Getting Back to Work

I’ve been trying to write something for the last couple of weeks.

I don’t really believe in writer’s block. I think most of the time it’s just procrastination. Fear. Laziness. Life getting in the way. Whatever you want to call it, I’ve had a bad case of it lately. But somehow, I’ve been enjoying it. I can’t really explain it. I hate it, and I love it.

Writing is a lot like lifting weights. If you don’t use it, you lose it. You stop trusting yourself. The sentences don’t come as easily. Every paragraph feels like a fight. Every word takes longer than it should. And don’t even get me started on the whole fucking em dash thing. I never know when to use it. Or when not to. Instead of writing, you end up thinking about writing, and that’s a dangerous place to be.

Two weeks ago, my wife came home with a surprise: two fifty-pound Nike dumbbells. They’re beautiful. White with black speckles and that new-rubber smell every gym rat loves. There’s something about brand-new gym equipment that makes you want to beat the shit out of yourself. So I did. Not in a punishment kind of way, but as a reminder of what I’m capable of.

Fighters fight. Lifters lift. Writers write.

Somewhere in the middle of that workout, sucking wind and wondering why fifty pounds suddenly felt like eighty, it hit me. I hadn’t stopped being a writer. I’d just stopped writing. Big difference. I needed to stop making excuses and get back to work.

Then, last night, my son and I went to see Spider-Man: Brand New Day.

Listen, this ain’t a real review. I’m probably going to love almost anything with Spider-Man in it. Comic books are how I learned to read. They’re how I learned to write, how I learned to tell stories. I can still remember being a teenager digging through the couch cushions looking for quarters. Comics were a buck twenty-five back then. My cousin Randy and I would walk three miles just to get to the comic book store. 181st and Cabrini. We’d buy the newest Spider-Man, X-Men, or Avengers comic, then read it before we even got home. Those books meant everything to us.

Tom Holland is so damn good as Peter Parker that part of me wishes he’d never get older.

My favorite part of the movie was when Spider-Man teamed up with the Punisher to fight the Hulk. I looked over at my son and his eyes got huge. He looked at me. I looked back at him. Neither of us said a word. Go see Spider-Man: Brand New Day.

All I could think about was my father taking my brothers and me to see Return of the Jedi in Times Square. I still remember the Emperor’s shuttle landing. Darth Vader kneeling, waiting for him with all the Stormtroopers behind him. I remember sitting in that dark theater thinking I’d never seen anything cooler in my life.

Then it hit me. My father gave me that memory. I wonder if he even remembers it. I hope my son remembers last night forever. I guess that’s what people mean when they say life comes full circle.

Maybe that’s what I’ve been caught up in these last couple of weeks. Not inspiration. Just life. The moments inside those circles. That’s where the stories happen. While I’m getting my ass kicked by a pair of Nike dumbbells my wife bought me. While I’m sitting next to my son in a movie theater, watching his eyes get as big as mine probably were forty years ago.

So here I am. The writing is coming. I’m sitting down. I just have to think like those Nike weights and just do it.

So, what have I been up to? A lot of my friends have been asking me that lately.

The truth is, a little bit of everything. I’m about to start my last semester at Manhattanville, which is hard to believe. This semester I’ll be doing an independent study, revising the memoir I started at NYU a few years ago. Instead of taking a traditional workshop, I’ll be spending the semester reading memoirs I admire and tearing apart my own manuscript, hopefully putting it back together a little better than I found it.

I’ll be reading Unlocked by Louis Ferrante, The Pink Marine by Greg Cope White, Bad Cop by Paul Bacon, and Dry by Augusten Burroughs. I’ve never had a problem with alcohol; I just love Burroughs. Great writing is great writing.

I also have to finish The Last Ride of Lloyd McNeil by Will Leitch and reread The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr. Between all of that, work, the kids, and trying to remember I’m supposed to be writing my own damn book, I think I’ve got enough to keep me busy.

I’ll be honest, I’m a little nervous. But this feels like the home stretch. I’ve been carrying this memoir around for years now. Some chapters have been rewritten so many times that I barely recognize the first drafts anymore.

I think it’s finally time to stop circling it. Time to step outside the ring I’ve been living in and finish the damn thing

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