Nick Holmberg's Blog

Orlando: A Biography by Virginia Woolf

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


A book for all artists; a book for all humanists. Not sure why it took so long for me to get around to reading this masterpiece, but the timing couldn’t be better as I finish my second novel with many of the same themes surrounding why we create art, why we live.



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“Running was an accounting of my spirit. It was my holy hour.”

Inspirational fiction isn’t exactly my MO, as many of you know. But in taking a week off to write this story last week, I found some much-needed solace from the difficult topics in my current long work-in-progress. Take a quick read, give it a thumbs up on the Reedsy page, and leave a comment. Thanks for reading.

https://blog.reedsy.com/short-story/habk5e

Maybe you’ll think I’m in need of medication when I profess my love for the writing process. If I talk about the creative process too much, I will quickly veer off topic. Besides, it might get a little woo-woo metaphysical, a little florid, a little poetical. Hell, even a little mystical.

You see, I don’t want to write about the writer’s hustle. I don’t want to admit the sheer volume of time I spend in endless social media algorithmic guessing games (AKA shamelessly self-promoting into the void). I don’t want to admit how jaded I can become at the bowing and scraping I have to do, much of which is for naught. Every time I send out a query or a short story, my dignity—indeed, my spirit—is implicitly threatened. The incessant trickle-trickle drip-drip of rejections that I have gotten over the years is enough to drive me to quit writing altogether. Why would I want to relive all those little traumas? I would much rather write about the recursive nature of writing and editing, the very cycle of creation and destruction in the process of creating worthwhile art.

See? Told you. Borderline woo-woo.

You might say I have a problem. When I hear “No” from a publisher, I reply, “Thank you! May I have another?” There’s plenty of evidence that I’m masochistic in this regard, as I have been trying to get short stories published for over twenty years (order my first published story today). And before my debut novel, The Emergent, was hybrid-published, it took nearly two decades of crafting it with elements of psychological mystery, coming-of-age, family saga, and magical realism. I must be glutton for punishment, thinking for a long while that a modern traditional publisher or agent would have accepted an unknown white hetero dude writing from at least two appropriated perspectives.

I won’t write here about all the hustle and general insanity it takes to get others to publish your work. Contact me to set up a consultation. Suffice it to say that, as an independent writer, getting my writing to market took hustle. Or delusion. Take your pick. But, being an un-agented genre-defying writer makes the hustle-delusion that much more acute.

Instead of focusing on my long line of failures in winning the approval of publishers and lit magazine editorial boards, I’d rather write about the more interesting side of the hustle: talking to folks about the woo-woo side of my writing process. You don’t need the gory details here about endless submissions. What should come across in this post is my love of writing. And trying to prove to publishers what I already know—that my writing is good or that water is wet—is a necessary evil. Once I accepted that the popularity and profit are inaccurate gauges for quality, my job as a writer became easier.

And in an ideal world, popularity and profit would not drive your artistic endeavors.

I’m not saying any of this to portray myself as something I’m not. I ain’t a bloviating egotistical writer-type, despite what my rant here may tell you. I’m simply a writer-type. No stereotypical egotism. Just a writer-type.

Better that than a typewriter. What a life. Born to get punched.

To flog a pun into a bad metaphor, being a writer-type really does mean rolling with the punches, all the small jabs along the way can slowly wear you down over years or, in my case, decades. Fortunately for me (and the folks who have heard me speak at public libraries, on podcasts, or on WHO-TV’s “Hello, Iowa”), the act of writing has never felt like a chore—even when I’m trying to repair the gaping plot holes and stumbles in poetic narratives caused by me killing my darlings. Creative writing has never been work (if it were, I should have demanded a higher wage and maybe some health bennies!). And writing has been only moderately about my quest for Steinbeck-like fame (that dude had ideas that resonated, he had ideas that he researched, wrote about, published to a wide audience, discussed, and defended. All this, he did for a living).

Even if you’re not like me—masochistic, self-proclaimed spiritual being intent on being all Steinbeckian and shit—, a published independent writer cannot just sit back and watch their baby go out in the world. This is to say, if you watch and hope for the best, your book will easily get lost in the sea of 4 million books that are published each year. No matter how you publish—self, hybrid, or traditional—hustle after publication is the name of the game.

The decades I have been tapping away on my laptop writing my great American novel have been instructional to my inner life. It has been a spiritual practice to wake and write every morning at 5 AM to create and coax my darlings to do my bidding—or a reasonable facsimile thereof. But over the last year and a half since the release of my novel, the hustle—booking, preparing for, and travelling to attend events—has taken energy. And it takes energy to poorly conjure super-keyworded and algorithmically steroidal social media content. All this promotional energy often has usurped time for my cherished, protected one-hour process practice: my daily 5 AM communion with syntax, vocabulary, and structure.

