Today, Satan

Inspiration vs. distraction

I’m in a good mood today.

I almost wrote “I’m in a good mood for a change” but that’s not right.

The last few weeks I’ve been very busy managing visits with clients and editors, yoyo-ing up and down the eastern seaboard, and hitting my deadlines for various projects, but it would be a mistake to say I wasn’t in a good mood.

Last night I turned in a draft of a book-length manuscript that’s been in the works for about a year and I went to the gym to exercise with a clear mind. Hence the good mood.

Does this look relaxing to you?

One of my weaknesses as a writer, and it’s a longstanding one, is a tendency to take my foot off the gas when I sense that I’m nearing the completion of a draft.

This was a big problem for me when I was a young writer and drank a lot. I’d write what I felt was a good sentence or paragraph or page and get up from my desk and clap my hands together and look out the window. Fuck yeah, Jim! That’s the shit!

While I was congratulating myself I was susceptible to all kinds of distractions: a nearby book, the TV waiting to be switched on, an invitation to go have a beer or two, which always ended up being much more than that. Sometimes much, much more. If the invitation came on a Taco Tuesday or Hump Day Wednesday or Early Weekend Thursday, my excesses could result in a crippling hangover the next day (or two). Then the weekend and all its temptations would present itself and the next thing I knew a week had gone by since I’d touched the story or novel or whatever it was I was supposedly laboring over. So it went.

Now that I’m sober the urge to celebrate prematurely manifests in the ways I allocate my time. I’ll prioritize something I’d rather be working on instead of focusing on whatever the task at hand might be. Suddenly, instead of cruising across the finish line, I’m behind schedule.

It’s an affliction.

The Chats at the North Park Observatory Sept 28, 2023

Yesterday, I was hours away from finishing this draft when I stopped to make myself a salad. I was chopping vegetables, singing snippets of a hardcore song I’ve become enamored with, when a voice popped into my head.

The voice was angry and cynical and full of resentment.

The voice had nothing to do with my project (or with hardcore for that matter).

The voice was the narrator of the novel I cooked up in a taxi cab in Mexico City in July.

The voice sensed I was close to wrapping up a big project and wanted to lay claim to my attention span, such as it is.

Not now, I thought, as I put the salad aside and opened my laptop on the kitchen table and wrote down everything the voice said until the words became approximations of the voice instead of the voice itself. That’s when I pulled the plug, ate my salad, and went back to finishing the project.

Not today, Satan.

Memento mori at CVS

I don’t want to give the impression that my work schedule is grueling or unmanageable. Since the last Message from the Underworld I watched some so-so horror movies on an airplane, bopped around at a punk rock show, went for a walk on the beach with Nuvia, celebrated her birthday at a bowling alley with twenty of her closest friends, watched a boxing match and a very bad football game on my laptop, got my teeth cleaned and the latest COVID vaccine, and took my car in for an oil change.

Clearly I do a lot of things besides write and think about writing, but why doesn’t it feel that way?

Why does my brain make me think I’m not working hard enough?

Then, when I’m nearing the finish line, why does it try to slip a banana peel under my feet or—better yet—why does it reroute the race course so that there’s nothing but banana peels underfoot?

I feel misguided but the bad advice is coming from inside the house.

Are all writers like this? Is this addict behavior? Is this compulsion to focus on the wrong thing simply a matter of poor impulse control? Is inspiration just distraction in disguise?

The older I get, the less I know.

Nuvia asked me to help organize her birthday party and this happened.

As you read this I’ll be making my way up to LA for a day of meetings and visits with friends. I’ll probably stop and stretch my legs somewhere before heading back to San Diego after traffic dies down. But if the voice comes back, the voice of the novel I guess I’m writing now, I’m pulling over. I don’t care if I’m on the freeway in the wilderness of Camp Pendleton or the boulevards of Highland Park, I’m going to pull over and write down everything it tells me.

Yesterday the voice spat a name at me: Riley.

Who the fuck is Riley?

All I know is he was in a band and disappeared and now thirty years later people are looking for him again. That part’s been twisting around in my head for a couple months now but Riley is new.

Riley is taking shape. Riley is acquiring a form.

I’ve got my antenna up for more vibrations, more disturbances in the psycho-geographical membrane, the badlands between memory and imagination.

But what if I can’t pick up the signal again?

What if the voice stays quiet?

Well, there’s always hardcore.

Next week: An interview with Lyle Hysen of Das Damen and Royal Arctic Institute and maybe some book reviews. Maybe.