One in the Books

Last night was a very momentous night for me. A night that's been a very long time coming. A night I've been imagining for months, if not years. But it's hard to grasp the magnitude of the accomplishment I finally achieved without some background.

N.B. I may or may not have told this story before. In fact, I'm pretty sure I have. But I'm (a) too lazy to go looking back through the archives to find it, and (b) pretty sure that anyone who was reading this blog back in those days probably isn't reading it anymore. So everyone gets to hear the story, and damn it, you're gonna like it.

I remember when I was a junior at Princeton, walking down Prospect Avenue towards Charter one spring afternoon. I was walking alone, looking around, taking in the beauty of the budding New Jersey spring, when my mind wavered momentarily to my academic responsibilities. I was smack dab in the middle of a JP that I had been irresponsibly ignoring--and believe me, it didn't help that I'd met with my advisor exactly once all semester, and for a total of about seven minutes--and even though I had a vague idea about my thesis topic, I was having one of my famous moments of self-doubt.

Then, like a flash, my mind shifted ever so slightly, away from the academic and towards a part of me that had lay dormant for a while but wasn't quite ready to roll over and die. I took my situation and projected it onto a fictional character, the character of a guy like me who was freaking out about his senior thesis and trying to figure out a way to turn the most important academic project of his life into something more personally and professionally meaningful than it presently was.

I began scheming about some of the dreams I'd had, and I projected those on him. So I couldn't make my way to see Poland any time soon? Give him funding to go there! Never met most of my father's side of the family? Have him go meet his family there! It seemed like an pretty nifty idea, one that, for some strange reason, stuck out in my mind more so than any other creative ideas had in recent memory. I resolved to keep it at the forefront of my thinking, and to meditate further on it when I had more free time.

Before long, this relatively simple idea took on a life of its own. At the risk of playing spoiler to a story I haven't even written yet, I'll withhold the details; but suffice it to say I managed to develop one of the most elaborate plots I've ever conceived. And even more promising, I'd managed to populate it with characters that I felt for in deep, meaningful ways. They were tortured, conflicted, complex. They were exactly the kinds of characters I loved to read about--and when I realized that, at the time, I had no idea how these characters would react to the situations that I'd placed them in, I got really excited. I knew, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that this idea was alive, and that it needed to be realized.

It didn't take long for me to sketch out some of the finer details, working through certain points in my mind before committing myself to seeing them through. By senior year, I'd been thinking about it so much that I had a complete, vivid mental picture of the entire first chapter, right down from the actions to the images, from the larger environs to the tics each character expressed. I knew precisely how it would start, precisely how it would develop, and precisely how it would end. All that was left for me to do was to write it.

But that was two years ago.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I loved Princeton, and I still do, but senior year did not treat me well. And one of the things that my unfortunate senior year imbued me with was a powerful sense of guilt--manifest specifically as the feeling that, if I was working on something that wasn't academic, I was being irresponsible. (And yes, I know, I've written on that before too.) So for two years, my great chapter languished in the recesses of my subconscious. Every now and again it whispered to me, and I would try to sit down and give it a go, but the words didn't come with ease. (For the past two years, they haven't at all, no matter the arena.) I'd written barely a page by the time my final semester of grad school began.

But with the end of grad school, as I've written for my last two posts, has come a new sensation, a feeling of inevitability in all the things I'd left behind for two years. It started one night when, three glasses of wine deep, I picked up the laptop and started typing, bringing myself to four pages. Not much, but a start.

Then, after an exceptionally frustrating day, I shut the door of my room, sequestered myself inside, and opened the document again. Another five pages, bringing me to a total of nine. Still nowhere near the end of the chapter, but at least it was going.

Finally, last night, the floodgates broke open. Monday was another day of mounting frustrations, but Tuesday had shown promise. I got some news on a possible job lead--which may or may not pan out but is still better than the tactics I've been using thus far--and because it was finally sunny (for only the third day this month), it seemed ideal weather for a walk. And during this walk, like that walk three long years ago, I was taking everything in when the right synapses snapped to life and gave me a fresh insight into my story. Specifically, how the story would move beyondthat first chapter. I was elated and impatient--I knew that I couldn't get to the new material without finishing the old stuff, so I steeled my resolve and told myself I'd work that night.

