Its almost been a month since my last blog and still no word from Pete Kalu about my novel. A writer's winter. The frustration penetrates the skin like the cold but this cold doesn’t make you shiver, it heats you up and eats you up, makes you want to barge into someone's office and ask them what they're playing at, makes you want to give them the dismissive missive - forget it mate, I’ve found someone else who'll publish me, only I haven’t.
So what came first, the writer or his novel?
Its easier being a poet, you never lose your sense of identity. When you've been working on a novel, especially your first, like I have been, you'll probably have been working on it for at least two years, three drafts (5 years, three drafts for me - Novelists don’t have months!) In that time, the novel becomes a soul mate; Everything the writers eyes sees and the creative idea that flourishes from it moulds itself into a character's thought, a character's situation, an enhancement or addition to the novel's theme or plot. You’re simply not a writer, without your novel.
So much of a novelist's time is spent doing what I'm doing; waiting. You wait for the idea to fully form in your head. You put it down and wait for it to simmer so you can re-read it and then send it out to people to read. You wait for feedback. Friends and relatives can be pestered to read faster but editor’s can’t, coz they'll bin your manuscript. So you wait. The benchmark is usually three months. The problem is in those three months, your mind doesn’t stop working and it usually goes against the advice to work on something new by pressing ahead with new developments, new characters, dialogue, descriptions, twists and turns for your work-in-progress. When the feedback returns its usually either - we'll publish you, or rewrite more or less the whole novel. If it’s the latter, you wait for new ideas to come that will fulfill the editors 'suggestions'. Then the process starts again.
I am at such a point in my life. And having been told not to touch the novel until it’s been read, I am, quite simply, lost. I’m questioning my identity as a writer at all. I can’t seem to think up new ideas, only ideas that fit into my novel. I can’t seem to think up any poetry either. I’m full of words that cant be expressed; I’m a literal time-bomb.
And I am quietly seething as I cross the street the other day destined for the Varsity Bar on Hathersage road where I intend to douse my frustration and perhaps muster enough courage to break down Kalu's door when surprise, surprise, I spot him crossing the street towards the Bar. I stop at the door and he sees me, increases pace. I call out his name and walk towards him. He stops; grins and comes to meet me. We park ourselves in the centre of the pavement. He extends his hand and wraps his fingers around my hand, then starts talking. Students squeeze themselves between me and the Varsity Bar wall while others maneuver themselves between Pete and the cars parked beside the pavement. I can see their lips opening and closing, smiling and raving but I hear nothing. I can see Pete’s lips moving and oozing speak, revealing a mouth full of white teeth but my ears are keeping a look-out for only two words – your novel. As he carries on, laughing at one point (I suppose he cracked a joke) I start to think of the different ways in which I could shape the question and just as I am about to do so, he pushes his spectacles up the bridge of his nose then runs his hand over his dreadlocks. He brings his head down near enough to my own and looks me dead in the eye.
‘I’ve read your manuscript,’ he says, then pulls back and straightens up. A rare strobe of sunlight cracks through the clouds in time to refract off the windscreen of a flashing ambulance that’s just turned into Hathersage headed for St Mary’s Hospital, blinding me. The siren breaks my eardrums solace and as it passes, all the attendant noises of the environment around us returns to me; the chattering of students, braking tyres, MRI ambulance sirens.
I can only stare at him, experiencing fusions of intense happiness and apoplectic fear.
‘Yes,’ he says ‘and I probably shouldn’t tell you this but –
He stops talking and shifts his gaze to what has stolen my attention.
A university student who’s bigger than both of us is standing in front of us; cap turned sideways, his knuckle-bruised hands hanging from the straps of the satchel behind him by their thumbs. He frees one hand and shoves Pete by the shoulder: ‘How you gonna stand in the middle of the pavement like this blood?’ he says.
Pete smiles, shaking his head, then extends his hand – ‘Zef!’ he says, then turns away from me.
‘Pete,’ the boy says, grinning, ‘you should have seen the look on your boi’s face when I stepped up man, the man’s shook!’
‘He’s a writer,’ Pete says ‘great talent. Great, great talent…’
‘Yeah?’ the boy says ‘what you sayin about my stuff that I gave you time ago still? You’ve still not got back to me you know…’
‘I tell you what,’ Pete says ‘What are you doing now?’
It doesn’t matter what he’s doing now! I think, you’re talking to me!
‘Chillin man,’ the boy replies ‘was gonna go gym with ma breh’s ya get me, but I gotta couple of minutes right now if you wanna talk.’
Pete turns to me and puts his hand on my shoulder. ‘So yeah, Gift, I’ve read it,’ he says ‘but we need to have a proper sit down. How about we set up a meeting?’ he says.
‘Alright Pete,’ I say as he walks away with the other boy ‘Alright.’
There is a lesson to be learned in all of this - Novelists behind me, learn to be writers apart from your Novel!
Those of you who are married and have kids, remember to love your spouses, because when the kids go to uni or get married, your spouse is who you'll be left with, and if you've been neglecting them...!