Monday, September 19, 2005

Drunken Persistence, Redux

I got hooked on Laborie pinotage some time back, when I took a tour of the Winelands in Cape Town. It's amazingly gorgeous there. Trader Joe's had a special on some South African pinotage this week, and I snagged a couple bottles. Laborie it ain't, but it's made me nostalgic. And a little drunk.

Sometimes, I am struck by where I am in my life, the people I've known, the places I've seen, the accomplishments I've made at 25. I have been running, running, running, working so hard to get to this place, to have these experiences behind me, to be looking forward to more, to life, to what lies beyond the horizon.

I was talking to both Jenn and B about how tough the last couple of years here in Chicago had been. Not the actual living part - the living has been happy and mostly easy. I can pay my bills. I love my roommates. I enjoy the weather, the public transit. But I've invested two years of my life working an admin job, turning down career opportunities that would require me to curb my writing (and my health) in order to advance. A career in the cell phone industry just wasn't what I was looking for.

Every time somebody asked me what I was working toward with each successive degree, with each job, I told them I was just *this* close to making the books pan out, to making money writing, to being a writer, working to build *that* career above all others. That was my life. That's what I was working toward.

But two years of giving up on more traditional opportunities can get to you. You can start to lose hope. You start to wonder what you're doing. You start to wonder if you're crazy. I'd been talking with both Jenn and B about getting other jobs, about finding ways to take in more money, about sacrificing writing time for something more tradtional, some other life. And I talked about it like a woman who was ready to grow up, to put away childish ideas about what could be and what might be and start worrying about how these student loans were ever going to be paid off.

I started to understand how people got trapped in jobs they hated, so they could buy things they didn't need, so they could have a life they didn't want.

I've bought some of my favorite wine, and I'm sitting here drinking it and staring at line edits I need to finish by Friday, and I'm haunted by the life that I want, the life I know I can have. I've said to myself, over and over, I just need to work harder. I can have this. I just need to work harder. Because there's always somebody out there who's willing to work harder than you are.

I have a blind belief in what I do, in this writing, in what I have. I'm not a genius, but I'm getting better every year. Each book is better than the last. And I have a secret:

This is it. This is what I want to do. I want to write fantasy books. I want to make a living at it. I want to be the best at it, whatever that is or means. I want, I desire, and it's a desire that eats me up.

I want to write for a living, I want to travel, I want to dip my toes in every ocean. I want to go bungee jumping in New Zealand. I want to climb Kilimanjaro. I want to hike up to Machu Picchu. I want a big, wide, bold life. I want to be an old woman on her death bed, gazing out over the pictures of her life. I want, I desire.

How does one want so much and keep going, keep striving in a world that tells you every odd is against you; you're too fat, too slight, too tall, untalented, too talented, not pretty enough, too pretty. It's a world that doesn't believe in anyone or anything, a world that watches faces get their 15 minutes and then moves on, callous, regardless.

And there's no answer to that, really, and whatever answer you do find is a little mad.

Because the answer is you just keep doing it while people tell you no. You keep getting better at it, because you want it. And you do it as long as you have to, if you have to spend five years at a shitty admin job and traveling to foreign locales on credit cards. You do it because the alternative is not to do it, and that's a far, far, more frightening fate.

B sent me Amanda's post over at Pandagon today, about all the things men had told her was wrong with her, about how she'd finally decided to ditch her boyfriend. And I was reminded of another time, another place, when I cared what people thought of me, when I valued myself based on my attractiveness to others, when I tried to mold myself into what other people thought I should be.

I wanted to reach out to Amanda and hold her and cry and say, "Honey, fuck everybody and leave the whole world. Go buy a one-way ticket to somewhere you've never been and start a whole new life and find out how strong you are. Don't go out finding yourself, go the fuck out and fucking create yourself. That's what life is. You find out what the fuck you can do. You realize how strong you are. You realize you can fly."

I can fly.

Even in the darkest times, when I'm freaking out and stress eating and missing the gym and scared and lonely, I know exactly what I can do. I know I can trek alone 160 km into rural Africa. I know I can buy a one-way ticket to Fairbanks, Alaska. I know I can pull together an entire person from the ashes of someone else entirely, and I know that even in the darkest times, during those dark teatimes of the soul, I will come back out of it awake, alive, ready to pursue my desires until the end.

Because this is who I am, this is what I do.

And I seem to have finished this bottle of wine.

10 comments so far. What are your thoughts?

Anonymous said...

Thanks for that Kameron. Few will doubt your passion and commitment to your craft. How to make a real living at the same time has ever been the great issue in art. There are many ways this can be done, with a college teaching job on the side being one of the more common feints, or following the example set by prior generations of writer- lawyers, doctors and even once upon a time scads of newspaper writers who worked in day jobs to support their writing 'habit'.

