When One Door Closes, Burn Down The House

Some call it a midlife crisis. For me, it happened at twenty-seven. I had recently lost two people—one to suicide and one to cancer, both young—and I had one of those slap-in-your-face, what-the-hell-am-I-doing-with-my-life moments. Grief and apathy took turns upsetting my fragile balance of routine, and I found myself struggling to comprehend an incomprehensible world. I’ve also wrangled with mental illness forever, and loss layered on top of the everyday battle to function like a “normal” person rocked my brittle foundation, to say the least.

I turned to art to cope. I was a music major (yes, I still have nightmares about juries), so I tried playing angsty piano, but it did nothing except exacerbate my existential rage. Next, I tried to draw, but I kept imagining the pencil as a sword and only succeeded in digging deep gouges in my shitty, secondhand table. Last, I tried writing—and this was my saving grace—something I held off from before, because I didn’t think I was good enough. Soon, however, the urge became too difficult to ignore, so I shrugged and surrendered.

Writing then became therapy for me. My early stories were horrendous, steaming piles of garbage, but I was so fulfilled by the process, more fulfilled than I had been by anything else I had tried—and I had tried MANY things (I was a whore for career changes). The more I wrote, the more my subconscious revealed, and I found the honesty of literary confession intensely satisfying. My garbage stories ironed themselves out into something novel-length and less embarrassing, so I decided to start querying. I was used to onslaughts of rejection and relentless scrutiny from the music industry, so I thought I was ready. I wasn’t.

Querying was supposed to be an escape, but it fast became another prison. All the fulfillment I felt from the writing process evaporated in the face of an army of sorry-not-for-me autoresponses. I tried to remember why I started, what I learned about myself, what stories saved me from, but it was hard to hang onto the dream when the nightmare kept pelting me with reminders of inadequacy. This went on for years amid an identity crisis (yes, another one—they’re good for the spirit).

I felt trapped in every area of my life. My professional and personal prospects withered along with my mentality. I drank too much, complained too much, and spiraled into a pit of self-deprecating misery. During this peachy time, I got an idea—a bold, risky, rugged, crazy idea about a broken boy, a grieving girl, and their overambitious journey to change their upside-down world. This was the kernel for EDGE OF THE BREACH, and the story took over my soul. I wrote it; I loved it; I queried it. But I still received the same outcome.

There’s the saying, “When one door closes, another door opens.” Well, fuck that shit. No other doors were opening for me, and this was the book I told myself I’d fight for, my stake in the ground. So I revised that saying. When one door closes, burn down the house. In other words, I decided to self-publish.

There’s a stigma around self-publishing of it being “lesser,” the same stigma that pervades everything else I am—gay, OCD, dysmorphic, depressed. Yet I quickly learned, as with all my other “labels,” that stigma is bullshit. All methods of publishing are valid and extraordinary. I’ve read stories across the spectrum in both traditional and indie publishing that have carved out my heart and handed it to me on a silver platter (I’m a masochist when it comes to my literary preferences). For me, self-publishing gave me complete control to tell the dark, weird, brutal story that was my mirror and my compass. So I edited till my eyes bled, created an aggressive cover, and slapped that sucker up on Amazon.

I won’t lie to you. I have not made massive sales, nor have I taken over the world. However, for the first time in my life, I am proud of something I made, something that cost my potential, something that took all the tools in my jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none toolbox. And throughout the neurotic experience of weathering negative reviews and celibate sales days, I learned to revise my definition of success. I wrote the book I wanted to read, no holds barred. So I stopped looking to others for validation and instead validated myself. We find ourselves in failure, in our reactions to disaster. Success is only a reward, but failure forges champions (this has become a touch Spartan, but bear with me).

My whole, long-winded, profanity-strewn point is that, if you want to do something, just fucking do it. You are your only impediment to progress, the only one holding yourself back. Yes, you’ll have shitty days. Yes, rejection sucks. Yes, plenty of people will have loud, annoying opinions. But the completion of the book is your success, not its reception. Once I changed my mindset, I rekindled my overwhelming love of writing and could move forward without the chains of self-hatred dragging me down. I know it’s easier said than done—hence my biennial identity crises—but I’ve enjoyed life the most since learning to be gentle with myself and validate each minuscule step toward world domination; I mean toward authorhood.

Thanks for listening to me ramble, and since I’m eternally shameless, if you’re interested in a raw, savage, violent, narrative storm of destruction, all my information is on my website at HaloScot.com. But please, for the love of Ra, do NOT read my work if you have morals or principles, because even I scare myself upon rereads.

And I certainly can’t miss this opportunity to plug the incredible, inclusive group of which I’m a founding member: QueerIndie.com (@queer_indie). We are a writers’ alliance established to promote queer and ally lit. Also, check out the epic podcasts @writing_show and @StorytellPod. Till next time, beautiful people.

More info: haloscot.com