FEAR AND WRITING IN MIAMI (PART TWO)

I spent this past week in Orlando doing death penalty mitigation for a client who is charged with committing a horrific murder. The murder got a lot of play in the media.

I finished the week by attending a writer’s conference in Tampa, where I had the opportunity to pitch two agents on my Manuscript: One Week.

The cold pitches were ten minutes. It occurred to me as I waited to give my first in-person pitch ever to an agent, that ten minutes is the time the U.S Court of Appeals gives me when I get oral argument on a case.

Ten minutes to save a client on appeal after spending months and months agonizing over every word in the brief, versus ten minutes to sell my book after spending every free moment I could squeeze out in the last year writing and writing and editing and editing.  

Appeals and fiction writing; it turns out there are a lot of similarities, starting with the fear factor as I sat outside the room waiting for my pitch.

As I watched the minutes tick by until I was called in to pitch, I wasn’t thinking about my book and the improbable, poignant, and witty (I hope) love story I had written (that seems perfect for not only a book, but a major motion picture as well!!),  I was thinking about all those times I was sitting in a courtroom watching oral argument, waiting for my case to be called before the court.

Spoiler alert: My pitch went well and the agents asked for my manuscript!

Woody Allen said 90% of genius is just showing up. What he meant (I think) is that you have to turn your great idea into something. That action: of thinking about it to doing it and finishing it is where most people fail. I have met dozens of lawyers who want to write a book. I’ve written two. Now I have to sell them. And finish my current project, while doing final edits and pitches on the first two. 

It took hours of negotiating with myself  to set aside the time from my family to sit down and write. I started by writing in the Coral Gables Library on Saturday afternoons.

Computer, Ipod, thermos of coffee, sandwich, power cords, cell phone, ear phones; Check, check, check down the line. I’m ready to go.

 I find a comfy stuffed chair in the back of the library. I spread out my stuff. Open my computer. “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.” There I sat, the greatest nightmare a writer has: a blank screen and all the time in the world to write. The rubber is meeting the road. It’s now or never. It’s like standing up to give a closing argument after a close-fought case. I’ve been training my whole life to do that. I’ve done a good job taking apart the prosecution’s case, but now the prosecutor has fixed a lot of it during their closing argument. The jury is looking at me. They like me, they understand my case. Now is the time. They are waiting for my first words. (Aside to trial lawyers- this is the time you NEVER thank the jury and spend a few minutes telling them how much you appreciate their service. Do that and you’ve wasted their attention at a critical moment. This is the time you say the legal equivalent of “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”)

I wasn’t worried about a great opening line for the book. I figured once the novel took shape I could always go back and add something (Which I’ve done about a dozen times, the end result being "The problem with this week is that it turns out I suck at math." ). This was just about writing. “Writers write” I kept telling myself. So I started to write- One. Word. At. A, Time. 

 I was about fifteen pages into the story when I wrote a line that made me laugh out-loud. To this day when I see it or think of Dan (the lead character in my novel) saying it, I still smile.

From that moment, the story was there and all I had to do was get it on paper. It was still a frightening time, but less so. Dan and Daphne (Dan’s love interest) were in my head. They were talking to me all the time, even when I was in court and couldn’t listen. It was always the same battle: fight for time to write, sit down, open the computer, stare at the screen, and realize this was the time I needed to do what I promised myself and my wife and my kids I would do: write.

It’s scary. It’s not as scary as when a jury walks into the room about to give a verdict. But it is still frightening. At some point, a few hundred hours and a hundred and fifty pages into the book the fear of “who in the world is going to like this? pops up and won’t go away. Now the battle is, should I finish? Is it good?

  

It’s like when I was a teenager in the Florida Keys sailing from Key Largo to Bimini. Point the nose of the boat north-east, and take off. The island is over the horizon. There’s the gulf-stream current to contend with, plus weather. But to get to Bimini (back then) you had to take a leap of faith in your dead reckoning navigational abilities. There was no GPS. I had to have faith to get to the unseen.

The same with the middle of the novel. Am I wasting my time? Who will read this? Shouldn’t I be at a yoga class, or taking the kids to the park? Something with immediate and tangible results.

This is where Dan and Daphne take over. They wouldn’t let me stop. They had a story and they demanded that I tell it, for better or worse. They let me into their lives and I owed them a finish. Not only that, but they wouldn’t leave me alone. “Dan drives that car” I would say when I saw his car on the street. “They went on their first date at Books and Books in the Gables” I would think as I drove by.  “Daphne hates the high prices in the HOV lane” I would mutter when I was going somewhere at rush hour and the fee was five bucks to use the express lane.

At some point the story over whelmed the fear and I finished the novel. And it’s a very good one, if I say so myself.

Now, there's only one thing left: share it with others.

Fear and Writing in Miami, Part III: letting other people read my novel.