We there yet?

Four years and three books ago. Note the bottle of Zacapa.   "So how much longer until you finish your book?" my wife asks.

   "I finish . . . when I finish."

   "Yes, but when will that be?"

   "I don't know."

   She looks disappointed. "But you said . . ."

   "What I said was that I would like to be finished some time next year—say, spring, late spring, June or July."

   "That's not spring! That's summer!"

   "You see, darling, that's where my creative genius comes in. It allows me to bend time, to perceive June and July in ways the ordinary, bound-to-reality person cannot."

   Now she looks irritated.

   "C’mon, you're asking me the kind of question you'd ask of the staff at Kinko's. Writing isn't a project."

   "It is, too, a project."

   "It is not at all like anything that goes on in the business world. It’s not just a matter of setting a deadline, then meeting it, and going onto other things. No, stories have a life of their own, and once you get involved with them, even though you're the one telling it, you never can tell when you'll be surprised by what comes up."

   "So when will you be finished?" she asks again. She can be terribly persistent at times.

   "You're not listening to me."

   She smiles.

   "To be honest,” I continue, “I've always wondered if a writer really ever feels ‘finished’ with the novel he’s managed to get published. I mean, no matter how many times I rewrite something, there will always be things that need changing, a better choice of words here, a deletion or addition there."

   "Murakami Haruki said that he never read any of his books once they had been published."

   "It wouldn't surprise me if other authors did likewise. Or musicians, for that matter. Does a rock star listen to his own songs? I doubt it, unless he's a narcissist . . . Funny, but I've seen so many movies which show an author typing out the last sentence of his novel. You know, always on one of those old manual typewriters, right? Tappity-tap-tap: The End! And then without fail, he'll rip the page out of the typewriter and look at it with the satisfaction one has when a job is complete. And you know why?"

   "Why?"

   "Because actors are not writers. And because they read scripts, not books."

   "Hmm . . ."

   "No, a writer is only finished with his novel when the thought of spending another day with it is more disgusting to him than the thought of leaving it as is. He pushes the plate away, ‘Enough!’ he shouts. ‘I can't take any more of this crap.’ Then he crosses his fingers and submits it. And the smile he has when it's published is not the smile of satisfaction; no, it's the smile of a con man who's just gotten away with it . . . But seriously, the reason I said that I would like to finish ‘next spring’ is so that I can get onto to writing something different."

   "You have other ideas for novels?"

   "Dozens! I sometimes feel as if I'm the new checker at a supermarket and there’s a long line of customers waiting impatiently, looking over the shoulder of the people in front of them, and looking over at the other registers and thinking of changing lines . . ."

   "Do you think when a novelist dies his last thoughts are, ‘If only I'd written that book?’"

   "More like, ‘If only I had sold out sooner!’"

On Royalties and Bath Plugs

   One of the reasons why I married my wife were the silly conversations we would have, like the following:

   Riko D: How much money do you think you'll make once you sell your book?

   Aonghas Crowe: How much does a book cost? One or two thousand yen? And royalties? Haven't got a clue, but they can't be high. Do you know?

   RD: No.

   AoCr: Well, let's say I'll get ten percent.

   RD: Ten percent, huh?

   AoCr: Yeah, so ten percent of fifteen hundred's a hundred and fifty yen a book. That's not a lot of money, but it adds up. So, if I were to sell two books, one for me and another for you, I'd make three hundred yen. Of course, if I were to write a second book, it might sell as many as ten copies . . .

   RD: Honey, be serious.

   AoCr: I can't. Especially when you ask me silly questions like that. Anyways, like I said, I don't know. I don't want to know.

   RD: Why not?

   AoCr: Because if I thought about how much money a book would make me, I wouldn't get anything done. I'd have all these dollar bills dancing around in my head, having a wild party and kicking up a helluva racket. “Keep it down, you guys!” I'd say, but you think they'd listen to a wet blanket like me?

   RD: If I were a writer, I'd know how much I’d get in royalties.

   AoCr: Oh, I'm sure you would know. What I want you to understand is that I'm not writing for money. That's never been the point. If I were writing for money, I . . .

   RD: I know, honey. But, but, but you must understand that I worry about the future and whether you'd be able to support me and our children. I worry that we wouldn't have enough money to buy proper clothes for them if the book you wrote didn't sell.

   AoCr: I don't know what's to worry about it. If it got too expensive to keep the three kids, we could always send one of them away. Take a hike, kid! Not enough food to go around for all of us. Oh, he might be sad and cry out to his mother, but that's life. Besides, think about how obedient the remaining too kids would be. They'd know that if Daddy's next book didn't sell well, why they might be the one who gets the boot next. “Mummy, Daddy, can I do anything for you today? Clean? Cook? Do the shopping?” They'd be petrified with fear every time they made the slightest mistake . . .

   RD: Can I tell you what my dream is?

   AoCr: Shoot.

   RD: I want to marry someone like Murakami Haruki. (She goes on to explain why she likes his writing, his lifestyle and success.)

   AoCr: I enjoy reading his stories, too. But, Murakami has never once made me look up from the page and think, Wow! Not like, say, Gabriel Garcia Marquez.[1] Granted I've only read a few things by Murakami, most of them in English, so . . . 

   RD: Oh, he's very good at describing things and using metaphors. I read an interview of him once where he said that he considered himself a pretty useless person. He wasn't like the plug in someone's bathtub, he said. The plug's quite small and simple, but it does its job well, keeping the water from flowing away. I really liked that image.

   AoCr: I've always thought of bath plugs in terms of oppression: chained his entire life to the side of a bathtub, shut up in darkness most of the day, only to traumatized every evening when he's forced into a hole and made to bear the back-breaking weight of so many gallons and gallons of water. You think the plug wants to do it? You think he feels he's being useful? I doubt it. When he was just a kid, still the sap of a rubber tree, he probably had grand dreams of becoming the tire of a bicycle tooling about the countryside . . .

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