History tells us that it's never been an easy road. You certainly know some of this, but the perseverance and persistence required can be wearing on saints. Even rich saints, or well married authors will have plenty of dark days of their souls that insurance exec's can only but barely imagine. So while we can applaud the bravery, the pluck, the sure talent and the drive that has gotten you so far, the rapids don't get any easier from here.

That's the hell of it. For most of life you're constantly doubling down on the most incomprehensible, impossible odds. You rarely can say 'This far and no further'.

A life's work is seldom about a conscious decision to 'settle', it's often a battle for survival the best way you know how. So never give up on your dreams, they can allow you to accomplish amazing things and reach for the transcendent. Hope will keep the fire alive inside you, but it can not always feed you in a physical sense. It may not be able to comfort a crying child, or pay for the health care for her or yourself. That's the ultimate dialectic here. And seeing the carnage in NOLA, and knowing history (here and beyond), can remind us that not only does poverty suck, it can and does kill. All the damn time. Every hour of every day.

So again this is probably way damn serious. Even for drinking.

I know you'll be getting better with your writing, and turning out astonishing stuff.

I wish you the best and keep us posted on
developments. Here's hoping that you're on the top of the Amazon list by this time next year.

Cheers & Good Luck, 'VJ'

 

Posted by VJ

Anonymous said...

Awesome post. Missed you. 

Posted by That Girl

Anonymous said...

Thank you, Kameron. You are an inspiration to all who would read. I wish I could recall where your blog was first noticed.

Though writing is not a passion, it sure would be nice to be able to express oneself as well as VJ! 

Posted by David

Anonymous said...

...and when you're a working fantasy writer, you may have to face the truth: That you write reality at least as well.

I hope you're one of those authors that keeps writing about writing even as you become rich from doing the fiction. 

Posted by jpjesus

Anonymous said...

What an inspiration. This post was just what I needed today, and I hope that blogging this post was just what you needed, too. Thanks a bunch. 

Posted by AnnaAnastasia

Anonymous said...

Greetings Kameron, I loved your post. I want to let you know that you CAN have a career as a writer. While you work on science fiction, you could try your luck as a copywriter. Check out www.robertbly.com -- he is a successful copywriter and has written many books about it. Copywriting usually entails business and technical writing, including letters and direct mail pieces. It is not exactly what you are interested in, but you may be able to earn money as a writer. Also subscribe to Writer's Digest. I pour over that every month and sneak it into my day job for a peak now and then. You are ahead of the game. I call myself an aspiring writer and I do no writing! The last time I wrote anything I was in college, and one or two papers in law school. Good luck! 

Posted by Amy

Anonymous said...

Never give up, Never Surrender...........
mama 

Posted by Terri H.

Anonymous said...

What you say resonates.

I feel like a lost soul, alone with the feeling, living in the big global village of the damned..

I found your words truly inspiring Kameron, they are affecting and you struck a nerve..

I'm 23 today and what have I to show for it? There are so many things I want to do, to see, to learn, to experience..

I'm finding it increasingly difficult to,

'keep striving in a world that tells you every odd is against you; you're too fat, too slight, too tall, untalented, too talented, not pretty enough, too pretty. It's a world that doesn't believe in anyone or anything, a world that watches faces get their 15 minutes and then moves on, callous, regardless. '

And as some of my august posts show I feel I'm AT that place as you say you once were,

'when I cared what people thought of me, when I valued myself based on my attractiveness to others, when I tried to mold myself into what other people thought I should be.'

Like you..
'I want to write. I want to make a living at it.

I want to write for a living, I want to travel, I want to dip my toes in every ocean. I want a big, wide, bold life. I want to be an old woman on her death bed, gazing out over the pictures of her life.'

Yet it feels like an unrealistic dream for me. Obviously nothing comes from nothing and I would need to truly desire and work for it as you are.

It may sound stupid, but I don't know where to even begin. That’s my trouble, getting started.

At the moment,
'I want, I desire..' to be where you're at, psychologically.

I want, I desire that above all other things..
 

Posted by rhyannon smith

Anonymous said...

Kameron,

Have you thought at all about wqriting a juvenile? I think a lot of your stories would be really inspiring to young girls.

Back when I was at sort aof a low point, I took on a project to write a book about the Internet for Girls (still posted on my website at http://www.sdsc.edu/~woodka/donna.html.)

It was never actually published, because the publisher was a small press and the owners ended up divorcing and the business was a casualty, but just in the process of writing it, I was reminded how strong I was and how much I wanted girls to know they have that within themselves.I think a lot of what you have to say are things young girls need to know.

Anyway, best of luck with the writing. I know you'll succeed.

 

Posted by donna

Anonymous said...

You touched a chord in me, and my friend, and others. We've all linked to your article, and it's made all of us look in and look out and think about what we want.

Horizons have a way of shrinking if you forget to look past them often enough.

Thanks for making us remember to look up. 

Posted by Drea