Now What?

I finished The Doughnuts—no, not that box of doughnuts, which I can't eat, since I quit eating wheat in 1992, and sugar in January, and anyway, doesn't exist. I'm referring to my novel, The Doughnuts, which some people are sick of hearing about, most people will never hear about, and a few people are reading about, here, right now. This is a novel I started working on in the late 1990s, actually, and probably went through more re-workings and re-imaginings than anything I've ever worked on. It started out as one thing, became something else, then became something else. I also feel like it's the best thing I've ever written—but I know I can't trust that feeling.

I have started working on a new novel, which is what I'm excited about now. In the past, whenever I would finish some long, engaging project, I would get really depressed for awhile, so I learned that to prevent this, it's best to kind of overlap projects. I love the feeling of having to figure out all the problems and questions that go into long writing projects, particularly novels. I don't know if there's anything particularly profound about this, maybe it's just another version of playing games or shopping, but it's what keeps me going at this point. Maybe at some point something else will be the thing that keeps me going, and at some point I won't keep going. But anyway, now that I've shifted into a different phase of this, the creative part of my life, the question that remains is: what should I do with The Doughnuts.

Part of me wants to put it in a drawer (it would be nice to have a fireproof box—I do care that much). Or, you know, a file folder, a safe, a hard-drive, “The Cloud.” Not that I don't want to share it—I'd be happy to share it—I just don't expect anyone to care. It's not like sharing a drawing, which is easy to do, or a song, which might take five minutes of your time, or even a movie, which you could dedicate a couple of hours to. It's not easy to read a novel. It takes a major commitment from a person who wants to experience it—a major commitment of time, hard work (reading can be hard work), and emotional space, if it connects (and if it doesn't connect, that's even harder—having to make the decision to, and when to, “break up” with the work). This is a long novel, too. It only exists on word processing at this point, so I don't know how many pages, but it's 210,000 words or so, which is pretty long. For the sake of comparison, Moby-Dick, a novel many people consider long, is about that long. Not that I'm comparing my novel to Moby-Dick (whales to donuts)! Though I did read Moby-Dick, and it was an influence on The Doughnuts. I loved Moby-Dick, actually—it was published in 1851, yet is relatable, funny, and fresh. The Doughnuts might not be fresh by 8 a.m. tomorrow morning. But that remains to be seen.

The Doughnuts also has over 100 characters, which is also asking a lot from a reader. It might feel like starting a new job where no one is wearing name-tags. Though, personally, that's one of my favorite parts about starting a new job. I find people pretty fascinating. A lot of these characters, of course, are little more than background actors, but a few of them are fully realized, and I love these characters. The extent to which I've come to feel like they're actually people might be considered a little odd, or even disturbing, but we won't dwell on that right now. My immediate problem is: “what to do with The Doughnuts.” Word processing files take up remarkably little space, so that's not a problem. It won't even take up half my sock drawer or anything. But what worries me is the feeling that working this hard and for this long to create something, and then just keeping it to myself—that feels almost wrong in some way. If that makes any sense.

Sometimes I wish I could go back to the days of making photocopied zines, which I really liked doing and felt was satisfying. I would write for awhile (on a typewriter, back then!) and compile stuff over time, then usually put the actual zine together in the course of a day, then take it to the copy shop. It was satisfying, it was doable, and we all communicated by mail. I don't want to be one of those Good Old Days old dudes, and honestly, having a website (where you're presumably reading this) is kind of a better, current version of making zine, at least for me. Also, I did attempt to write novels back when I used a typewriter, but I don't think they were very good. I don't know if this (The Doughnuts) is any good. I don't know if I'm not a digital game-piece being manipulated by a bored AI presence in a future or long-ago space outpost. Or the overactive imagination of a lonely cockroach.

I guess I haven't solved the problem I set out to, though I didn't really set out to do anything, but write this memo. I'm sure I'm not the only one to think that this pandemic time is so strange and disturbing that I often find myself wondering, “if I was to go totally insane, might it be exactly like this?” Just saying that, though, somehow helps. If you've read this far, that is very kind of you. I hope you maybe got a laugh somewhere. If you're laughing at me, that's okay, too. I'm laughing at myself.

—RR 10.11.20