So after dinner, I packed up my things, drove to Starbucks, settled in with a Frappuccino and my laptop, and got to work. And you know what happened?

Three hours later, Chapter One was complete. Done. For real and for true.

The satisfaction I felt is hard to put into words. It wasn't so much that I felt it was an amazing accomplishment, but the pressure of the perfectionism I'd placed over myself was finally released. It's hard for me to say whether or not I think the chapter is precisely how I'd imagined it would turn out, but it managed to hit all the points I'd planned, and I'm very much satisfied with the style and the impact of the whole thing.

But more important than all that: it's done. I don't need to sit and explain to people what I'm planning to do, how I expect it will come together. It has come together. Instead of dreaming about it, it's real and tangible, and I can show it to people instead of waxing philosophic about it. And the most satisfying part is knowing that because it's done, I know it can be done. This isn't just a fantasy anymore, in which I would ideally like to write the book. It's being written. And I have a sample chapter to prove it.

Nevertheless, I can't let my focus waver. I don't expect to have hyperproductive nights like last night all the time. But I do need to keep focused and continue working on my goal. In his splendid memoir On Writing, Stephen King notes that no matter what you're writing, "the work is always accomplished one word at a time" (156). One word at a time, one sentence at a time, one paragraph at a time, one chapter at a time. I can't rest too long on my laurels just because I've hit a benchmark--there are still many more to come.

So with this post, the celebration officially ends. I'm incredibly proud that I've finally reached a landmark on my journey, but contentment and complacency has been the bane of my existence for far too long. I can no longer be satisfied with simply Chapter One, because around the corner, Chapter Two still waits to be written.

The Time to Act

This may come as a surprise to you, dear patient readers, but I love to write. I believe I may or may not have made quite an extensive point about that in my last post, and you can go back and decipher what trite message I may have enveloped in those particular words on your own time. But now is not the time for reminiscence nor is it the time for speculation. As if the title of this post wasn't clear enough, it is the time for action.

Summer has always held a redemptive charge to me. I know I've been, over time, an outspoken advocate of the spring, but summer means business. It doesn't fuck around with the occasional teasing of brisk bluster or the threat of flurries amidst the constant rainfall. Summer means business, and in New Jersey, that business is boatloads of heat and humidity. (And, being New Jersey, business is good.) And with the weather, and the general environment of the region, trying so hard to be not only lively but consistent, I've always felt it was my duty to approach this season with a similarly go-getter attitude. Winter's a fine time for malaise, but when the weather heats up, it's go time.

Which brings me to today. Yesterday was not a banner day for me: after two weeks of being home with no leads on the job search, I've finally become impatient with things. See, I'm a man of routine. And for all my bitching in this blog about how much I hated my old routine, I've found it's surprisingly difficult to live without one. Not to mention how challenging it is to suffice on one's expecting lifestyle without any kind of regular income. I'd imagined I would be able to let my stash hold me up for most of the summer, but I've got plans far more ambitious than that--as a result, this kid needs money, big time.

So today, I decided to make a few changes, a few active choices that would, hopefully, allow me to enjoy a greater quality of life over the course of my job hunt. For starters, I decided that I would be taking a ride up to my local Borders to inquire about the possibility of employment. Because I figure if I can't find a job in publishing at this very moment, it might not hurt to have a job working for a bookstore when the publishers come a-callin'. So that's on my to-do list effective immediately.

And it was this notion of a to-do list that's set me on this newfound path. I discovered a short time ago that I'm not the only one in my corner of the blogosphere looking to make changes. And while I certainly won't steal her idea, I've been inspired by the notion of tangible progress to the point where I feel I want to make some tangible goals of my own.

At which point I realized that, despite all my wavering and whimpering and whining, I've actually been astonishingly productive over the last few weeks--and all of that productivity has been in the service of things that have been goal-oriented all along. My attempt to work at a bookstore, for instance, was something I told myself I'd start considering around July 4th. My job hunt, in a perfect world, is the kind of thing I'd like to see realized by my birthday. These are tangible deadlines for tangible goals, and I'm working towards them.

