Are We Blood Suckers?
Last night I was woken up by a mosquito.
Before I registered its existence, my eyes opened. I sensed a presence. And then there it was, in my right ear.
Bzzt.
My body went stiff. A second later, the assault of another buzz, in the other ear, left me paralyzed. I’ve been here before. I’m not sure I would be able to get back to sleep with a mosquito dive-bombing in to suck my blood, but I knew that if my partner woke up — if that thing buzzed in his ear, or if I made a slap at it that clued him off that there was a mosquito in the room — he would turn on the light, fly out of bed, and hunt until it had been searched and destroyed.
So I lay still. The next time I heard the attack buzzsaw sound, I smacked—hard and fast and (I wish) quietly — my own ear. I missed, and the sound woke my bf. He stalked the bloodsucker, crouching, the light from his phone like a torch in the jungle.
For what felt like hours. Finally, a solid smack and a celebratory yelp told me that the mosquito had been neutralized.
I don’t know about you, but I prize my sleep dearly. I kill most of the lights and turn my phone off hours before bed; light signals the body to stop releasing melatonin, which is needed for a deep sleep. The power of an eight hour sleep, complete with REM cycles, is crucial to a productive circadian rhythm — and therefore crucial to a productive #writerlife.
In the morning, as I write, I’m dead. It was a hot night, which was why the window was open a mosquito’s breadth. I hardly slept. This morning my bf darted off to the office at the regular time. I don’t dart off to the office. I work from home. Every day I take my fate into my own hands. I decide each day’s schedule, because through a combination of easy, path of least resistance gigs and the certainty that the social anxiety that makes me frightened of my own shadow and the shadows of other humans makes me not suitable for the workplace (NSFW), I work for myself.
Today I’m an editor. I line edit and creatively guide independently published writing. I want to be a writer, full time, of fiction, mostly, and perhaps a bit of journalism. Like Ernest Hemingway. Why dream small?
Each day, REM sleep or no, I need to decide whether the old schedule is working, or whether I need a fresh managerial strategy. How to shape the ideal workday that will yield the highest quality work product. I will A/B test the best strategy to get productivity out of my workers (my hands, my brain cells). I cast aside the existing paradigm, dabble in competing philosophies, iterate between what works and what doesn’t, and find the sweet spot in the middle. My team is made up of me, lesser and better versions, and I’m my own manager.
Writers write. The only way to a full-time writing life is to start now and do everything. Write every day, write like the wind, write copiously, fearlessly, prolifically, write a daily word count goal between two thousand and TEN thousand words, write blog posts, write shorts, write a novel in one month, write poetry. Even if it’s no good.
Especially if it’s no good?
Complete a manuscript draft. Put it aside for thirty days. Like Stephen King says in our bible, On Writing. Write something new (write your agent query letter).
Re-write your draft, revise it, join a writing group, find a critique partner, and solicit feedback from Beta readers who are not your friends and are definitely not related to you.
But start with your dad.
(My dad’s response to mine: “Too many names I couldn’t pronounce. I couldn’t keep track of the characters.” Some dads aren’t into fantasy. God forbid were I to write a book about the town I lived in in Zacatecas where the men were all named Augustín, not to mention the four Marianas who went by Marianita, Mari, Marianis and Jael.)
Now you need an agent. Agents prefer to sign writers who have a story published, a byline in a respected publication, and a platform consisting of a blog with traffic and a social media empire (just a small one). Attend classes, workshops, seminars, and conventions. Improve your craft elements. Revise again, with your new #writingskills and beta feedback. If you can land a teensy TV interview, great. If you can get J.K. Rowling to retweet your MS pitch, even better.
In response to a recent New York Times article about how to productively work from home: You won’t.
You won’t work productively. You won’t get out of bed early, you won’t shower and dress as if you were going into the workplacce. You won’t get work done at your local coffee shop. The keys will fall off your laptop keyboard when you need them the most, and if you don’t have a 9 to 5, how will you be able to pay Apple to repair them? You won’t have the flexibility to get in a workout. You won’t keep work tasks separate from housework. You won’t sleep better, soar to new heights, be more creative, have more time for family and relationships, or go from drafting to publishing a book in six months.
With a few hours of missed sleep, I’m brain dead, even after coffee. But every day I wake up, it’s a chance to start over. I write. I take my fate into my own hands, and I have to decide whether the old paradigm is working. Do I solicit an agent, or do I post my novel piece by piece as a Medium serial? Do I beg Beta readers to take pity on my chapters, or do I push my work into the hands of other writers with tweet after insistent tweet?
The full-time work-from-home writer life will not be easy. I’m hoping, though, to have a fulfilling, weird, out-of-sync experience of life in this world, showering when I want to and never checking my email. It puts the nine to five into perspective. Working for yourself, it’s never unclear what’s really worth the limited time we have in a day (or in the middle of the night when there’s a mosquito to be dealt with).
Why do I say I’m like the mosquito? If you’re a writer, you know. You know there will be blood. You know you will squeeze blood out of a stone, if you have to. You will pry meaning out of every life experience you have and pry the best moments out of you, begging them to mean something to someone else. You will suck the life force out of the everyday; the mess you made when you smashed a glass in the kitchen when you should have been writing becomes an anecdote and a symbol of your guilt. You take from everywhere, don’t you? Or won’t you? Stories from your friends, tales overheard from you enemies. You take it all, and pour it into your work.
The only question is where can I suck next?
