which is why I get so angry when the words I am reading clang flatly. It is a ride and if the ride is not fluid I am jerked out of the story.

I know this now because I went on anti-depressants last week. I took them for 5 days. They stopped me from sleeping. I broke out in pimples on my nose and forehead. I sweated terribly and smelled funny. But the worst of it was I wrote words without feeling them at all. They were all flat on the page. I had no way of telling if they were good words or bad words. I was removed from the dance of them. I couldn't feel them in three dimensions any more.

Last time I went on the drugs I didn't write for a year.  Now I think I know why. What is the point of writing flat words on a page. If the dance is gone or if you are removed from it, why bother to try to dance at all?

I have stopped taking the drugs. I know I have been close to the edge. I know I have been worrying my friends and bothering my acquaintances with my odd paranoia. I have been thinking about the long sure plummet of late and that is a concern. But what is the point of living if you are vaguely happy. What is the point of working if you cannot feel the words.

Maybe it is not synesthesia but if not it is something terribly similar. Whatever it is, it allows me to wrap my arms around the body of the work an bend it into the most pleasing shapes. It is like being with a responsive lover. It is like the best kind of kissing. I am not yet ready to abandon this for the safety of sanity. I have come off the drugs. Bear with me. We may be up for some hard times. yet.

flirt

You are playing with her. Playing as a child plays, full of joy and wonder. There is just the bubble of you and her, she giggles and moves her arm, you lean towards it, chasing. This is kiss chasey only on a micro scale, here in the bar surrounded by the rest of us. You are just flirting. Both of you partnered off to other people, but for this second there is only the pure childish joy of this moment.

You are fun to be around.

I hear you say it and it throws me. I am here with everyone else and I am alone. I do not flirt. I am not flirted with. I am not fun to be around at all. You lean in to chase her arm and I withdraw. I am close enough to touch and yet I am not touched. I could be chased but I remain heavy and static, a statue made of brass, untouchable.

Little stop

Little stop, my grandmother used to say. Now a little stop. I think of this when I place it on my tongue and swallow. I don't feel quite right, but then I wasn't quite right before. This unbalanced feeling is perhaps a leveling.

1.30am. A ridiculous time to be so awake, awake enough to work and yet with nothing to offer. The pounding in my skull is the sound of the world emptying out. My palms are sweaty. There is a faint odour.

I have been taking the drugs for three days. I can still see the slide of the knife into my eye. I can still imagine the cold O of the mouth of a gun. I can do myself harm, but what is the point when I have no passion for it. I no longer weep because I am all dried out and I am thirsty as a dog in summer.

I sit on the couch, sleepless, wide eyed. I sit and know the vast emptiness of eternity and my place within it. Only now eternity is shrinking, day by day, closing up on itself till, next week, or the one after, I will walk down a small street into a small city and it will feel like everything there is.

Genre Attack

It is strange when I suddenly realise that what I am writing fits within a genre I didn't expect. It happened with Steeplechase (Text Publishing due May 2013). I was writing this book and I thought it was just a straight literary fiction. It was only sometime in the second draft that I realised I was writing a ghost story of sorts, not actual ghosts but the ghosts of your past. I started to read gothic ghost stories and suddenly the whole book fell into place.

This next book, Abstinence had the same journey. I wrote the first draft referencing classic erotic texts and it was truly an erotic novel. That was it's genre. Facing the second draft I knew something was not quite right. It seems what I have written is a sexual superhero story. I blame my obsession with Wilhelm Reich, of course, but now that I come back to the book, the Orgone energy thread is the strongest trope in the book. My heroine is a sexual superhero. She is Barbarella, she is Batman with a cunt. I am learning to embrace this now. In my re-draft I am upping the superpowers. This is not a genre I am used to. The comics I enjoy are more Chris Ware than Marvel or DC. Perhaps I should introduce a costume for her at some point. Oh dear. What have I done?