The work is the work …
Before I explain the above statement, I’ll give you a quick health update: heart echo last month checked out—no issues under the hood. I’m now pretty much off all meds except the occasional Tylenol, and the dizzy spells and other weird episodes have gone away. My walks have turned into runs (is that Usain Bolt I see up there on the horizon?), and I’m back on the mountain bike. Sunday, for my birthday, I treated myself to a “cheater’s marathon” (23 miles on the mountain bike + 3.2 miles of old man shuffle = 26.2 miles). The end was kinda old-school-suffering epic, thus absolutely glorious. It’s a blessing straight from God to get to go out and tool around like that. My next scan is now September 8th … I’m feeling good, but you never know … praying the tumors in the lungs have remained stable, and they give me another 3 months to forget about this stuff and savor life. A couple of things I have my eyes on in September: a 5K (would like to get under 30 minutes) and the VentureQuest Adventure Race (6 hours with Paddle Boy, Logan Welsh) … God-willing, I’ll get both of these things in.
Now for the important stuff … The work is the work … I’ll get there, but I guess I should start by saying that I finally released my novel, All Good Quests, the first draft of which I actually finished back in 2016. The official publish date was June 9th, in fact, although I’m just now beginning to put the word out in any kind of public way. It’s been a long and winding road getting here—one in which, whether you realize it or not, you folks out there reading this have played a huge role …
Here’s the (my) skinny on writing: It first showed up on my radar as a teen. To Kill a Mockingbird got my juices flowing, then several years later, I discovered John Irving, and that was it. I got it in my mind, one day I’d just flip a switch and write a masterpiece myself—fame, fortune, and respect would follow. During my time at JMU, I traveled a lot, drank too many beers, studied a little, and worked a bunch of random jobs: I tied steel on a feed tower construction crew, I delivered tuxedos, I worked in bars and restaurants. What I didn’t do much of is write. By the time I graduated, I’d completed a grand total of one short story and the draft of one really bad novel (handwritten) that I actually lost while changing trains in Copenhagen (yes, that hurt). Then came grad school—a master’s in English Lit—ahh, the perfect setting to focus on that masterpiece. Nope. I got into running and climbing mountains and took on more random jobs: I built fences, worked the night shift in an Alzheimer’s facility, and became a case manager for juvenile parolees. By the time I got my degree, I’d written a stack of academic papers but not a single page of fiction. Even when opportunities to forge a life as a writer popped up, I, quite stupidly, let them pass. I wrote my thesis comparing the masculine ideal of ancient Greek and Germanic cultures to that of our modern American culture (think professional athletes). I presented the paper at symposiums, and my committee chair, in particular, really dug it. He urged me to cut it into a long-form magazine piece—he had a contact at Sports Illustrated and thought they might be interested. “Yeah, sure,” I said. Instead, I moved to Atlanta and took a job in a glass high-rise in Buckhead. A nice view of midtown, an expense account, and my first real paycheck … again, writing could wait. That switch was just an arm’s length away, after all.
I finally got after it (somewhat) in my mid/late twenties, but by the time I hit 30, I had a wife, kids, a mortgage, and a new career. I was taking writing seriously enough to realize there’d be no simple flipping of a switch, but I told myself I still had plenty of time. I finally finished my first novel (not counting the handwritten tome I lost on the train years earlier) in 2002. But masterpiece or not (certainly not) I quickly realized I had little stomach for the hustle required to go the traditional publishing route. I was long out of academia, had no contacts in publishing, and I had too many other things going on to keep me busy. I was okay with having spent thousands of hours alone, late at night, grinding the thing out, but I just couldn’t bring myself to spend years querying agents, chasing publishers, and, if I was ever lucky enough to land a deal, having to edit my work into what a boardroom of suits might deem the most saleable version.
I did eventually connect with one particular agent—a high-profile guy that represented a few authors I really admired—and five years after I finished that first book, I tentatively agreed to do the rewrite he wanted. But we were pregnant with Tegan at the time, and it wasn’t long before we learned her road was going to be more challenging than most. In short, my world came to a stop. I forgot about writing and turned my attention to “unbalanced chromosomal translocations.” It would be close to two years before I looked at the book again … the agent had long since moved on.
