Speculation, Inquiry, and a Quest for Purpose

Current Projects: Winter 2021

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I quit my day job in 2018 because I was fed up with how other people were spending my time, and I wanted to see what I would do with it if no one was buying it from me. At the time, I was rewriting a novel I had (foolishly) self-published back in 2016, finishing a second one I started in 2015, and trying to find a way to make writing more of a central focus in my life.

By the end of 2018, I had gotten involved with a local writing critique group, started attending a weekly philosophy discussion series, and volunteered to write for both a charter school and a reused construction materials store. At The People’s Colloquium, I was able to share my works in progress with other writers to get their feedback, and I got to read a lot of other people’s writing to share my perspective on as well.

In January 2019, my fiancée and I discovered that we were going to be parents and had about seven and a half months to get ready. We needed a family car and an apartment that would fit the three of us (plus three pets), so I applied for the fastest employment I could find, through a temp agency. I kept writing and kept attending my discussion groups right up to the week of my child’s birth, but when he was born, everything changed. Suddenly, everything I knew about how to spend my time was irrelevant, and I had to start over from scratch.

My world was already rocked beyond recognition by the time COVID-19 was declared a global pandemic in March 2020, and when the dust finally settled a few months later, I woke up in a new house with a wife, a son, a gig as a copywriter, and no day job to speak of. My wife’s work is very fulfilling, so she’s still going in 30–40 hours a week while I stay home with my kid.

I have to fight hard to make time to write despite renovations, house guests, maintenance, and all the demands involved with being solely responsible for keeping a toddler occupied, safe, and engaged for twelve hours a day. It’s not easy, and most days I can only manage to eke out my three morning pages, but I’m determined to finish what I started before stopping to figure out what’s next.

With all that in mind, and in the interest of opening the garage, here’s what I’m working on as of this winter 2021:

Morning Pages

Since I left the workplace in August 2020, I have written three pages in my journal every morning. As Julia Cameron recommends, I write a stream of consciousness and try to do it first thing in the morning. Cameron also recommends writing longhand, but I haven’t been able to commit to that. I’m too insistent on digitizing my notes. Before becoming a parent, I would transcribe my handwritten journal into a digital format for archival and retrieval purposes, but in the aftermath of losing all semblance of control over my time, I’ve had to resort to digital.

There’s something special about three pages. It’s between 750 and 1,000 words, depending on how you count (I shoot for a thousand when I’m typing) and that’s just long enough for me to run out of things to talk about when I realize I’m only halfway through. Then, when the noise of whatever ephemera I’ve been documenting dies down, there’s a spark of insight that leads me through writing to my inner thoughts and preoccupations. When I write my morning pages, I’m practicing sitting down to write and tapping into that part of my mind that has something to say. It’s like a morning workout routine.

Everything’s Totally Manageable

It’s been nine years since I started working on the novel that led me to my interest in writing. “Everything’s Totally Manageable” is the working title I have given to a story that started out as an autobiography but has slowly evolved into a piece of realist fiction. I started writing it as something to do instead of smoking cigarettes on my breaks from work, but then some unexpected life events changed the course of the project, and I’ve been desperately trying to finish it ever since.

The story follows a group of college students grappling with the reality of their friend’s suicide while immersed in an undergraduate philosophy program and experimenting with mind-altering substances. Its central questions concern the nature of reality, what constitutes meaning, and whether life itself is even worth living.

Because I was starting with no formal training in writing—only a minor in comparative literature—I could only write by trial and error. My first draft was over a hundred thousand words, far too long for a debut novel by an unknown author. When I rewrote it to a more manageable size, I experimented with getting closer to the true facts of my life before moving farther away from them, tried melding and separating characters, worked through different tenses and timeframes.

Now I’m about ten thousand words into what, I hope, will be the last draft I write without professional assistance. After this, I’m either going to hire an editor or start querying agents. To reach this goal, I reengaged with a new writing critique group born from The People’s Colloquium called The Critiquery, which I’ll address momentarily.

The Critiquery

One thing I wish I knew when I started writing “Everything’s Totally Manageable” was the value of working alongside a community of like-minded individuals. Although I’ve read several books on the craft of writing, nothing has improved the quality of my own like sharing feedback with other writers who are struggling to bring their own ideas to fruition.

I spent the first eight years of my writing life alone. The People’s Colloquium was my first writing group, and I barely got to know them before parenting permanently changed my relationship to time. When I could finally allocate an hour or two a week to a critique group, the pandemic had dissolved the in-person roundtables and produced new video conference rooms.

The Critiquery represents one such development, and they emailed me to let me know they were conducting weekly sessions again via Zoom. I started attending their sessions in May 2021, while I was working to finish the second-to-last draft of my novel.

We meet for one hour every week, late enough that my wife is home from work and can look after our son, and we discuss submissions up to 10,000 words. At first, I balked at such a restrictive limit, but I have since learned to appreciate how it makes me focus my writing on brevity and concision. I look forward to it every week, and I volunteer to moderate the discussion about once a month.

Professional Copywriting

After I left my day job in 2018, I was approached by a former coworker about writing copy for a marketing firm. I hadn’t written to anyone else’s specifications or requirements since I was in college, so I accepted, thinking it would be a good pivot into a possible new career. By the beginning of 2020, I had signed on to write site pages for a new startup in Portland, followed by monthly blog articles and product descriptions for items on their menu.

Every couple of weeks I get an order for a new round of copy and I strive to finish any outstanding assignments before returning to my creative projects. This work still has to fit around the schedule of my primary job—parenting—but my wife helps me dedicate some time to writing throughout the week. I couldn’t do any of this without her support.

The Curious Writer

Lastly, I got an unexpected gift from my sister during a family reunion in early 2019, the same trip my fiancée and I announced our pregnancy. It was a textbook from one of her classes at the University of New Orleans titled, The Curious Writer. Since I lacked any formal education in writing, I was ecstatic to have any kind of guide—especially since my impending fatherhood precluded any possibility for further education for at least another five years.

The Curious Writer aims to teach writing as part of the larger process of academic inquiry, guiding students to ask questions, look for answers, engage with different viewpoints, and reflect on the whole experience. Despite spending so much time writing fiction, I have great interest in learning to get at the heart of my ideas and present them in a compelling way to the public.

With so much else on my plate, I’ll admit that plodding through The Curious Writer is often the last thing on my to-do list, but I still have been making progress and one of the reasons I reactivated my weblog was to have some public outlet for the essays I produce. I’m trying to put into practice what I’m learning as I learn it, and writing essays is something I’d like to learn to do well.

About the author

Ian Hayes

Former technical support and customer service professional, now freelance writer and entrepreneur writing Horror, Narrative Nonfiction, and Literary/Speculative Fiction.

Also backpacker, rock climber, casual biker, woodworker and armchair philosopher.

Currently living in Portland, Oregon, but also from New York, Alabama, New Mexico, Virginia, Georgia, Connecticut and Tennessee.

By Ian Hayes
Speculation, Inquiry, and a Quest for Purpose

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