I Wrote the Worst Novel of all Time.

I wrote the worst novel of all time.

Seriously.

It was bad.

It was basically a bar bet - an inside joke amongst my writer friends and I. Technically it was a nanowrimo project strung together with obscenity and tropes galore. I’m not even talking about failing on a professional/ technical level. Let’s forget for a moment that I felt I could edit my own manuscript or that I threw together a cover using Gimp and Inkscape. To this day, whenever I need to get my bowels moving I’ll flip through it and catch any number of typos.

Foolishly, I embraced the power of self-publishing and bought a handful of copies (the only physical copies ever ‘sold’). Forget the string of one star reviews on Goodreads. Forget the hateful comments I received on my blog in regards to my ‘masterpiece’. Forget the fact that by the time I mailed copies to my buddies I ended up losing money.

My dear mother - my biggest fan and supporter of my creative endeavors - bought two copies from me. After she read them, she turned them backwards on her bookshelf so nobody could see what they were. Mind you, she was a sweet Christian woman and my novel was more Naked Lunch than Narnia. She was embarrassed for me. We never talked about it.

My wife never read it.

I pulled it from all the markets. The only copies I know of are my mother’s copies that have been collecting dust in my office ever since she passed away a little over a year ago.

This bastard child of profane prose, middle school humor, and plot holes so big you could drive a Buick through them entered the world circa 2012. I haven’t published anything since.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m the biggest proponent of self-publishing. I think there are a lot of voices that wouldn’t get heard any other way. (That can be a good thing.) I’ve helped some of my friends publish their own masterpieces. I’ve traded short stories with co-workers and encouraged them to get their work out there any way they can.

Storytelling is at the base of our prehistoric DNA.

Writing is the sharing of stories, ideas.

Most every religion is a collection of tales. The journals hidden away in attics - the love notes passed through the mail - all of my mother’s text messages I saved after she died - these are only a sliver of the way story connects us.

So, why should we let the gatekeepers strangle our words before they even reach the door? It sounds more poetic than it is. Let’s just say that we’ve all forced ourselves through some terrible turds that were highly recommended international bestsellers. We’ve all sat through the latest book-to-screen phenom just to say ‘I could’ve done better than that!’

But me? I haven’t been able to bring myself to ‘publish’ anything in over a decade. I couldn’t get past that mental block of that bomb I had unleashed on the world. I’m sure it’s considered a PTSD of sorts. You put your baby out there and it’s eaten alive by a cold, callused public.

Nobody likes an ugly baby.

I wrote a few short stories here and there. Nobody read them. My own family didn’t support me enough to flip through a five page opus. Feeling scared, and more importantly, feeling sorry for myself I knew that I would never be a writer - ever again.

I was so paralyzed in my own thoughts that I didn’t hear the positive feedback I was getting. I didn’t see all the times people told me ‘that sounds like a great idea. You should write it.’ But more importantly, I wasn’t playing around with the creative ideas I had. Nothing was good enough. Everything got shut down before it made it to the keyboard.

You think that if you can’t win the majority over then you might as well just focus on one of your other thousand hobbies.

Enough of that.

I’m kicking the crowds out of my head. I’m scrubbing the one star reviews out of my carpet. I’m filing a restraining order against self doubt. I’m going back to writing in its most primal form. I’m writing for me. And the words are flowing.

What changed?

All my fucks got thrown away. All it took was a series of mental breakdowns, a divorce, the loss of my mother, a series of dead-end jobs, and some good ‘ol fashioned Electroconvulsive Therapy. (Each one of those is a post in itself). But, more than that I’ve just had enough with my own anxiety. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m climbing up to 50 The realization that my clock is running out becomes clearer with each doctor’s visit. I’m playing catch up. I could sit here wallowing in the mire of wasting my life away. OR, I can do something about it.

Like my therapist says. ‘ Sometimes you have to not think and just start DOING something. Before you know it you’ll have made progress.’

My therapist also says she wants to read my book.

Never.