All the Angels, Singing to Me

I stare at the alarm clock. It’s a superfluous thing in my life. I never use it as an alarm clock because I’m always awake before it activates.

3:27 am. I wait and watch. The minutes feel like decades. I wonder – and I do this every morning – why a minute feels like an eon. I won’t get out of bed until it reads 3:30. For some reason, it feels like a sin to be up before 3:30.

The clock hits the magical moment and I get out of bed. Sometimes I have an adrenalin rush when I do this, and no coffee is needed, though I still drink unbelievable amounts of it. Some mornings, I drag myself out of bed and groan at the thought of what I’m about to do.

I slip into awake mode. Time for the terror to begin.

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I know what you’re thinking. Why the hell do you get up so early? What could possibly be important enough to rise at such an hour? I think I can explain it, but I’ll start with golf.

Yeah, golf.

I remember one day in particular. It was October, 2001. I’m playing a round with Stan, a Humanities professor from my university. Crusty. Surly. He doesn’t suffer fools or students gladly. My kind of person.

We’re on the first hole at Meadowbrook Public Golf Course. It’s a good course for being a public one. Not easy, not impossible, but still challenging.

Par five. I hit a beautiful tee shot. A slight draw all the way to the top of the rise. It tumbles down the hill, resting at the bottom, just 160 yards from the hole. My next shot, with a seven-iron, hits the green and rolls to within three feet of the hole. I make the putt. An eagle three.

Stan makes a six. He looks at me and I shrug, but inside I’m delighted. I worked hard to be a decent golfer, and now it’s showing.

We walk to the second hole, but I’m the one that feels goose bumps on my arms. I’m the one that hears all the angels singing to me.

The rest of the round is unremarkable. I beat him by seven strokes, and card my first sub-eighty round ever. Ok, maybe it’s a little remarkable.

This is why I get up at 3:30 am and subject myself to all sorts of self-imposed torture. I want to hear those angels again.

**************

It’s 3:42 am now. I sit in my old, creaky, disreputable chair, a chair I love. My little office is cramped; I can barely make it to the disreputable chair without bumping into a box of something we haven’t bothered to unpack since we moved two years ago. One of the three light bulbs are burned out, and I won’t replace it until another one bites the dust.

I turn on Spotify and go to my Three Bs playlist: Brahms, Bach, and Beethoven. Sure, I have some Mozart and Vivaldi in there as well, but the name is cool. To me, anyway.

I open a Word document. It may be something I’ve been working on, or it may be a brand new effort. Doesn’t matter. The document pops up and the real horror of what I’m doing begins.

I prepare to write.

**************

Words. Math. Despair. Hope.

There are about 170,000 words in the English dictionary that aren’t obsolete. If you’re a writer, you seem to have a task that is the epitome of hopelessness. You have to pick and choose from 170,000 words and arrange them in such a manner that the reader of those words can relate to what you arranged.

Like what I’m doing right here.

But it gets worse. Much, much worse.

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A writer has to consider point of view (POV to us scribblers), tone, tense, theme, symbol, motif, assonance, consonance, dissonance – all the ances. And don’t even get me started on alliteration.

Writing wearily, Wes wandered woefully through the woods, wending wistfully through wounded wisps of wisteria, wishing wells without water washing away his dreams.

What does that mean? Hell if I know. I’m not a real writer.

It’s now 3:56 and I haven’t written anything worth noting. Basically, I’ve been bitching about the craft of writing. This is usually how I begin my writing time.

The people in my life are asleep. Like a tree in the woods, no one is around to hear me finger-banging the keyboard. Does that mean it didn’t happen?

Do I dare disturb the universe? Shall I part my hair? Do I dare eat a peach?

Fuuuuuuuck!

I take a shot of Jameson Irish whiskey. It goes well with coffee, and I’m also hoping that some of that Irish writing magic had somehow found its way into the bottle. Yeast for Yeats. Juice for Joyce. Fermentation for French?

I let the warmth seep into my bones, wait for the glow that comes almost instantly. Now I can write. I tell myself it’s a process. Build a routine, stick to it. Don’t give up.

Sounds like the same advice I’d give myself if I wanted to become an alcoholic.

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4:05 am. I stare at the whiskey bottle. It winks at me, flashing me a smile.

My mistake. Another light bulb just burned out. Now I can procrastinate, all in the name of being able to see what I haven’t done. I replace the two dead bulbs without serious injury.

Shit. It’s bright in here.

The thing about writing is that you have to have a story to tell. Ideas are a dime a dozen. Actually, I overpriced ideas by ten cents. Anyone can come up with an idea. I do it all the time. The tough part is getting the right words to convey what you want the reader to feel. No problem, though. You got about 170,000 to choose from. Kinda like choosing what to watch on Netflix.

So, I put my fingers on the keyboard and caress them. Maybe I’ll start my tale with the letter W, but I won’t make it a question. I’m feeling adventurous this morning (helped by Mister Jameson, no doubt), so maybe I’ll go with J. Sounds good. I type the letter and think of J words. Jump. Jolly. Jasmine. Juniper. Joy. Jejune. Jabber. Jicama. Juxtaposition. Jurisprudence. Jackal.

