It's starting to hurt again.
Even before I am completely finished, like with revisions and editing, I feel that shadow creeping up behind me, ready to engulf me.
It's the writer's greatest fear: the abyss.
What abyss?
You know: that one: the bottomless pit of deadly indolence, where writers who've just finished a book go to scream at the walls for another story idea and hear only the echo of their own pitiful voices. It's a curse.
What abyss?
You know: that one: the bottomless pit of deadly indolence, where writers who've just finished a book go to scream at the walls for another story idea and hear only the echo of their own pitiful voices. It's a curse.
Then it's done and you have nothing. Oh, sure, you have your baby. But it's just a heap of words and punctuation that may make sense to a few people. But there it is.
Now you have nothing. You stare into the mirror and see the abyss looking back. Did you actually write that book? Is it any good? Will anyone want to read it? And if any dare to read it will they bother to click on a star or even type a few words by way of sharing their opinion of the book? Will the words be positive or a sharp critique of everything you have ever believed about the world and all the beings in it and how they interact and whether you have plausibly represented them to such a degree that a reader will not only be compelled forward through the pages but perhaps be moved in some way, emotionally, spiritually, maybe get up and go do something helpful in the world, a turn in their life, something like that?
So you get a few words by way of a review. Good comments. Thank you. So good, in fact, that you want to read it, as though you are not the author but just another reader. You pick up your personal copy from your trophy shelf and begin. A number of pages in you find the first mine and it explodes in your face, rips your eyes from their sockets: the error, the most grotesque of all errors because a mere spellchecker could not find it and thrash it.
So you get a few words by way of a review. Good comments. Thank you. So good, in fact, that you want to read it, as though you are not the author but just another reader. You pick up your personal copy from your trophy shelf and begin. A number of pages in you find the first mine and it explodes in your face, rips your eyes from their sockets: the error, the most grotesque of all errors because a mere spellchecker could not find it and thrash it.
It reads "form" when, in the context of the sentence, it should read as "from".
And the shadow takes you completely. What is the use? Can never get it right. Why try?
Because without that compulsion to pound keys you are nothing. There is nothing else that causes you to awaken each day. Without an idea, a story to compose, you have nothing. You are an automaton, going through each day in the simplest routine of breakfast, lunch, and dinner, TV, naps and night sleeping, dreams abandoning you. You are a mere husk of your former self. Waiting.
Then, when you least expect it, a whirlwind of narratives spin up from the abyss, circling around you, closing in, rubbing your mind raw, until you see a ghost in the machine and you lean forward and you type again.
My latest effort is FLU SEASON, a pandemic trilogy, with Book 1 The Book of Mom available now. Books 2 and 3 are finished and will be available soon.
(C) Copyright 2010-2023 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog.
Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.
