1. I am writing a novel.
There are few phrases more fraught with more personal and social peril than this. Once I put it out there, this bright badge I’d decided give myself throughout my 20s and 30s, then I had to talk about it.
How’s the novel going? It’s going. This was the most truthful answer I could give. If I felt talkative, I’d paraphrase Kurt Vonnegut, who once equated novel writing to World War I trench warfare. Long stretches of nothing happening, then sudden flurries of action and movement that may or may not be considered progress.
So what’s the novel about? Best answer I’ve ever given: Nouns. When pressed, I dropped a few real examples from what I was working on: conspiracy theories, frogs, reality TV, garage rock, psychedelic drugs, politics, 19th Century Brazilian history, Indiana, fish, Ancient Rome, the Rodney King trial. And cancer. I didn’t like talking about the novel, I liked being thought of as the sort of person who was writing a novel. And then there was the expectation of completion. People remembered and asked about it.
2. I am doing this other thing, but I’m really writing a novel.
The jobs I worked while toiling on the novel – pizza delivery, ESL teacher in Japan, independent researcher for the National Archives, writer for various startups during the first dotcom bubble – were only to keep the lights on, food and drink in my belly. The novel was a noble activity and higher purpose that gave shape to my life. The novel, finishing it and the bright days that would follow, kept me going. This was the story I told myself.
To be clear, I really was writing a novel. A complicated, convoluted, hard-to-describe beast of a thing. When I completed what I’d considered at the time a first full draft, I celebrated with a tattoo of a hash mark on my right bicep. First book done!
3. I wrote a novel.
But it needed a lot of work and a way to get it into the world. I bought the book on how to sell your novel and did what the book said to do. A solid first hundred pages, query letters to agents and publishers. I did it all. No response. It was hateful and soul crushing.
4. I’m a Content Strategist.
In the meantime, a project lead at a digital ad agency I was freelancing for informed me that I was Content Strategist. The term didn’t have a very solid definition at the time, but what I did find made sense. Websites are complicated systems for delivering information. Someone should be making sure that the information is structured properly for the system and provides users with what they need while supporting business goals and accurately representing the brand. That someone is a Content Strategist.
Subject matter aside, Content Strategy ticked many of the same boxes as working on the complex narrative of the novel. I gravitated to financial services clients for the complexity and challenge of educating people about and selling a “notional” product that only existed as a legal entity – words embodying an idea that we’ve collectively agreed has weight, meaning, and value. A car has specs, heft, and takes up space. An insurance policy or bank account has rules and contours, but no “there”. I enjoyed the challenge.
5. My office is a war room.
And the novel gathered digital dust. Old friends and family would ask about it, and I’d mention a lack of time. Truth be told, I didn’t need it anymore. Content Strategy and my work projects provided what the novel previously had given me. The work, the cross-disciplinary teams of art directors, interaction designers, technologists, and project managers, gave me partners, cohorts, and mentors. Where fiction writing is a solitary activity where decisions are yours alone, my projects felt like small budget indie films. We pounded it out in stinky war rooms where we laughed, shouted, sweated, drank, swore, and cried our way to final deliveries. These were my people, and I loved them.
6. I once wrote a novel.
Still, the world of the novel poked through a few times. These characters and their imagined lives would appear to me every time I drove through northern Indiana from Chicago to visit family in Michigan. Nunny Catch, the fictional town I set the novel in, would be just off I-94 near the infamous “US out of the UN” sign that been there for decades. I’d wonder about my characters, trapped in a mental back burner and on pages gathering dust.
7. I live in Baltimore, I work in Chicago.
I attended a friend’s baby shower in Baltimore, and I met a woman named Lisa that became my wife. We debated the merits of building a life in Chicago versus Baltimore (or Philadelphia). Baltimore won. I keep my job, traveling back and forth to Chicago every other week or so. My company was very understanding and supported me as a remote worker.
8. I have cancer.
About a year or so into this divided life, I began to notice blood in my stool. My general practitioner recommended that I get a colonoscopy. I awoke to an almost certain colorectal cancer diagnosis, which later tests confirmed. I kept a blog of my experience called Colorectitude as a way to keep my friends and family up to date with my prognosis.
9. I once wrote a novel about cancer.
In truth, cancer was only a part of the novel, but a pretty important part. One of my main characters, an institutionalized flower-child gone to seed, is diagnosed with prostate cancer. He’s thinks the mainstream medical establishment is part of conspiracy to suppress alternative cancer treatments, finagles a way to get released, and searches for a cure on his own. This search is a driving force of the novel.
A few weeks after my diagnosis, the novel and the cancer I’d given my character came back to me. Granted, it wasn’t the same flavor of the disease, but I had a momentary sense that I’d toyed with cancer and then cancer had decided to toy with me.
