The Writer Donkey by Gabriel Valjan

 

Writers say they write because they have to. Is that true of you? What happens if you don’t write? Do you cranky? Bereft? Restless?

 

Guess.

 

This is a playful question because literature is filled with characters who are Gloom and Doom types, Grumps, Moody Misanthropes, and Negative Nancies, yet nobody talks about the author behind the page. Nobody would argue that Scrooge enjoys the lemon more than the lemonade. Mr. Darcy is rude and surly. Sherlock Holmes and Coraline can thumb wrestle for the championship title of Most Moody. Holden Caulfield is both snarky and negative. I want to say my favorite creation is the blue bear Mr. Grumpy from the Care Bear series, but that’s too on the nose. I’d also like to say that my dark side is as complex as Severus Snape, cold and enigmatic on the exterior, but conflicted and hot with emotions, underneath.

 

The truth is comical.

 

When I don’t write, I am a cross between Eeyore and Ove. Me not writing is an international incident, British as Milne’s donkey and Swedish as author Fredrik Backman’s curmudgeon. If the name Ove is a mouthful of marbles for you, you’ll be happy to know there’s a Netflix adaptation called A Man Called Otto. For the record, the name Otto was a mouthful for Mexican actress Mariana Treviño who played Marisol in the adaptation. How and why? The vowel O in Otto is pronounced differently in Spanish than it is in English. It made me howl. Yes, I am a weirdo.

 

And yes, I can be a difficult person when I’m not writing. Unlike Jack Torrance, work does not make me a dull boy.

 

I’m American as Jay Gatsby, in the sense that I’m always trying to improve myself. Remember Jay’s Self-Improvement Program, inspired by his reading Benjamin Franklin? I feel compelled to be ON all the time, or occupied with projects. There’s no down-time for me because idle time is the personal highway to vices. Once upon a time, I was a very bad boy.

 

Writing provides me with a natural high, a kick of endorphins, and it distracts me from the chronic and unrelenting pain I have from nerve damage as a result of surgery and radiation.

 

There’s another aspect of my personality at play here. I am a reserved and guarded person by nature. The reasons are numerous, but suffice it to say the recipe is part Catholic upbringing (self-control equals discipline) and part environmental (emotions equal weakness equals a point someone can exploit and have exploited, at my expense).    

 

Question: What does all of this have to do with writing?

 

Everything. When I’m not writing, I feel as if I should be revising something to make it better. If original sin started with the snake in the Garden, then the Catholic Curse is the snake eating its own tail because Perfection is impossible.

 

Anybody who knows me knows I have a sense of humor about my workaholism. I don’t know if sardonic is the proper adjective, but I’m willing to call myself an ass. Hence, Eeyore. If I were to be accused of being a pessimist, my response would be that I am a covert optimist. If I am down and long in the face, it is because I have a lot of energy and I need to direct it somewhere. Writing is an obsession but not a vice for me. The donkey ears become visible when I start to doubt my talent. Set aside the Catholic theology about Pride, I worry like the lovable donkey that I will wake up a hack, realize the well of ideas has dried up, and my mojo with language has evaporated.

 

Before you take out the dart gun and aim it at me or send the posse with the butterfly nets after me—by the way, I have a low center of gravity and I can run fast—I will say that I’ve gotten better at channeling the potentially destructive forces into something constructive. I’ve learned to let go. When I have taken my novels or short stories to the limit of my talent, in the here and now, I release them into the wild. This is not defeat or abject obedience to my Muse, but an acceptance that I will be better tomorrow than I am today.

 

I have to write.

 

Hee-Haw.