Ashton Goggans? Are you still there li'l pussy?
Did you know that November is prostate
health awareness month? Of course you did. But do you participate?
Do you grow your moustache in order to celebrate Movember? I hope
you do. Prostate health is very important etc. I’ve been sporting a
moustache for the past two years but shave it off every November
just so passerbys don’t confuse me for someone with a moral
conscious. I don’t have one and it would be a rude sleight of hand
to pretend I do.
November is also National Novel Writing Month and you didn’t
know that but should. Novels are more interesting than prostates,
or I’m guessing. I’ve only written one and started four and none
will ever see the light of day. Even so, my literary agent (the
absolute best in the world) allowed me to write a piece on “Why I
Write” to celebrate NaNoWriMo and I decided to share with you too
since you are the ones who put up with me every single day of the
week, multiple times.
Sorry but without further ado…
I like to write more than almost anything. I like to write more
than I like to surf, more than I like to shop in label-hooker
shops. More than I like feeling the warm sun on my face. Writing
came to me not because I have any talent, at all, but because I
fell in love with writers. I wanted to be Albert Camus with his
flipped collar and jaunty cigarette. I wanted to be Tom Wolfe in
his impeccable white suit. I wanted to be Norman Mailer, boozy
Norman Mailer, getting in fights, getting beat up by rivals,
getting laughed off the stage after delivering an awful boozy
performance.
Writers eclipse all the stars of the universe, who could
possibly disagree, and the only way to become a writer was to
write.
Just after 9/11 my two best friends in the world and I went to
Yemen to be the first ever surfers up its mainland coast. I had
heard on the news that Osama bin Laden’s family had come from the
hills surrounding the city Al Mukallah, found it on a map and
stared at the coastline. There had to be surf there. Just had to
be.
We financed the trip, partially, by pitching stories to surf
magazines even though none of us had ever written more than a
school paper. My friend Josh would write for Surfer and I’d write
for Australia’s Surfing Life. Months later we were there, wild
explorers living literary dreams. We were like Livingston, Burton
and T.E. Lawrence with his steely blue eyes pointing out across the
desert.
We found surf, yes, got in trouble, very much so, and lived by
the seat of our threadbare boardshorts for three months. Al-Qaeda
chases, shootouts, pirate encounters, etc. The story should have
written itself.
Except I wrote it.
I remember feeling like a future Pulitzer Prize winner as I
punched my computer keys. I was doing the exact same that Evelyn
Waugh, Joan Didion and Hunter S. Thompson had done. I was one of
them. Maybe not exactly one but in the room or maybe in the yard. I
emailed the story to the editor, pleased as pie, then went out to
the mailbox to wait for the issue to arrive in the mail.
Three further months later it was there. I ripped off the
plastic sheath, threw the surf DVD aside, furiously pawed through
the pages and found my story.
It was the worst thing anyone had ever written on earth.
Pompous, ill-informed, narcissistic, horribly paced, littered with
first person-pronouns. I buried my head in my hands, all dreams
crushed, all hopes dashed.
I would never be a writer.
A few months later found my two best friends and me in Lebanon,
working on a story for Vice. Josh, writing well and smartly, kept
sending stories in which came back with notes before I decided to
give it a crack, writing a pompous, ill-informed, narcissistic,
horribly paced piece littered with first-person pronouns.
Vice accepted it instantly and look at me now. Look at me, damn
it. In all truth, though, I have fallen deeply, hopelessly in love
with writing and will never stop again even if I’m my only
audience.
Narcissistic Nirvana!
