Writerly Dilemmas To Avoid

I'm writing about a character who is a little like me, but twenty years older. He's writing a novel about a character who is a little like him, but twenty years younger. The character in that novel is writing a novel about a character who is a little like him, but twenty years older. Argh! Read on, if you dare.

I sit down in front of my computer. I wiggle the mouse to escape the star field screensaver and bring my story up on screen. The novel I am writing is about me, or someone a little like me, when I was young. This younger me is in his early twenties. He is a student. He is desperate to become a writer. He is sometimes very good at writing and often very bad. He is an optimist who believes he is a cynic. He is a layman who believes he is an intellectual. He is entering into a very interesting stage of his life; he is just beginning to discover that he knows very little.

In the novel, this younger me has a notebook in hand and is writing a novel about an older version of himself. It is a disconcerting choice. For both of us.

I write: My novel was getting out of hand. This futuristic me had not become the much-celebrated, highly sought after man of action that I’d envisioned. I’d made him a sad, pathetic loser. But he was likeable. He was the kind of person you could invite to parties and have a good time with. When he left, you would gossip with your friends about how he wasn’t making anything of his life. So much potential, wasted. Was this going to be me, twenty years down the road? Spending his time alone, with no one who truly understood him? Writing books that no one would read?

I closed my notebook and tossed it into the fireplace. Five surreal seconds followed. Then, with a yelp, I reached into the fire and retrieved my ruined manuscript. My hand was burned. The pages were beyond saving.