Why having a mountain rocks (get it)

You know, I was looking through them old posts of mine and it's quite obvious (the pictures might have given it away) that they are mostly about motivation. The motivation to make it through those three books in three months. Although assisted by my muse Caffeine, that motivation was not alone powered by her might. It was something else as well. I like to think about it as the mountain.

After finishing my recent draft of book one and sending it out to readers I became...morose. I don't like just waiting and I was waiting at that point. Life outside of writing does not have the same daily savour for me. Without a mountain, I feel directionless. My girlfriend always recommends me starting another project when one finishes because she knows what I'm like. Give me something to climb and I'll ask for rest, give me rest and I'll have an existential crisis.

But what is the mountain? I ask myself that and sometimes I think it's about publishing and having a tonne of readers and writing that masterpiece one day, which involves an arctic battle between the forces of ancient and old versus some dudes protecting a queen. I'm not even kidding, there's some half-formed idea that's been gestating in my head for a decade or so that I do one day want to write. Sometimes I feel like its all leading towards that one random novel, but maybe that's the nature of the mountain, its a made up peak so you have an excuse to climb.

And that's fucking brilliant. I recommend it heartily. There should be mountains everywhere. Or at least hills. I think we live in a culture obsessed with entertainment. We're bombarded with it every day; media, games, food, you name it. And we talk a lot about goals and self-improvement with the idea of a certain outcome in mind, whether its a better body or new experiences, or even meeting that special someone and finally filling that hole, whatever it may be. But there's something to having a goal for the sake of it. For the glory of success, the struggle, the milestones, even the rejection. The rejection's always yours to own- you did that, you made a thing or strove and because you chose that path you got knocked down, but isn't that better than just coasting along?

I'm oddly inspired by a friend of mine who one day decided fuck it. I'm going to write a fantasy novel by doing 500 words a day. It's not the goal that's inspiring, but the commitment to a climb. It's choosing that over going through the motions. I'm not trying to tell anyone their life is unfulfilling because everyone's got different flavours and different priorities and that's how it should be. But if you're wondering whether you should even attempt to learn that new skill, to embark on that creative project, to take up fucking knitting, I'd like to say its worth it. Just for the sake of the mountain. I'm not promising you'll succeed or that there's anything at the peak or that there even is a peak to begin with. But waking up every day with a purpose is a wonderful thing, it fills a space that maybe, if you're an enlightened sort of fellow, shouldn't be there in the first place, except I suspect the hole is nowadays, for a lot of people.

I think on some level we're this biological paradox, in that evolution has programmed us to seek leisure and rest but at the same time staying still will literally drive us crazy. If we tip too far in either direction we might lose it. There's a balance that includes giving a shit and striving towards something. It's what's advanced our species despite on some level, not really needing to. We never needed art or a bunch of luxuries we invented, or to go to space or climb literal mountains. It's built into us, as a side effect of evolution or a necessity of sentience. To climb some shit.

With that in mind, I remembered today why I started writing originally. What was actually at the top of the peak. It wasn't to get published, it was to be a great writer. In short, out of all the art forms, writing, in my opinion, contains the greatest potential for capturing reality. If reality includes all our thoughts and perceptions, memories and emotions, flaws and glory, writing can maybe, just maybe capture and translate that to another living being as a form of profound connection. I started writing because I got the tiniest taste of that. I wanted to be a writer so I could do that some more, so that I could take a moment in time that I experienced and somehow convey it, that I could crystalize something human, that's lost in the every day, that there ought to be a psychic snapshot of. None of this is to do with stories. I love stories too and I'm full of ideas and I want those ideas to come to life, but when it comes down to it, I started climbing because of this heady possibility, elusive though it may be.

I wanted to articulate that today.

If I can do that whilst having a bunch of orphans fight a steel worm in a desert more power to me. At the risk of sounding like one of those self-help guys always preaching a lesson, or directing the vague reader towards a certain path, I wholeheartedly encourage you to start climbing any of those mountains you dream of daily, that you glimpse in between the work and the rest.

Enough rambling! I hope some of this made a smidge of sense, because I'm in an introspective mood and it's oddly freeing to be able to love what I do without feeling that desperate pressure to succeed at it.

Though I'm going to fucking succeed because to hell with failing.

Here's the second part of HTWACSN (how to write a commercially successful novel). It's set in that shithole McDonalds on Queens Road.

Chapter 2: Yellow

McDonalds is filthy. Let me clarify, this is no ordinary McDonalds. This McDonalds resides at the bottom of a set of steps in the middle of Hong Kong. At the bottom, so that the filth can slide downhill, on the same level as cockroaches breed and rats scurry, and all within close proximity to Lan Kwai Fong, where expatriates vomit and where the vomit like the filth, rolls down the steps. The beleaguered cashiers appear to be in a kerfuffle when I arrive, with several no longer behind the counter but surrounding a corner from which drifts a copious amount of cigarette smoke.

