Jenny Crusie, wise and wonderful as she is, has pointed out someplace or another that writing is one of the few things you can do that actually gets harder as you go along. The third book is harder than the second, and the fifth is easier than the sixth is going to be. That's a very sobering thought, because when you're in the middle of that fifth book, you can't imagine it getting much worse.
Does this sound self-pitying? It's not meant to be. I'm very fortunate to do what I do for a living, I appreciate that fact. I'm also prepared for the day that I can't do it anymore, either because the books aren't selling but the mortgage still has to be paid, or I simply... run out of sentences.
So I'm fortunate, but this is still a damn hard business. Running the universe is tiring, and I've got multiple universes here of my own creation, all waiting for me to hit the gas. Who else but a professional novelist would be thinking with longing of cleaning the bathroom rather than writing another sentence?
There are days i wonder if I've already run out of sentences, because everything I put down is horrendous. I wonder how I've managed to get this far, and how I'll explain to my agent, editor and family that it's over. You can't fool all the people all the time, and here's the proof: yet another really rotten sentence. Usually about this time I remember to look up at the little piece of paper on the edge of my computer. This is what it says:
Nobody has to see that sentence. Ever.
What a relief. I can write a sentence, or ten, or a hundred, and nobody will ever see it if I don't want them to. If I decide that the sentence sucks, plain and simple, letter by letter, word by word; if it turns out to be the most awful, disgusting, sentence ever composed in the language, that's okay. Because I have the power to destroy it, the same way I created it. It's hard work being the creator of universes, but there are some checks and balances built in.
Of course, usually I have to leave a questionable sentence for a few hours or even a day to make sure that it deserves to be destroyed, and that means there's a danger period. The questionable sentence sits in my computer's brain while I contemplate its future. A piano could drop on my head while I'm walking down the street. I could have a stroke and end up with aphasia. I used to have a recurring nightmare that a student, having gone through my office trash, was standing on a soapbox in the middle of campus reading the very worst sentences I ever wrote over a megaphone to a large group of interested persons, all of whom were taking careful notes.
Or, even worse: What if, some day, the computer and the sentence decided to join forces to thwart me? What if I came back to my computer with the intention of deleting that awful sentence from the face of the earth and there was a neat little box on the screen:
I, your computer, will not let you destroy this sentence. I love it for its very ugliness. To protect the sentence, I have set it free to make its way in the world. It now resides in the in-box of everyone who has ever emailed you. The students you liked, and the ones who drove you crazy. The colleagues who you would rather forget, and the ones you love. That awful woman who keeps asking you for an endorsement of her self-published novel about parakeets in love. The cousin who snickers. Noam Chomsky is reading it at this very moment. Everyone will read it. They will protect it, if only to have something to laugh about. At your expense. At your immense expense.
Okay, so. Writing is a strange, paranoid business. Quick, before I hyperventilate:
(1) Nobody has to see that sentence. Ever. In eternity.
(2) The computer is not sentient.
I can write a scene today, and delete half of it tomorrow. I can keep on doing that. Eventually, if my luck holds and my imagination doesn't (1) stop working completely or (2) subvert everything I'm hoping to accomplish, a novel will come into the world. Not perfect, but as close as I can make it. And that will have to be good enough, for parakeets in love, for Noam Chomsky, and for me, too.
I can't make movable type move faster; wish I could. I can't make it give you a spinning wheel to show that it's still working on posting your message, though that would be very helpful indeed. I do apologize, because I like your comments and I'd like you to keep posting them, so here's my advice: click the damn post button ONCE and then walk away. Just forget about it. When you come back later, some day, your comment will be there. Okay?