I got sick in India, laid low by dengue fever and its concurrent 10 days of misery. I had been making fairly good progress on the book, having set a goal of 5,000 words a week and hit it three times. But I got stuck in Varanasi, in no small part because I couldn't find a place with actual tables and chairs to work in, rather than low tables and cushions on the floor, which I can't stand. And then dengue hit, and made me so sick that at one point I had to lay down outside a train station (in the dirt, surrounded by cow shit and maimed beggars) because I couldn't take a single step more.
I put down the laptop when I got sick, as you might expect, and did little more than sleep and slowly drink water for ten straight days. I didn't realize I had dengue and kept moving between cities, staring out the window of moving trains, wrapped in a puffy coat and shivering with fever chills despite the blistering heat of India in August. I went to the Himalayas briefly but in short order returned to Varanasi, where I stayed in bed for days, leaving only to drink sugary Indian milk tea and use the bathroom.
When I finally snapped out of it, I sat down at my laptop and took a gallop through the 15,000 words I written. I had been referring to them as "my 15,000 mediocre words," but hitting the goal had felt right, and I -- always a compulsive editor -- assumed that getting things down on paper, at least in the beginning, was more important than having it be perfect. But when I went back and re-read it, with post-dengue fresh eyes, I found that above all else I was bored: intensely and overwhelmingly bored. It's not so much that it wasn't fixable -- I could've cut half of it, and tweaked the prose of the remainder and maybe perhaps started to make lemonade out of wretched, wretched lemons -- but I found that I lacked the desire to do it. I wanted to be done with the book, and not in the sense of having it finished. I just didn't want to write about Afghanistan any more.
"Maybe it's a sign," a friend told me. "Maybe it means you should just be done with that chapter of your life." She took the fact that I lost my beloved military-issue fleece as a further indication that I should sweep Afghanistan from my life and finally -- finally -- start moving forward.
But I wasn't quite ready to toss in the towel, just yet. I put down the laptop and bought a bus ticket to Nepal, intending to take another break, this time by choice, rather than by illness. I bought a second backpack, shoved my laptop and most of my clothes into it, and left it in a guesthouse in Pokhara. I hiked for 25 days, largely cut off from internet and thoughts of the broader world, and I ignored the book and focused on the mountains. It was the right thing to do.
I finished hiking and flew from Nepal to Mumbai and hung out with an old Foreign Service friend for a few days, eating excellent food and playing with her dog and making excellent use of her hot shower. And then I flew to Thailand, which feels like cheating because I've spent so much time here. But there's an island in the south with a trapeze rig and a crossfit gym and a few yoga studios, and I've decided to plunk myself down for a while and try again on the book.
I realized, during my month long sabbatical-within-a-sabbatical, that this book as a work of non-fiction just can't happen: I don't care enough. It might be interesting, it might not be interesting -- but I myself am so bored with the subject that I am unwilling to try to separate out what's worth keeping and what's not. It's time to let go.
And instead, I'm revisiting the book as a work of fiction.
I have always been a fiction person. Every time I purchase non-fiction, it languishes on my kindle and mocks me for my inability to focus and get through it. But fiction I love.
I've never written fiction, though, and I am struggling with basic questions like whether the book should be in first person or if there should be an omniscient narrator, or if I should switch between the two. And, within that vein, whether I should attempt to write from the Afghan point of view, or just parse what I think their experience may have been, on the other side.
I am done with the outline, and no longer writing in chronological order is liberating, allowing me to re-arrange the timeline to suit what I see as my purpose, per se, in writing this novel. And today I actually sat down and wrote for the first time in forever -- not outlining, but actual writing. It feels good to be back -- like I'm finally doing the work that I should be and not shirking.
I didn't write much -- maybe 250 words -- but after weeks of not writing, 250 words feels so much better than zero.
Tomorrow is Monday, and for the first time in forever I am setting an alarm. I will get up at 5:30, like I used to, and I will set aside distractions, and sit on the porch of my tiny island bungalow, and I will write.
It's good to be back.
I put down the laptop when I got sick, as you might expect, and did little more than sleep and slowly drink water for ten straight days. I didn't realize I had dengue and kept moving between cities, staring out the window of moving trains, wrapped in a puffy coat and shivering with fever chills despite the blistering heat of India in August. I went to the Himalayas briefly but in short order returned to Varanasi, where I stayed in bed for days, leaving only to drink sugary Indian milk tea and use the bathroom.
When I finally snapped out of it, I sat down at my laptop and took a gallop through the 15,000 words I written. I had been referring to them as "my 15,000 mediocre words," but hitting the goal had felt right, and I -- always a compulsive editor -- assumed that getting things down on paper, at least in the beginning, was more important than having it be perfect. But when I went back and re-read it, with post-dengue fresh eyes, I found that above all else I was bored: intensely and overwhelmingly bored. It's not so much that it wasn't fixable -- I could've cut half of it, and tweaked the prose of the remainder and maybe perhaps started to make lemonade out of wretched, wretched lemons -- but I found that I lacked the desire to do it. I wanted to be done with the book, and not in the sense of having it finished. I just didn't want to write about Afghanistan any more.
"Maybe it's a sign," a friend told me. "Maybe it means you should just be done with that chapter of your life." She took the fact that I lost my beloved military-issue fleece as a further indication that I should sweep Afghanistan from my life and finally -- finally -- start moving forward.
But I wasn't quite ready to toss in the towel, just yet. I put down the laptop and bought a bus ticket to Nepal, intending to take another break, this time by choice, rather than by illness. I bought a second backpack, shoved my laptop and most of my clothes into it, and left it in a guesthouse in Pokhara. I hiked for 25 days, largely cut off from internet and thoughts of the broader world, and I ignored the book and focused on the mountains. It was the right thing to do.
I finished hiking and flew from Nepal to Mumbai and hung out with an old Foreign Service friend for a few days, eating excellent food and playing with her dog and making excellent use of her hot shower. And then I flew to Thailand, which feels like cheating because I've spent so much time here. But there's an island in the south with a trapeze rig and a crossfit gym and a few yoga studios, and I've decided to plunk myself down for a while and try again on the book.
I realized, during my month long sabbatical-within-a-sabbatical, that this book as a work of non-fiction just can't happen: I don't care enough. It might be interesting, it might not be interesting -- but I myself am so bored with the subject that I am unwilling to try to separate out what's worth keeping and what's not. It's time to let go.
And instead, I'm revisiting the book as a work of fiction.
I have always been a fiction person. Every time I purchase non-fiction, it languishes on my kindle and mocks me for my inability to focus and get through it. But fiction I love.
I've never written fiction, though, and I am struggling with basic questions like whether the book should be in first person or if there should be an omniscient narrator, or if I should switch between the two. And, within that vein, whether I should attempt to write from the Afghan point of view, or just parse what I think their experience may have been, on the other side.
I am done with the outline, and no longer writing in chronological order is liberating, allowing me to re-arrange the timeline to suit what I see as my purpose, per se, in writing this novel. And today I actually sat down and wrote for the first time in forever -- not outlining, but actual writing. It feels good to be back -- like I'm finally doing the work that I should be and not shirking.
I didn't write much -- maybe 250 words -- but after weeks of not writing, 250 words feels so much better than zero.
Tomorrow is Monday, and for the first time in forever I am setting an alarm. I will get up at 5:30, like I used to, and I will set aside distractions, and sit on the porch of my tiny island bungalow, and I will write.
It's good to be back.
1 comment:
Glad you're back buddy, in every sense. Keep it up.
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