HYPNOTIST: Your email said you wanted help with your profession.

WRITER: That’s right.

HYPNOTIST: Okay, great. So what do you do?

WRITER: I’m a writer.

HYPNOTIST: Wow. That’s fantastic. Anything I might have read?

WRITER: Do you have a tumblr account?

HYPNOTIST: I’m sorry?

WRITER: Never mind.

HYPNOTIST: Okay. Are you suffering from writer’s block?

WRITER: No.

HYPNOTIST: Publishing anxiety?

WRITER: No.

HYPNOTIST: Creative logjam?

WRITER: No.

HYPNOTIST: Sexual dysfunction?

WRITER: What? No. I mean, I don’t think so.

HYPNOTIST: Alright. So what’s the problem you’re having?

WRITER: I want to stop.

HYPNOTIST: Stop… what?

WRITER: Writing. I want to stop being a writer.

Read More

This is a 5,000 word bio for one of the viewpoint characters in my novel. There are five of them.

What in the holy hell is wrong with me? 

I spent much of last night figuring out how to theoretically cause a non-sexual sapient species to feel sexual arousal.

Sometimes being a writer is very, very strange.

Hint: Injections of oxytocin into the cerebrospinal fluid and (eventual) conditional drug response to erotic stimuli should do the trick.

I feel like my job is a place that says, “Sit here and do nothing of substance, wasting yourself, and we will give you enough money to remain fed and housed.”

That’s fine.

What’s not fine is that I say, “Okay.”

I’m coming back from vacation tomorrow… But I think the lake is trying to make me stay.

Where I am.

marybroadbent replied to your post: [ Hallelujah! ]

Dear Jesse, Hooray for your efforts! cannot wait to hear all about the novel from you in person. Hopefully a meet up can be arranged in September perhaps when the weather is cool and the sky is clear! ttfn Mary b

That would be most excellent, Mary B! I’ve been following your cross-country trek with great interest. Right now you’re in my old stomping grounds of Joplin, where reality TV very nearly killed my creative soul. Be wary, my dear.

After five months of heartache (and heartburn), I’m happy to say that the rough draft of the novel (the toilet paper draft) is done.

I’m pleased, but also intimdated. I feel like I’ve finally reached the summit of a steep hill — only to see the gargantuan mountain on the horizon.

My thoughts can be summed up thusly: “Ugh.”

“Aye, most nightmares perish with the dawn; but the ones that linger are the very worst of all.”

“Why?”

“In sunshine you see you were right to be afraid.”

We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

It’s pretty rare that I can’t finish a book. In fact, this is one of only two that I can remember in recent years. The author is a fine enough writer, but I just didn’t find the main character either believable or likable. Further, one of the conceits of the books is that she’s writing to her estranged husband and yet her letters are written like somebody who graduated from a creative writing program with an MFA. I found this extremely annoying and it was, in fact, part of the reason I couldn’t continue past page one hundred.

I’ve heard it gets better toward the end, but I just didn’t have the patience to wade through the rest of it.

View all my reviews