That said, all the hustle has led to fulfillment; by year’s end, I will have done twenty events. As a result, I have gotten to be a little Steinbeckian, chatting with folks about researching my novel, discussing its overt and subversive themes, and defending my artistic vision.

Circa Spring 2001. This brief first stint teaching in the classroom deserves mention. I took prep classes for the CBEST so I could pass the math portion of the substitute teacher test in California. I passed and got my first gig subbing at a high school. Let’s just say that passing some standardized test does not prepare you to teach. And when those students are a mere four or five years younger than you, it makes even less difference. I was battling some pretty serious imposter syndrome at that point, so I withered under the pressure; I didn’t return to the classroom for several more years.

Still on the fence about reading the The Emergent? Or have you read it and want to know what someone else thinks? The novel got a good review in the local arts & culture magazine, Little Village. Take a read here.

After I quit the Therma desk job, the bartending job fell through. With nowhere else to turn, I went with shameface back to bar life in a different way – barely making a dime while combining bouncer jobs in downtown SJ at South First Billiards and The Flying Pig Pub. Falling far from the glory of slinging drinks and doing my own bouncing in an old West saloon, I was now checking IDs and hoping I wouldn’t have to break up fights. I’ve had some shitty jobs in my day, but these two that make up job #11 were the worst. Like other crappy jobs I’ve had, the ego was bruised so the humiliation was magnified.

I would say the book giveaway on Goodreads was a success. I want to share a little secret about the United States Postal Service. If you are sending hard copies of your books out to patrons, contests, and book fairs in the US, save money by using the book rate. When you go to the post office, just ask your packages to be sent using media mail for a ~50% savings. Slightly slower delivery speed than with regular mail, but well worth it if you have a little extra time.

“They” are a mysterious force in a kid’s life. And because “they” said it was what I was “supposed” to do upon graduation from SJSU, I quit my bar job for a desk job—the integrity of my writing dreams be damned. It is an example in my life where I can clearly see how things would have turned out completely different had I taken the other path. The bar job would have—in theory, at least— allowed me to practice writing during the days. You see, I was young and could have recovered from all the hangovers after shifts to read all the books and write all the stories. At minimum, I should have kept a couple shifts to see how the desk job panned out.

But the desk job sucked all the life out of me—and crushed creativity. I was a technical editor of standard operating procedures at an engineering firm called Therma. For someone with absolutely zero engineering in his background—not to mention, no coursework in technical writing—, the job felt as pointless and boring as it sounds. The things we do for our resumes, our health insurance, and $15 bucks an hour. With the prospect of a bartending job in a restaurant in Santa Cruz, I quit Therma after six months.

The picture was taken around that time and is representative of me at that time. The birdie is directed at “they” who said I was “supposed” to quit the fame and fortune of bartending for the “security” of an 8-to-5.

The Caravan Lounge was as close to an Old West saloon (or the Cantina on Tatooine) as you could find in downtown San Jose. And starting in the spring of 1998, pouring drinks there was a perfect job for a 21-year-old SJSU English major undergrad aspiring to be a writer. With a Greyhound station and a by-the-hour-or-month motel just next door, the cast of characters rotating though from 6AM to 2AM was…eclectic. And sometimes violent; I often had to jump the bar to break up fights. But, fueled on pre-shift martinis at the bar around the corner as well as all-I-could-drink in-shift shots of Jameson and The Champagne of Beers, I was invincible. And sexy as hell.

[NOTE: don’t ever date a bartender; they’re all sluts.]

My schedule was ideal for a college kid: Thursday to Saturday, usually not starting until ~9PM. I pulled in more money than I could in twice the time at my previous job. And, because I had so much more free time during the week, my study habits actually improved during my ~2 years working there. This is quite shocking, given that, on shift nights, I wasn’t going to bed until 3:30AM (at the earliest).

I’d like to thank beer-drinking hockey fans for making possible my sabbatical from school in the fall of 1997; your contributions were significant to my young life. My older colleagues deserve some credit for helping build my self-confidence (I was once a timid field mouse).

Because my brother was a Theta Chi, I achieved an honorary frat brother status in my high school days (note: I got Greek life out of my system by the time I arrived as a student at SJSU); my brother also worked at Spaghetti Factory and Gordon Biersch Brewery Restaurant. Therefore, I had some connections to the service industry. In the fall of 1996, I landed the job at the Tied House Brew Pub on San Pedro Square. I made significant cash as a busser, especially off the pre-gaming Sharks fans who regularly flooded that establishment.

I saved up enough money in a year to pay my own way for a 2-month journey to 11 North American cities (early September thru end October 1997; it should be noted that my parents paid for school and half my rent and, with the promise that I’d return to school in Spring 1998, were cool with me taking a semester off). I got promoted to waiter not long after I got back from that journey. And I started saving for my first car.