No problem. I had a great life. Everything, in fact, a man could ever wish for. I flirted with stopping writing altogether, in fact. But in the ensuing years, the ideas kept coming. That’s the thing with being a storyteller. You can’t turn it off. For the first time in my life, I realized I needed to write because I needed to write, not because I needed to be “a writer.” And so, I began another book—this time with no thought of ever publishing—really no thought of anyone ever even reading it. (The novel I began working on then was, indeed, All Good Quests). I finished the first draft in 2016. I showed it to a few people and set it aside. I spent the next several years working on other creative projects, screenplays, short film stuff, and new novel ideas, but I did nothing to take the next step with anything I’d already written.
Then I got sick …
I’m not sure there’s a playbook exactly for when a doctor tells you you’re “on the clock,” but I immediately went into “get-your-house-in-order” mode. I checked my life insurance, I talked to my financial planner, I made plans for the future of our family business. I set all our bills to autopay, I put together a master spreadsheet for all the usernames and passwords we have, and I made sure Aedan knew how to do things like check the oil on the mower and change out the HVAC filters. But I found myself doing something else too: I organized all my writing—travel journals, short stories, essays, screen plays, and the novels, of course. Then I uploaded latest drafts of everything to Dropbox, and gave access to Z and Frankie2Phones. I told the guys I was planning on sticking around for a while, but in case things went south quickly, I didn’t want a lifetime of work to disappear. They’d figure out what to do with it, if need be. More than anything, I wanted my kids to be able to get their hands on it one day. If they ever felt compelled to do a deep dive into who their dad was, they’d find me somewhere in those words. I was in there. This was telling. The panic I felt at the thought of saying so much over the years but having it all disappear into the wind, never to be read … well, you get the picture.
But it wasn’t until you all came along that I really began to understand what writing means to me and decided to get serious. This was supposed to be a platform for me to share details about my cancer journey, but from the beginning I’ve used it to riff on running, parenting, adventure racing, friendship, faith, and, of course, writing, among other things. I’m eternally grateful for the latitude you’ve given me to do so. It’s no exaggeration to say the connections I’ve made with those of you who’ve read along the past year, in my mind, have saved my life. On the acknowledgements page of All Good Quests, I wrote: “To our CBridge army out there, thanks for indulging my digressions and reminding me of the power of the written word.” That pretty much sums it up.
Of course, getting to that June 6th publish date was no easy task. I sorely underestimated the amount of administrative BS (copy editing, cover design, reviews, website development, getting set up with Amazon, Apple and the like, social media, marketing, etc. etc.) required to give birth to a novel. Thankfully, I’ve been blessed to connect with a handful of wonderful pros (Matt DeMazza at MacMillan, designer Devin Watson, and most recently, publicist/consultant Nancy Sheed) who’ve held my hand and helped me get to the finish line. Probably the most difficult thing for me is the inevitable element of self-promotion that comes along with having published a book and establishing myself as a novelist. Nancy, not sure if you’ll read this, but I blame you specifically for the fact that … cringe … www.joegraber.com now exists and that I now have a Facebook author page.
A couple of important (to me, at least) notes on writing:
Writing has the capacity to dole out equal shares of bliss and torture to anyone who attempts it in earnest … Writing is the reason I built a barn, a pool, a fire pit, a deck, an addition on our house, and finished our basement. Writing is the reason I’ve run marathons, climbed mountains, and entered really long, punishing, downright stupid races. Writing is the reason I worked a lot of different, odd jobs in my youth and have had a couple of different professional careers later in life. Why? Because just about everything is easier than writing, particularly novels. It’s lonely. It’s laborious, it’s downright painful at times. You can never step back and “see” your work like a section of stone wall or a perfectly coped piece of crown molding. The novelist spends years pecking at a keyboard, the end product being little more than an electronic file or a stack of paper. It’s damn hard to share too. If I could play an instrument and sing, I could write a song in a day and share it in 5 minutes. A painting, a piece of sculpture, a film, or an amazing collection of photography? These may take more than a day to create, but at least they’re easy enough to share with the world. Not so with a novel. For a novelist to “share” his or her work, he or she has to ask quite a lot of any would-be “sharee.” Ten, twelve, fifteen hours or more of absolute, undivided attention. Not to mention, imagination. The consumption of a novel is a two-way street, after all. The author creates the world, but in the end, it’s the reader’s own imagination that brings it to life. Yes, if the ability to write a novel is a “gift,” it’s a gag gift for sure. Alas, I only know 4 or 5 chords on the guitar, and my singing voice is barely passable (although I can do a decent Dixieland Delight: “White-tailed buck deer … munching on clover …”). Anyway, I guess I’m stuck with the novelist gig. It’s not all bad, of course. The same qualities that make writing a novel so difficult and reading a novel such a commitment, can, if the stars align, pay off in spades. If a catchy song is a one-night stand, a fine novel can run as deep, rich, and long as true love.
