For a few years now I have thought more about Henry, Rose and the others than myself. Perhaps this is a form of self-sacrifice. Caring about characters is not the same as caring about people.
Each morning my belly aches with pangs. But I let them echo. It’s good to hold onto each discomfort and feel it. I know I might sound…afflicted. I have learned is all. That my troubles begin when I try to escape discomfort. So long as I experience my pain I keep things on track. Call it a form of bracketing. A sensor indicating when I’ve gone too far left or right.
I hold the pangs. Remember aches are a sign of growth. When asking myself which direction I choose the one that feels hardest. It’s a strong rubric. Not perfect. But strong. I take another sip of coffee (now lukewarm) and think there is nothing worse than a man who does not know himself. I’m okay with abrasive people. They have definition.
I sit in a red recliner. Look out the blurry window at a Narnia lamppost leaned to the side. On my right I have a cactus and a lamp. Many books I am reading at once and slowly. Sometimes people comment about writing with feeling. But it’s not really a choice. I think, if I had no feeling, I would not be able to write at all. I can’t write from any other place. Which sounds like limitation to me. I always worry that the feeling will stop. Until I survey the world’s landscape. Then I’m reassured.
I have been writing 20XX for three very continuous years now. No, it is not my first novel. I wrote others. Completed them. Shelved them. A writer must know what to shelve and what to share. The novel has taken many forms. Its earliest form wasn’t even my own. It took a lot of hell to make it mine. Stepping into your identity as a writer hurts. All becoming hurts. In this process we face the truth about who we are which means we face the truth about who we are not. That is every writer’s greatest fear: confronting who he is not. We would rather not look too closely. The answer might declare us fraudulent.
Let me name an author I admire. Kurt Vonnegut Jr. It’s my opinion that elegant satire is some of the most challenging writing. Bradbury writes thin form satire. So thin you sometimes have to double take to be sure it was satire at all. The best satire follows the spectrum to a place where the reader wonders is this a joke or is this real?
Kurt has a voice in satire so unique it is hard to imagine anyone replicating it well. Who else could write about the bombing of Dresden and aliens?
Naturally, I wanted to emulate his work. Who hasn’t tried emulating their heroes? That was how 20XX began. As emulation. Actually it began here: look how screwed up America is. All this fodder for satire and nobody’s using it.
Seriously. I couldn’t believe no one was taking advantage of the hysteria in this country to write good satire. So I conceived a highly satirical examination of broad spectrum American society. My Cat’s Cradle if you will.
At the time I was sitting in Dane County Jail. My sentencing was still months away. I found some Vonnegut books and devoured them. Remembered why I loved his writing. That was July of 2021. It was November when it came time to transfer to the penitentiary. As the day approached I had one chief concern. Would I be able to take my text?
I have always had a single fear. Any writer worth his salt can relate. Losing my manuscript. I would rather be crucified, burned at the stake or forced to swim with piranha. It’s irrational. But writing in solitude for years is also irrational. And no one had a very convincing answer about this. The short of it: there was no reason for the prison intake to toss my manuscript. But then again they didn’t need reasons to take my property and trash it. Wouldn’t matter to them.
So I sent the 240 or so penciled pages to my belongings for my father to pick up. Figured he could mail it back to me when I reached my final destination.
Except that never happened. In the following weeks the Wisconsin corrections system adapted its mailing policies and I never saw those pages again. Not until I arrived home two years later.
It was my Hadley moment. The story goes that Hadley went to Hemingway in Switzerland with a suitcase of all his stories and carbons. Along the way she left the suitcase out of sight. While unattended it was taken. Like Ernest I went through a significant depression. Made worse by my stone wall conditions.
I smile now as I think back. It was the best thing that ever happened. In my depression I began to write and this time, for the first time, my real voice emerged. I stopped fighting my nature and took my first doddering steps toward the stylism that would become my own. It was the start of a great journey that would see me through prison and up to the present moment.
A lesson in acceptance. And also a liberation. I can now read authors I admire and say that person is great at writing in their form and their style but it is not my form and style. I smile now because I have a form and style.
Form and style are never fixed. There is always a bit of float. But they do get zeroed in. They do get clarified and continue to clarify over time.
I’m into work now. I work a day job you know. Just another pencil pusher sending business emails with my characters at the back of my mind. Henry and Rose and all the others demanding a bit more attention. I give it to them. Self-sacrifice.
Roman Newell is hard at work on his debut novel — 20XX — a work in magical realism, which explores the complexities and conflicts in modern day societies amid confusing social norms, rapidly evolving technology, and impact traumas. Follow Roman’s Substack to be added to the 20XX contact list.
An arduous few years, this journey has been. The long sheet in discovery. :)
Undeterred by hardship, these last few years has taught much. I'm beyond proud of you.
It's been a minute… I look forward to being with Henry and Rose and cast soon, really all that 20XX is to be. 20XX will be an epic read. From mind to hand, let it be inked carriage recording your stories next entry. The bestest stories have no need of an end. They are continually being written. Like life, it steps confidently forward.
Cat's Cradle… YES!!
Incredibly thankful to writers | authors [past| present] that inspire to catalyse growth. You were able to pin point. Defining your own unique writing style and voice. Now you get to inspire other writers in that process. A perpetual exchange of inspiration and encouragement. Pretty cool :)
You drop so many precious gems along the way. It's funny to grow fond and deeply invested in characters. A few of mine were distillations of family or friends who have become quite dear, as they represent those people captured and frozen in a moment - not always their best, but certainly interesting.