Textcalibur!

I should have been a musician. I think it’s something of a blessing in disguise that I’m not, though, considering how atrocious my singing is. None the less, I think I should have been one. Explanation forthcoming.

I was reading an article recently discussing some writer’s ‘writuals’ - habits that they’ve formed over the course of the professional or not-so-professional careers. Whilst every other aspect of their daily working routines varied widely, they uniformly professed to an inability to write if they were listening to music.

I, on the other hand, cannot write in silence. I simply can’t. My obsession with musical accompaniments to my writing is so severe that I form new playlists for each writing project, whether it’s a would-be novel, a short story or even a short poem. Certain songs simply capture the feeling I get when writing about a particular character or a particular story, and I find that listening to them facilitates my ability to say what I want.

The problem is, I want to capture not only that feeling, but also the music. Melodies swim in my head as I write and I try as hard as I can to put them to words, but it’s an impossible equation. You cannot translate music to prose. Still I feel like once I can do that, I will have achieved what I want from my attempts at writing. So I try and try and try again. One of these days, I’ll succeed.

In other news, work is Hell. I apologize for all of the unanswered e-mails sitting in my inbox; I promise I will attend to them as soon as I can. Right now the venture is forking in a million directions and it’s just madness trying to keep everything under control. If we can manage it, then things should ease up soon and I can maybe, hopefully breathe again.

It’s Thursday, which means the weekend is starting here. Don’t ask me why, but Friday is the only day Syrians have off. Seeing as how I’m a stuck-up European, I take Saturday off too so my fragile psyche doesn’t become overburdened and shatter in an orgy of workplace violence, but that’s beside the point.

It’s been a long week. The venture is coming along and we’re working on a few large projects now, which will hopefully pay off in the end. They have required a lot of time, energy and compromises however. I am finding that it is really quite impossible to do any sort of business here and maintain your integrity. I suppose it would be naive to claim that’s something unique to this region or country; I’m sure it’s the case all over the world. Here it’s just a little bit more obvious. Ironically enough, it’s the corruption that is transparent in the developing world.

That’s why I think the Endlessness means so much to me. Now, I like to think of myself as a fairly decent, if inexperienced writer. I know you don’t have much to go on at the moment, and that which is available would suggest otherwise, so you’ll just have to take my word for it. So I was thinking I’d like to add more to this admittedly ill-conceived project this weekend, and decided (against my better judgement) to read over what I’d put up so far. It’s really quite awful, I thought. It reads like a schizophrenic, pseudo-intellectual social critique with no apparent point. For a moment I thought maybe I should just stop writing it and hope that nobody saw it.

Something nagged at me, though. This is what it’s like - writing, I mean. You write horrible tripe at first, barely legible garbage that looks as though someone vomited a mixture of Webster’s, anti-depressants and vodka. It might be shit, but at least it’s honest. You can still see the half-digested pills on the bathroom floor. In that unrevised honesty, it’s the counter-balance to the bullshit inherent to ‘getting by’ in the world - a refuge from the half-truths you swear by and promises you can’t keep.

It’s the ultimate therapy. For all the words that I cannot speak during the day I find vindication in writing. I know it doesn’t excuse it, but it sure as hell helps me cope.

Updated the Endlessness a bit. I’m sure it’ll start to make sense sooner or later.

There’s a new page on the right-hand menu titled The Endlessness. This is where you can find the would-be novel I am currently writing in the rare moments of lucidity I experience before falling into my nightly coma. It will be updated completely at random. For the record, I’m not writing in chapters or any sort of coherent format - I’ve been told I write in scenes, which is what I suppose I’m doing here. They may be very short(as this one is) or very long. More will follow when it does.

My apologies for the lack of substantial updates - since the news of my exemption from the Finnish army, things have kicked into over-drive around here. Every day I’m faced with a new idea or project, all of which sound terribly promising but put together portent a lifetime’s worth of work. Hopefully it’ll quiet down a bit in the fall.

