The Novel

Chapter Six

I won the trial. I wasn't convicted for the murder of that woman despite the overloading evidences presented that could incriminate my name. Well, I just got lucky, I guess. My name had been cleared. Call it the plot armor! Since I am the main character, I get to be free from the consequences of my actions. Oh, the absurdity! To the public, I hadn't done any wrongdoing. To them, I'm a good man. In order to come up for the second novel, I had to go to drastic measures. I had to do whatever was necessary for the sake of reclaiming what I lost. A few days after my stag night with Roger, I started focusing on my next work.

Just when I retired from that teaching job, then I lost my own creativity. I sat there in my workplace in my apartment, staring at my laptop that displayed a blank page document, with my mind unable to come up with anything, not even a name of a character or a genre! Not even one sentence! I felt like I was being devoured slowly by the darkness, eating me away from reality. It wasn't a writer's block anymore, it was more of a blank page syndrome, and I had no idea how to cope up with it. So I decided attending night classes to distract myself from my book for a while. Just one of those writing workshops where your classmates are all aspiring writers, poets, essayists, novelists, and are too stupid to create a path of their own so they seek advice from an English literature professor who also can't get anything published, but spends his time in critiquing famous works by novelists who actually got what they wanted. Talk about the hypocrisy of envy. Like what that quote in Annie Hall states: "Those who can't do, teach. And those who can't teach, teach gym."

Sitting there next to a talkative aspiring science-fiction author, I wondered thoughtfully why business professors never got any businesses of their own, and why some gym teachers are overweight and can't do stunts. Why should I listen to a lecture on how to be a good writer from someone who hasn't even gotten anything published yet? Why should I trust a science teacher if he doesn't even believe what he's teaching? Well, this is the part where you say the current educational system is really fucked. The only companion I had in this class was this guy named George Mano. He was that talkative nerd I mentioned earlier. He'd been blabbering about his science-fiction works and how they can revolutionize the genre, bragging that they're better than Star Wars and Star Trek combined. Honestly, I didn't give a shit but at least I had somebody with me.

"Along with Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, and Isaac Asimov," George said, "I'll be one of the greatest sci-fi authors of all time!" He sounded proud, even looking up at the ceiling like he was some sort of savior of humanity. He adjusted his spectacles and took out his inhaler to breathe. He was that stereotypical nerd you'd see in movies, except that George is too talkative instead of just silent. He is socially awkward, he just felt comfort in conversing with me, not knowing that I was the only published author in the room. "What about you?" he asked me, "What do you write about?"

"Philosophy." I said. Everything I wrote about, published or not, had always been philosophy. I admired this subject so much that sometimes I even questioned its importance. If you actually think about it, every book had always been about philosophy. However, that depends on your perspective. To me, there's philosophy in everything. From Dr. Seuss' Cat in the Hat to Stephanie Meyer's Twilight. Bad comparison, sure, since it's unfair to Dr. Seuss' side, but that doesn't matter. Every book screams philosophy left and right, whether it's bad literature or not, there's always that deep message in it. It just depends on the reader's interpretation. If you just look closely, like I do, you will see.

"No, I mean, specifically, what do you write about?" George insisted. He obviously doesn't know who he's talking to, but I didn't want to tell him I'm a published author. That would ruin the fun. He might be intimidated by my fame or my accomplishment. He might display his enviousness, his arrogance might shrivel. I don't want that. That's what I enjoy about him. See, a simple revelation to a person might change his or her whole perception.