Recently, the bookstore that I have worked at for the past 2 ½ years closed.  Although I’m not completely saddened by this (Why?  Because this company, in many ways, deserves its fate for crimes purported against its customers, the book industry, and, most importantly, its employees), I have found it utterly sad to watch a place I spent so much time making a wonderful place picked apart like carrion on the side of the road.  Not to mention pissed off to see employees who have worked for the company for so long (one of them was just shy of 22 years) tossed aside like unwanted-but-still-functional socks.  But when sadness and anger subsided, I found that I was left with something much, much worse: apathy. 

Sadness and anger… well, they are manageable.

Apathy is a whole different beast.

Merriam Webster defines apathy as “having or showing little feeling or emotion.”  It goes further to include “having little or no interest or concern.”  Of course, how can you show any interest or have any concern for anything when you feel dead inside?  All emotion and feeling has been dampened.  A barrier has been placed between the ‘signals.’  A gauze over everything.

The thing about apathy, though, is that it’s not subject specific.  You don’t feel apathetic to just your job.  Or school.  Or your relationship.  You feel that way about everything.  It’s like being sick and everything you eat has no taste.  Everything in your life is bland.

Including your writing.

And this is the biggest kick in the crotch.  Because writing is the one thing that truly gets me going, sometimes.  When life is driving me nuts (kids, wife, job, parents, you name it), writing is the one thing that sets it all straight.  There’s something about leaping into your emotions feet first and swimming in that raw mix while your smacking the computer’s keys that just has a way of setting everything straight.  You start to see things in perspective and find your way around any impediments that your life has thrown at you.  You can see why your wife is angry at you or what you’re doing that’s driving your kids crazy. 

You can see.

Except, apathy, well… you don’t see anything.

That pool of emotions that you used to dive into… it’s closed for the season.  Hell, they even took the diving board!  So what’s a writer to do?  If you can’t tap into your emotions then everything you write is going to sound off-kilter.  I’ve been working on a second draft of a novel now for a few months.  Right before the store closed, I had the middle part all laid out.  This is how things work for me sometime: I get a strike of pure lightening that makes a thousand pieces polarized and suddenly come together, all the cut pieces fitting so perfectly.  With this novel, I had this all planned out… then the crap hit the fan.  I’ve been soldiering on, going through each chapter, writing what happens, moving the characters around the chess board, and getting them from A to B, but it feels weird.  It feels dry and sounds like I’m trying to write in a foreign language.  The characters are flat.  Not boring… but passionless.  Usually so full of passion (and, honestly, my main character Jack, is a man who fuels his ability to create and control fire by his emotions) they instead are robots, shambling around.  Doing interesting things but… oh so bland.

So what’s a writer to do?

Many years ago, Michael Chabon (Pulitzer Prize author of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, and others) was working on his second novel.  It was a massive book that he just couldn’t quite get finished.  Basically, this frustration created writer’s block.  But, Chabon had an epiphany: he would take the frustration of not being able to finish his work and write a novel about a man who was working on a massive book he couldn’t quite finish.  To make art mirror life.  And it worked.  Wonder Boys was born and it is a wonderful book about writers, the works they create (or don’t), the shambles they make of their lives, and the way they burn so bright when they are doing what they do best: writing.

In the past, I’ve taken this lesson from Mr. Chabon and used it to fight the mythic beast called writer’s block a few times.  It’s resulted in a few good stories that I was able to harness my frustration into creating good fiction.  But what do you do when there’s no frustration?  There’s no nothing to work with.

You write about apathy.  Two days ago, I started a comic book script that I’ve been thinking about for a little while.  It’s a long form tale that is connected to my first novel, The Fire Inside.  The Fire Inside has a lot of back story and that back story started to take on a life of its own a few months ago.  The Fire Inside’s main character, Jack, was mentored by a man named William Wilding.  As I wrote a little bit about the man in the novel, I found myself making little side notes about him.  He’s this fascinating character who starts as a hero, but, through the utter destruction of his life, becomes a better hero.  Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, he becomes stronger.  It’s a story I’ve really wanted to tell in comic book form but could never quite get where to begin.

But now I know.

It begins with apathy.  It begins with a man who has spent the past ten years dealing with every horrible thing his city could throw at him.  It begins with a man who used to champion his victims with a fiery passion finding that he cares nothing for them anymore.  That he cares nothing for anything anymore.  That he is dead inside.

I plan to use apathy like a tool.

And hopefully begin to feel again.

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