Welcome To Manas’s America

Terrible to have to experience it first hand but inspiring and important to be able to access in the pages.

After I finished writing “We Are Stardust,” I thought it was probably advisable for me to begin another novel. This was for a few reasons. First, getting up everyday and having a novel to work on made the drudgery of my life bearable. As long as I had to risk my life five days a week, driving an 80,000 lb. missile on the same roads as Florida’s most distracted drivers–all for $23 an hour and no benefits–I may as well have something of my own to cherish and look forward to. Second, by writing one novel after another, eventually I’m going to become a lot better. Finally, living inside my novels for much of the day afforded much needed escape from a world where we seem to have one foot in World War Three and another on a banana peel.

I had an idea about a world where the cost of housing became so prohibitive that the typical American household devolved into a college type situation but for middle aged people. Three or four couples to a house. I thought if I stocked the house with strange and mysterious characters, a story would simply tell itself.

This was one of those ideas that seem wonderful when it’s sitting in your attic as a concept, but utterly untenable when you sit down in front of a laptop to start. From there,I began to write a YA novel about a high school aged girl who lived with her granddad after her parents were tragically murdered in a mass shooting.

As a pantser, that is, a writer that flies by the seat of their pants and doesn’t follow a stringent outline, that idea was less than optimal. I really wasn’t sure where to go and what conflicts I should introduce to keep the reader’s interest.

Finally, after I received a foul criticism from my exes pain in the ass friend, it became clear to me what I needed to write. It was one of those moments where the universe presents you with the perfect gift of creativity.

Tony Robbins explained this phenomena in one of his “Personal Power” programs. When your brain is focused sharply on a single outcome, it will deliver.

I don’t want to give too much away, but I can say that this work of fiction will have the reader looking at a social issue in a light that

is never usually explored. Any time a writer can successfully add depth and realism to an often overused cliche, it’s bound to be interesting.

Once I landed on the idea, I went from desperately trying to create a few hundred words everyday, to easily getting a thousand at each sitting. This is when you know you’ve hit on something. Sort of the way Billy Joel always describes his experience with the “Innocent Man” album. When the material comes quickly and you are having fun sitting down to do it every day, you don’t fight that. You thank the gods of creativity and you enjoy the ride.

I haven’t been in therapy since I left New York at the end of March. I wasn’t allowed to keep the therapist I had and I haven’t had health insurance since being fired by Tesla. As I’ve mentioned, Florida has very few protections for its blue collar slaves, which makes it an obvious choice for entrepreneurs to do business here. Cheap American labor.

Because of this, I believe that writing this novel is all I have right now to work out all the issues that weigh me down. For this, I am truly grateful.

And while I will always see therapy as a necessity, if writing is all a person has, then so be it. It beats having nothing. Or worse yet, relying on the television for comfort.

I noticed yesterday that this day marks my third year publishing on Substack. My list of subscribers has never really deviated from about 320 and my paying audience tends to fluctuate but averages about ten.

I am certainly no Jimmy Breslin but as long as some people are willing to give me money for my efforts, I know I am doing something good. People are very tight with their funds these days and they have every reason to be.

It’s no secret that life for the “unwealthy” gets worse all the time. Pay is going down, paid time off is a thing of the past, benefits are only for people under forty who don’t get filtered out in search results and if you happen to find a position when you’re over fifty, they generally hope to pay you half of what you’re worth to do the job of two people.

It’s all a part of a larger campaign for wealth to stay where it belongs: with an elite group of people who are…wealthy.

No sense in wasting it on poor people. They wouldn’t even know what to do with it.

Not that I’m bitching. Poverty is responsible for some of the greatest art that has ever been created—Dostoevsky’s Russia and Dickens’ England come to mind.

Terrible to have to experience it first hand but inspiring and important to be able to access in the pages.

Perhaps, instead of lamenting the obvious end of days, I can let a smile be my umbrella and just remind myself that I’m simply living in Manas’s America.