In the meantime, I’ve made a curious observation about the novel which I’ve been writing during my ‘off-hours’, such as they are. I started it just to keep writing while working, setting Saint John aside as it really does require copious amounts of research and fact-checking: things I have neither the time nor the energy to do these days. Anyway, the off-hours project has slowly but surely been growing in the wee hours after I’ve declared my intent to sleep and the inevitable dreamless hours that follow. The other day I had some time to myself in the office and thought to read it over while properly awake.

It’s an awful lot like the would-be novel I tried to write ten years ago. The novel that I desperately wanted to write, but didn’t know how. The novel I thought would communicate whatever it was that I felt was so terribly important that it had to be shared with the world.

Is that a sign? Is that message still lingering somewhere inside me, looking for ways to escape the confines of my admittedly muddled mind? Thinking about this made me think of something else which I’ve often wondered about, but never really knew how to ask: is there one ‘ultimate’ novel in every writer? This novel - whatever it is - nags at me in the hours when I’m too tired to argue with it. I’ve ignored it for a decade for lack of technical skill, ambition and yes, for lack of courage. Now it’s back.

I think it’s something I need to write. I don’t know if it’s any good. Hell, I don’t even know what it is. It’s a difficult feeling to describe; I don’t really know what’s going to happen until I set my fingers to the keyboard and allow them to explain it to me. When I finish for a night, I have to read back to realize what it is I’ve just written. I remember feeling similarly about some poems which I’d written years before I understood them - as if somehow my subconscious had grasped what I’d been trying to say, but my conscious mind had lacked the faculties to translate the images and symbols.

I’m probably sounding very loony at the moment, so I’ll wrap this up after one last point. As I thought about this terribly-important-and-probably-terribly-terrible novel and what it means to me, all of the whining I’ve done about the publishing industry etc lurked behind a shadowy corner of my brain.

It wouldn’t really feel right, would it? If it’s something I feel I need to share, then why the hell should anyone else have anything to say about it? We(would-be writers) get so caught up in the world of publishing, agents and editors that I think we often lose sight of what this is all about; getting your words out to the world. For better or worse, that’s what we’re all in this for. To tell the world whatever it is we feel we have to say.

So, I’ll be ‘publishing’ it here on this blog as I write it, chapter by chapter. It might be great, it might be horrible - I don’t know. I’m not looking for advice, writing hints or helpful tips - it’s just something I want to say. I have the day off tomorrow, so I’ll throw what I have so far up then and continue updating it as I can.

I’m sorry to say that there will be no bitterness or derogatory remarks in this post. This is mostly because this post is not about writing; instead it is a self-congratulatory post and a general notice to those among you who are aware of certain specific details of my life. Should someone find this interesting despite not being part of that crowd, I must express a sincere concern for your lack of hobbies.

My announcement is simple: I have been exempted from military service. This means that I do not have to pack my bags in one month’s time and interrupt everything…again…but can remain in Syria, work on the business and the novel until the cows come home. Or until Finland goes to war, in which case the Finnish government reserves the right to draft me for cannon-fodder duty.

Insert joyously frolicking emoticons here.

I rag on the publishing industry a lot in this blog. Hell I rag on just about everything a lot in this blog. So far I haven’t ragged on writers so much, aside from exposing my own personal neuroses and letting you draw your own conclusions about what sorts of people so-called creative writing creates. So then. Here we go.

Somehow the notion of saying ‘maybe not everyone is supposed to write’ seems taboo. Like voicing such an opinion condemns your own efforts at ‘making it’, because hell - nobody is born a star. Some of the greatest writing has come from the unlikeliest of places. How do you judge something as subjective as creative writing in the first place? It’s art, man.

Yeah, that may be the case. Maybe everyone can be a writer. Maybe all of our creative writing teachers are right to say ‘keep at it, you’ll make it one day’. Maybe dreams can really come true for all of us. Maybe everyone with a laptop and a copy of Microsoft Word will one day be a multi-millionaire sipping pool-side cocktails. I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this.

WordPress and similar blogging sites are the worst thing to happen to writing in a long, long time. I know, I know; I’ve got my own little corner of it so it’s very hypocritical and all that. Shut up. That’s not what I mean.

