The Book I’m Terrified to Complete

Though I began penning a novella a few months before the 2016 election, I can’t deny that part of what motivated me to actually start the dang thing was that it seemed relevant to the times. For the record, however, I conceived of this story and began pre-writing it a few years before, inspired in large part by the Ukrainian revolution of 2014.

My story is set in a vaguely eastern European nation with an ethnic divide on an alternate earth; a nation with a long history of triumphs and failures, a beleaguered president, and an ambitious mafia boss who is always on the lookout for opportunity. I tend to write big and long, so this time I wanted to challenge myself into a smaller, tighter story which would require me to say more with fewer words. Thus I planned to write a novella with 10 chapters, each composed of four parts told from the third-person perspective of four leading characters.

The story begins just after the president made an extremely unpopular decision meant to placate his wealthier supporters but which resulted in a long-term occupation protest erupting in the capital. After a week, the protesters are showing no signs of slowing down and the president’s appointees are starting to resign like rats fleeing a sinking ship.

The national police need help but the president doesn’t want to call in the military. Instead he tries to secretly recruit incarcerated felons. All of the prisoners defer to a mafia boss who has been imprisoned with them for three years and now unofficially runs the place. The two men strike a deal; boots on the ground in exchange for time shaved from their sentences. The mafia boss counters with one further demand: he gets moved to a secure, comfortable room in the capital building. Desperate to put this matter behind him, the president agrees to the secret deal and a grim partnership is formed that will eventually trap the citizens firmly in the jaws of totalitarianism.

How Far I Got and Why I Stalled

I was expecting, on the evening of November 3rd, 2016, to celebrate the election of Hilary Clinton and the defeat of Donald Trump. Instead, I was dreading what would happen over the next four years. Some friends shared my fears, others tried to tell me I was overreacting. I gradually stopped speaking regularly with the latter group; I wonder how they feel now?

I finished the first draft of the novella around April or May of 2016. As I began trying to revise it, I sank into depression. The story was meant to be fantastical, but its core is still far too relevant. I don’t want to live in a world of unaccountable power, especially when that power is propped up by racism, ignorance, and machismo. It became very difficult for me to visit a world that I feared was becoming far too similar to my own.

The other reason I stalled was concern for my reputation. I’m not an expert on political science or authoritarian regimes. This presidency has already attracted enough fake activists, professional scolds, and shameless grifters who offer empty hope to the desperate and politically disenfranchised. I didn’t want to be accused of being one of them.

Why It Will Be Finished (Eventually)

Say what you will about sunk cost fallacy, but it can be an effective tool for psychological motivation. When I think of the hours I spent planning each chapter, crafting the history of the alternate earth, and shattering the assumptions of my well-meaning but terribly naive characters, I feel guilty that I haven’t completed the necessary work to fully bring them to life. I feel haunted by them.

As to what the future holds – who can say? I like to think that this coming November, we’ll vote our way out of the danger zone and start doing the necessary work to make the United States live up to the ideals it claims to be founded upon. This novella is shelved for now, and I won’t be looking in its direction until I at least finish the novel I’m working on currently (details to come!). But eventually I will do the work and it will be finished and everyone can think whatever they like.