The Central Question of The Rubble and the Shakespeare

tyunglebower ♦ November 3, 2023 ♦ Leave a comment

What’s the single question at the heart of my upcoming novel The Rubble and the Shakespeare?

Stories often have multiple underlying questions, or themes. My novel is no exception, but one question is central—central in that not only does the novel itself and its characters consider it, but as the author so do I. The question:

Are creative endeavors justified in the midst of struggles?

I’ve pondered this question at numerous times in my life long before this novel came about. Yet between some personal issues, as well as the Pandemic dominating much of my thought and time during the process of writing The Rubble and the Shakespeare, this felt especially topical.

The experience of writing this novel paralleled the plot of same. This wasn’t my intention. In fact this wasn’t the novel I started; just before the pandemic planned on an entirely unrelated story. This was slow going, and ultimately it was clear to me that it was not the time to pursue that novel, so I iced it.

The decision to put the first few thousands words in a drawer, (only the second time in my career I had ever done that) acted as a millstone, acting as strong inertia against writing anything at all, including this novel.

That inertia reared its head more and more as local implications for the worldwide COVID situation became clear. Libraries closed. Non-essential people encouraged to not leave the house except for vital supplies. Some of my family members contracted the virus early on before there was even a hint of a vaccine or treatment for it.

These circumstances decreased my writing productivity.

Perhaps such mental and emotional fatigue were understandable, given the whole world suffered from it and still does. Yet beyond lacking the literal motivation to write, I began to ponder, really for the first time in my life, if the process itself had value during such a time or worldwide struggle, and personal depression.

Not only did writing and pondering a novel require twice as much energy than normal, I remained encumbered by endemic low readership of any of my work. (A side effect of my lackluster marketing skills and resources since my first book.)

Writing in a world on its feet, but with few readers was one thing. Writing for loyal readers, happy for the distraction when the world was on its knees would have also been one thing. In both scenarios I could locate the motivation, I think.

Committing to the laborious task of writing and marketing a novel unlikely to be read by many people while the world was brought to its knees? At best it seemed naïve, and at worst delusional.

What is the point?

I wrote only sentences every month or two at home for much of the first year and a half of the COVID crisis. Only once libraries cautiously opened again, and I forced myself to visit mine almost daily in 2022 did the ball at last roll on this novel.

You’d think completing and publishing it would have finally justified the dedication.

It didn’t. Not on its own. I struggle with it even now, and perhaps will do so henceforth, even once the pandemic is merely a history book chapter.

Still, this question, this struggle to determine the “worthiness” of creativity, or the arts as a whole informed my writing of The Rubble and the Shakespeare.

The characters, refugees in their own war torn city obviously have different issues to deal with than I did and do. Yet the question is the same. “Is it worth it? Does this still matter, given all the other crap that’s going on around us?”

I hope you’ll download a copy on the 27^th to find out if they answer the question any better than I have.