Any aspiring writer who starts his or her own blog here will at some point or the other peruse other would-be writers’ blogs. I think that’s a pretty defining moment in a modern writer’s life. Here’s my opinion on what you can surmise about yourself based on your reaction to the first five ‘writing blogs’ you see:

Option 1: “Oh wow, there are other people like me out there! This is so great, I think I’ll join a dozen communities and plaster my blog with cutesy buttons to showcase my support for struggling writers regardless of whether or not they should be breathing, let alone polluting the internet with the textual dribble they claim is fiction. Then I’ll post an excerpt from my ‘funny yet poignant’ novel and ask people to comment on my seventeen run-on sentences and unimaginative symbolism! Yay!”

Option 2: “Jesus fucking Christ these people are idiots. This writing is horrible. I want to die.”

If you chose option 1, you should put all of those ‘great effort, keep at it!’ notes your high-school teacher gave you to good use and inflict enough paper-cuts to repent. Should you bleed to death in the process, your life is an acceptable loss. We’ll miss you. Well I won’t, but I’m sure someone will.

If you chose option 2, chances are you’re a lot like me - a talentless hack looking for a way to express your general discontentment to the world rather than an opportunity to genuinely contribute to human society. I’d advise similarly self-destructive activities as in option 1, but since I like myself I’ll just prescribe a good night’s sleep and a paying dayjob.

If you had an original thought - or better yet, if you haven’t been sucked into this pretend-writers’ virtual playfield in the first place - then maybe you’ve got it in you to write something worth a damn. Seriously, my point is this; encouraging people is great provided they should be encouraged. There are a lot of people out there writing absolute tripe, spending years chasing a dream that will never come true because they’re just awful writers. Plain and simple.

The other day I stumbled upon a blog about writing which was in fact a blog about writing a blog. The author complained of suffering from writer’s block - in regards to the blog! It’s not that the author couldn’t think of the next line for their novel, or they couldn’t nail the rhythm of their latest poem - this author had no such projects in mind at all. They were blocked about what to blog about.

Have we really started to believe this shit? That you can ‘be a writer’ by doing nothing more than posting an update here and there, ranting and raving about whatever? Why the hell does everyone want to be one, anyway? Is there some notion flying around out there that writers lead glamorous lives living off the enormous royalties their mid-list sellers garner? Be a writer; it’s like being Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie without the paparazzi!

Wake up and smell the fucking mortgage. If there is anything in your life you would rather do - anything at all - then maybe you should think twice before spending the next 1 - 50 years opening rejection letters and borrowing money from your parents. Writers aren’t rockstars, no matter how much Neil Gaiman tries to look like one.

When perusing blogs about writing, you’ll inevitably stumble upon posts about the injustices perpetrated by the publishing industry. Granted, many of those aren’t necessarily warranted - it could be the writer in question is just bloody awful, ignorant of the publishing industry or just a giant prick like myself. Still, a trillion unpublished writers can’t all be wrong. Something is rotten in the state of Random House.

I mean, for a publishing company named Random House, their selection of material is anything but random. Obviously the publishing industry isn’t limited to them - every publisher wants the next Harry Potter, not some twat’s 800-page manifesto on the nature of narcissism. Problem is, if you happen to be the twat writing that manifesto, the scenery is pretty bleak and depressing.

What about other avenues? As I previously mentioned, I’m a big fan of Trent Reznor. It’s not just his music I enjoy, I think he’s got a great deal of integrity as well. Before releasing The Slip for free, Reznor broke from traditional record publishers and published Ghosts I-IV on the internet. Cutting away the middle man and production costs of printing and publishing CDs, you can buy the whole album for anywhere from $5 to $300 depending on how much additional shit you want - or just download the first 9 tracks for free. Click the link or the picture below to go buy your own copy.

Granted, The Slip being Nine Inch Nails’ 27th release, Reznor doesn’t exactly have to worry about the money anymore; a career that long is bound to have produced a penny or two for those rainy days. The apparent success story of Ghosts I-IV(which made $1.6 million in the first week of release) despite the widespread piracy of the album isn’t as resounding an affirmation to the benefits of such liberal distribution methods as one might think; Nine Inch Nails has a rabid fanbase who would sell their souls to get the latest release. Smaller bands attempting to emulate Ghosts I-IV’s success would likely be in for a rude awakening.

