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A Bad Case of Novelism
by C.A. Scott

I am a novelist. To put it another way, I suffer from novelism, a peculiar form of obsessive-compulsive disorder that has driven many to drink, to drugs, to all kinds of self-abuse and even suicide. If you can possibly manage to live without writing, I say, then by all means do so! It is misery, it is insanity, it is not a talent but a malady. Novelists are barely functional manic-depressives for whom writing very often takes the place of prescription psychoactives. And that’s if they’re lucky.

All humans are creative to some extent. The most popular past-times these days are gardening, crafting, and scrapbooking — all arguably creative pursuits. There’s a whole entertainment industry based on exploiting the work of artists. And you can dabble in just about anything, especially if you have a new iMac on your desk. Welcome to YouTube Nation.

But novelism... Well, that’s a special kind of crazy. No other supposedly legitimate endeavor is so easily expressed in the terms of a psychological disorder. Only method actors are almost as bad. A novelist makes up imaginary people and obsesses over them for months, even years on end. She has conversations with them, even arguments, and struggles to control them but never really can. She sees the world as a reflection of her own inner landscape, spends hours and hours doing the same thing over and over again: tap-tap-tapping at the computer. Sometimes she laughs out loud or shouts “Yes, that’s it!” for no apparent reason while driving down the highway. When you’re talking to her, and her eyes go all glassy, you can be sure she’s off in that other world again, wherever it is.

This. Is not. Normal. Behavior.

I finished my first novel around age 18, and it was terrible. I actually (cringe) had some people read it, and they all said nice things like people always do. I’m embarrassed to think about it now — more for the characters than for myself (another sad symptom of novelism, putting imaginary people ahead of yourself). I even sent it out — I so hope no one who saw it then remembers it now! — and got an invitation from TSR to write for hire. But I didn’t want to write in someone else’s universe, I had a perfectly good one all my own!

Eventually I gave up and set that first one aside. After all, it was really bad. But the characters didn’t go away. They just waited... for years... until the right moment came along. Meanwhile, I went to college, played in a couple rock bands, wrote other things, toyed with acting, and started a career in journalism. Then one day, about a decade after that first novel, I went to the local moviehouse and sat down to watch Dark City for the first time.

Those eyes… I was entranced. Where had I seen them before? And that voice… Where had I heard it before?

“Oh no.”

Out of the darkened theater, he appeared, took a seat next to me, looked over and gave me that infernal smirk. “Hey, long time no see.”

“Urk,” I said, very quietly, a vain attempt to stifle my insanity.

“Honey, have I got some things to tell you…”

“Oh crap.”

And thus was Diego Lee reborn. I hear Rice had the same problem with that Lestat fellow. And Doyle too, with Sherlock Holmes. There are some characters who just won’t let you go. But look here, I’m the writer, I’m supposed to be god to this guy! I tried to tell him that the original book had been a great big pile of unsalvageable dreck, tried to explain that I had a career and a husband so there was no time to write some dang novel (series), tried to tell him I wasn’t good enough at the whole fiction thing anyway... tried everything I could think of to get him to leave me alone.

“Not gonna’ happen, ma cher. You better just sit back and enjoy the ride.”

Enjoy. Ha. You should see what the MRI of my spine looked like after five years of weeknights and weekends at the computer… You should see the weight I put on when I should’ve been out hiking the Cascades… You should see what happened to my finances when I stopped paying attention to them... Ay... Diego. That bastard.

Sometimes, I tried to work on other ideas. I had lots of them, still do. But he was brutal, kicking them aside and forcing them to the back of my mind, one after the other. Some weren’t strong enough to survive.

Diego changed my taste in music, taught me some very bad words in several languages. He whispered to me in the night, lurked through crowds and on my TV, sometimes even spoke through me or my friends. Some people who have never read the book feel that they know him already. An artist I know has found herself drawing him even when she doesn’t intend to. He’s insidious that way.

But the final version is finished, and in a year’s time the whole thing will be out in the world on its own. Guess I was finally ready to write the story he wanted me to write, the one he deserved. The real story. I learned a lot in the process of hacking it out, too — about myself, about the world around me, and about writing. And I rode it all like a carnival ride — sometimes dizzyingly fast, sometimes nauseatingly slow, sometimes euphoric, sometimes agonizing — often felt as though I had little to do with what was happening beyond merely serving as transcriptionist.

And I loved every bit of it. I never feel better, more alive, or more truly me than when I’m working on this stuff. It was hell trying to market such a huge, bloated, Dickensian nightmare of a 5-volume novel series… but now finally, I get to go back and spend quality time with it again. I get to come up with cool cover imagery and fun extras for my readers… I want to podcast and find an artist for a comic series... There’s not enough time for everything I want to do. But I need to share the madness. That’s the only way it’ll ever let go of me.

Oh, there are other stories, some about characters who live in the same alternate universe as Diego, and they’re already tugging at my attention — albeit none so obnoxiously impossible to ignore as him. There are even other worlds entirely, other people with totally unrelated stories to tell. They wait patiently on each successive hard-drive every time I upgrade to a new computer, some cowering in fear whenever his name is invoked. How I’ll ever find time to write about them in the midst of all this Racing History, I have no idea.

You gotta’ be crazy to do this. You gotta’ be crazy to love it.

My name is Cheryl, and I am a novelist. A very special kind of crazy.

RACING HISTORY

"Every WayFarer has a story. Every traveler tells a tale.
And in this life… you have to make a name for yourself."

Racing History is an ambitious, five-volume sci-fi series that proudly flaunts its appreciation for pop culture: music, film, comics, television, videogames, and yes literature of all kinds. In her episodic series, the author dares to challenge many of today’s boundaries in science fiction. This is the full story of a singular moment in history, not Earth history or human history but all of history — the story of everybody — and the how and why that make all the difference. One person can change the world, and the right people can make history. Sometimes silly, sometimes scary, alternately tragic and triumphant, but never boring, this is epic space-punk: space opera with a cyberpunk attitude and a touch of film noir.

Volume 1 (Episodes 1-7) is METEORIC, a dark and gritty story of life at the bottom of the glorious star-spanning civilization futurists are always raving about. This book introduces a man who will one day change the face of the galaxy. His early years are a trial by fire, preparing him for great challenges to come. People often talk of a “meteoric rise to fame,” but meteors are really just glowing brilliantly as they burn to nothing in the atmosphere. They never rise, only fall spectacularly... And Diego Lee lives both sides of that expression.

A scientific journalist and editor (with a few "skiffy" projects on the side), C.A. Scott is author of many articles and magazine supplements covering biotechnology. As a technical editor, she has been a guest at several west-coast science fiction conventions — and will do so again. Traveling extensively for work, she has visited nearly a dozen countries (so far) and once met a real live clone. She is also an alumna of Long Island University’s "SEAmester" program and Eugene, OR’s infamous "Wordos" professional writing group. Science fiction is her passion. She lives in Springfield, Oregon, with her husband and her mother, who retired from the working world in 2003 to devote full-time to her art,after raising three successful kids on her own. C.A. Scott drives a Jeep, misses her horse terribly, and loves to hike and spend time with her black Labrador retriever and her iMac computer.