We talked the other day. He’d fallen asleep on the bed. I could hear him almost snoring in there and went in to see what was going on and to wake him up. Across the bed. Strong light straight in his face. Now that’s tired.
I love that we talk. I try to remind myself about that. I didn’t think you could do that with someone you dated. I was missing out.
“Why don’t you publish your work?” He asks.
He never asks about my writing. He accepts that there are things about me he will never get. So I am surprised.
“You could try get it published in Japan if you don’t want people you know to read it.”
“I’m not ashamed of my writing,” I explain. “And either way I don’t think that Japan is the best place for it.”
He looks at me as if he thinks I’m making excuses.
“Besides that is not why I write,” I hurry to add. “I write because I love it. If you write with the purpose of making money you’ve got it all wrong.”
“People make money from writing,” he objects.
“That was not what I meant.” I know that he knows this. He is just humoring me. “I’m just saying that the reward for writing is just that. Writing. If it becomes about money the passion, or even the soul of it, might be lost. Not everything is about money.”
“So how do you expect authors to make a living then?”
“First of all, I am not an author.” I clarify and smile at him. I think it’s cute that he thinks of me as one. “Secondly, you’ve just brought up the most interesting and maybe just the most difficult dilemma that authors have been faced with throughout time. Atwood actually devots a whole chapter to this in her book. She means that some people value a book after the number of copies that it sells and others value the book because it doesn’t sell many copies at all. Something about the artistic value of it all. I don’t strongly believe one nor the other but either way you swing in this matter one thing is very clear; You can’t make a living as an author if you don’t make money on your work.”
“I fail to see your argument against making money on your writing. It seems like that would give you more opportunaty to do what you claim you love.”
“It’s a very versatile problem. The way I look at it is that once you’ve published something there will be expectations if your work is good enough. There will be a follow up. And the follow up will be driven by money and a whole lot of pressure. Once you’ve taken that step you no longer write for yourself and the minute you make that choice it will never be the same. The magic that is writing will be lost.”
“But what if you fail? What if no one cares if you write something else ever again? What if it sucks?”
I have considered this of course, it’s not as if I am
that self absorbed. Chances are that I am just like one of those people who’s been singing in the shower for ten years and had one or two people telling them that they have a wonderful voice. Then when they are standing in front of the Idol jury they are told what they really sound like and are broken down. They’ll stop singing in the shower even though it wasn’t about sounding good as much as it was about
feeling good. Knowing that you suck puts a gigantic cloud over everything.
“Now that would be a whole other kind of bad.” I tell him.
“So what you’re saying is that either way you play it, you can’t win?”
“No, that’s what I am trying to tell you. I
am winning.
Right now. Right now I am doing it for the right reason and I’m loving every minute I’m spending with it. Why risk changing that? For anything?”
“So you’re never gonna publish it?”
He seems very dissapointed about this which is strange because I know that he has the same attitude about his music. And we have thought about publishing it but it always stops at discussing it. Somewhere along the line we realize that publishing it would mean that it would have to end and that is some scary shit.
“Maybe baby,” I smile. “Some day if it feels right.”
