After thirteen months of exhilaration, horror, brain death and suicidal ideation, I have just now completed the next novel, my thirty-second book of fiction, a novel called "No Direction Home." How do I feel? Let me quote the last paragraph of my essay, “This Monkey, My Back,” in which I liken writing fiction to a drug habit: “That’s the beauty of this addiction—you have to move on, no retirement here, look out ahead, though you can’t see where you’re going. First you have nothing, and then, astonishingly, after ripping out your brain and your heart and betraying your friends and ex-lovers and dreaming like a zombie over the page till you can’t hear or smell or taste, you have something. Something new. Something of value. Something to hold up and admire. And then? Well, you’ve got a jones, haven’t you? And you start out all over again, with nothing.”
Post-partum depression? No time for that. In the days before computers I would spend the succeeding month after completion in typing a clean final draft on the manual Olivetti my mother gave me when I went to college, an almost Medieval task that completely absorbed me in the way, I suppose, that the feel of the clay must absorb the sculptor. (Lordy, what powerful fingers I had, fingers of steel, fingers that could balance the whole world and not spill a drop!) Now I go back to page 1, make my emendations, scour for continuity, sense and emotion, then hit send and wing it to my agent, who gives me the full benefit of his eyeballs and brain, then in turn pushes send and wings it over to my editor.
Okay. Fine. Electronic magic. But what am I going to do with myself now? There is the beach, where I appear most days, early in the fog of morning, and then later, either to read and take a splash or work the paddle of a kayak. And, of course, all this is by way of hobby, as my true vocation is cleaning up after Frau Boyle and making sure all her needs are consummately met. As those of you who follow me on X or at tcboyle.com will know, I work cyclically with regard to my books—novel, half a book of stories, novel, second half of the book of stories—and so, that is where I am now. The first six stories for the next collection were written before I started the just-completed novel, and I hope now, as the year gets leaner and colder and wetter and shows its starveling teeth, to turn back to short stories. You’ve seen some of the previous six in The New Yorker and Esquire and most recently (“The Maneater”) in the current issue of Narrative.
Whew! Crank the music! I’m done!
(For now, anyway.)