The Anti-Interview

The problem with me is that I'm too picky about everything I read. There was a point as a child when I liked just about everything. Then I grew up. Now I'm too discriminating, or critical, depending on how you look at it.

I don't even like my own books. What am I supposed to do if interviewed?

Q. How did you come up with the idea for your first book?'
A. I started writing and it happened.
Q. Which is your favorite book?
A. I don't have a favorite. I hate them all.
Q. Why don't you like them?
A. Clearly, you haven't read my blog, or you would know.
Q. Why do you pursue writing if you don't like what you write?
A. I ask myself that all the time.

The truth is, there comes a point in my creative process where a sordid sort of absolute detestation takes place toward the offspring of my imagination. That's how I know it's finished.
Because, really, if I look at it one more time, I'm going to delete it and start something else that's just plain awful.

It's like Degas who was always redoing his paintings. He'd take them off his friend's walls, spirit them home and work them over again, sometimes ruining them completely. This bears eerie resemblance to myself.

Except Degas was good.

He had one friend who got tired of having the paintings swiped and decided to chain them to the wall.

I don't have anyone who can swipe my computer and lock up my novels and tell me enough is enough though.

Rats.

Why?

Why is the literary world obsessed with the process of becoming damaged?

Why is it considered good writing to write about that process and bad writing to write about healing? The process of becoming undamaged?

Have you noticed in books these days, the ones that show the horrors of humanity with a main character that ends the series emotionally and mentally worse off than when they started, is lauded and extolled as high quality stuff?

Books written, showing the better side of humanity with goodness, hope and forgiveness and a main character that ends a better person than they started, is considered shallow, unrealistic and fluffy?

Why is one point of view more valid than the other? Are we all emotionally bereft? Are we incapable as human beings of improvement, hope and joy? Are those things any less real than depravity, anger and sorrow? Are they not also part of the human experience?

Why aren't the better emotions worthy of exploring in our literary world? Why are they casually dismissed as fluff? Proclaimed to be okay if you want escapism reading, said with a curling sneer on the end of the lips.

Why is only what is depressing, unedifying and angry considered literary?

What is wrong with us?

Book Published - Yikes!

Death bed requests should be taken seriously.

I always thought if I ever got one I would be non-committal and then I wouldn't be obliged one way or another. (At this point you should probably be asking yourself why I'd ever thought through how I would respond to a death bed request.) I underestimated the power of someone I love asking me to do something before she died.

We became friends before she was diagnosed with cancer. I have lupus amongst other nasty things and she came home from a vacation and asked me if my bones hurt. I said no, my joints hurt. She said her bones hurt.  I said that's not normal; go see a doctor. It was bone cancer. Bone cancer is terminal. People don't recover from bone cancer. It was horrible.

I have a lot of health problems, and I mean a lot. I am riddled with chronic illnesses. I don't like people to know the extent to which I've had to modify my life to live with them and thrive but I let her in because she was the only person who, instead of looking at the way I lived my life in horror understood what I was dealing with.We laughed about them.

This is the power of friendship. You can laugh at debilitating chronic illnesses. You can laugh at terminal cancer. We called bone cancer a chronic illness. We laughed at her wig. We laughed at people's reactions. We laughed when I'd get diagnosed with something new. It made it all more bearable.

And we cried. She call when she didn't feel up to visitors. Crying usually happened on the phone, laughing usually happened in person. I guess because if I was with her we were both feeling relatively good.

She mentioned she was running out of things to read during chemo. As a friend I naturally wanted to help with that. I made book suggestions. She wanted to read my book. So I let her. She loved it because she loved me.

It took years for her to go because she is a fighter. I saw her for the last time a few weeks before she died. I knew it was the last time, she knew it was the last time. After that she was in and out of consciousness and slept most of the time. Her family told me she was hardly ever lucid after that and when she was, it wasn't for long. And I got an e-mail.

The e-mail had a request in it. Publish the book.

I didn't want to. I didn't say one way or the other whether I would. I sent a gushy e-mail back. I don't know if she ever saw it.

And then I sat on the book with this request niggling at the back of my head. A year passed and it got worse. I couldn't stop thinking about her and how in the last clear moments she had she'd taken the time to e-mail me and ask me to do something for her. Wasn't her life and her death worth a sacrifice on my part to do this one small thing?

So I published the book. Not enough. I told people about the book. No. I feel I really have to do this thing. Which is simply not my style. I'm a very private person who is effective at masquerading as an open person if the need arises. But she knew me and knew me well and I think any effort I put forth she will understand is uncomfortable and as long as I reach out of my comfort zone it will be enough and maybe that was the motive behind the request.

I miss my friend. No one understood the way she did. And this is for her.