While spenidng much of this week waiting for the slew of rejections that I feel are bound to come for my book proposal for "Peep Show" (based in large part on this here which many of you have read ) – two down, eight to go – I’ve pondered my career, my goals, etc.
For the past year or so, I’ve largely put aside much of what I would call writing to work on a book proposal (and, well, to open a bar, too, sure). Essentially, I’ve been writing and rewriting and rewriting ad copy for ME. It’s horrible stuff, like jerking off with sandpaper, material that no one should have to write for him/herself. Last fall, as you may have read here, I got a first passel of rejections but my wonderful agent was supportive and undeterred, and we went back to the drawing board, working through several more drafts to finally come up with what we sent out last week.
The book is with ten publishers, and I think optimistically, that at each one of them we have about a one in twenty chance of the book getting picked up – there are just so many reasons and ways to say no – so I find myself questioning not only why I’ve spent so much time on a document that is just yucky, but also why I write at all. Or rather, whether I actually want to write or just want to be "a writer" or, grodier still, an "author." I’ve always wanted to be some kind of artist or another, but do I really want to make art, to communicate something to people outside my immediate circle of friends, or do I just crave the ghettoized hipster fame that measures the success of a certain brand of serious artist in America.
Being in a rather self-deprecating mood – in case you hadn’t noticed – I keep coming back to how much I love women and love when women – brilliant, beautiful women – think that I am even vaguely brilliant and/or beautiful. I am very happily married to one such woman, and hope/plan to remain so permanently. When I think of success as a writer, I think not of the affairs I could have with such women, but of how much the respect, and, yes, adoration I might garner from such women (much more than I care about the approbation of my male peers beyond those whose work I love) is a driving force. That is, I want them to want me, to love me, to love what I have to say to the world, to them, more than I want them, and this, is, to more and less degree depending on the day, why I write. That is, I guess I’m seeing myself as a megalomaniac, if I’m using the term correctly, craving the fame and the attention more than needing to make the work – and yes, as ever, when I think about it right now, megalomania seems to me much more a male than female condition. What’s important to me is whether the desire to be loved for my writing is the driving force behind the writing itself or just behind the desire for "success." I mean, this is America after all, where fame is our god, reality shows our scriptures, so it’s understandable that even as noble a being as I would fall pray to her wiles. But if fame is the reason I write, well, then it’s time to do something else. At least that’s the way the thought train gets a rumblin’.
Now when I presented this all to my therapist today, she (and it always has been, always has to be a "she" therapist for this guy, in part relating to my need for acceptance of my lusts, etc., by women, but that’s a whole nother kettle o fish, kinda) shrugged and told me to give myself a break, to accept that I, like everyone, have more and less noble reasons for doing what I do, and to try to spend my time thinking about what I want to do and how to do it rather than beating myself up about why I do it or don’t
And then I started reading this, which I’ll get to soon. Please have it read by Monday, class.
P.S. The conversations that take place here with men I do find just as valuable as those with women, without a doubt, so maybe I’m just full of shit and I write because I write and just feel like beating myself up this week.
(Okay, I will now be brave and post this without edit, because I fear/feel that were I to go back and look at this I would very likely not post it at all.) (Damn. I posted it and now, hours later, I’ve gone back and reread this post and and am utterly repulsed by it, but, in the name of self-flagellation, I’ll let it stand. If nothing else, it’ll get me to crank out something better to quickly replace it.)