Then I extrapolated further and realized that many of my other goals have been accompanied by deadlines as well. In the absence of regular employment, I've been working on my creative projects--two in particular. My manuscript comes and goes in waves, as I don't feel like I want to rush it for the sake of getting it done. I believe in it, and I believe it will come when it does and I just need to be ready to get the inspiration down. But the other endeavor is my screenplay, an idea hatched near the end of last semester and taken up in earnest by a collaborator that has proven to be not only incredibly creative and funny, but also exceptionally diligent and persistent. And, truth be told, it's her belief in the project that has driven me to invest serious time and thought into it.

Once we realized that we were on to something, and that we were creating material for a viable project that was taking shape faster than either of us probably could have imagined, we set some deadlines as well. By July 4th, we want a sketch of the plot in its entirety, whether storyboarded or just plotted out in paragraphs. Each scene, with at least some vague idea of how we get from one to the next to the next and so on through the whole story. And by my birthday, September 9th, we want a first draft of the entire script done.

And the craziest part about all of this is that, no matter how many times I look at these dates and these goals, I can't help but say to myself, "Yes, you are going to meet that goal." By my birthday, I believe our screenplay will be done.

So on top of all of these goals, which I will of course keep you, loyal readers, posted on, I will also be renewing my weight-loss project. Last year, you'll remember, I took the baseball season as my guide and managed to lose twenty pounds between April and October. I was pleased with what I accomplished, and thrilled that I've kept it off since then. But, like I said, this is a time for action, not complacency. I'm not satisfied with what I weigh now, and now that I've proven to myself that I can do it, I want to do it again. Thus I've tacked on another goal: by the end of the summer, I want to lose another twenty pounds. And to give myself added incentive, I've set myself to the task of dropping at least fifteen by the time I go to Chicago in August for my dear friends' wedding. It will not only make me feel better, but it will perhaps even give me the chance to buy some sexy new clothes and show off The New Hotness™--coming soon!

But I can't act without the tiny, piddling audience I've somehow been able to maintain over the years. So I will be devoting myself to far more regularity in my posting as well, beginning with this one. It's time to stop talking and start doing, to get myself on the path towards the life I want to live, rather than sitting back and letting it happen in front of me. I'm already doing it, setting myself in the right direction, and the time has come to pack up the old camp, follow the trail, and see where it leads me.

And I'll get right to it, just as soon as I finish this episode of Lost.

...what? I've got five seasons to watch before the new season in January. That's a goal and a deadline too, you know!

Out Across the Rooftops, Out Towards the Hills

A friend of mine recently lamented that reading this blog "made [him] want to slit [his] wrists, it was so emo." I suppose, despite my recent streak of happiness, I haven't exactly been writing the most uplifting things around here, and for that I blame my silly mind, which tends to lose confidence the longer it allows a topic to ruminate.

The truth is that, over the past week, I've already tired a bit of letting things stay too long in strict contemplation mode. It's been a week since I returned home to New Jersey and, in that time, not much has transpired worth noting. I've been applying to some jobs--all of which have yielded, thus far, no responses. I've been running errands with my parents, one of which resulted in one of the finest acquisitions of recent memory, but most have which have simply burned up my time. I've been doing a lot of sitting and relaxing, along with a fair share of walking and music-listening. All told, the status quo has been pretty, well, uneventful.

The spare time I've had on my hands has been both a blessing and a curse. I came home from Penn State with an enormous pile of books on my To Be Read stack. And while the TBR pile has been relocated from the third shelf of Billy bookcase to the corner of my room (perched carefully on a makeshift dais of the Neverender: Children of the Fence Edition), the time I've been idling since graduation has done very little to put any kind of dent in it. I partly blame the fact that for a while I was far more interested in spending time with my friends than sitting alone reading, but that's not the only factor.

While visiting Detroit two weekends ago--yes, that was Mystery Destination #2, for my Facebook and Twitter followers--I brought along a pair of books, the last two I took out of the Penn State library. They were Billy Liar by Keith Waterhouse and Youth by J. M. Coetzee. Combined, they numbered scarcely more than 300 pages. Nevertheless, it took me WEEKS to finish reading them. They just did nothing for me, and few books in recent weeks have been able to grab me the way I'd like one to. A book that digs in its claws, won't let me go, and makes me turn the final page begging for more--I haven't read one that's done that for me in too too long.

