A few days ago, I finished a novel I had been writing since July 1st, titled "Sexile at the Greenwich Hotel." At 80,000 words, it is shorter than most of the novels I have written. I am not sure if this is a sign of progress or not, though I never intended for this one to be a real tome. It tells the story of college students living in New York City falling in and out of love while they explore their sexuality in an age of the internet, birth control, gay rights, and feminism. Some parts are based on real-life events and others are pure imagination. A few are in the middle, taken from the lives of others, or what they have posted anonymously online. It is the eleventh novel that I have completed and finishes up my four-part series of campus novels.
Often when I complete such projects, part of me wonders what the purpose is behind all this writing. Why sit down and create a novel? Surely there must be something better to do or watch, something that is far more fun! Another part of me answers: Publication! Advances! Release Parties! Readings! Book tours! Impressionable women in bookstores and campuses! Then there is another part which responds to both of them and defends the work. There is pleasure enough in bringing the desperate bits and pieces of life together. But there is still a place for publication because it continues this process of connection and expands upon it. It is the reason that art thrills us at all. For through art, we realize that the universe is one big attachment.
I'm sure commentators elsewhere have drawn comparisons between drinking and writing, and not only because so many writers are drinkers. However there is one way that the two are related that often goes unacknowledged. One often drinks in order to forget the pains of life and also to celebrate them. We drink after a bad breakup and after a happy wedding. Bars are filled with people unhappy they are unemployed or overjoyed the weekend liberation from work has come. It is the same way with writing. One can write for catharsis, to let go of the trauma of the past, or to delve into whatever happy occasion is taking place at present.
Writing is its own form of intoxication, but different than drinking or the usual kinds of inebriation. In those instances, the mind is liberated briefly from the impositions of the senses and the ordinary arrangements of the world. In writing, the opposite effect is achieved. One looks at a world that is disorganized and gives a new shape to it. Memories, sensations, fantasies, perceptions, rumors, dreams, myths, and possibilities that otherwise hang in the air like decorations are fashioned into a something different that makes use of them to produce a new reality. Tragedies from the past are given design, direction, and purpose. Comedies in the present are tied together to reveal something deeper about the world, like the warped glass of a funhouse mirror. This process produces the afterglow that the writer seeks after first and foremost.
What about fame and fortune then? Yes, those are motivations too, for me and for most writers out there. But after our own pleasure (however sadistic it may be) the secondary mover for words on the page is the thought of just getting something read. I say thought, first of all, because the writer's work cannot be read until it is written. Secondly, there is no certainty it will find an audience. However, the writer writes on, not just out of habit, but from a hope that they are expressing something inside that might dwell in others. The hope is to reach out and find a very basic recognition that also influences the reader as well. Ideally, through the writer, the reader is able to both uncover new internal territories of the psyche and to find a connection for those parts they have found and are looking to piece together with others. In literature, the broken continents inside the writer and the reader come together to form some new landmass.
In the absence of progress on my aforementioned goals, I write. Even if I was making progress on all other fronts (job, house, social life, publication, love, etc.) I would still be writing, though probably not as much. These days my one resource is time, so I use it until my time does indeed equal money. I admit, writing is an escape from my life, which is nothing new. But this is not the only reason I have turned to writing and continue to do so. It is still fundamentally a place where I can rearrange my experiences to fashion cohesive narratives or illuminating lines. This would hold true even if everything was moving along splendidly for me. Most writers in history have felt the same way. This is why we not only put words down, but are more likely to finish our literary projects as well. We need some sense of completion and fruition in their lives.
