I've also done little to advance the inlay art for my brother's guitar.
One reason I haven't worked more on my web site is to keep the focus on 'Wealth Effects.' I know, writing a novel is the Get-Poor-Quick scheme of the 21st Century, probably only rivalled by my adolescent dreams of being a jazz guitarist for a living. One of the cliché questions asked of writers is 'why' they write. Most will chalk it up to some sort of compulsive behavior, that they just can't help it, and that seems to rub most people as a bullshit answer. To an extent, I guess it is. Anyone can write out of a sense of compulsion, in a fit of hypergraphia, and even 'publish' it after a fasion like I'm doing right here.
If you're sending query letters to agents, trying to figure out how to pay for a trip to the Bread Loaf conference or anything like that, it's more than the desire to express yourself. My wife calls it seeking fame, but again, what kind of idiot would write a book to get famous? No one reads them, and even to get bought as a doorstop, home decor, subway prop or paperweight, you practically need an ayatolla to declare a death sentence on you. Or for everyone who's literate to condemn you if you're Dan Brown.
So why am I writing this book? To prove a point? Make an ass of myself?
Part of it to be sure is a form of fame seeking. Not so much to be known by the masses, but to be known by a handful to have the shit. Like that soccer player in Tennessee, plays for the biggest team in the world's most popular sport and his neighbors don't know. Except, oh yeah, he gets a hefty paycheck from Manchester United. So not like that, really.
I'm not saying it wouldn't be nice to have your books optioned as movies, sell a lot of copies, etc. That'd be great, and I wouldn't turn down the Booker Prize or National Book Award people either. But as a main motivation to write, it's up there with Powerball tickets or a lucky case of bourbon.
I've always been setting out to write a novel. Since before I'd even read many, it was just something like what I hear some people describe their religious calling or favorite sport. But all my ideas sucked, or seemed to after I got a few chapters down. That's still true, though I've quit letting it stop me.
And I've got all this work left to do to get 'Wealth Effects' in marketable shape. Why bother? And why try to publish? I bother, in part, because I want to see it down. Getting published would really just be affirmation that the time and effort wasn't totally wasted.
But I have a better answer to the overall 'why' I write. Chuck Palahniuk has hinted at it on his 'Haunted' apology tour, the need for myth. That's really what's behind the spark of a story, it's talk-therapy on paper (or screen). It's how I try to understand myself, people, the world. I guess this is probably deconstructionist bullshit, but when I read a 'weird news' item about someone with seven teeth being pulled over on a Pennsylvania highway with 28 live chickens and a stolen piano in a stolen 1975 Peugot, I want to know how they got there. So I make shit up.
They don't ban books anymore. That made the entire career of, for instance, J.D. Overrated-Salinger. Looking at my 'to read' stack, I see 'For Fucks Sake' by Robert Lasner. I think of Ani DiFranco's comment about Clear Channel banning a bunch of songs, including 'New York, NY' but not any of her songs. "Come on," she pleads. "Ban one of my songs. Because you have to play them before you can ban them."
Maybe the smart move would be to publish under the title 'Do Not Read! Obscene Content!'
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