February 21, 2023

Dear Reader,

What fantasies are you bringing to this process?

That's the first question my analyst asked me.

I remember being taken aback. 'Fantasies' sounded delusional. The question made me uncomfortable.

"I don't think I have any fantasies," I replied, which is when he calmly explained that he just wanted to know what my hopes and expectations were as we headed into the analysis.

Looking back now, it's easy to see that I did have fantasies. I had at least hoped my analyst would tell me exactly what to do and then everything would be aces forever and ever. I wanted someone else to do the hard work for me and take away my pain. I didn't say those exact words during that first meeting, but I'm sure my analyst was able to catch my drift.

After two-and-a-half years of analysis, I understand that I initially had no idea what analysis really was; I didn't grasp that my pain was a map that I needed to study. And I can see now that it was helpful for my analyst to know what he was dealing with—primarily my ignorance—which is why he asked the question.

And my fantasies were useful, inasmuch as they gave me the courage to enter into analysis. If I had known what was around the corner, I would have never started the process. And for this reason, during our first session, my analyst smiled and nodded when I told him my naive hopes for our work together. He didn't puncture my fragile bubble with truths I wasn't yet ready to know.

Last fall, I mentioned that I had written my next novel, about which—at the time—I was feeling wildly optimistic. Whenever I finish a manuscript, I like to enjoy the high of it being just mine. No one else in the world has read it. It exists only for me, which means it is untested against reality. It still has all the potential of a glorious fantasy.

My wife, Alicia, has always been my first reader. She often says I am her favorite writer. And she almost always loves what I produce. But this time around she didn't, which punctured the fantasy I had for this most recent manuscript.

I fought that reality dose for months. Defensively and desperately, I even privately hypothesized that I had written such a brilliant novel that Alicia was jealous or unable to fully understand it.

(I was really invested in this fantasy. I'm not proud of my initial inability to let go of it. Sorry, babe. Thanks for editing drafts of this M.P.L. And congrats on the Edgar Award nomination.)

Alicia and I had many conversations about the manuscript, each one a new dose of reality. Alicia was steady with her evaluation. There were things she really admired about the novel, but she didn't think it was fully baked and strongly felt it was a misstep.

That medicine tasted horrific.

But she was right.

My analyst has suggested that I needed to write this latest book for me—that there was all sorts of symbolic information in there that I needed to unpack, which is clearly the case. The novel was a necessary conversation with myself and maybe not one to which other people should be granted access.

What I wrote in the fall is a rough draft for something that I now feel will not only be more commercially viable, but also objectively better.

The alchemy of turning fantasy into reality is ego-challenging and unsexy work, which is why—particularly when it comes to novel and script writing—most people don't do it.

I've been writing full-time since 2004. That's almost twenty years and I still trip over the fantasy-to-reality conversion when it comes to my career. And I've seen more than a few seasoned writers struggle as well. It's the work.

I'm coming to believe that we need doses of both fantasy and reality. If we are lucky, we'll have kind wise people in our lives, people who will know when to puncture our fantasy bubbles and also when to let us take comfort in a bubble's wondrous—albeit ephemeral—iridescence.

I'm often approached—mostly via email and occasionally face-to-face—by people who want to share their fantasy of being a fiction writer and/or working in the movie business. I remember being on the other side of these conversations, when I was an unpublished writer dreaming big. I'd ask published writers for advice and mostly receive platitudes, which felt frustrating at the time—like there was a secret that nobody would tell me.

When we were MFA Creative Writing students, my friends and I would occasionally pressure our advisors for truth.

Are we good enough to make it as professional writers? Are our manuscripts accomplished enough to land us agents? Do we have what it takes?

Please be honest with us, we'd say.

Looking back now, I see how we were putting our advisors in a very difficult spot.

Of course, if we had what it took at the time, we would have already been publishing. We were in the MFA program to practice turning fantasies into realities, knowing full well that the majority of people graduating in the classes ahead of ours were not instantly landing fantastic book deals. And if the advisors thought we were fiction-writing geniuses, they would have surely shared that information with us already.

Sometimes the advisors would break down and hit us with some tough love, letting us know their true assessment of our talents, occasionally reducing some of us to tears. I remember a few particularly ugly moments. None of them were unprovoked. In each case, we had asked for it. Sometimes, we had even begged.

At the end of my MFA experience, I cajoled a published writer into giving me odds on my landing an agent. After assuring this person that I could take it, this person said—and in a somewhat gentle way—that I wasn't talented enough to acquire representation. In my case, that really motivated me to prove the assessment wrong, which I did just three months later. I've often thought of sending this writer a thank you card.

I think what that writer meant was this: if he were an agent, he wouldn't represent me. That was a hard truth to swallow, because I admired this person. But the reality was that most agents wouldn't have represented me then either. More than seventy rejected SILVER LININGS, puncturing my fantasy of everyone loving my debut novel. The reality was that some people loved it.

I think maybe you have to know a person pretty well to understand when they need to hang onto a fantasy and when they need a dose of reality. Which is why the published writers I wrote twenty years ago mostly offered platitudes. They only knew me as an email in their inbox.

Then again, making a fantasy into a reality usually requires surviving the naysayers and accepting the ugliest truths about the endeavor. And no matter how talented a writer is or how successful they might become, there will always be plenty of people ready and willing to criticize their work. 

Alicia knows me better than anyone. So she can get surgical with her fantasy-puncturing scalpel. And, ultimately, I trust her. She benefits from my successes, so she has some skin in the game. And, yet, such truthful conversations can produce gloomy days in the Quick-Bessette household. Perhaps we need the stormclouds to appear every now and then.

My analyst got to know me first and then slowly brought me along, giving me small does of reality, both regarding what analysis actually is and the fantastical parts of my worldview. Had he injected me with a full dose of reality on day one, I would not have been able to tolerate it. Tiny mental injections at opportune moments. This has taken years and is still ongoing.

With every manuscript I have ever written there has been a fantastical creative honeymoon, followed by the sobering far-less-sexy work of accepting feedback, revising, and then yielding to the project's true fate.

Speaking of projects, I'm currently hard at work on the WE ARE THE LIGHT film adaptation and am navigating all the joys and frustrations of the process. I'm lucky to have a few passionate teammates.

There has been some exciting movement with THE REASON YOU'RE ALIVE adaptation. Been working on that one since 2016 with a very tenacious and loyal producer.

And I'm just about to start the second draft of my latest novel.

Fingers crossed.

Okay, friends.

Until the 21st of March 2023, please remember that wherever you are in the world, whatever your current battle may be, your man in Coastal NC is sending you good vibes. Always.

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MATTHEW

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