I approach, satchel in hand, Mac tidied away, fountain pen tucked behind my ear and see Her. She’s the source of the smoke. My Cantonese is not very good but I can still understand enough to comprehend that all three of these cashiers are trying to tell her to leave, that she cannot smoke out here. But through the mass of striped uniforms I see her slender hand, now, with her perfect black nails, pitched with the cigarette leaning just so, and her deep red lipstick, ruby red, brighter than ruby red, so fuck off red you’d think it was bright red paint, and now her lips are making shapes, are making her sneer.

I love her sneer.

I proceed towards them and hear her own, perfect Cantonese and I’m pretty sure she is saying “I am too drunk to leave, so fuck off.” Which is very rude, and not like her at all. I wonder at her predicament. But then I feel the first pulse inside me, the first roar. There are chains inside my heart you see, chains within a cage within a prison within a mountain, and these silver chains bind my inner beast. On the surface, I am a mild-mannered writer, one who strives towards commercial success, but underneath I am both more and less. It is a terrible affliction, almost as bad as being a writer.

So I pulse as the moon rises. I can feel the moon’s reproachful eye past the fluorescent glare of the yellow-tiled muck-stained ceiling. I can feel the moon on the other side of the urban canyon and the ads, past the smog, there, calling to my inner beast, saying, “Just relax, let it out, let loose.”

If I did, what terrible things would happen to these pure cashiers. So I grab my willpower like Mjolnir itself and I bring it crashing down into the beast within the chains within all the rest, and he quietens so that only the tiniest “awoo” escapes my lips.

And she has risen. Statuesque, pale, eyeliner black, nails black, dress black, lips red, like some of kind of morbid seductress, the kind that would be inappropriate at a funeral, or like a vampire, which is exactly what she is. The cashiers turn to face me and I nod, politely. One of the cashier’s crosses his arm and says, “Your girlfriend needs to leave.”

She pushes forward and through them, stumbling as she does so towards me. Then I notice it, what I thought was a smear of her lipstick on her chin is in fact something entirely different. The red splotches that trail down her chin have not been made by a MAC truck but by something far more sinister. Little drops, barely noticeable, yet my bestial nostrils detect their coppery scent amongst the nauseating melange of McDonalds. But this is no barrier to my need, my primal anticipation, as I prepare to embrace her, arms out, hope held aloft, preparing to feel her soft body squish against mine, when she stops, abruptly in front of me, my arms almost Jesus lengthwise in either direction; she crucifies rather than touches me.

“Bob,” she says. She pokes me in the chest with one of her sharp fingernails. They seem to trace, briefly along the skin underneath my shirt, which quivers, stiffens, seems to yearn for the rest of her fingertip, to bypass her nail and feel the sweet softness of her index finger flush against my shirt. But I do not move. My arms remain on either side as if to lower them would be to flap my arms and fly away from this moment, from this intimacy that I dream about and sometimes touch myself to.

“We have to leave Francesca,” I say. “I can’t stay with you for much longer. The moon is gibbous.”

“I can’t leave here Bob. Not anymore. Not after what I’ve done.”

Again, those three splotches thrum in my vision, like three bright red lights that indicate ‘stop, go no further, cease your questions and do a u-turn.’

Yet to never leave here? Not ever again? To stay here was to invite death through heart disease. I did not know what horrible affront kept her locked in this yellow prison but nothing could be worth sentencing herself to a minute further in this shitscape, let alone the rest of her life. The chains rattle in my chest.

My mind is beginning to get muddied by the beast. Of course she did not mean she would stay at mickey d’s till the end of her days, instead, she has clearly committed some terrible crime. I lower my crucified arms and with one hand approach her wrist. But she pulls back and our eyes lock. Hers; deep, enigmatic, like dark pools filled with visions, like Giladrials fountain. Mine; bespectacled, awe-filled, I summon my poker face, visage like a curtain of nonchalance, thinking of doing my taxes, thinking of washing dishes, thinking of the banalest of activities so as not to reveal my heart.

But what did she do? I want to form the words and ask, I want to know, but at the same time, the terrible secret; what if it changes how I perceive her? No. I perceive her imperfection, her smoking, I will not turn away now.

“We only have a little bit of time Francesca.” I say, gulping as I do so. “Tell me what you did.”

“I can only show you, Bob. Thank you. Thank you so much.” She squeezes my hand and I wish her own would linger, but it pulls away. “It’s three streets up. Come and you’ll see...but you may not think of me the same afterwards.”

I want to laugh, want to grab her and say: You Fool Francesca. You could shoot a puppy and I’d still want to be with you.

Without looking back at me she glides past and up the rank staircase, the smell of her cigarette smoke an acrid perfume beckoning me onward. But I only have eyes for her rear end, which strain against a tight leather miniskirt. There is no telltale outline of underwear. I linger, backwards, lecherously, hoping that if she walks high enough with a better angle I could glimpse the secrets beneath. But before she reaches the top stair I am too sickened with myself to continue. If she shows me her secret of her own accord that is one thing, but to glimpse it in this manky cesspool is another entirely. I bow my head like a penitent and stumble after her.

The beast within has begun to growl.