It's hard to describe the feelings around finishing a novel. And I mean a real book... not some formulaic piece of detritus that's more than likely complied by rhesus monkeys addicted to cocaine, locked in a chamber (I'm calling you out, Ms. Picoult). No... I mean a real book, something that you've spent months of your life on. Because unlike certain charlatans, a novel isn't just a five-step process pumped out in a couple of weeks.
No, a first draft of a manuscript is something so intimate, so personal... it's almost impossible to describe it with accuracy. You spend so much time locked away in your head and in your room (or wherever you work), spending countless hours with people that are only real to you. You develop relationships with them. You start to view your protagonist as a friend and your villain as... well fuck, a villain. Pretty straightforward, isn't it? But it's entirely natural. After all, if you're putting in the amount of time that your work deserves... then it's inevitable that you start to connect with these figments. You know absolutely everything there is to know about them, more than even potential readers will ever discover. They are your lovers; your siblings; your parents; your children. They are you.
For a long time now, I've had a set tradition for when I finish a novel. I feel like that's one of the few stereotypical procedures in writing that I actually agree with. No matter what's going on in my life, whatever obligations I have... it's the same. I buy a bottle of Glenlivet 12 and I drink, usually alone, while I listen to early Bob Dylan. I can't honestly say how this tradition of mine started, but it's been around now for so long that I can't think of doing anything else at the end of the long road called writing. I can't really even explain why I do it. Yes, I love scotch... and Glenlivet is a personal favorite. And Bob Dylan is the greatest song writer of all time, at least in my world. But how those two came together? Who the fuck cares? They did and they still do, so let it go.
What really matters is the ritual itself. I've tried explaining it before but it usually falls on relatively deaf ears. And I don't blame anyone for that: in fact, it's a strong probability that it's my inability to appropriately articulate my feelings at this point. The best I can do is provide a parable... a story from the past.
It was several years ago and I was a relatively new arrival in the City of Angels. I hadn't met a lot of people yet and coming from years in the same place, New York... I found it distressing. A few nights before I finished the book I was working on, I spent a night at the Frolic Room in Hollywood. A remarkably old and unpretentious place situated on Hollywood Boulevard, it had served as a watering hole for countless names from Tinseltown lore. I was sitting at the bar, several martinis deep, when I had an idea for the last chapter. I pulled out my Moleskine notebook and started jotting down ideas, written in my hieroglyphics-meets-chickscratch shorthand. I was so consumed and distracted by the images and sensations passing through my mind that I oblivious to the young woman sitting next to me, asking me what I was doing.
When I finally snapped back to reality, it turned out I had been effectively ignoring her for almost twenty minutes. Normally such an action would drive people away, but this chestnut haired bhikku wouldn't give up so easily: on the contrary, my obsessive focus seemed to increase her curiosity. Once I was part of the routine world once again, she pounced... striking up a conversation. She repeated her question, asking me what I was working on. I replied, demurely and dismissively, talking about the idea for the chapter. When she found out I was writing down ideas for a book, a crocodile grin spread over her face, her eyes alight.
"You're working on a novel," she asked. "What are you doing in this town, then?"
I couldn't help but laugh at the outburst. Turns out, she was a New York transplant who had come out to Los Angeles for college and had yet to find her way back. I remember making a joke about how I felt bad for her, leaving NYC... to which she laughed and simply said,
"Any place is interesting, as long as you make it so." Despite the fact that I was older and had experienced a lot more in my life... those simply words put a pause in my mind.
We ended up going back to my place where, unlike my usual encounters with women at a bar, all we did was listen to records and drink whiskey. We both fell asleep on my couch around the time the sun broke the horizon. We spent a lot of time together over the next couple of days: despite our incredibly adolescent friendship, I felt a spark of kinship with her. And so on the night that I finished the book I was working on, I called her and asked her to come over.
She arrived soon after. I had waited on uncorking the Glenlivet, but the minute she was in my apartment I put on "Bob Dylan Unplugged: Series 4 - Live at the Royal Albert Hall, 1966" and poured two glasses of Glenlivet. We spent some time in silence, listening to music and drinking the scotch. But as the night progressed... I sunk into a melancholy.
She couldn't understand why. She asked if I was unhappy with the book, if I was giving up on writing. Of course, the answer to both questions was a solid no. I just felt sad. She couldn't wrap her head around it; she kept telling me I should be happy and, more importantly... proud. I felt joy for finishing the piece, and I was immensely proud of it. But I had spent almost a year with those characters, walking in the world I had made for them. By finishing I felt as if I were losing dear friends. And thanks to the maudlin tones of Dylan and the effects of scotch on the brain, I started thinking about the life I had left behind in New York. I remembered every crazy night with my friends and family at the Four Faced Liar; I remembered afternoons spent outside the Music Inn, playing sitar with guitar toting troubadours; and I remembered all of the people that I had lost in those years, friends who were taken and lost to chance and consequence.
That's the whole point of this, I guess. There is a bittersweetness in finishing a book, an action where you create a whole world and the people who inhabit it. They become a part of you, people you actually laugh with and who are crutches when your actual life becomes painful. When their time comes to an end and it's time for you to say goodbye... it brings to mind all of the lives you have lived, all of the past memories that you can never reclaim and the friends you can never embrace again. Finishing a manuscript is a metaphorical death, and as such... it reminds us of death. And the reaction is the same: we mourn all that we've lost... yet we also celebrate all that we've gained.
