No, this is not a diatribe about the Bush Administration, although the fact that the years of which I speak coincide is not entirely coincidental. This is about my personal failure, about the incredible waste of time that has been my writing life from the autumn of 2000 to the present.

I don't want your pity for this. I'm not going Morrissey. I am depressed about it, but the depression is tempered with realism, with the bare facts. I've produced nothing publishable in eight years, despite constantly being at work.

I have a three-hundred page novel manuscript called Silver, which devolved into a long instant message conversation between a guy and his gay college roommate about the sad state of American politics. I'm also on the ninth draft of what would have been a rather prescient novel, had I published it in 2004 when I first intended to complete it. It revolves around a preacher with an uncanny resemblance to like Rev. Wright, who bears an uncanny ethnic background to Barack Obama, whose brought to fame by an artist and zinester who shares Shepard Fairey's propaganda mentality (the artist who generated Obama's famous Hope logo). If I had published the book on time, I'd be considered some sort of prophet, which is also ironic, given that "Prophet" is part of the manuscript's title.

While I have nothing to show for these eight years, I have not been left without wisdom. I know where I've gone wrong. There are going to be those Anthony DeMello new-age, mind-over-matter types who will argue with me, but I know myself and what makes me happy, and there's only one way for me to write a novel, and that's the Proustian way: I can only write about life when I'm not living it.

For the last eight years, I've tried raising two kids, consulting for my wife's business, and writing a novel. I've had time to work—plenty of it—babysitters and daycare and a hard-working wife, but my focus always seems to be elsewhere, and without laser-focus my writing has an airy quality, as if the writer isn't fully there. On top of that, I've been miserable (and making my wife and kids miserable in the process), always berating myself for not getting anything done.

The majority of my first novel, World Leader Pretend, was written when I left an active social life in San Francisco, and moved in with my parents, who lived in a retirement community in Northern Arizona. I wrote like mad, mountain biked all over the Prescott N.F., and more importantly, was more at peace with myself than I've ever been in my life. Recently, I've taken trips to the Oregon Writers Colony, where I again, wrote like mad, took long walks on the beach three times a day, and felt reunited with my muse, who I hadn't seen in a long time.

The conclusion I've come to is this: after I finish this novel (and I'm going back to the Oregon Writers Colony in order to finish it) I'm not going to write another without giving it my complete attention. It may be years before I can do that, but at least I'll be living life in the meantime.

It may have been eight years of failure, but hey, I still have hope.

Labels: Writing Process