The Despair of Being a Writer
I would love to say I”m a relaxed, stress-free writer who patches a story together in a calm methodical manner. But I’m afraid the truth is quite different.
I’m surrounded by backlogged tasks, which I must get done, somehow, some day. But I am constantly faced with emergencies that others never see.
You see, I often have three or four stories advancing at the same time. When one reaches an impasse, I flip over to another and run with that until it bogs down in some way, then I turn to the other uncompleted story … or start a new one. But what this means is that I have several characters in limbo at any given moment.
Right now, for example, I have Lance, a young Australian bloke who lost his wife and daughter a few weeks ago. He’s in Indonesia trying to sort himself out but he’s on an inter-island ferry, in a storm, right now, that looks like its going to go down.
I’ve left him there while I go back to Guy, a software analyst in New Jersey, who has fallen in love with an alien, whose disguise skin has her looking like Marylin Monroe. She’s irresistible, but she’s going to talk him into assassinating an important public figure. How am I going to help her to convince him it’s the right thing?!
When I can, I return to Chifumi, a young female samurai living in the Edo period. She’s traveling back to Edo (Tokyo) where she is probably on the Shogun’s list of most wanted people in Japan. But before she even gets far from her home, she is assailed by a group of ronin, bent on raping her. The event will somehow set her state of mind so that she will vow to take on some seriously bad guys in the coming pages.
But I’m afraid I can see her right now, looking at me … “Well, Gary,” she says, “how am I going to do this?”
Sometimes my characters wake me in the middle of the night, like getting a phone call. “Hey, Gary, this ferry is in serious shit, man. It’s going to go down with four hundred passengers. Is this really what you intend? We’re all waiting for your decision on this.”
I have so many people relying on me for their future. Writing is a serious responsibility. I don’t recommend it to the faint hearted.
Intolerable Fate
Here, I have been sitting for two hours.
Better I show no emotion, no remorse.
No sympathy for him whose head I must verify.
The Shogun’s men sit before me, waiting.
Spitefully, they know it would be impossible for me to feel nothing.
So we are all playing a game.
A show of faces.
The door slides open and here enters the man with the box.
Inside is the head of the traitor,
probably still warm for he was only killed this morning at the city gate.
The official places the box before me and removes the lid.
He takes hold of the hair
and lifts the head from the box.
Immediately I recognize it.
But I cannot dismiss it.
It is the head of my own son.
One eye is closed hard but the other is opened in a distorted way,
showing the pain he experienced at his death.
Horrible that a dead man’s head always expresses anguish—not pride.
His mouth is stretched diagonally, contrasting with his white teeth.
I recall how his mother insisted on him cleaning his teeth,
so they would still be white
on the day of his death.
I look up at the officials sitting opposite.
Did I betray my composure with some flicker of love or remorse?
I force monotony into my eyes
and look back at my son’s head.
The blood that had splattered across his face has been smeared away,
leaving a dark red line
in the old scar on his cheek,
like a dried river.
How inhuman is the discipline of a warrior.
How cruel it is that a father cannot express feelings for a son he has cherished and protected since he was a baby.
I feel my core withering,
an empty space opening inside me,
to stay empty forever,
empty except for an eternal ache.
Intolerable, inescapable.
I look up at the man holding the head.
With disgust, “It is, indeed, the head of my son. The detestable traitor. Remove it from my presence.”