The words start forming, albeit hesitatingly. Then a little more rapidly. Madison is in trouble, but not regular trouble (if there is such a thing). She’s been murdered, but she’ still in the world, as a ghost. Or she’s fleeing an abusive relationship. Or she’s flying to Corfu to meet a friend. Or…

You see. Plenty of ideas. I pick one that suits me. I change Madison to June. She’s now a middle-aged woman who likes her comfortable life but longs for more.

The words come to me more comfortably now, like they are just waiting for me to notice them and put them on the screen. Friendly words. Social, outgoing, almost promiscuous. Gotta slow down and think about it all. But if I slow down, I might stop. Then I might have another shot of Jameson and the words will go home for the day, locking the door behind them. They’re persnickity, bipolar sons of bitches. Like me.

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Almost five o’clock. 311 words. The vast majority of them will be cut, altered, or mistakenly left in when they shouldn’t be left in. Still, June is well on the way to closing the library and bumping into an old schoolmate that has returned to town. Vapid and predictable? Maybe. But June is gonna make it all work out because she’s going to turn out to be a serial killer. That’s the twist.

It needs foreshadowing. Ok, I’ll get that in there. I need to drop some subtle hints about June’s proclivities, but with a vagueness that makes sense only after the big reveal. I’ll get that in there. June, you sweetie, if you weren’t so homicidal, I might just fall in love with you.

The story is shit. Ok, maybe not shit, but it doesn’t have that thing, that je ne sais quoi that sets a crappy story apart from a quality tale. I’ll stop here. 923 words. Good enough.

But it isn’t. I sigh and go back to what I had written. I read it, over and over. I just can’t seem to spot what’s not quite right.

It’s five o’clock now, and my writer friends in America are either still asleep or getting ready for work or, as in my case, working on their literary masterpieces. No time for them to beta this morning.

I think of my writer colleagues in Great Britain and Ireland. It’s eleven o’clock there, and maybe someone will offer to beta my stuff. Lots of colleagues in Ireland, as a matter of fact. Hell, if they aren’t too drunk by now, maybe they’ll help me out. All the ones I know are terrific writers. And they all drink, right? It’s fucking Ireland, for Christ’s sake!

Two people offer to beta for me. Great!

5:17 am. I start to work a little more on my novel. My baby. My treasure beyond value. All 2,311 words of it.

I’m not gonna lie. I don’t have much written yet, but my ideas and plans and stratagems and such are all laid out in my mind. It’s gonna be amazing. Have a Cigar by Pink Floyd pops into my head.

It’s a helluva start

It could be made into a monster

If we all pull together as a team

I read what I have and then close the document. It’s good stuff. Very good. So good, in fact, that I feel like someone else wrote it. I know I wrote it, but I feel disconnected from such good writing. One line in particular stands out.

The soft sigh of the bible sliding across the table sounded like the whisper of broken dreams.

Even out of context, it’s great line. With context, it’s transcendental. How did I write this? Jesus!

I close my laptop and wander into the living room. Turn on television. Sit down. Sigh. Slump. Surf through channels.

I settle on Sportscenter. Talking heads are there to soothe me, and I need soothing. The dog-ass Cowboys lost to the dog-ass Cardinals. The Bills are struggling. The Texans are on the ascendant. The Michigan coach has been suspended – again. The sports world is as it has always been, and I settle back comfortably, willing myself to relax.

It isn’t working.

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5:45 am. My Irish beta readers have gotten back to me. I read their comments. I agree with their comments. They are brutally honest about my tale, yet their brutality has softened edges. It’s like they hit me over the head with a blunt object, but not as hard as they could have, helped me up, made me a stiff drink, and patted my hand. Shit! Their comments show better writing than my tale.

I love those Irish motherfuckers. The drunk, depressed, never-see-the-bright-side-of-things bastards. Those dour Dublin denizens delightfully donning the artist’s dungarees, denouncing dreadful prose.

I decide not to write any more today. I have done all I feel capable of doing, all that the good God allows me to do. Sure, blame it on God, right?

So, why do I feel so good?

Because.

Because I still remember that eagle I made at Meadowbrook. I still recall the moment I wrote about a Bible sliding across a table. I still remember lines that transcend. I still remember phrases that hummed, paragraphs that sang, entire pages that danced merrily before my eyes. Not many of these, true, but enough.

Enough to keep me coming back. I’m like a crack addict. An alcoholic. A lifelong member of Gambler’s Anonymous. In my case, there is no cure.

Thankfully.

I want to chase that literary dragon to the ends of the earth, to the very depths of hell. I may not ever write another beautiful line again, but the search for the perfect tale, the riveting line, the unassailable paragraph will never end. I can’t help myself. I’m lost in a sea of words, themes, dialogue, and the ever-elusive pithy observation.

Writing. It’s a lovely thing to hate, don’t you think?