So many books I haven’t read Anna Karenina; The Pale King; The Night Circus; Silver Sparrow. These are a few of the physical books in front of me, suspended in the air by blood red “floating shelves” bolted to the wall. I dare not look into my Kindle or iBooks apps to see the e-books I haven’t opened–or even downloaded.

Hoarding books appears to be another aspect of the writer’s life:buying new books even though I hadn’t read books I previously purchased or those gifted to me by loved ones.

My “to read” list grows, as does my “currently reading” tab: those books I’ve partially consumed but, out of boredom or distraction, I sat down, never to return. This list includes The Savage Detectives, Pym, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, High Fidelity, Sag Harbor, Another Bullshit Night In Suck City. Continue reading →

At the end of “Cowboy Bebop,” protagonist and general badass Spike engages in one final shootout with his rival. Bullets fly, the rain falls–all that you’d expect in a finale. Leading up to the last episode, “Cowboy Bebop” felt rushed as the writers tied up many, if not all, of the subplots before ending the series. It’s a common trait in anime, I think–or at least one expressed by the creators of “Cowboy Bebop,” who also rushed their subsequent, and less fulfilling, series “Samurai Champloo.” Anyway, maybe that’s the trait of all series–animated or otherwise–which is to wrap everything up before everything is wrapped up.

Such was the feeling of the AWP Conference & Book Fair, my first time visiting the affair. Continue reading →

A part of me wants to complain. Something about the land of the social misfits irritates me, but I keep my mouth shut–at times–because I consider it a personal problem, one easily fixed by my removal from the networks. I could call it “downtime” to reenergize and, soon, return to the task of tweeting comedic one-liners and over-sharing my personal life. I could do this without an examination as to why I feel the need to unplug in the first place or, better yet, the reason(s) why I’m irritated, angered, and at a loss. An existential crisis of my online persona is under way, a silly, but–I wonder?–increasingly commonplace problem.

Who I am–and the aspects of my personality which I show online–is a matter of careful curation, sifting through the shards which makes me “me” and display the beautiful pieces, the sexy ones. The goal, of course, is to be seen, to be heard, as oppose to “see” or “hear”–I look for another party to reach out and validate my nonsense with an LOL. Because to say what I really want to say–which is nothing, for I am both shy and introverted IRL–means screaming to myself into the ether(net) and, well, I can simply berate my walls if talking to myself is the end result.

That I’m a writer (self-promotion) and editor-in-chief of a literary magazine (promotion of others) makes my crisis all the more inconvenient. Day by day, the links affixed to short stories and poems and press releases for new or upcoming books whiz by my tiny window, capturing the hearts and minds of the small audience we literary types–we, the online literati–look to endear with our meager offerings, the ever-increasing ephemera we produce. Scraps of sentences and half-baked plots, cooked with the speed and quality of low-grade crack cocaine, doled out in dime-bag-sized blog posts and tweets: forgotten footnotes masquerading as literature, which we claim to create and endorse.

And some of us do, yes, but at the expense of the bright lights beamed from the eyes of “edgy writers.” Writer–by any other name–is a nerd, a social reject, the plaything for high school bullies. A part of me can’t begrudge them–us–for the cronyism, the cliques, as a mere expression of self-preservation (combine and defend!). But in what hopes? What, in fact, is the endgame here in this online literary realm where exclusion is a custom or, perhaps, merely the remainder resulting from long division (popularity over substance)?

And who am I to complain? I am a participant in this entire game. I’ve stacked more wins than losses over the past year; between publications and the launch–and relative success–of my magazine, the aforementioned question is answered: I am no one to complain.

But to be human is to complain–and to be online is to have a public forum to bellow out my grievances–so I must do my duty.

The existential crisis is twofold: I rarely reveal the real “me” while online and the ways in which I do reveal the curated pieces–mensah demary vs. Thomas DeMary–goes against my very nature, though I don’t mean to make it sound so dire. To the latter point, the Internet is the latest space where the paraphrase “no country for introverts” is applied, if easily dismissed, for anyone can say anything to anyone without fear of retribution, the IRL variant (bodily harm). I should know: I spent 2011 harassing @Tyrese.

I’m no fool–my task as curator of my own online life is, to this point, a successful one. But it comes with a price. It comes with the sacrifice of who I am, of what I believe, in order to run with the beautiful ones of online literature, albeit in the back of the pack–which beats being a groupie, a status some of my contemporaries are happy to own, but that’s for another day. My problem is, indeed, a personal one because no one else, to my knowledge, wonders aloud, “WTF are we doing here? What IS this ‘online literature?’ And to participate in it, to actually have my work read–or at least seen–by as many people as possible, what does one have to do?”

Depends. Maybe you have to routinely insult people. Or bare your breasts. Or inflate your importance with Twitter bot accounts featuring wonderful plays on your name. Or receive a facial. Or type in all caps begging, pleading, almost offering fellatio to receive a glorious retweet or re-blog from a beautiful one, a literary titan who lords over the fecal matter we espouse as literature.

It depends. For me, I simply insult people and make a mockery of my own personal life, to treat the pain of divorce with irreverence, the latest in cyberspace fashion. And I do it all in the name of gaining something called “notoriety” because, my fear is, to do it with humility and a dose of reality–to be “real”–is to be ignored. Cast out.

