The Rotor

Reflections on a writing life

Lately, I’ve been asked about my writing habits. I have a tendency to publish often, and I’ve got, for a 35-year-old, something of an unusually large CV. There are three published books with two more on the way, including a novel, Glass Century, that will be out in May. Most self-proclaimed novelists arrive with the novel as their defining work, what they display to the world, and part of me wishes I was that person, the one who sat patiently, toiled, and debuted at the proper moment. There’s a purity to that. But I couldn’t help myself—I had to write and had to publish. I was deeply eager, in my late teens, to get out there. Part of that was the deep love of the craft, the longing to arrange the thoughts in my head into language, the sanctity of the act itself. Part of it, obviously, was ego. I was not a remarkable child. I wanted to be a great athlete, to star in front of millions and prove I was, at last, not another bum from the neighborhood, but I was going to be neither a baseball nor a tennis professional. I was bereft of godly physical gifts but also the mental fortitude to be a success there; I was the kind of boy who treated strikeouts or tournament losses as deep and irrevocable personal failings. I would mark myself, like the raving Puritans of Hester Prynne’s world, with my own scarlet letters. I forgot my triumphs quickly and lingered on defeats for days or months at a time. I was not cut out for that kind of life.

Writing offered a way forward. For whatever reason, the anxiety I felt as an athlete disappeared entirely when I sat in front of a keyboard. I could write and write and write. Who cared about failure? In baseball, I was haunted by the batting average, and the idea that each time you failed to get a hit, your average dropped. You were punished for trying more. There were many times when, satisfied with a 2 for 4 performance or feeling 1 for 3 was about all I would muster that day, I hoped to not hit again. To protect myself. None of that trepidation existed in writing. I could submit all the stories I wanted and no one would even know. I could write novels and not tell anyone. I was free, you see, from public scorn, or what I imagined the public to be—as if anyone cared what my baseball statistics might have been. I do think I was a preternaturally confident writer and I cannot tell you exactly where that came from. I was never, for a moment, anguished. It was all very fun. How to erase anxiety as a writer? I don’t know if I can tell you. It’s like a pitcher being asked where his velocity comes from. Throw harder, I guess.

It helped, in time, to have worldly validation—that drove me on. But I was sure, somehow, I’d make it through, even when accolades and publishing credits were absent. So many of my short stories were rejected. Agents ignored me. In college, I ran for the position of executive editor at our alternative newspaper, the Stony Brook Press, and was defeated. I applied for an intern position at the New York Observer after I graduated and was turned down. Eventually, I got another one, when I was twenty-three, and parlayed it into a staff job there. The lesson? You’ve got to be lucky, of course. And you do have to try. If you’re confident or not—nerve-wracked or not—you’ve got to throw yourself into the arena, regardless. You’ve got to keep writing. I find myself, at thirty-five, in a professional position I rather like. I can’t complain. I do think some of it is talent, some of it is luck, and a good deal of it is persistence. You have to outlast everyone else. That isn’t easy, given the economics of writing. You’ll probably need a day job. But nothing, really, should prevent you from writing and publishing—not in the age of Substack, at least. There’s the cliche about success and showing up, and it’s one I do subscribe to. I show up. I’m a bit dogged, if the adjective conjures the image: a junkyard dog, ragged and slobbering, sinking his fangs into a precious bone.

There’s something else too, another trick native to me, a soft anxiety that helps me write. It causes a mild distress that is alleviated by the act of writing. It’s what precedes my pen to paper, my fingers tittering on the keyboard. I think of it as the rotor. It’s the unseen turning inside of me, the need to produce. The rotor whirs. The rotor asks: what have you done lately? Why aren’t you writing? If I’m home, and I have nothing else to do, I write. I don’t have children; if I did, possibly, my productivity could wane. For a long time, I lived with a romantic partner, and now I live alone, but I was plenty productive either way, even when she was in the apartment with me. I think one secret is, when possible, to let this rotor spin—to never, really, be satisfied. No laurel in my career has convinced me I should write less or take time to reflect on what I’ve done. I believe I am death-haunted; I want to live a very long time but I’ve been aware, since a young age, mortality was going to limit me. Eventually, I’d have to stop. Allegedly, when Huey Long, the great kingpin of Louisiana, lay dying from gunshot wounds, he cried out, “God, don’t let me die. I have so much to do.” Those words have gripped me for more than a decade, since I first read them in T. Harry Williams’ biography of Long. I understood, exactly, what he was feeling. There is so much I’ve yet to write. I am not nearly done. The untimely death, above all, is the unfair death. To be robbed of potentiality is the greatest crime of all.

If I am haunted, perhaps, I am not afraid. Afraid of death, sure, but not of writing or producing work that won’t be of quality or value. And not afraid that I won’t be able to write, that I’ll find myself, one day, devoid of the language suited to the task. It’s plausible I will encounter a moment like this and my breeziness is irrational; writer’s block, like death, might come for us all. On the day after my father died, I published a Substack piece—I wrote most of it on the day of his death—and it occurred to me, right then, nothing would stop me from writing absent a violent physical injury, of the likes that mauled my fingers or caused searing, incapacitating pain. I’ll write through anything else. I am restless and stubborn that way, contentedly restless, and I can’t imagine existing in any other manner. I don’t understand those who write but can’t derive enjoyment from it. Why bother, otherwise? Art, ego, the thrill of creation—it all crashes together, and makes up a writer’s life. My other piece of advice, I suppose, would be to minimize distractions. People aren’t distractions, but technology and entertainments are. Keep the smartphone out of arm’s reach. Save YouTube and the streamers for when you’ve got your work done. Read books and watch your attention span toughen. And if you’ve got the urge to write—if you find it eating and eating at you—go out and meet that urge. Embrace it. Let your words live for others to enjoy them.