KMS Blog

I’m about to put all my chips on my own version of the Roulette wheel.   For those of you familiar with the game of Roulette, it’s pretty simple.  The wheel has 36 numbers, alternating red and black in color.  The simplest way to play is to bet either “red” or “black”, meaning if the wheel is spun, the ball dropped, and it comes to rest on the color you’ve picked, you double your earnings.  50/50 shot.   If it lands on the color you didn’t chose, you lose everything.

The Set-Up
Those of you who know me know that I took a huge gamble with my 20’s and 30’s — I sacrificed much of what people consider necessary or normal in life to follow my artistic dreams.  I did, it is worth noting, have a fantastic and loving 12 years with one woman, and she made the process a lot easier with her love and support.  Our relationship ended, but I continued on the path I had begun to see if I could not only create a complete collection of short stories, but also to get them published.  

The odds of getting published are astronomically small, especially for a work of literary fiction (genre fiction, like Romance, stands a much better chance because of a larger, more dedicated, and less fickle audience).  Short story collections are notorious poor sellers, even for big name guys like Stephen King.  So I was aiming for a pinhole on a dartboard.  The path was not an easy one — 300 rejection letters have a way of undermining one’s confidence, sometimes in the extreme.  But in December of 2007, I finally got published by O-Books.  I had achieved the very thing I had been seeking my entire adult life, but I had no money and no jobs, little support from those closest to me, and no idea what to do next.  In what was a very telling moment, the fact of my publication was not celebrated in the least.  No champagne.  No extravagant dinner out, or even modest dinner out.  No bragging to friends and neighbors.  I just kept my nose down, and kept plugging forward the way I always had, as if nothing had changed.  But everything had changed; I just didn’t know it yet.  About two months after I was published a mentor noted, with a bit of shock, that I hadn’t celebrated, so I did finally go out to do so.  It felt strained and heavy, an almost joyless event of which I have little memory.  

The truth was that the struggle to get published had nearly sucked the life out of me.  It had taken its toll so that I was more identified with the struggle then with the act of creation itself.  How strange!  I was more identified with the “struggling” part of “struggling artist” then with the “artist” part.  What, or who, was I without the struggle?  I wasn’t entirely sure.  

Ironically, it was those few months after I got published that were some of the darkest of my life.  I was being encouraged by some of those around me to settle down and take a full-time job to take a break from my self-imposed stress, and rest in the security of a weekly paycheck.  There was little encouragement to keep pushing boundaries and limits, or to see the light that lay just beyond my identification with the struggle.  For my part, all I knew to do was what I always had done.  My partner at the time saw the toll the work had taken and assumed that the wisest course of action was to step away from it and embrace something more stable, perhaps a 9-5 job and a more settled life. There was wisdom there, for sure, for I did need to lay down the struggle to move forward.  But I feared that stepping into a full-time job would be a retreat into security, and a movement away from growth.   I knew all too well that safety and security have their place in our lives, but they also have their price.   To break into something difficult and challenging requires that you forgo safety and security, and step into the world of uncertainty even if, or sometimes especially if, no one else believes you can do it.  It is the ultimate leap of faith.  After all, if you do not have faith in yourself, who else will?    So I worked through my over-identification with the struggle, went back to freelancing with newfound vigor, and slowly pulled myself out of the darkness and into the light.  I emerged alone, but emerge I did.   

Fast-forward about a year.  The opening of the summer finds me more positive and optimistic then I’ve been in years, and I genuinely look forward to each and every day, and to my immediate future.  I am now surrounded by the right kinds of people, who see who I am and what I’m capable of, and also know how to push, pull, prod, and encourage me to move further down the path I started so many years ago.  To move further into my fear, not away from it.  

The Status of the Roulette Table
Jun Po Denis Kelly Roshi, the 83rd Patriarch of the Rinzai Zen school, has hired me to write his official biography, and is flying me to Massachusetts on June 17 for two weeks.  I will fictionalize his life, keeping the stories all 100% true to what he tells me, but adding in the luscious detail of a storyteller.  Jun Po has been kind enough to advance me a significant sum (for me at least), knowing (as I do) that the book will be a bestseller (his life is like a combination of Hunter S. Thomson and Ram Daas, with a touch of Jim, Morrison and Adi Da thrown in for good measure).  His story is amazing, and the book will capture it in language that can honor the beauty, complexity, and uniqueness of Jun Po’s story.  His advance will fund me until October of 2009, but not beyond.  At that point, I will have to return to the grind of freelance business writing, or step up to the gambling table.  

The Bet
I have a house in Philadelphia, my last concrete investment and the last piece of physical security that I have in the world.  I could take Jun Po’s advance, which will fund me until roughly October 1st, and then go back to freelance writing to make ends meet, as I have done for the last decade, and then wait the 18-24 months for royalties to start coming in from our book.  I could then take that money, and really sink myself into completing the 4 major works of fiction I have rattling around in my head.  That would be the safest, most secure, and most rational route, and would give me some options if anything goes wrong.  But it means delaying, once again, my own work while I eek out a living.  It means hanging my own future on the outcome of a book that is not certain.  It means playing it safe until I can find the time to write, full-time, my own material, cramming a few hours here and there into odd corners of the week around freelance interviews, deadlines, and stress about money.  

Or…or I could turn my back to security and safely, up the ante, and bet everything on myself.  

All Chips In
My house is going on the market July 15th.  Once it sells, I will take the profit and use that money to fund me after I finish with Jun Po’s book.  I have a group of intensive friends who are willing to hold my feet to the fire, and I’m convinced that I can complete at least 2 of my 4 ideas in the 9 months I’ve allotted.  So basically, from July of this year until July of next (2010), I will be doing nothing but writing professionally.  And once that money is gone, I will have nothing — no savings, no investments, no property.  Only a dog, a really cool 1972 BMW motorcycle, my used and worn 88 Jeep Wrangler, and a few odds and ends.   If I “hit” on this, I will make back my gamble with a wonderful windfall.  If I miss my mark, and I can’t sell or even complete any of my own works, then I’ll know that I chose the wrong path for myself, and be able to start something utterly new while still in my 30’s.  In short, I’m all chips in.  

Stay tuned.  The next 12 months will be interesting ones.