11. I crap in a bag.
We caught my cancer extremely early. My team of doctors at Johns Hopkins recommended surgery to cut out the cancerous portion of my colon – a colectomy. No radiation. No chemotherapy. The wild card going into the operation was whether or not I was going to get a stoma for an ileostomy bag. The stoma and the bag would allow the spot where my colon was reattached to heal and minimize the chances of infection.
When I woke up after the surgery, I immediately felt my side. There was a stoma and a bag that would be my constant companion a few months. I crapped in a bag and had a lifting restriction of 10 pounds. Everything in the world, I soon discovered, weighs at least 10 pounds. The less said about the bag, the better. By the time I got proficient at dealing with the strange intersection of my body and the bag, it was time for the reversal surgery. The stoma was closed up and stuck back in my torso.
12. I don’t have cancer anymore.
I stopped having cancer the moment my surgeon snipped the six or so inches from my colon. The tumor had only just breached the colon wall and hadn’t spread into my lymph nodes. Follow-up tests started every three months, then four months, then six months, then yearly. With each passing year, the chances of a re-occurrence decreased exponentially until I’m no longer tested at all.
13. I’m not a cancer survivor.
Cancer dabbled with me and I was fortunate enough to have insurance, a support system, a primary care physician with good instincts, and to live 15 minutes away from the best healthcare in the world. I’ve had close friends who haven’t been so fortunate. I got very lucky, and just don’t think of myself and the experience in terms of survival even though it’s technically accurate. It’s a badge that I’ve chosen not to wear.
14. I, um, don’t have a job right now.
In the middle of 2016, I was laid off from my Chicago Content Strategist job after 9 years. After going through six or so rounds of layoffs in three years, having my staff of fellow Content Strategists dwindle to a single contractor, and seeing my own billable hours dry up to nothing, this wasn’t much of surprise. I was more than ready to move on, but it was all so bittersweet. I was sick of the travel and sick of living in a town I didn’t work in, but I loved my co-workers.
My former company is fairly well-known even outside of the agency world. So when I met people, told them where I worked and that my title was Content Strategy Director, I liked the response I received. Even if they didn’t really understand what I did, by gosh, it sounded impressive. Add in that it’s a Chicago job and I have to fly back and forth from Baltimore every few weeks, and it was downright glamorous.
After the layoff, I struggled with the language to describe myself. I hadn’t been unemployed in about 15 years. My verb tenses jumped between past and present mid-sentence. I’d describe my tone as “conflicted”. With each awkward conversation I worked through a range of emotions, from giddy to sullen, often in the same sentence.
15. Am still a Content Strategist. I think.
I considered myself a Content Strategist, but even the term “Content Strategy” seemed contested and blurry as I started looking at job listings. Content Strategist, Content Marketer, Digital Strategist, Web Content Specialist, UX Writer, Content Designer. Unpacking the job descriptions revealed a thin spine of common tasks and soft skills, but widely varying responsibilities that didn’t really fit what I considered to be Content Strategy.
So what the hell was I now?
16. I’m a freelance Content (Strategist/Designer/Wrangler).
There’s a small web agency a five minute walk from my house. I’d met with them a few years ago when the Chicago travel and work was getting to me. I really liked them and it felt like a good fit, but I wasn’t quite ready to leave my Chicago job. I reached out again after I was laid off. They happened to have some work that fit with my skills, and I started freelancing for them a few months ago. It is a good fit and I’m enjoy working with them very much.
17. I published the novel finally.
I’d been kicking around the idea of putting the novel out there as an ebook for a while. I was leery for a couple of reasons. Digital is not my preferred way to read anything beyond the length of long-form journalism pieces. I like a physical book and the way it feels in my hand. If I was a Millennial and learned to love reading on a digital device, I might feel differently. My father looks down on paperbacks and prefers hardcovers, so I come by this honestly.
And then there’s the idea of “self-publishing” as an admission of defeat draped in cloak of vanity. I know that’s a harsh and snooty, but I went through an MFA program. I see the work of former classmates, professors, and co-workers on bookstore shelves, in magazines, and on TV. They’re grinding it out and earning their spaces in the culture. I’m dusting off an artifact from my 20s and 30s and dragging it into the light. Yawn.
So why do it, you ask? Several reasons.
Getting The Book of Catches out into the world puts a final bow on the Chicago-Midwest part of my life. I love it there and the novel is very much of product of the area, but my home and work is now in Baltimore.
And I still really like it. I think there’s a possible audience out there who might enjoy it, too.
This is the part where I’m tempted to caveat the heck of The Book of Catches and distance myself from it with some claptrap about bodies replacing their cells completely every seven years, so the novel is really an echo of an earlier me. But that would be bunk. The truth is that the Sikes-Foster family, the made-up town of Nunny Catch, Indiana, and the rest of the people, places, and things stuffed into The Book of Catches are still very close to my heart and my soul. I hope you give them and this troublesome piece of me a read and enjoy it.
