Lately, for, say, three months or so, I just didn't write. I was indulging in the beach scene in the Mayan Riviera, and convinced myself that some R & R would be good for my brain to rest and would give me a chance to marinate it with ideas.
I barely even did enough work to survive for those three months (addressing "the problem of living" as Henry Miller said), and, well, I found that it's hard to let go of a Midwesterner's work ethic. In fact, it made me feel sort of anxious and nervous not to be doing something productive all that time, but I quelled that feeling with phenomenal bouts of drinking.
Maybe the break was good for me; I suppose the measure will be if I get some inspiration and start writing again.
It's not that I have writer's block or anything, in fact, I have at least 4-5 books rolling around in my head. I just can't decide which one to focus on. Because when you write a book, it owns you, or it should; it is in your every thought of the day, you are immersed fully in it, living in it, so as to find every morsel of thought to invest in it. It must be an absolute and total commitment. It consumes you.
I returned to Baja, to the Pacific coast, and on top of feeling I need to get busy again, my writer friend/nemesis Roman, the Crazy Croatian, has finally had some doors open for one of his screenplays at the biggest and best agency in Hollywood. I believe his patience and hard work and single-minded focus is about to pay off.
"Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies." -- Gore Vidal
And so Roman, feeling puffy and proud, took the opportunity the other afternoon to chastise and harangue me about not writing. Using caustic wit and brazen insults, I'll have to admit, I was getting close to punching him in his pompous, fat face. While I piled up the excuses, he noted, "Yes, and in my country it is said that one can shit in a church, if he has an excuse."
I reminded him of my prodigious output in the last few years and also the global reach of some of my tech publications, but he poo-pooed all that, saying, in essence, "If you're so smart why aren't you rich and famous?" My protestations continued.
But I knew he was right. Yes, I have published four books in four genres in four years -- but I can do more, and my best work is ahead of me. Which was another excuse; in essence, "I am gelling ideas and pondering so when I get going the next one is going to be really good."
I didn't really plan on writing much fiction when I went off to the Caribbean beach, in fact, I planned to get in good physical shape and catch up on some reading. Which I did, (to a degree). But mostly I drank colossal amounts of beer and laid in the sun.
I thought that perhaps the vast beauty of the ocean views might inspire me, but there is something about living in a town that has been mostly constructed in the past 20 years that turns me off. No history, no culture, no muse. And the place I stayed in didn't have a full desk, no place for writing to get comfortable.
Roman joked that my shtick should be "the writer who does not write."
Roman reminded me that about a year ago, when he told me of a brilliant writer friend, one who is well beyond even outstanding writers, a genius, but profoundly depressed and not writing. My response was that this man was wasting his gift, and was committing the greatest sin an artist can commit, which is to shun his gift and simply not provide art for the world to enjoy.
Hypocrisy, staring me in the face.
Then the beer and tequila flowed, on my tab, of course, and we visited other important topics such as high-end whorehouses in Rio, group sex (he refuses to ever again have sex with a single woman at a time, as it is just "boring"), heavy drinking, and Hollywood.
