FULL BLEED: GHOST WRITING

In 2020, I drove out to San Francisco. I want to say it was in February. Reviewing, it was actually in January. I covered that trip here, in the post called "That Good Godspeed You Black Emperor Light." There was a thing called Covid in the news, but it wasn't real. Not like it would be. It would be the last trip I took to the city until probably 2023? Just checked, actually December 0f 2022. I seem to be a month off in my recollections.

Of course, Everything Horrible that's been going didn't start in 2020. It started long before we were born. But there was a certain flavor of horrible that started then and stuck around, never really left, right? Maybe we thought we'd get a respite after the election and ha ha fuck us all, we were not right in that. You could even argue that it might've been better for Biden to have lost in 2020 and then we'd be done with all this. We wouldn't have had four years of not caretaker but pallbearer presidency. And don't worry, I'll stop talking about politics right. Now.

I was hoping, and maybe in my own way, trying to tie off this last little while, trap it in a ligature and strangle some of that psychic funk out of the works. Granted that wasn't the whole purpose of the trip out there, but it was on my mind. It's often on my mind.

So I drove into San Francisco, through the fog that squatted at the head of the San Joaquin Valley. Through the cold and cloying, leaving everything wet as an afterbirth. Maybe the wheel was turning after all.

2025 was hard and I was hard on myself, perhaps the whole year, not just in this back half. This is probably something I should be working on. And not in the manner of Radiohead's "Fitter, Happier [explicit]" where I'm optimizing productivity and minimizing humanity. But I feel like I should be doing more, y'know?

Just yesterday or the day before I posted something along the lines of "Next year marks ten years of Hazeland (though not under that name) and all I've got to show for it is three novels, a short story collection, a series bible, covers and artwork for promotion" and someone, my friend Jack, pointed out that I needed to listen to myself. And I have. Yes, it's ridiculous to think I should have done more and to know that more was possible. I spent a year awhile back basically not writing anything as I cut off the relationship with my former publisher when it was clear their heart was elsewhere (and yes, Covid did a number on them, but I didn't see any manner of adaptation going on.) And at that point (maybe sometimes now if you catch me at my most brutally honest) I thought that being published mattered more than the work. The fact of that was that I was still doing most of the promotion work and it didn't get any more attention from reviewers than my work does now. Even though I still see very strong currents of "self-publishing means your work sucks or you're an awful person who can't get along with any publisher in genre fiction" and that's exhausting too.

So, kinder. Goodness knows the world isn't.

I'd like to say that I got more accomplished this year than I actually did. It's difficult and strange to see people listing fifteen publications in the last twelve months. Obviously I'm doing something wrong that I'm not able to fill out my CV like that, yeah?

Kinder. Shut up.

The reality is a single book two-thirds or three-quarters written (hasn't decided yet), a couple shorts planned out. Some artwork. A lot of time spent in my own head. Not helpful, but venomously comfortable.

So we're all staring down the turning of the wheel once more, hoping that this is the year we have the strength to break out of the habits and traps we've set for ourselves, shed those remnant chrysalises, slip the snares, become something new and better. And maybe that's not what's needed at all. Maybe we need to understand a little more who we are and what we're capable of and knowing that the reaction to the work isn't a commentary on the work itself, at least on a marketplace level. That's one I still wrestle with. We all got our own angels, I suppose, our own tests and barbed crowns we jam onto our heads like self-coronated royals. Yeah, I know. Come down off the cross, we could use the wood.

And if we're really interested in transformation, or comprehension, that's not the work of one day, but all days. Just like Camus talking about the last judgment. Every day we get to stumble and pick ourselves back up. Yeah, sometimes it doesn't feel like actual strides are being taken at all. Sometimes the only thing we see are reminders of where it's all ultimately going, that the victory is getting through another day without giving up an increasingly larger piece of yourself, ourselves. Reminded that I have to look past that, yeah, not ignoring it, but look past it and see there's something else. Something more than the churn and cascade of chemicals in this fleshly sheath the important parts of ourselves are riding around in at all times. That's the part to reach for. Not the awful mechanics of fandoms and markets, not year-end lists and being able to say "award-winning" as the first two words of your social media bio, or any bio.

It's only the work that matters. We've found ourselves in a world where we don't know how to even allow for something like a literary titan. Someone bigger than life. Someone whose work opens things up just by its very nature. We've outgrown this kind of legend making, though it's still pursued. I'm watching it happening now. And that stuff won't take. It's a cutting from a tree whose environment has fallen away. Sure, we got this little living twig, but no ground to put it in, nothing that will sustain it long enough for it to grow big enough to shadow out the sky. And, of course, pursuing that is hubris itself. It's still something I'm trying to break myself of and to be content with the work.

I've watched better writers than me wrestle with these questions and come up short. I'm in good company. But one wonders about the talents of a favorite writer who was inevitably bound to become a towering figure in their field, and if they could survive conditions today or if they'd have packed it in long ago and gone into copywriting or becoming stock brokers or even managing a Panda Express. I've also seen writers leave too soon, sorry, die young and seen their legacies become battlefields in waiting as their reputation is tended and fed and coaxed into something bigger than anyone perhaps intended. I wonder what they'd have thought of all this. I don't know many writers who go into this to be thought of a wise men or women, as holders of all the answers, as exemplars. They were just under the same compulsion to do this thing that probably doesn't even make sense and particularly in the world of twenty and twenty-five sure as hell doesn't.

I keep thinking I'll end up talking about the thing that takes most of my time and energy in this life, but that I probably never will. Just know that it's a thing that won't ever end but one way. And it's not me but someone I see every day. And it's nothing that changes. And that's what I'll say on that. Every time I'm getting down to write, it's against those headwinds. Yes, I know. We all have our own. I probably let them define me too much. I can't not. But the feeling that more work could have been done and should have been done in any time? It's my wailing against that thing that's never changing. That's what I'm really upset by, drained by, harried by, buried by.

Where was I? Ah, San Francisco. Tying off the last five years like I was a practicing chaos magician or something. I didn't bring any steel thread other than the one I'd imagined, a line that dragged across the Bay Bridge to the Mission to the Haight and back around, drawing that tighter and tighter so that I could cut out that five year tumor without even a knife. It wouldn't even know it, other than to suddenly be separated and set adrift and I'd be free, free, free. Did it work? I dunno. I got to talk to a friend for a few hours. Got to have a magnificent couple bowls of Chinese food, some of the best I've ever had. Found a copy of Leonora Carrington's Tarot at a used bookstore and burned up the last of the Christmas money to take it home with me. Got to take some pictures, some of which you've seen interspersed here.

Is that weight gone? Did the doctor heal themselves? Stay tuned, true believers! Excelsior!

In the meantime, it's pat the kittens and apply eye medicine as needed (the kitten is ungrateful at this particular action). It's fix that Ikea shelf that I wrecked by over-burdening it with books these last fifteen plus years. It's make dinner and try to exercise again and just do the daily work of trying to live with myself more effectively than I did the day before. It's appreciate the work for what it is and not try to control it or the reaction to it. We're in a world post-Chicxulub, like I like to say. Nothing but Chicxulubs all the way down. Gotta make sense of the rubble that's left behind and do what only you, only I, can do.

But yeah, with a little more kindness maybe. Ain't a one of us machines, us the weird spirits sheathed in these gummy and bleeding chemicals, all trying to make sense of this world that we didn't make but have endured so far.

Happy new year. Light a tire fire of 2025 and tell 2026 that it's on notice.

Happy new year.