The Writer's Life

When beginning a manuscript it's always important to have a grip on what you're saying. Ideas are like very soapy dishes, they slip and break apart if you're not careful with them. I know an amateurs bit about washing dishes. I worked at a restaurant. The little Vietnamese man made me wash dishes to earn my keep there.

It took a bit of analysis to decide that if I'm going to be working so hard, I might as well be working hard at something that makes me proud and sometimes happy. I'm not appreciated by the customers. I might not be cut out for customers anymore. Customer Relations, I mean. Why do they give me nothing? Perhaps my smile is too forced when it shows at all. I have long hair. Maybe my hair is too long.

There's no way to tell now, every person who stiffed me today is gone. McAllen is a small town, I may see them again, and when I do I could ask them. But it doesn't matter anymore. If I am going to go to sleep every night tired as a dog, it will be for love. If no one is going to appreciate my efforts, then I must at least be able to.

I, like you, have stores of energy in my body and in my breath, enough to produce manuscripts every day. I may not be any good. The manuscripts will come back rejected sometimes. But I make nothing now. I am broker than the economy. My parents support me. My girlfriend buys me food. The lifestyle I live is not a leader's lifestyle; it's not the moneymaker's. It's the writer's life.

I am rude to people I love who don't deserve it because they interrupt my working. It's a price I've paid for less. When they don't take me seriously I keep working. When I have nothing to write about I drink tea and keep working, like Balzac, but not as good, neither as fanatical. But I am a fanatic. There is no other way. None of my friends understand why I don't want to enjoy them and be happy with them. But I can't let that move me from my desk, where I am from the hours of 4:30 to 10:30, every day of the week except Monday.