Writers, or their egos, tend towards fragility. The making of art seems to require that kind of sensitivity, or oversensitivity, depending on your perspective. Certainly our significant others may wish, now and then, that our skins were just a tiny bit thicker. But it we had thick skins we might not be driven to reconcile ourselves to life through art. We suffer, suffer I tell you! And so do our gay lovers.
Part of that fragility is the occupational envy of our peers’ successes. Nothing draws out our knives quicker than a popular and successful friend. There’s the universal thrill of schadenfreude, of course. But beyond that is the simple and pervasive fear of declining resources. Accurately or not, writers operate under the assumption that there are only so many enormous book advances, grants, and medals to go around. And one little precocious Jonathan Safran Foer, snapping up the lion’s share of the literary world’s love just a year or two out of Princeton, can set our collective teeth on edge for months and years to come.
The internet is fertile ground for schadenfreude, and I myself fall prey to this fragility all the time, gleefully clicking from one snarky book review to the next, leaving the computer after these sessions feeling bloated and nauseous. But in one area of my life, the area in which I expected my skin to stretch the thinnest, I’ve somehow developed a strange case of generosity.
I’m talking about my fellow students in the MFA program at Columbia, particularly in the nonfiction genre, where I concentrated. Two years have passed since I left New York, and word of my peers’ book deals and publications keep trickling back to me, and yet I have greeted the news without that familiar fear taking root within me. Instead their success has only given me greater hope, faith almost, that my own book will somehow find a place in the world.
Much of this is due to my familiarity with the authors themselves, all of them quite lovely people. Last week I attended a book reading and signing by my buddy Dan White (no relation to Harvey Milk’s assassin, as far as I know) whose book was published last year, a book that I was lucky enough to read in early draft form in workshop. Dan’s generosity and self-deprecating humor naturally deflect writer’s envy. And he made it even harder to dislike him by bringing to the reading an element of show-and-tell, complete with his trail fanny pack, scanned copies of his crazy journal, and an annotated map of the Pacific Crest Trail, complete with little paper ticks glued to the spot in Southern California where they feasted on him and his then-girlfriend.
Of course I indulged in moments of true selfishness during his reading, imagining myself up there in his place, reading from an actual bound copy of my book, fielding questions from an attentive, bordering-on-adoring audience. Sue me.
But indulging these fantasies during the creative process is dangerous. Thinking too much about the book’s reception, rather than the craft of the book itself, can pretty much guarantee artistic failure.
So last week with the Manly Fireplug I imposed a moratorium. No more talking about the book’s future. No more speculations on how it will be received, or if any doors would open for me after its publication. I took it one step further, into reality, insinuating that he might end up with a husband trapped in literary obscurity for the rest of his life. For some reason he stuck his ground.
I’m mulling these issues because I promised myself that I would finish a rough draft of the book by the end of the year. The first draft is utter and complete torture for me, and so abysmal in quality that I would rather upload my “Should Have Put a Ring on It” dance routine to YouTube, than show anyone my rough draft.
Plus I’m kind of difficult to deal with when I’m in first draft mode, so the Fireplug deserves a break. Luckily I’m on track to meet the deadline.
I realized recently that I’ve made countless references to the book, but I don’t know if I’ve ever actually described it. And summing up my four hundred-page labor of love/hate in a couple of pithy sentences makes my skin crawl. But I’ll say this much:
It’s a memoir about my family, spanning twenty years, from when both of my parents came out of the closet, up until my mother’s death in 2002. It follows my family as it fractures and divides and takes new shape, as each of my parents end up settling down with same-sex partners who themselves were also previously married, with kids. It describes the fall-out of these events on me, who eventually also came out, and my brother, who turned out straight, and became, in more ways than one, the black sheep. You know, basically the story of your modern all-American family.
And as I work my way, in the rough draft, through the year 2000, arguably the worst year of my life, I fall prey to all kinds of fears. That I won’t be able to write about some events with enough distance to turn them into art. That it will sound like an undigested therapy session. That it’s all one big boring cliché and that (the worst fear of all) I will write a mediocre book. Not a bad one. A mediocre one.
This neurotic energy often greets the Fireplug when he comes home from a long day at the barbershop. Which is why I like to finish writing in time to make us a decent meal, so that for a few minutes I can feel the satisfaction of a finished creation. Which means bye for now – I have a date with a steak and a bunch of arugula.
