Eleven years ago I was diagnosed with mesothelioma, an incurable cancer caused by asbestos. I was a victim of corporate malfeasance, tossed onto the altar of shareholder value. Thanks, Jack Welch, I got poisoned, lost a lung, saw my career killed and almost died myself because General Electric was too focused on the bottom line and didn’t care about your workers. Greedy motherfuckers like you give capitalism a bad name. Your people could have maintained the fraying asbestos heat shields on your boilers but you decided you’d rather pay a penny more in dividends, so thousands of your employees died a painful and unnecessary death.
But I didn’t.
The doctors gave me a year to live, maybe a year and a half, with luck. Not much time for a relatively young guy with a loving wife and a ten year-old daughter and big plans for the future.
I won’t go into all the things that happened next. That’s a book, not a blog post. Long story short, I got bombarded by mega-doses of radiation which fried my perfectly healthy lung, so that got chopped out, and I spent the next year zoned out on Oxy, making peace with the thought of dying because living sucked.
But then I missed my appointment with the Grim Reaper. Must have slept through the alarm. Instead, I hung on, living in some endless purgatory, until one day I realized it was four years later and I HADN’T DIED! Woo-hoo!
Which led to the big question…now what?
Career was shot. One thing about being a fashion photographer - go away for four years and you’re ancient history. Not that I would have the stamina anyways, but still…would it have killed you to remember me?
So I went back to my number one, time-tested strategy: blind faith. I stopped worrying about it. Stopped thinking about the future. Just lived each day. Grew a lot of vegetables and flowers and cannabis. (8-foot- high Bubba Kush - baby, I got real good at growing things.) Learned to cook. Watched my daughter grow up. Lived life with my wife. Didn’t make plans.
Then, one day, I remembered an idea I’d had years before. An idea for a book - a novel - a crazy, epic fantasy full of magic and adventure. Only problem was, I didn’t know how to write a novel. I’d written 9 screenplays, some had even been optioned by major Hollywood type players. But writing a book? Actually putting my shit out there in front of the world. Being compared to writers who actually knew what they were doing? You gotta be nuts. Or living on blind faith.
So I took a stab. Then another stab. I wrote a lot of crap for a year or so, trying this, trying that - delete - delete - delete.
Until one day, the gods smiled.
I noticed little nuggets gleaming amongst the shite. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I didn’t care. I didn’t have a plan or an outline. I’d start a sentence, not knowing how it would end, and I’d watch it go somewhere that surprised me. I’d put my hero in a jam, quit for the day, and wake up excited. How the fuck is he going to get out of that? The best part was the waking up excited. Wanting to get back to the story.
Fast forward some more - I thought I’d finished writing it two years ago. Then I got feedback, and had to rewrite it. Then I rewrote it again. And again. Re-wrote it five times. Is it good? I don’t know. I like it. I’m going to write another.
But here’s the point of all this rambling on - I’m now grateful for the cancer.
It ended my life, scared the shit out of me, left me lying in a hospital bed, wanting to die, but it was one of the best things to ever happen to me. When the foundation of your life breaks apart, thoughts push through the cracks and voices bubble up, demanding to be heard. I got shoved wa-a-y out of my comfort zone, but it led to one of the most exciting creative projects I’ve ever experienced. Even if it doesn’t get published, I’ll feel like I won, because my life has been transformed for ever.
Now I’m looking for an agent and I’m sure there are a lot of rejections in my future. Nothing new there.
Bring it on.