THE TROUBLE WITH BEING A FICTION WRITER

By J. Paddy Spaight

There are certain advantages to being a fiction writer. You can travel anywhere in the world without leaving your chair. You can become fabulously wealthy without earning a dime. You can become a master criminal, or the President of the United States—all without getting out of your pajamas. And, best of all, you can murder somebody without going to prison.

Of course, there are disadvantages. For one thing, people tend to look at you strangely when you announce that you’ve spent the entire afternoon trying to figure out the best way to dispose of a body. It’s even worse when you say it in a crowded supermarket.

I have been writing fiction for years, and I’ve discovered that the greatest occupational hazard isn’t writer’s block. It’s having an imagination that refuses to mind its own business. Take a perfectly ordinary situation. I’m sitting in my recliner watching television when a thought suddenly enters my head. What if the guy delivering the groceries from Amazon isn’t really a deliveryman? Perhaps he’s a retired assassin. Perhaps he’s an escaped mental patient. Perhaps he’s an extraterrestrial disguised as a retired assassin who’s pretending to be a deliveryman.

Now, instead of watching television, I’m mentally outlining a novel involving an interplanetary conspiracy, three murders, and a missing jar of mayonnaise. That last detail is important. I happen to like mayonnaise. A lot.

My wife, Billie, has learned to recognize the warning signs. She’ll look at me and notice that I’ve been staring at the wall for twenty minutes. “Hey, Writerman! What are you thinking about?” she’ll ask. “Nothing,” I’ll reply. “You’re writing another story, aren’t you?” “Possibly.” “Does somebody die?” “Not yet.” She’ll shake her head and return to whatever she was doing. Marriage is a wonderful institution, particularly when your spouse understands that the person sitting beside her is occasionally somewhere else entirely.

Sometimes my imagination gets completely out of hand. Consider The Other Harold. Most people would look at an old man and see an old man. I looked at one and wondered what would happen if he discovered that he had an identical twin he never knew existed. Not unusual, you might think. Except this particular twin had been hiding inside him for seventy-four years. Now there’s a family reunion you wouldn’t want to attend.

My collection Nightscapes presents an entirely different problem. It’s filled with tales of suspense, mystery, and the unexpected, which means that perfectly innocent things suddenly become suspicious. A creaking floorboard? Somebody’s hiding upstairs. A light flickering? The house is haunted. A cat staring intently at an empty corner? Well, that’s obviously something supernatural. Although, knowing my cats, there’s an equally good chance they’re watching a spider.

Then there’s the matter of research. Writers are constantly looking things up. The history of poisons. Unusual medical conditions. How does blood smell. The most effective way to escape from a locked room. I sometimes wonder what would happen if someone examined my internet searches. They’d probably send a detective. And the detective would probably become a character in my next book.

The strangest part of being a fiction writer is that the people you invent eventually begin behaving as though they’re real. You create a character. You give him a name, a personality, and a perfectly respectable occupation. Then, halfway through the story, he does something completely unexpected. “You’re not supposed to do that,” you tell him. He does it anyway. Now you have to rewrite three chapters.

Because, despite all the frustrations, there’s something magical about creating a world that didn’t exist yesterday. A world where ordinary people encounter extraordinary circumstances. Where the impossible becomes possible. Where a perfectly innocent evening can turn into a nightmare. Or where a seventy-four-year-old man discovers that he’s been sharing his body with a relative who never bothered to introduce himself.

I suppose that’s why I keep writing. Not because I expect to become rich and famous. Not because I enjoy staring at a computer screen until my eyes resemble two overripe tomatoes. And certainly not because I enjoy discovering a typo three minutes after publishing a book. I write because there’s always another story waiting to be told. Another mystery waiting to be solved. Another character waiting to make my life miserable.

Besides, what else am I going to do? Take up golf? At least when I write fiction, nobody complains if I kill off the competition. Well, almost nobody. Billie occasionally objects, especially when I tell her that the next victim bears a remarkable resemblance to someone we know.

And that, dear reader, is the trouble with being a fiction writer. You never really know where the next story is coming from. But you can be reasonably certain that somebody, somewhere, is going to have a very bad day.

And I’ll be sitting in my recliner, enjoying every minute of it.