Regardless, it’s interesting to dwell on the notion of alternative means of publishing. In the music industry, Radiohead and NIN are spearheading an increasingly popular(to the fans) move away from traditional record labels. Given that we live in a time of exponentially developing technological means, why hasn’t the publishing industry gone the way of the dinosaur?

Self-publishing works about as well in the literary world as it does in the music world. It’s expensive to print out physical copies of your book and the end result often ends up looking amateurish. Aside from the odd success tale which owes more to opportune movie deals than genuinely great writing, there hasn’t been much to motivate aspiring writers to take on the prohibitive costs of self-publishing.

Electronic publishing is another alternative of course, but there’s no mp3 equivalent in the field of literature. Music is intangible by nature and infinitely better suited to an electronic media. I personally can’t imagine reading books electronically, though some of the new e-readers do look tempting.

So maybe these alternatives aren’t optimal. They’re still alternatives - if all writers do is bitch about the publishing industry, why don’t they do something about it? Why aren’t they exploiting these alternatives and carving a path away from the traditional powerhouses of the industry?

The answer is simple - it’s not a question of risk analysis, cost efficiency or even of how many copies you can afford to publish by yourself. It’s a question of marketing. Without a publisher, you quite simply cannot reach a sufficiently large audience to make writing a viable means of sustaining yourself.

A publisher doesn’t just print your book, they let the world know it’s there. There is such a plethora of novels being published annually that no one can possibly know which ones most deserve your hard-earned $8.99. A publisher uses its network of editors, marketers and corporate partners to make sure your novel gets out there, is heard about and reviewed. It’s the marketing people who drive the publishing industry, who tell consumers what they need to read and who make sure that the books they’ve invested time into sell. Considering they’re able to sell all sorts of shit to people, it’s no wonder the marketers of the publishing industry are so keen to stay where they are:

Indeed, whether they begin their career in publishing or not, the industry seems to be a relatively happy place for most with the exception of an agent who says “every sale I make is like getting a root canal.” Just about a third (32%) “never” consider leaving and another 18.5% feel like throwing in the towel only when the season changes. The department with the fewest flight fantasies is marketing. Almost half (45.5%) “never” consider leaving the publishing industry and 44.1% report their departmental choice is “a perfect fit!”

-Source: Publishing Trends - Industry Survey 2007

What does this mean for those of us whose samples or completed works are deemed unsellable? We’re shit out of luck. No marketing means no sales. No sales means no income. No income means get thee to a fucking dayjob, you cross-eyed, basement-dwelling hack.

I wonder how some of the various best-seller lists would look like if there was no such thing as marketing. If there were no advertisements, no brands, no merchandise, promotional freebies or arranged interviews on daytime talk-shows. I’ve got a feeling they’d look a hell of a lot different than this.

I’ve discovered another aspect of ‘being a writer’ that I really miss. Allow me to explain with a brief example:

Friend of friend: So are we ready to go yet?
Friend: Everyone except Oliver.
Friend of friend: Why, where’s he?
Friend: Sleeping.
Friend of friend: It’s 2 pm!
Friend: He’s a writer.
Friend of friend: Oh. Nevermind then.

For reasons beyond me(and ones I choose not to explore out of hedonistic self-preservation), it seems that writers are allowed completely alien mannerisms. It’s the ultimate green light. No matter how bizarre or perverse your activities are, tossing the phrase “I’m a writer” around will inevitably elicit reluctant nods of approval from the understanding, if slightly disturbed standers-by.

Once this ‘real work’ gig is over I am going to exploit that aspect of writing to its fullest. Why wallow in my self-inflicted, pseudo-artistic misery in some darkened room when I can share it with the world and suffer no particular consequence? What are they going to say; I’m insane? That’s a fucking plus in my books, buddy.

So far I’ve thought of nailing stray cats to the the doors of any conveniently near-by PETA offices, rolling around naked in feces and subsequently running around yelling “I am the personification of urban fantasy”, putting on a street performance act entitled Nailgun Meets Your Face in a crowded subway and ordering from the breakfast menu at McDonald’s at lunchtime.

