Into the Unknown

a challenge/a practice

Like so many terrible ideas that have bestowed themselves on me, I have to blame Vickie a little bit. PDW readers may remember Vickie from this interview we did in 2020. She also runs a great Substack called Glossing that you should subscribe to if you don’t already. Her horror and sci-fi writing can be found in some pretty rad publications (and the list is growing). In addition to writing, she like running, crafting, cooking, and inhaling the world. One of the ways she inhales the world is through bad ideas.

Case and point: I appear to be writing a book.

Something happens between me and my friend Vickie when we’re together where bad ideas just bubble forth from the ether. It’s usually in the form of a challenge (“hey let’s do 3000 push-ups in a month” “hey let’s run a half marathon” “hey let’s make 25 different vegan cheesecakes” “hey let’s write a young adult novel together” “hey let’s start a podcast where we get drunk off of bizarre liquors one at a time and then go into the history of that liquor”). The most recent of these bad-idea-challenges is a daily writing challenge.

Our goals are simple: she’s working for one hour a day and I’m hitting 500 words a day. We’ve created several arbitrary rules around the challenge because what, I ask, is a challenge without arbitrary rules - rewards at certain check points, punitive measures if we skip a day, etc. What isn’t so simple is the damn writing.

I have several projects simmering on the back burner of my mind. There’s a theatrical/stand-up script I’ve started outlining. There’s a children’s book I want to make with an illustrator friend. There’s a memoir/essay collection that I feel my soul needs to birth. There’s a feature film script that I pitched to my bookclub for the better part of an hour one day to their complete dismay. Are any of these ideas, some with quite a bit of meat on them, the ideas I’m working on for this challenge? No, no they are not.

Instead I appear to be writing a fantasy novel. I say “appear” because I went into this challenge with no actual goal or expectation other than completing the challenge. I say “fantasy” because an ogre showed up on the first page. And I say “novel” because I don’t know what the hell else it could be.

I would like to believe that I’ve gotten fairly proficient at the essay. My poetry is amateur but something I greatly enjoy. I poured my entire personhood into writing a TV show. I’ve written a few short film and web series scripts over the years. I even wrote a pandemic-themed comedy book. But this is my first foray into fiction. I’m finding it…scary.

It’s a scary endeavor because the form is unfamiliar to me. I’m not able to rely on my usual tricks. There’s no safety net or technique I can fall back on. No training is going to carry me through the tough spots. I’m writing into the unknown. Every one of those 500 words lands on the page in total darkness. One by one they clear the path toward…who even knows.

Maybe it’s the thrill-seeker-adrenaline-addict in me but that scary part has turned out to be enjoyable. Writing through this completely unknown territory feels a lot like being on stage. Much like acting or public speaking, there’s this feeling of unpredictability. It’s dangerous. It’s thrilling.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that I picked up my meditation practice again around the time we began the challenge. The two have proven unexpectedly harmonious. Meditation is all about sitting in what is. It’s allowing things to be exactly as they are as each moment unfolds into the next. It’s basically a metaphor for scary writing (and possibly scary anything). Each word put down on the page unfolds into the next. In the absence of tricks and habits, techniques and routines, I’m left with nothing but allowing things to be exactly as they are. For the moment that means letting the writing be bad. Quite bad in fact. Super duper cringy bad.

But Vickie and I, in our infinite wisdom, didn’t set out on a Good Writing Challenge. We simply set out on a Writing Challenge. So to that end it’s been successful thus far.

While I don’t know if this will one day turn itself into a real actual book I do know the process of writing has been enjoyable and thrilling. Enjoyable and thrilling is precisely the kind of life I want to be living. And the worst case scenario is that I don’t complete a book. That might be a bummer but at least I have my drunk podcast and 25 cheesecakes to fall back on in the meantime.