While catching up on the New Yorker stack composting beside the bed, I read a profile of Neil Gaiman, the prolific and versatile author of spooky kid and adult books, comics, graphic novels, screenplays, and more, who described himself as having the good fortune of being a “facile” writer. The Londoner lives in rural Wisconsin, working in a cabin behind his house. “Facile” provoked in me visions of a ballet of writing, this man in black flitting and spinning from one project to another with ease and grace. A less-crazy Jackson Pollock spewing ink from a pen. A Vivaldi soundtrack. Facile would be among the last words I’d use for my own writing, especially now, as I wrestle with the final chapters of the latest draft of my two-year-old biography of Robert Ripley. Lumbering. Cloddish. Plodding. Less a ballet than a slo-mo wrestling match. Or a marathon. But in my case, someone keeps moving the finish line. I’ve had the end in sight for a month, and can see the tape, so I know I’m in the home stretch, the last hundred yards. But each day the finish line seems just a foot or two closer. I’m almost a month past my deadline, and desperate for something resembling facility. Occasionally I find moments of clarity and the words come easier (often after an end-of-day beer and a whiskey), but it’s all too brief, at least with this book. Which only confirms what I’ve always known: writing is a bitch, a grind, a chore, a job. Yet so is running a marathon, climbing a mountain, building a house. I’ve embarked on three similar adventures, and each journey had its dark moments, but each ended with a row of shiny-fresh books on Barnes and Noble’s shelves. And I know the day will come when I read “Thompson” and “Ripley” on the spine of this next book, that I’ll visit the new Elliot Bay Book store in Capital Hill the first day it goes on sale, just to touch them. But I need to try not to picture that scene too soon. There’s much work to be done, and it’s a bitch.
