On the road to somewhere

Perhaps I'm feeling philosophical and somewhat bleak because I'm in the middle of reading Cormac McCarthy's brutally brilliant novel, The Road. Its searing, post-apocalyptic images of a world not just dead but hellish isn't exactly something that stirs up good humor on a gray Sunday evening.

And no, this isn't yet another woe is me post about how I can't seem to find the motivation to finish revising my novel. No. It's not. It's deeper than that. Really.

And yet ...

And yet, it starts there, doesn't it? I can't seem to find the motivation to finish.

And I don't know why. I've spent more than three years of my life working on The Devil You Don't Know. Years that could have been spent building a second career, a career based on something more solid, more substantial, than just a dream and the seemingly baseless hope of success in a highly competitive field where far more fall behind and die than reach the publishing promised land.

And so, each day I fire up the computer and piss around reading blogs and Facebook and Twitter. I love to read about how others are writing and working hard to reach their dream. And yet mine languishes on my hard drive.

Since the day I walked out of the newsroom -- Jan. 16, 2007 -- I've been on a journey unlike any I've been on before. My future is solely in my hands. That, I can handle. But the futures of my wife and young child are also in my hands, to a certain degree. And that's where I freeze.

No matter the successes I've enjoyed in life -- and there have been a few -- I somehow feel as though I am programmed to ultimately fail. And I don't know why.

I want to finish this book. I want to see it published. I want to become rich and famous. I do. Honestly. And yet, I seem to be rooted to this spot of uncertainty, where I am neither there nor not there.

It is, I've decided, a crippling case of being more afraid of succeeding than of failing. And I don't know why. I'm no stranger to counseling and therapy, and I know enough about my past, my childhood, to see how it affects everything I do. And there's something there, some dark malignancy, that will not allow me to move forward.

And here's the real kicker: I know, deep in my heart, that the book is pretty good. And with the major revisions I'm doing, it may even be better than pretty good. It might be damned good.

I know that. And still I feel like I'm fooling everyone, including myself, by thinking, by acting, as though I can actually get it published. I feel like a fucking fraud. The literary equivalent of Bernie Madoff.

Why?

I know this: If I don't get off the dime and do my very best -- my absolute best -- to get this novel done and out the door, the journey will come to an end. Soon. The money isn't endless, and I've run through a good portion of it living this fantasy, this dream of becoming a published author.

And then what? What of my family? My home? My bills? My future? What of me?

These are the things that keep me up at night, tossing and turning and occasionally lapsing into a nightmare that's so transparently metaphorical that it even makes me laugh upon waking.

I daydream of succeeding beyond my wildest dreams, of sitting down on Oprah or The Tonight Show or someplace like that and talking about how frightening it was, laying it all on the line like this. It sounds so romantic when it's in the past tense.

But what of now?

Now, it just seems terrifying.


I pray I have the strength to see this through. I have always believed I am destined for something more in life. I can't really put it in words, but there it is. That's what keeps me going.

What keeps you going, in the face of insurmountable odds? What keeps you awake at night, when the world sleeps? I'd like to know I'm not alone in this.