The work is the work … I almost forgot we began with that, didn’t we? Back when I was very young and dreaming of literary stardom—dreaming of becoming “a writer”—this thought never occurred to me. It wasn’t until I allowed that dream to be washed clean by the blessings of a full life outside of writing that I came to understand this simple statement. The work is the work means this: you commit to sitting down and spending hundreds or thousands of hours breathing life into a world and a story you can’t shake from your thoughts. You give that story room to grow, and you do your best to do it justice. When it’s done, it’s done, and God-willing, you’re at peace with it. Of course, you want it to be read. Of course, you’d prefer readers like it. But in the end, the work is the work, and nothing will change that. Land on the cover of a magazine as the next great American novelist? It doesn’t change the work. Spend your whole life writing in isolation, the words destined to never see the light of day? It doesn’t change the work. Sell 50,000,000 copies or 5 copies? You guessed it, it doesn’t change the work. No review, good or bad, no accolades or criticisms, no pats on the back or behind-the-back-ridiculing will ever change the work. I have read books that hold indisputable positions on the Mt. Rushmore of literature and thought they were so-so, at best. And I’ve read books by authors I’d previously never heard of that stuck with me for decades. I wouldn’t be surprised if somewhere out there, some lonely writer has a novel stuffed in a desk drawer, that if I ever came across it, might be my favorite book of all time. I love that about writing. Anyone can take a crack at it. But when the work’s done, it stands alone. It speaks for itself … the work is the work.
So, what comes next with all this writing stuff? I’m not quite sure. I said all along, I can’t be sure what God’s plan for me is, but that I will do my best to accept and embrace whatever that plan is. If that plan includes more writing, fantastic. If not, well I suppose that’ll be okay too. For now, I’m grateful that I am at peace with All Good Quests, and it’s out the door. Next, I have a 200,000-word novel that I haven’t looked at closely in about 15 years that I need to sink my teeth into. If all goes well, it will be “sent out to the world” next year (stay tuned for The Short Happy Life of Cob Logan). And I’ve got notes on several other projects I’m pretty jazzed to get moving on. In the meantime, I’ve still got a lot of admin work to get done with the website, social media, etc. One of the things “being discussed” is migrating some of the writing I’ve done right here over to (cringe again) my website, so that it might be shared via blog with a wider audience. I’ll be honest with you, I’m a little torn about that. If there are people out there going through battles with cancer or other health issues (or perhaps just other yo-yos who are into adventure racing, etc.) that might somehow benefit from these ramblings, I suppose it could be a good thing. We’ll see. All I know for sure is that connecting with you folks right here over the past year has been nothing short of life-changing for me, personally.
Finally, I’d like to give a quick shoutout to a stranger named Natale, the technician who did my echo last month. She will never read this, of course, but I promised myself I’d thank her publicly and thank God for dropping her into my world just when I needed it. Natale broke protocol and told me that everything looked good with my heart so I wouldn’t have to wait for several days until the doctor called. This may not seem like a big deal now, but all I can tell you is it was quite a big deal to me on that day. And finally finally, for those of you who don’t know my man Jim P. but have been praying for him: Jim bounced back nicely from some of the difficulties he was facing, but please keep the prayers coming as he’s stepping into a new stage of treatment soon. Jim, you are a true warrior, my brother!
Once again, thanks for all the prayers and support for our family! If we don’t connect again in the next few weeks, we’ll let everyone know how the scan goes on September 8th. Until then, peace out!