O P I N I O N
NOT THAT PROFOUND
By Nathan Graziano
I have a new excuse not to start the novel I’m planning to write: The Pats won, and I won a few bets on DraftKings. I can’t write today, I need to celebrate.
And tomorrow, I’ll find another reason to procrastinate.
Of course, as novelist Dennis Lehane pointed out in an interview, nobody cares if I write this next book or not, which can be viewed as either damning or liberating, depending on how you see the proverbial glass. But this back-and-forth inside my own head is maddening.
Do, or do not. This is insane behavior.
While in the abstract it might seem exciting and romantic to write books, the reality of it, for me, has been far more inglorious. Much of my time creating is spent in a state of pause, staring at a blank screen, in a space that exists somewhere between self-doubt and inexorable ambition, endlessly spinning my creative tires.
It took Jack Kerouac three weeks to write “On the Road,” yet for the past month, I’ve been inventing reasons to not begin a book that has been nudging me for a year. Either I’m too tired after work, celebrating something inconsequential, or I need to watch marathons of “Law and Order: SVU” on the couch with The Existential Pug at my feet.
Besides, I tell myself, no one reads anymore, so what is the point of writing something that no one wants to read? And I’ve already written a bunch of books that no one has read nor will likely ever read.
Instead of feeling bad for myself, maybe I should do something else, something that matters. Maybe I’ll learn to dance the Lambada, or maybe I’ll build a bench then sit on it.
I’m not sure who first said that writing a book is an act of insanity, but no one in their right mind is going to decide to write a few hundred pages about about their imaginary friends and obsess over it for years; meanwhile, maintaining a glorious delusion that this will somehow make them happy, or famous, or fulfilled. It is positively irrational.
But it seems this is exactly what I’m setting out to do, again. I’ve already failed at writing novels a few times. I even once had a literary agent who also couldn’t sell my imaginary friends to any of “The Big Five” editors in New York City, who were supposed to make me a household name.
It is positively irrational. It is an act of insanity.
But here’s the other thing: In a country that seems to be requiring adherence, without question, to figures who seemingly celebrate illiteracy, writers need to keep creating worlds for other people to travel, if only in their imaginations, to get out of our own.
Creation is positively irrational, but now, more than ever, we need people willing to be irrational and write down the things that need to be said.
I’m going to write this next book because I can’t imagine a world where I can’t. Art is freedom, and when you create, you are free—and insane.
But I’ll start that book tomorrow.
You can purchase Nathan Graziano’s latest act of insanity, A Better Loser, at The Bookery in downtown Manchester, or any major bookseller.
He can be reached at ngrazio5@yahoo.com