I’m not sure how many of you will be familiar with the reference
I’m about to make. There is this really cool video game called Portal in which
you are given a gun that allows you to solve puzzle type problems in a unique
way with your handy dandy portal gun. Like any good game, the problems you encounter
grow progressively more difficult as you advance. You are accompanied on your
journey through their maze by Glados, a creepy, wise cracking computer voice that
encourages you, and promises that at the end there will be cake.
At one point, later in the game, in frightening graffiti on
the wall the warning is scrawled: THE CAKE IS A LIE
This is exactly how I am feeling this morning.
One of the hardest things about being a writer is that it is
a solitary endeavor. I am running a marathon, but there is no one at the finish
line waiting with a medal or even a congratulatory bottle of water and a pat on
the back for persevering when things got tough and making it to the end anyway.
I finished the project I was working on last night in the wee
hours, when everyone else was asleep and I should have been too. I wrote over
eleven thousand words this weekend. I completed a whole novel last night! And
then I hit save, backed it up in several locations, closed the file and went to
sleep.
I woke up this morning to feelings of relief, sadness and disappointment.
Relief that it’s done! Sadness that it’s done. And disappointment that it’s done,
that I’ve accomplished this great thing and…
An accomplishment like this should be marked with a party. There
should be cheering. There should be cake! But there scrawled on the wall in what
looks chillingly like blood is the graffiti: THE CAKE IS A LIE.
I went to work. I made the motions of living my life. Like
normal. I didn’t even say anything at first. Honestly, I think I was mourning and
wanted consolation. Mourning what? Both the loss of something that has consumed
me for two and a half months solid and the lack of acknowledgement.
But you haven’t told anyone, you say? Yes, and this is where
the tough part comes in, for me at least, being a writer. Everyone wants to be acknowledged.
They want their accomplishments to be recognized. But most of us also don’t like
to toot our own horn, which is where the crux of the problem comes in.
As a writer, no one is going to know you’ve accomplished
this great thing if you don’t tell them, but if you shout it from the rooftops
it feels an awful lot like tooting your own horn, like you’re a rooster up
there strutting, saying, “Look at me! Look at me!”
I’m learning sometimes it more selfish to keep quiet than to
let others share in your successes, to hope someone will look over and see you grinning
madly or crying quietly into your Cheerios. So, I say, COCK A DOODLE DOO! Let’s
make some damn cake!
