November 27th, 2015

The Origami Man

The Origami Man is now on sale at

http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0692572872/ref=dp_ob_neva_mobile !

Pardon the ugly link. I'm writing this post in a foreign house in a foreign environment, because it is the Holidays and I have spent the night with Friends.
I can hear the coffee machine, so clearly these people are not savages. But I locked my door and sprinkled salt on the windowsills just in case.

Anyway, I'm posting from my phone. Dogshit technology. Truly amazing, harrumph snort, but still, idiotic in its own right. Damnable thing won't let me embed the link! Ah well. I'll make pretty later.

My book is available. I'll speak more of it later, play it up, point out its positive elements (it's fun) and downplay its flaws. (If you shove it down a person's throat they could choke.)

But for right now, I'll say this.
It's taken six years to get here, and here is amorphous.
I make twenty grand a year if I'm lucky.
I've been stuck in Ithaca since college, because, again, I've made maybe a hundred grand in that time. Before taxes.

I won't say something stupid like "but it's all been worth it," because I'm weaning myself off insipid comments. This has been a hard road. I've alienated people, burnt out relationships, I've found myself stuck in a moment when I needed for my very SOUL to be mobile, and I've learned to make living lean an art.

It isn't worth it. Not yet. But for the first time, I see that I might have made the right choice. When I can put out a book with drafts of two sequels written. When I find myself rewriting a published novel, exhaustively, because I know I should, and it doesn't meet my standard yet, but I also know I can't waste time on an old project. When I find myself hurrying, but still writing well.

I see, in those and moments similar, that I may have made the right choice. That I may have some business doing this. I see, now, that this hasn't been worth it, but that soon it will be.

The best feeling, some times, is not ecstasy. Sometimes the best feeling is calm. After six years, I'm calm about been a writer.

Time to get freaked out and write some more.

Ben