My Pornography

Writing isn't easy. Probably, I could write that line a million times, and that would say better whatever it is I'm trying to say. I'm working on my novel. The title is Happy. It was born out of my experiences in Porn Valley. It isn't easy. Not only is it hard to write, but I don't know what to say about it, so I say not a lot. Writing is crazy-making. Writing about these things made me crazy in the past. At this point in the story, my main character is going crazy, and that means it's like he and I are on a seesaw, and sometimes I'm up and he's down, and sometimes I'm down and he's up, and it's a lot like a battle, and nobody knows who wins in the end.

It's about pink salons, soaplands, and geisha bars. It's psycho-noir, apocalyptic tomorrows, dogs in nightmares. It's the story of waterboarders and whales, IEDs and pornography, Happy and Chance. I read an interview in I can't remember where with an author who had written a mystery, and the interviewer asked about the ending of the story, and the writer said something to the effect of why would he have written the book if he'd known what was going to happen in the end? Writing is like walking down the street blindfolded, and you're being led by a blind man.

Did you know Faulkner wrote As I Lay Dying in six weeks? On a turned over wheelbarrow? Working nights at a power plant? True or false? Does it really matter? When it comes to putting words on paper, what's made up is more true than what's real. Faulkner: "Given the choice between the experience of pain and nothing, I would choose pain." When you write blind, the words spill out on the page, and you can't help but see yourself.

What's this book about? The more I write, the less I know. Porn? I doubt it. Death? Maybe. PTSD? Suicide? Insanity? Yes, all that, too. But I don't know. In a way, I guess you have to turn a blind eye to it while you do it. Otherwise, you trip yourself up on your own psychoanalysis, the blind man leaves, and there's nothing left but you and the yawning chasm of the white page.

I am sure of one thing. Writing is lonely. The loneliest.