That Ninety-Nine Percent

After Saturday evening’s big mish-mosh of sulkitude, yesterday I decided to treat myself to a day in. I basically lounged around in my underwear all day, white t-shirt and gray boxer-briefs, sitting up in bed, reading and writing. I decided it was time to tackle some story ideas I’d had for a while, so I picked up Anne Lamott’s Bird By Bird off the bookshelf and read select chapters for the umpteenth time. Short Assignments, Shitty First Drafts, School Lunches, Characters, Plot, Plot Treatment, and so on. And over the course of the day I managed to get down several pages of what I hope will be a novel. I don’t know if that’s just a little too ambitious. But it’s the story I’ve always wanted to write. At the same time I have a couple of unfinished short stories that I’ve been working on for two or three years. It would be nice to finish those as well.

I worked on my pages intermittently throughout the day. Every so often I’d read them over and think, wow, these are pretty damn good. Better than I expected.

And then I picked up Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay and started reading it, and I thought, damn — how can I compete with something like this?

I’ve been a fan of Michael Chabon ever since I stumbled across his second novel, Wonder Boys, on the new paperbacks table at Barnes & Noble five and a half years ago. It was one of those times when you’re looking for a book to read, and you know what you want but can’t quite put your finger on it, and then you find it. I picked up the book, read the description on the back cover, and thought, this is the one. And it was. It was terrific. A couple of months later I picked up his first novel, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, which was published when he was 24. Twenty-four! That’s disgusting. And it too was terrific. I’ve read it twice.

The thing about Chabon is that although I love his dizzy plots, I can’t quite get a handle on his writing. Sometimes his words seem like those of a foreigner who has mastered English better than a native speaker; stiff, formal, unnatural, as if they’ve been translated from Czech or Polish or Spanish, or as if they were written a hundred years ago. His prose is not quite human; seamless, smoothed over, with no holes. He can feel overwritten. His prose can be a bit cold.

But oh, his skill, and his plots, and the little observations he’ll throw out at you!

I wondered what the heck I was doing, trying to write a story of my own, but then I thought of what Natalie Goldberg has said: it’s a spacious world. There’s room enough. Tell yourself: He is good, and I am also good. They’re not mutually exclusive ideas; it’s not a competition. There is always room for one more person to speak. After all, there are billions of us on this planet.

If I’m going to be published, I have to write. Regularly. And not just in my blog. So, although I lack discipline, and can rarely keep myself enthused about something for more than a few days, I’m going to try to sit down every night and work on my story. I’m just gonna do it. I know that I have it in me, I know that I have the potential. I’ve got the inspiration, just gotta work on the perspiration. And if I don’t have the inspiration, then I’ll write until I do. Good old Thomas Alva Edison.

Meanwhile, speaking of discipline, I came into the office an hour late and I’ve yet to do any work today and it’s noon. Better get cracking.