This Is the Business We Have Chosen
At approximately 2:45 p.m. on Sunday, April 22nd, I typed the word "cello," then stopped.
The sun was out, the sky clear, the temperature climbing past the mid-80s. So not long after typing the word "cello," I put on my shoes, and stepped outside.
The sun and the heat made my head hurt, and all the people who had swarmed outside to enjoy the beautiful day frightened me, so I turned around and went back inside my apartment as quickly as possible, locked the door behind me, opened a beer, turned on the television and watched C.H.U.D. instead. I was happier that way.
Three weeks earlier?I don't much like mixing my businesses this way, but it's necessary?I had finished writing the silly book I'd been conscripted to write some time ago. It had taken an unusually long time (given that I decided against taking vacation time off to do it), and I was glad to have it out of the way. Finishing the silly book, however, marked the end of my contract. I figured it was a good time to start doing a little forward mapping.
So I put in a telephone call to a fellow at the publishing house where my contract had just run out and said to him, "Y'know, I think I'd kind of like to write a novel." I'd never done anything like that before (except for one disastrous effort when I was 20), and was sick to death of writing about myself.
He seemed a shade less than enthusiastic at first, but by the time we spoke again a week later, he'd changed his mind. Changed his mind rather drastically, I thought. He not only wanted the novel, but he thought that it might be a good idea to release the novel before the third silly book came out. I didn't much care how things were released, myself?but I talked it over with my lawyer and my editor anyway?both of whom agreed that it sounded like a fine idea to them.
The catch, however, was that the publisher wanted the novel As Soon As Possible?like, within the next month? And could I do that?
Oh, I'm an idiot.
Trouble was, the "novel" in question hadn't really gotten much beyond, "Y'know?I think I'd kind of like to write a novel."
It was too late to think about that, though. I was in it. So over the course of the next week, I came into the office every day, did my work here, while letting the rest of the brain do what it needed to do in silence. It sure as hell didn't leave a lot of room for little things like, oh, research. But I'd deal. Maybe pick up an atlas on my way home some night.
That Wednesday afternoon, I had a few drinks with a novelist I admire who was in town for the day. He was an artist, a craftsman?he wrote literature (and I say that in all seriousness, without the slightest smirk). He was a master?and because of that, had been unable to get a book published in many years. It seems not much of anybody?especially editors?wanted to read literature these days.
When I explained my current predicament to him, he said, "Look at this?I've been writing for 50 years, and I have 10 finished novels that I can't get published. You've never written one before, and..."
I felt kind of bad about that. I wasn't trying to be a showoff. Instead, I was trying to illustrate how insane the modern publishing world can be. I guess it didn't come out that way.
Nevertheless, I arranged to take the following week off from the office, lock the door, turn on the machine and not move until I was finished.
Yeah, that was the plan.
The quiet panic was leaving me lightheaded?and was slowly leaching into my bones and my guts. I'd done this sort of thing once before?but that was a while ago. I was younger then, and stronger, and at least then sort of knew what the fuck I was doing. This I had never done before. Oh, I am an idiot, I kept telling myself.
On Friday night, Morgan and I went out, and the following morning at 7, I turned on the machine and sat down. Reached over, popped in a cassette of Akira Ifukube's scores to most every goddamn Godzilla movie ever made, and started typing.
I sort of kind of had a notion of what I might possibly want to do.
Deep in one of the darker corners of my heart, I knew that I was having fun. I liked the idea, I liked the challenge. And pressure makes me type faster. Not more accurately by any stretch, but faster.
I sat there for nine hours that first day, only taking breaks for smokes and quick wanders around the apartment.
Sunday morning, I was awakened at 4 a.m. by some sort of nasty, insistent intestinal virus. I rode it out until the sun came up, ran to the drug store, then got back to work.
I averaged between eight and 10 hours a day, and I'll be damned if something didn't start to take shape. Now, I've always hated?really, really hated?I can't tell you how much I despise these people?writers who say, "Oh, I'm just a vessel. It's not my choice. The words just come through me somehow." Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever?but I will admit that there were several occasions when characters did things I wasn't expecting them to do (which was a touch unnerving, I must say). Instead of thinking that some external spiritual force was at work, however, I tended to side with Morgan, who described it as "sitting there and puking for a week." That makes much more sense to me?even with the odd turns. I mean?when you're puking for a long time, you never know what's going to come up next, either.
Not that what was coming out was "art" or "literature." Far from it. It was just a goofy story about stuff. One that I, thank God, wasn't in. If it was akin to anything?at least methodologically speaking?it was akin to a pulp novel, though probably not as good as most.
I listened to nothing but Godzilla music, let the tape play over and over and over again, pausing each time through for the Peanuts singing "Mothra's Song." I heard no news, and mostly ignored the phone.
The fellow from the publishing house called at 9 a.m. Thursday morning, essentially to see if I was done yet, and when he might expect things.
"Yawp," I believe, was the word that came to mind.
By Friday, I could feel myself going a little funny in the head. That happened the first time I tried a stunt like this, too. I think it was worse then, though. This time, at least, Morgan snuck me out for beers a couple times (though I imagine I wasn't much fun to be around).
Saturday afternoon, the end almost in sight, I started thinking, Oh, in the end, it's just going to be one more book lost on the shelves, quickly forgotten, if noticed at all in the first place. It's all really pretty pointless. But that's okay. What isn't pretty pointless? I was having a good time. This, after all, is the business I have chosen.
Then, Sunday afternoon, at 2:45, I typed the word "cello," and was finished. (That, by the way, was the only time the word "cello" appeared in the book.)
It seemed odd and slightly sad to be finished. So that night after C.H.U.D., I sat down cross-legged again, and began making some notes.