The latest book in this trend has been William S. Burroughs's Naked Lunch. Now, I know what you may be thinking: if you know me, I've actively voiced my dislike for Burroughs since first reading him in late 2007. At the time, I recall thinking The Soft Machine and Nova Express were filthy, nonsensical, and completely devoid of meaning. The fold-in and cut-up methods he used were things I just didn't understand. I didn't know what was happening, why it was happening, or why I should give a shit. All I knew was each was filled with drugs and body parts and fluids and other things that I just don't feel need to be mentioned here. I'd heard better things about Naked Lunch, though, and besides, it was on the list of 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die, so I figured why not?

Big mistake.

In a number of ways, the book is practically unreadable. One of those ways, of course, is the filthiness, the vile descriptions of things that I gather are the reflections of someone so far gone on drugs that they're willing to believe these things can exist. But I've got a strong stomach for that kind of stuff (hell, I LIKED Chuck Palahniuk's Haunted) and it's not like I'm finding myself physically incapable of reading on. I'm just frustrated by the lack of plot and general coherence--the exact same complaint I had about his other books. In other words, just another book that was supposed to be great that I simply can't get through.

And I know what you're thinking. Why don't you just put it aside and read another book instead? There are two answers to that. The first is that, because I'm stubborn (and because I've never NOT finished a book I've started), I'm going to eventually finish it anyway, so why not do it now while it's still fresh in my head? The second is that I've already done that three times already, leaving four mediocre books off to the side, and I'd feel bad having five books going at the same time when I have a hard enough time keeping track of one.

But last night, my reaction against Naked Lunch was so strong that I came to a realization and, surprisingly enough, acted on it. I thought to myself, "Fuck, I could write something better than this shit!" So I put the book down, picked up my laptop, opened up my long-neglected manuscript, and started working on it.

It had been a while since I'd worked on it, a few months at least. It was hard enough motivating myself to write the papers I needed to finish to get my degree, so I figured a personal project that had no impact on my academic work was a bad thing to focus on. But it was also the same nagging issue that's been keeping many of my creative projects from getting off the ground: the feeling that I would never be able to pull it off, so why even bother trying.

Well, with nothing else on my plate for the foreseeable future, that attitude registered as bullshit. So off I went. And in one night, I added about 1000 words to the manuscript, doubling its current length. And when I reread those new pages this morning, they sounded good--not great, but they sounded up to par with what I'd expected of the work.

It was at that moment that I realized that this wasn't just a tiny step, a nudge in the right direction. I was doing it. I was writing that novel I've been talking about for so long.

Then I started chatting through Twitter with a fellow Princeton alumna who'd participated in last November's National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). She received a paperback proof of her book as recognition of her accomplishment, and now she's looking to work on a second novel, as well as try to get the first one published. This was a person with a shockingly similar background as my own, doing precisely what it was I hoped to do, and we've been talking for much of the day about how we can both reasonably try to get our respective projects off the ground.

So even though the economy sucks and my job hunt is totally stagnant right now, I genuinely don't feel the need to see this as a bad situation. I've got a work in progress that I'm proud of, encouraged about, and excited to work on. I've got three other ideas in the works that all have varying degrees of seriousness, all of which I can put in work on whenever I want because of all the free time I have. And I figure all I need is for one of those four projects to be completed and become a success--then I'm right on the fast track to the life I've been craving all along. All I needed was to put something into a little bit of action, and now that I have, I'm way more excited about the potential these new projects possess.

I commented many months ago to the effect that I felt like my life was in a condition of permanent stagnation so long as I was still in grad school. Now I'm out, at long last, and instead of seeing the malaise carry through, I find myself instead possessed of creativity and motivation for things I haven't wanted for far too long. I'm glad to see that I was right, and I'm thrilled about where things can and will go from here. I haven't felt this excited in forever--instead of holding back, hoping that one day I'll see it, sitting and waiting for these things to come to me until then, I'm actually working towards them. It feels real. It feels possible. It feels almost inevitable.

And yes. It feels good, sir.