Soliloquies Anthology 30.1

by Coralie Olivier

When he was twenty-five, wonder boy Orson Welles was given an incredible contract with RKO for two films, the first of which became the most critically acclaimed movie of all times (until Paddington 2): Citizen Kane. By all accounts, Welles was a genius and a perfectionist, but he had one critical flaw that derailed his career. He was only ever interested in his next project.

I share my birthday with Alexander Hamilton. If you’re like me then most of what you know about Hamilton comes from the Lin-Manuel Miranda musical. I had friends who were really into it, my sister too, but I stayed away from it for a long time (to be honest, I’m not interested in musicals much). Once I finally listened to it, though, I was struck by how much I had in common with Hamilton. I mean, “How do you write like you’re running out of time?” “How do you write like tomorrow won’t arrive?/How do you write like you need it to survive?/How do you write every second you’re alive?” Those questions could have been written about me. And then I discovered we shared a birthday. It’s a crazy coincidence. Like I know astrology is fake (sorry, Micaela) but damn, what are the odds?

I don’t know if I’m in my most prolific era. Perhaps I used to write more when I was younger, when my back could take bad posture, but every so often I’d become unable to write – turns out that’s called a burnout. Now I force myself to take a break on Sunday. Like God, I rest on the seventh day. Still, writing six days a week for two to three hours allows me to write a lot. I usually astound people with how quickly I can turn over a project. The truth of the matter is that I’m always more interested in the next one.

Presently, I’m finishing a novella that took me four weeks to write – I’d planned for it to take three weeks so I’m already off schedule. Yet for the past two weeks, I’ve only been thinking about abandoning it to start writing a Resident Evil fanfiction, because why not? I don’t hate my current project in the slightest. I love the characters, I love the stories, I’ve been painstakingly writing the pining so I can finally write the romance, but when I wake up in the morning, all I’m thinking about is that Resident Evil fanfiction.

I keep a writing list, so I don’t forget all the future projects I’m supposed to work on, and I can add the new ideas I have afterward. Right now, it looks like this:

-The Resident Evil fanfiction

-Edit the massive novel I wrote between December and February – it took me two more weeks than I’d planned to complete.

-Rework the other massive novel I wrote between August and October – this one was supposed to be a novella, but another one of my many issues is that I write too much.

-I really should edit the novella I’m finishing now, and also the screenplay I wrote – it took me one more week than planned – you’re getting the picture. But all that editing is going to kill me, so perhaps I should do some writing then?

-I have two novels and three screenplays on the backburner that I would like to write.

-And some mornings I wake up and I wonder whether I even like writing in the first place. But then I start writing and the question doesn’t even matter anymore. Yes, I love writing.

After my first non-fiction class, the teacher asked us to write a short essay on why we write. Not knowing that non-fiction doesn’t have to be a funeral, I wrote about how painful it makes me feel, how I’m bleeding on the page, how I need to or I’ll die. Like my main output these past few years hasn’t been Star Wars lesbian fanfiction.

I don’t think there’s a word for the type of writer that I am (we should start to typify ourselves, now wouldn’t that be fun?). I’ve heard other people with my condition being compared to faucets. Once you open that tap it never shuts. Personally, I think of myself as a printer. A recycling bin, too. I’ve never met a story I couldn’t shred, melt, mix with other bits and pieces and make something new, even from my own, long discarded remains of abandoned projects. I’ve forgotten how many novels I’ve written (all unpublished, as my sister likes to remind me).

I’d like to make amends for that stupid ‘Why I write?’ essay I wrote back in September. Writing isn’t painful to me. I don’t bleed on the page. I even like having so many projects always on the back of my mind, just itching to get out. So here’s the secret that we’re not supposed to say, but it’s true, deep down, most artists are attention whores. We love being given a golden trophy and a cheque and a pat on the head and being told “You’re the best around, nothing is ever going to keep you down.”

EDIT: The afternoon after I wrote this essay, I had the chance to read an excerpt from my play which has been shortlisted for the English Department’s Creative Writing Awards. At this event I received heaps upon heaps of compliments. Did that make me happy? Yes, for about fifteen seconds. And then doubt set in and I became paranoid. Why did I receive so many praises? Something horribly wrong was about to befall me and I just knew it. I couldn’t sleep that night, as I anxiously waited for the other shoe to drop. The mortification of being seen, or whatever the saying goes.

I’m older than Alexander Hamilton was when he fought in the War of Independence. I’m older than Orson Welles was when he made Citizen Kane, or when he abandoned The Magnificent Ambersons to party in Brazil. Sometimes it’s hard not to think that I’ve missed my chance to have an incredible career already. I was a teen genius when I wrote my first, terrible novels. But I’m way past that point now. Now, I try to think about L. Frank Baum, who was in his fifties when he wrote the Oz books, after multiple failed careers in a variety of fields. And then sometimes, I think about Emily Dickinson, whose work was published a decade after her death. I think about Jane Austen, whose name wasn’t published on her novels until after her death. Is it better to be famous in your death than it is to be forgotten in your living? Do they know how much they are worshiped now? They don’t, obviously, I’m just being rhetorical.

I might just leave a humongous body of work when I die, and won’t that be fun for future scholars to disentangle? For my part, I’ll never stop writing. You know I can’t, I’ve got fifteen projects waiting in the wings for me. Death is going to have to yank that keyboard out of my hands on my deathbed, and when she asks ‘Are you done?!’ I’ll say ‘No, I’m going to have to divide that chapter into two, it’s gonna take me another week.’