Wednesday, February 23, 2005 | by nathan

Egosturbation

If you want to be a writer, one of the things you have to contend with is fear. In my statement of purpose for getting admitted to the university of oklahoma I said that it would be a disaster for them not to let me in, because, frankly, writing is the only marketable skill I think I might have, and it’s very possible that my degree in religion and philosophy from one of the top undergraduate institutions in the nation might mean that I am qualified to starve, but little else, and therefore, in the interest of saving a life, my admittance to the MPW program was required.

So writers are afraid, a lot of the time. We are afraid of the same things everyone else is, but accountants do not have to face this fear as tangibly as we do, because accountants get paid every two weeks. They show up and their job is more or less routine, and someone cuts them a check. Doesn’t suck. Writers show up at their computers and in their own heads and spill forth all our greatest, shared fears and secrets - or at least, the good ones do. Barbara Cartland probably did very little of this, although, to be fair, I’ve read so very little of her.

Writers are also in a constant state of what I call “egosturbation:” your ego is constantly getting rubbed one way, and then another, until you have some kind of minor meltdown, or, God help us, breakthrough. I can tell I’m quickly on my way to one or the other, because the pace has quickened of late.

I helped Tish edit a paper this morning, which was great fun for several reasons. First, talking on the phone to Tish Warren is always fun. Also, the paper was smart and insightful, the conversation it entered into important and enlightening. She kept telling me what a good editor I was, which was fantastic, because I’d absolutely love to move to New York and work as an editor at some major (or hell, even minor) publishing company. Ego: stroked.

Then I went to my tutorial with Jim Davis, who, as far as I can tell, is a successful and well-respected writer, if not, like most of the writers here, especially hard-on for literary fiction, which is my genre of choice (or calling, we’ll see). He seems to really like my book and where I’m going with it, and I get three credits for meeting with him for 20 minutes a week. Mostly we talk about Aristotle and Sartre, because we’re both in love with philosophy, and ideas, and how they relate to the way we live, and especially to the way we write. Granted, I’m writing about a gay man who is doing everything in his power to destroy his own life, and he’s writing novelizations of Law and Order episodes, but he’s getting paid, and I’m not. Also, he’s smart and I don’t care what he writes as long as the occasional bits of advice he gives me are helpful, which they are. More so than the Novel Writing class I spend four hours a week in. Ego: stroked.

Talking with Jim, the subject was broached: I said, “I want to sell this book. I’ve been writing these since I was 8, and this one I’m more in love with than anything I’ve ever done.” I sounded desperate, and crazy, which is what writers are, deep inside. So he told me a couple stories:

1) A Canadian author recently sold his first book, a 1300-page opus which takes place in the Spanish Baroque era. This led us to a long and scathing discussion of Ayn Rand, but anyone familiar with the publishing world - anyone who reads, really - can imagine how hard it is for a first author to sell a book. Add to that how hard it is for any author to sell a 1300-page book. Also, the extreme difficulty in selling a book about the Spanish Baroque. Add these together, and I’m thinking the guy had an in with Zaphod Beeblebrox and his Improbability Drive, because damn. It gave me hope. Ego: stroked, if not a little confused.

2) Another first-time author was recently paid a $2 million advance. This has angered the literary world, especially because the book for which he was paid - a thriller called “The Day After Tomorrow” (not related to the film) - ended up being panned by critics and a general literary mess. Ego: who the hell knows? This was confusing.

Also, Jim said that finding an agent isn’t so much like finding a needle in a haystack as it is like finding one in Kansas (my analogy, not his). “No one just sends their stuff off to agents. Hardly anybody gets their agent that way.” Oh, well, shit. That was pretty much my plan of attack. It’s like if you’d told the Japanese fighter pilots, “You can go ahead and bomb Pearl Harbor, but just know that the US doesn’t really give a shit about Hawai’i.” Would they still have gone through with it? Ego: crushed.

Well, I’m still going through with it, because I need to at least be able to pretend there’s an option out there for me. Maybe I’ll be that rare exception to the rule that isn’t really the rule, as it turns out. The first step, of course, is to finish the book and make it as good as possible, which is a whole other area of fear and self-loathing. But I’m in love with the material, and a quick read of a classmate’s novel (she was using a Mac in the lab, I used Remote Desktop to spy as she wrote. Is this wrong?) proves that I am not, contrary to my secret belief, the worst writer in the world, or even in my class. The sick pleasure I got from this negated any potential ego boost, so I’m going to have to say, Ego: stroked then crushed in rapid succession.

I won’t even get into what a bad person I am, suffice it to say I’m praying for a spirit of redemption but would settle for a Klondike Bar.

Also, it got cold and rainy in a heartbeat last night, the cat was freaking out about the lightning, and I had to put her in my room, which is actually more difficult than bathing her. But, Julian came over for dinner and we finished off a bottle of Chardonnay and another of Merlot. So I’m wicked tired today, and I have little in the way of anything actual to say, except it’s a scary place out there. Take care of each other, and be sure to share your bananas.