Control: My Novel Is Live…
I, Dalton Lewis, wrote a sci-fi epic about a man, Ares Morgan, who has a breakdown in the year 2174. He collapses, loses his way, and wakes up on a pier in a water planet far from Earth, waiting for rescue. Demons swim around his pier over and over, holding swords and watching him. He has to wait to see if they will bother to kill him.
I wanted to write about a mental breakdown because I had such a mental breakdown in my life. In Las Vegas I started to scream at the walls. People talked to me but I couldn’t hear them because talking to the voices in my head became more important than what other people said to me. A stay in a hospital inspired me to write about this subject. This situation — unhappy adult men want to lash out and hate the world — moved me. I wanted to write about the unhappy men who can’t date and can’t find wives. They lash out, desperate and afraid. I was one of those men. I needed to live with a lack of a career and a lack of a love life. I wasn’t one of those geeks who made it in a science field. I was one of those geeks who failed to bag groceries at the local supermarket.
Why? Why do some men fail to make it in life? We don’t know what to do to make it in the work world. We don’t have the skills to make it as a writer or a director or an actor or something, and at the same time our friends and relatives make it in life — getting grants for web shows or selling books about conspiracy theories. That actually happened. I have friends who are dentists or professional writers or lawyers. I have to live off of disability and my parents. I don’t want that.
Someone suggested that I write a novel about adults instead of teenagers. This is that novel — a book about the problems that happen when one grows up and needs to deal with real life. I also wanted a book in which the story doesn’t play out the way the reader expects. I wrote the first draft furiously during Nanowrimo last year. I spent nine months rewriting it after that. I rewrote the first chapter six or so times and then just deleted it, and I liked the story a lot more after that. Other people start their stories with an action sequence — I don’t believe in that. I try to develop characters for the reader to love before putting them in danger.
This story happened because I had a dream of a beautiful woman. She was perfect and attractive and smart and kind. No one felt guilt about her beauty or charm — there was no guilt or shame involved. I liked that — the notion that one could feel attracted to someone without worrying about hating one’s self for finding her attractive. I wanted to move towards that healthy view of appreciating beautiful women without mistreating them. I wrote that novel because of that dream of a beautiful woman.
I know that my writing career isn’t doing well. It’s fine. I’m not selling a million copies of this book. No one will give me a Pulitzer for this one. I just want to get better at writing and for people to give my novel a chance. I want someone to read it and acknowledge that I worked really hard on this one. I don’t expect to make it as a writer any more — I just think that someone should thank me for working so hard to try to become a great writer and write the Great American Novel.
What should I do? I have failed at my life’s goals. I need to re-evaluate what I should do as a career while I write novels for fun. I could try to get a minimum job bagging groceries or I could try to learn a trade. Further education to gain a skill might be a possibility. I can’t believe I made it to this — but no one is buying my books. No one wants to read them. I have to live with that.
Thanks, and take care, friends.