“We want outcasts,” so goes the tagline for my magazine. A message to myself–and I didn’t even know it.

Interesting.

mensah demary, whose prose has appeared or is forthcoming in various publications, is co-founder & editor-in-chief of Specter Magazine.

a regular contributor for The Lit Pub, Hippocampus Magazine, ArtFaccia, and Peripheral Surveys, mensah currently writes in Camden, New Jersey. For more information, visit www.mensahdemary.com or on Twitter @mensahdemary. 

my writing life is different. its previous state outlined in an earlier essay, here–now–is where i note the dissimilarities.

it is 5 AM and there’s no time to putter. the urgency to write is here–now–evident inside my blood slowly circulating and the morning breath in my mouth [toothpaste can wait]. i wake up alone–

she floods me with dread–

and i’m motivated to write as if my fingers were legs, as if these letters were the smoky jet-stream of a man in flight, as if i’m hunted down by truth and this entire exercise is a race to a safe haven, because no one said the truth is benevolent or benign.

i roll out of bed thinking, swearing off drinking, while my Amira gently sleeps

[i hope].

the coffee is already prepared when i exit the bedroom. delay timer delayed brewing time by five hours–back when i dumped the coffee and water into the machine–and ten minutes before 5 AM, its circuitry awoke and began the percolation process: scalding steam flutter above the coffeemaker while hot water trickled into a flimsy coffee filter containing store-bought ground coffee [arabica, maybe]. this makes it possible for fresh coffee to await me when i exit the master coffin to find myself.

what else can a writer do but write when all the shit falls down?

in my previous writing life, i needed a half-hour to get to work–thirty minutes plus a beige pill to ward off the demons–but now, in this new life, i take five minutes:

pour the coffee + creamer + sugar into my mug [stir];
find my glasses;
piss;
don a hoodie because it’s chilly and i, at times, like to write while wearing a hood over my head;
wake up my computer and light a cigarette and set the timer [T-minus 90 minutes].

in this new life, i worry about finances. this, my home, is an apartment with two in mind; its rent, with only one party, is daunting, though surmountable. who am i to complain? i am–as they say–the “asshole” in this scenario, the “douchebag, scumbag, and jerk-off.”

[run away with me, a stray thought says in my head. run away from me–or with me–or to me–or without me.]

at the computer, there is no hesitancy. truth stalks me and i’m still under the naive belief that writing is my lord and savior, or at least an armed defender [albeit with dented armor and a broken dagger]. and why should i hesitate? this space is mine

–where they can never hear me scream–

and there’s no one to placate or tip-toe around or sort of, kind of, ask for permission to write, or to feel as if i need to sort of, kind of, ask for permission to write because

to write is to be away

and sometimes, the most understanding of lovers wants her shivers spooned beneath the still-black slowly turning blue sky and amid the silence of a city blinking its eyes, wondering if it can rise once again–wondering if it should

–and lovers, particularly the most understanding of this class, feel and hear everything–

can hear and feel the city breathing heavily, its lungs rattling as if full of phlegm or coagulated tears choked back–and even in her sleep, she is troubled and would like an arm draped across her waist.

but to write is to be away and baby, i gotta go. i gotta run. sometimes, a writer’s gotta race.

yes, there is urgency, but there is no rush. this large, echoey space is mine to inhabit alone–just as this city is mine at this hour, excluding the homeless rising from their grated mattresses, their piecemeal clothes soaked by municipal steam. god help us for leaving these men and women and children and gay runaway teens out in the cold to fend for themselves–god help us for the words they write in their heads or on pieces of a HDTV cardboard box.

anyway–i’m alone.

the root word of solitude is solace: this is the bullshit i dredge up while writing alone which, remember, is occurring right now, right this minute, moments after waking alone which, remember, meant i slept alone and snored alone and wanted to spoon so i probably spooned myself

[this is sometimes called the “fetal position”].

with this train of thought in mind, why should either of us–writer and reader–be surprised by that little solitude/solace nugget? it oozes self-help. it sounds nice like the way an ugly pink polyester dress looks nice on a shapely body.

Will said something to the effect of “you blew up your life so you can build it back up” and this sounded nice and perhaps even true but the nicety only explains, as opposed to healing the damage from, the detonation.

Leslie said, “my problem is finding the energy to create” and i dug her sentiment.

and Amira said, “thanks to you, i’m writing poetry for the first time in years” and i stared at my shoes.

and i say now, “it is quite evident to me why i befriend and, at times, fall for writers. they have writing lives and it is so easy to become wrapped up in that blasted miasma versus, say, tending to my own shit.”

but it’s 6 AM now and i’ve written 1,140 words in an hour because typing is a slow go with a slow brain but the point is–the point is–i’m alone and the truth reads over my shoulder and i have nowhere left to run and hide. my writing life, now, demands i sit and peck at the keyboard, waiting for this disaster to end. or write its end into existence.

mensah demary, whose prose has appeared or is forthcoming in various publications, is co-founder & editor-in-chief of Specter Literary Magazine. For more information, visit www.inhelvetica.com or on Twitter @mensahdemary.