At least that's how I do. Hence... Bob Dylan and Glenlivet 12.
No, a first draft of a manuscript is something so intimate, so personal... it's almost impossible to describe it with accuracy. You spend so much time locked away in your head and in your room (or wherever you work), spending countless hours with people that are only real to you. You develop relationships with them. You start to view your protagonist as a friend and your villain as... well fuck, a villain. Pretty straightforward, isn't it? But it's entirely natural. After all, if you're putting in the amount of time that your work deserves... then it's inevitable that you start to connect with these figments. You know absolutely everything there is to know about them, more than even potential readers will ever discover. They are your lovers; your siblings; your parents; your children. They are you.
For a long time now, I've had a set tradition for when I finish a novel. I feel like that's one of the few stereotypical procedures in writing that I actually agree with. No matter what's going on in my life, whatever obligations I have... it's the same. I buy a bottle of Glenlivet 12 and I drink, usually alone, while I listen to early Bob Dylan. I can't honestly say how this tradition of mine started, but it's been around now for so long that I can't think of doing anything else at the end of the long road called writing. I can't really even explain why I do it. Yes, I love scotch... and Glenlivet is a personal favorite. And Bob Dylan is the greatest song writer of all time, at least in my world. But how those two came together? Who the fuck cares? They did and they still do, so let it go.
What really matters is the ritual itself. I've tried explaining it before but it usually falls on relatively deaf ears. And I don't blame anyone for that: in fact, it's a strong probability that it's my inability to appropriately articulate my feelings at this point. The best I can do is provide a parable... a story from the past.
It was several years ago and I was a relatively new arrival in the City of Angels. I hadn't met a lot of people yet and coming from years in the same place, New York... I found it distressing. A few nights before I finished the book I was working on, I spent a night at the Frolic Room in Hollywood. A remarkably old and unpretentious place situated on Hollywood Boulevard, it had served as a watering hole for countless names from Tinseltown lore. I was sitting at the bar, several martinis deep, when I had an idea for the last chapter. I pulled out my Moleskine notebook and started jotting down ideas, written in my hieroglyphics-meets-chickscratch shorthand. I was so consumed and distracted by the images and sensations passing through my mind that I oblivious to the young woman sitting next to me, asking me what I was doing.
When I finally snapped back to reality, it turned out I had been effectively ignoring her for almost twenty minutes. Normally such an action would drive people away, but this chestnut haired bhikku wouldn't give up so easily: on the contrary, my obsessive focus seemed to increase her curiosity. Once I was part of the routine world once again, she pounced... striking up a conversation. She repeated her question, asking me what I was working on. I replied, demurely and dismissively, talking about the idea for the chapter. When she found out I was writing down ideas for a book, a crocodile grin spread over her face, her eyes alight.
"You're working on a novel," she asked. "What are you doing in this town, then?"
I couldn't help but laugh at the outburst. Turns out, she was a New York transplant who had come out to Los Angeles for college and had yet to find her way back. I remember making a joke about how I felt bad for her, leaving NYC... to which she laughed and simply said,
"Any place is interesting, as long as you make it so." Despite the fact that I was older and had experienced a lot more in my life... those simply words put a pause in my mind.
We ended up going back to my place where, unlike my usual encounters with women at a bar, all we did was listen to records and drink whiskey. We both fell asleep on my couch around the time the sun broke the horizon. We spent a lot of time together over the next couple of days: despite our incredibly adolescent friendship, I felt a spark of kinship with her. And so on the night that I finished the book I was working on, I called her and asked her to come over.
She arrived soon after. I had waited on uncorking the Glenlivet, but the minute she was in my apartment I put on "Bob Dylan Unplugged: Series 4 - Live at the Royal Albert Hall, 1966" and poured two glasses of Glenlivet. We spent some time in silence, listening to music and drinking the scotch. But as the night progressed... I sunk into a melancholy.
She couldn't understand why. She asked if I was unhappy with the book, if I was giving up on writing. Of course, the answer to both questions was a solid no. I just felt sad. She couldn't wrap her head around it; she kept telling me I should be happy and, more importantly... proud. I felt joy for finishing the piece, and I was immensely proud of it. But I had spent almost a year with those characters, walking in the world I had made for them. By finishing I felt as if I were losing dear friends. And thanks to the maudlin tones of Dylan and the effects of scotch on the brain, I started thinking about the life I had left behind in New York. I remembered every crazy night with my friends and family at the Four Faced Liar; I remembered afternoons spent outside the Music Inn, playing sitar with guitar toting troubadours; and I remembered all of the people that I had lost in those years, friends who were taken and lost to chance and consequence.
That's the whole point of this, I guess. There is a bittersweetness in finishing a book, an action where you create a whole world and the people who inhabit it. They become a part of you, people you actually laugh with and who are crutches when your actual life becomes painful. When their time comes to an end and it's time for you to say goodbye... it brings to mind all of the lives you have lived, all of the past memories that you can never reclaim and the friends you can never embrace again. Finishing a manuscript is a metaphorical death, and as such... it reminds us of death. And the reaction is the same: we mourn all that we've lost... yet we also celebrate all that we've gained.
At least that's how I do. Hence... Bob Dylan and Glenlivet 12.
