CATEGORY: The Novelist’s Due

The Novelist’s Due – #7

October 8, 2009 jeffrey hannan Leave a comment

Rapture

After picking up the latest rejection from my PO box this afternoon, for Rapture, I stopped into the Body Shop on Union Square to get some shaving cream. There were two chicks and a big bad ass security guard hanging out at the front door. Slow day…?

rejection: new yorker, oct 2009 - Rapture

I was still slightly reeling with delight that my rejection slip actually had a human being’s scrawl on it: “Thanks for the read” it said—my god, the electrons of a living body transmogrified through an inkpen into the manifestation of a sentiment…Body shock.

Then I went into that cursed store.

Of course I knew what I wanted and I wasn’t there for idle chit-chat or to run up my bill, so I grabbed a container of Maca Root shaving cream (shameless, almost unworthy plug) and turned circles looking for the register so I could pay. Just then a sales clerk appeared in my face: Those are on sale. Buy two get one free.

This one will last me an eternity, I told her.

So get something else. Moisturizer, facial cream…they’ll last for three years and you don’t have to come in next time you run out. Stock up. Get two or three. Why not.

This is all I want.

Judging from the disgruntled look on her face she didn’t comprehend the notion that I only wanted 1 of something. I’ll help you over here, she said in a surly tone. She headed toward a cash register in the corner of the room. She was still talking. I ignored every word until the brusque, rapid, “Got your birthday buyer card?” (Or whatever it’s called.)

No, I don’t.

When’s your birthday?

I don’t want one.

Your birthday month you get 10% off every purchase. Even if you don’t have—.

I left it at home. I’ll live without it this time. Thanks.

Through some divine intervention she took my 20 and gave me change: Want a bag?

Sure.

You can keep everything in it, she said (ie hate mail from the bill collectors and my latest rejection).

Thoughtful, I told her. Thanks. Seriously. Thanks.

Where Rapture ends a Ravenous desire kicks in

When I got home and filed the rejection for Rapture in my folder I realized I’d been clinging to another rejection, unsure of how to package it. It wasn’t a difficult one; it came over a month ago, just as we were in Honolulu changing planes to head home to SF. It was the Esquire fiction contest. Ravenous. No go. Not even the finals.

What is it about a disgruntled 80 year old lethargic that editors find so unappealing? Truth is mighty and it comes in unexpected packages.

Like shave cream in an ultraviolet light-resistant, dark green plastic shopping bag??

The Novelist's Due

Wake-up calls and other insomniac fantasies

September 23, 2009 jeffrey hannan Leave a comment

moon 4:30 in the morning may not seem an optimal time to catalog the fallout from all of your bad decisions in life, but there are certain advantages:

your cell phone doesn’t ring
the only emails you’re getting are from automated email marketers
it’s dark
it’s quiet (aside from your neighbors’ one-night stands getting in their cars to leave)
there’s nothing else to focus on, which makes the session painfully effective.

Flash back: 2004

Five years ago I made a conscious decision steeped in unconscious subterfuge. I chose to grow my business and try to focus on my real work, which is writing. In a grand master act of self-delusion I convinced myself I could actually do both simultaneously.

Back in 2004 the economy finally seemed in recovery mode after the internet bust and the fallout of 9/11. There was work; there was income; an open road lay ahead personally and professionally: life was like a freeway system of opportunity. Unfortunately that freeway was built on subprime mortgages and wobbly credit portfolios which were bundled, shipped, sold and resold like bad cement. Unable to exit, I could only keep driving and wait for the thing to collapse.

Flash forward: 2009

Watching the stock markets from late 2008 through mid 2009 was like watching a global leeching. Contracting opportunities fizzled, fizzled, then were gone. My own income opportunities evaporated and I figured I might as well focus on the book. God knows it had been long enough. And after a few years of living well, crashing, then head-banging, it was a painful lesson to learn that you can’t give 100% to two different things simultaneously.

Back in 2004 I wrote and rewrote the opening to Chapter 3 of Hugo, knowing that it somehow had to be there, but not quite sure how I was going to make it fit. Yesterday—five years and one full draft of the novel later—I finally got the paragraph right. I know how it fits into the rest of the story. It is concise. It makes sense. I only wish that the road that got me here didn’t keep me up at night.

The Novelist's Due

The Novelist’s Due – #6

September 12, 2009 jeffrey hannan Leave a comment

The Confluence of Everything..

Everything has come to a head.

There is no aspect of life that has not undergone some sort of turmoil; had to be evaluated; had to be dealt with. The balls were all tossed into the sea and now they have to be guided back to shore.

Confluence (10/3/8 – hilo)

Hugo
A day and a half spent in Hawi, in the northwest corner of the big island, yielded a thorough and disheartening reading of Hugo. It’s not that the book is a mess; it’s just not “right”, and for a perfectionist that’s a painful discovery. There are matters of tone and personality that have to be addressed. Dropped topics. Disappearing characters. A small cocktail gathering of different narrators…

Dearth
The latest rejection arrived after I returned from Hawi. Doug called on the day of my birthday party to read through my mail to me. I asked him the standard question: “Is there anything addressed to me, from me?” The answer was yes: DEARTH was rejected by Zoetrope. This one was my faithful hold-out. I thought for sure it was going to be a good match. (Let that be a lesson to all you optimists and dreamers.)

Taxes
A few days after arriving back in SF, an email from my accountant yielded shrill news on the economic front: my tax bill for 2008 is equivalent to all the money I’ve earned this year. Funny; when income is low we call it ‘nothing’. When it’s a tax bill we call it ‘exorbitant’. Still, it’s hard to draw blood from a stone, so I’m going to have to get creative in order to figure out how to pay it.

..And nothing in particular

There’s this urge—and I can only speak for myself. It’s an urge to find in life a fundamental stillness that will counteract all the inevitable and inescapable noise. The search is complicated by ambition. It’s complicated by the bad habits we grew up with. The lack of training. Obligations. Struggling focus. Competing desires. Matters of faith and inhibition…

oak and broderick streets, sf

For me, Hawai’i is that stillness. Should be that stillness. But when there’s a daily stream of people working on the house—only 1 or 2 at a time, mind you, but hammers and questions and power tools that drain the battery bank; and when the house and garden project list grows and I don’t say no; when I break to swim when I should be writing for another hour or two; and when a client who wants to pay me a little money calls…All these things I appreciate and enjoy and don’t actually mind: when they come together as a steady flow of activity, though, their tiny distracting capabilities turn into a confluence of disruption.

There is a nothingness to writing that must be undisturbed and preserved at all cost. It’s the most difficult part of writing: trying to have a life while at the same time trying to write. It’s difficult to convey this to people. I suppose it’s hard for non-writers to understand that when the flow is broken it can take minutes, hours or days to recapture the motion. That tenuous, beloved rare confluence which comes from creating something out of nothing flees like a handful of fireflies and you’re lucky if you can re-capture at least one.