January 2008 Newsletter

A BRAVE NEW YEAR

It is four in the morning, and there are thoughts that compel me to crawl out of my warm bed and begin scribbling. I am aware that they may not hold up to scrutiny in the light of morning, but that doesn’t stop me.

When I write, I tend to have a sense of my reader, not your features or your gender, but rather an open, curious being that sits across from me in the black leather club chair in my office. I want to entertain you but I also want to confess to you.

This is my final letter for 2007 and I want to say thank you. This year was filled with so many victories for my fellow writers in the workshop. This is the year that we began the writers lab, sitting at the tables at the Fairfax library and pounding hard for two hours each Friday afternoon amidst the the other silent scribes and not so silent homeless. This is the year that we began the monthly reading series in Larchmont, where Maria brought balloons and the writing became more specific, where deadlines were met and writers developed their ear for dialogue.  This is the year our fears were confronted and barriers smashed, joy recovered, friendships forged and strangers became family. Words were scrawled into sentences that we did not understand, but when read aloud, they came alive and electrified us. This is the year that tears spilled and we went deeper into ourselves, became channels for our stories, and learned that nothing outside of ourselves is louder or more powerful than the silent voice within.

I began teaching with real focus following the self-destruction of my second novel (that’s right, blame an inanimate object). I began to teach because, frankly, I was scared. I started this ‘busines’ (funny to call it that) out of necessity. I wasn’t broke, but I was hopeless, which is much worse. That was several years ago now, and as my sense-of-deserving has gradually caught up with my initial success and selling my work has begun to feel like something I can accept, I no longer teach out of necessity. What was initially a humbling awareness has now become what I believe to be, at least an aspect of, what I am called to do. I am beginning to realize that, whether I like it or not, I am a teacher, and now, strangely, a new necessity has taken its place.

I need my students.

I don’t mean this in some co-dependent way. Although, hell, it is now 4:15 in the morning and I’m writing this newsletter. I think what I’m trying to say is that I’ve become aware that I have a purpose, and it doesn’t really matter whether I like it or not. Deep down, I have no choice. I know this is antithetical to a democratic people, but I don’t think that any of us actually has a choice, and I think that this is where true freedom lies. When I know that I have no choice and that I must be willing to follow my inner calling, I can relax. It doesn’t mean that I like it. It doesn’t mean I want to climb out of bed at four in the morning and sit in my cold office and write this thing, but I know that if I don’t, I won’t sleep. I cannot afford to ignore the calling. Though it is a mystery I willl never understand, I know with absolute certainty that it is what sustains me.

And so, if we don’t have choice, what do we have?

Well, I guess we have free will.

This is a completely different thing. We are surrounded by free will, aren’t we? It looks like fun for a while, like spring break. Free will is loud and brash. It doesn’t give a shit. It’s audacious. Free will looks like rebellion, but it isn’t. True rebellion is accepting the truth that we have no choice. True rebellion is following your inner voice. Show me someone who listens unwaveringly to the quiet voice within, and I will show you one badass motherfu@%*#. For too long, when I was around free will, I felt stupid and marginalized. like I didn’t belong. Now I know the truth. I don’t belong to anything temporary, to anything trivial, to anything shiny or loud. I’m a writer, and there is absolutely no time for me to be cool.

When Diamond Dogs received a six-figure advance and they were calling me the next Bret Easton Ellis, and saying that I was on the ‘cutting edge’ and ‘ultra hip’, I was confused. I wrote the book, a totally earnest and desperate story, because I was tired of not telling my truth, tired of not showing the joy and ache of life as a I saw it, tired of second-guessing the marketplace, tired of hoping. I was done, completely done, with zero need to even show the manuscript to anyone except my friend in the black leather club chair (which I didn’t yet have), who already knew it was perfect. There was nothing hip in my intentions. Cool happens when you no longer give a shit, when you surrender to your voice.

In less than a week, I will help guide a dozen or so writers to complete in 90 days the first draft of their novels. I feel so many things, but mostly I feel excited that I am about to meet my people. These are my tribe. This is where I belong. There is little for me to do, except guide this dirty dozen to their source, give them some clues, because the truth is, the stories already exist perfectly and completely inside of them, and once they access their unconscious, the rest is dictation. These mad men and women are about to rebel against everything that they think they know, and become channels for the truth, channels for the story that is screaming within them to be released. 90 Days gives you no time to think, no time to capitulate. In 90 Days there is only time to lay it down, go straight to the heart. The 90-Day Novel is like a polar swim. You jump in and you’re thinking ‘why did I do this’, and before you know it, you can’t believe how alive you feel. The world begins to look different, unlike anything you had ever imagined, and you suddenly realize that you will never be the same again. The only way to freedom is to trust our deepest voice, regardless of consequence, because our deepest voice is always guiding us toward love.

Always.

Being a writer, is about committing to the unknown, but it is more that that. It is about developing a relationship to that quiet voice that leads you up the mountain. Fiction is not an escape. It may be for the reader, but it most assuredly is not for the writer. It is our truest reality. Writing is about penetration. It’s as primal as love-making. It is the impulse to connect. Writers don’t speak of writing as healing. The closest my fellow madman and novelist friend Eric comes to it is that he says ‘as painful as writing is for me, it is more painful when I don’t do it.’

See, the healing is just a by-product.

We write because that is the only time we are truly present, and when we are truly present, time stands still and we enter the realm of the gods. A little ink, some paper, and the willingness to gaze unblinkingly at the truth.

I hope some of this made sense. I’m going back to bed now. It’s a big week ahead. And so, here we go. Into the arctic waters.

A brave and happy new year to you all.
Your fellow writer,
Al