Before I get there though, I have to face reality. It’s grim. Someone knows just what I need:

I need your discipline
I need your help
I need your discipline
You know once I start I cannot help myself
-Discipline by Nine Inch Nails

Trent Reznor, one of the few people whom I am genuinely “oh my gawd sign my tits” about, has released the latest Nine Inch Nails album free. Click on the below image to download your own copy of The Slip. The quoted track and album aside, discipline is precisely what I need. I think I’m getting there though - despite my nocturnal habits, the prospect of money does a damn fine job of waking me up each morning. Or was it coffee?

It’s midnight in Damascus. I could be asleep, but I’m not. I probably should be asleep, but I’m not. Instead I’m working on the nth meeting agenda for a business venture which would be promising if people would just let me handle…well, everything. Suddenly the cellphone perpetually adorning my nightstand begins an irritating loop of beeps which I’ve come to loathe. The undecipherable melody has lost whatever appeal it had when I opted for it as my ring-tone, having long since transformed into a theme song for interruption. I look at the screen to identify my late-night harasser; it’s one of my partners. I answer the call.

According to my cellphone’s built-in “here’s how much time you just wasted” tracker, it took exactly three minutes and twelve seconds to make five solid days’ work obsolete. The company brochure draft, completed website text, service profiling and logistics schematics I’d drawn up had just been tossed out the window by one simple change: we’re completely renewing our company profile.

I contemplated getting angry or at the very least mildly depressed. Instead I saved the file I was working on even though I’d have to rewrite the whole thing. Setting the finished work aside in the vain hope that one day it might come in handy, a thought occurs to me.

This is surprisingly like writing.

How many times could I have finished a novel with some more discipline? If instead of waiting for inspiration or agonizing over details, if I’d only focused on the task at hand I probably would’ve finished Saint John by now. Chances are I’d have finished another novel too.

It’s a bit of a contrived analogy, of course. Business is rational and logical. Writing is emotional and neurotic. That aside, working with a bunch of idea-driven improvisers is providing me with a valuable lesson: there’s no substitute for focus. Take an idea, squeeze its balls until it cries uncle and drag it to the finish line.

It’s ironic how focused I’ve been with this business venture in contrast with how absolutely chaotic my writing process is. Ultimately I can see a lot of parallels; a company profile is a lot like a synopsis, an explanation of not only the contents but also the purpose. It should give a clear idea as to what you’re selling and why you’re selling it. It should also be the first thing you do.

From there you move ahead one step at a time, laying the brickwork for the eventual launch. There’s no fast-forwarding involved, no fucking around with a new idea when you’ve already decided on one. You don’t stop to examine every little inconsequential detail unless it’s somehow relevant to the basic steps you need to take to ensure that you achieve whatever you’ve set out to do by whatever deadline you’re working under.

It sounds so simple. In this scenario, it is so simple. I’m working far longer hours and far harder in general, yet I feel none of the exhaustion and general despair I do when writing. What’s so different? Is it just that writing is innately such a creative and emotionally draining process that it sucks the very life out of me? Or have I just fooled myself into thinking that it’s somehow a ‘higher’ pursuit, that writing shouldn’t be easy? Maybe it’s the fault of other writers - if they weren’t usually such insufferable cunts, I might have had more pleasant preconceived notions about writing and being a writer.

Obviously I don’t know the answer. Kallioppe left a good comment on the subject of the ill effects of writing on my previous post, specifically regarding its 24/7 nature. It’s true, when you write, you write all the time. Especially when you’re not writing. You can’t escape your writing or the fact that, like it or not, you are a writer. Published or not, it’s what you do. There’s a curious mixture of entitlement and discontentment that grips you from the moment you decide to write in earnest, as if something leaps up from inside you and beats the ever-loving shit out of your insides to give you an idea as to how bruised you should be feeling. Because, you know, you’re a writer. You’re supposed to be all sorts of messed up.

I wonder if that’s some sort of a sign. That feeling so strongly about something, even if it affects you negatively and turns you into a verbally abusive sociopath, means that you were meant to do it. I’d like to think it does, but then again that might be because I just really like writing. I like a lot of things about it, and to list them all here would be impossible. I will tell you one thing I like about it however, which I didn’t even realize I liked about it until tonight.

Nobody calls me up at midnight to tell me to change my synopsis.