What’s the day to day of a young male novelist like, you ask?
Oh wait, you didn’t ask that at all? Well then, just sit there politely and I’ll go on and on about it.
My day starts no later than 5 or 11 am. After opening my eyes I take a shot of whiskey and have a smoke. Then, still laying in bed, I scribble down a quick thousand words in my notebook. Usually they’re just short musings about all the hours humans waste on sleep. Did you know it’s actually a lot of them?!
Of course I write these neo-aphorisms by hand. Were Shakespeare’s words typed on a computer? Don’t get me started on what the relationship between the prose poet and technology should be. A writer’s only use for a computer is to update his Facebook status with quips about the classics he’s reading and upload photos of himself looking mysterious.
After my thousand words I pour myself a drink from the bottle next to my bed. I sip it while I take my morning shower. Then, I put on my three piece suit with the elbow patches. Why do I dress up if I’m just going to be writing? Well it’s simple: boys have swag, but real men have class, and suits are classy.
Once I’m dressed I sit at my desk and say a quick prayer to Dionysus. Then, and only then, do I take hold of the mighty pen and let the spirit of the muse take hold of my physical body so that I can purge out the poetry within onto that white wonderland in front of me. There’s this writer, my favorite one, his name is Ernest Hemingway. He said once that to write all you have to do is “sit at the typewriter and bleed.” I guess he was feeling like a pansy that day because the true writer would laugh at blood. To write, you must sit down and give the page your life. I truly believe that, mainly because I am kind of buzzed at the moment.
Minutes pass and I write page after page, chain smoking and drinking from my bottomless glass of liquor. I keep writing until I fall asleep which is very soon because I haven’t eaten anything and have been drinking hard liquor non-stop since I woke up. Am I a writer because I drink, or am I a drinker because I write…? It’s just another part of the burden of the scribe. Laborers. Doctors. They know nothing of work that is true and real and human.
When I awake from my booze coma I head over to the local coffee shop. I talk to the cute barista, who avoids my eye contact, about the books she’s been reading. Usually they’re written by Women. I haven’t heard of that one either, I always say. I sit down in the corner and secretly spike my coffee with alcohol from my flask and then sit back and people watch.
I like observing. I’m technically human but I feel like an other, like I’m witnessing but not participating in life. Maybe my entire raison d’être is to transcribe what I see into perfectly crafted, short, declarative sentences.
Once they kick me out of the coffee shop for yelling “DAVID FOSTER WALLACE!” over and over again for no reason, I head to the bar. The bartender knows my name. That’ll be a nice little touch when a newspaper follows me around for my first feature. I sit there and pull out my little pocket notebook and scribble bits of dialogue and character descriptions of people I see. My psychologist likes to say of my observational nature, that I’m a “sociopath” who sees people solely as “props to be used in my writing.”
Oh, that reminds me, I forgot to take my anti-depressants. Oh well, If I kill myself, it won’t matter as long as my work is able to live on. Death is the best thing that happened to a lot of writers, you know. It’s, at the very least, a career choice worth considering.
Finally, at 2 am I arrive back at my place. Inside my room it’s just me, my mattress, my desk, my papers, my pens, my booze, and my piles of convenient trust fund money from my unartistic but very wealthy parents.
As you can see my life is simple but filled with deep postmodern thoughts and an absurd amount of alcohol consumption to impress young writers when they read my biography. It’s a tough calling but somebody has to write The Great American Novel. That someone will obviously be me.
I lay down and stare at the ceiling and romantically fall asleep in my suit while clutching a bottle. I don’t dream. Because I’m a writer, my life is already a dream.