Head Case
by Jennifer Oko
The Extreme Novelist
Like most writers, I am an excellent procrastinator. Truly world
class. If I need to get my house clean, my laundry done, the kids signed up for
their summer activities for the next five years hence, all I really need to do
is decide to start a new novel. The writing might not come fast, but the dishes
sure get done. The more writing I need to do, the less writing actually
happens. I don’t want to get into psychoanalyzing WHY this is, why so many
talented and devoted writers are even more talented procrastinators, though
from my armchair I can certainly hazard a few guesses. Heck, I could spend an
afternoon doing that. But obviously, since the ultimate goal is to actually
finish writing another novel and not
to earn a degree in armchair psychotherapy, this isn’t a very workable
situation if I want to get any substantive writing done. So, I set out to find
some solutions.
In April, I signed up for Camp NaNoWriMo, the springtime offshoot of
the wildly popular National Novel Writing Month, in which you commit to writing
an ambitious amount of words (50,000) in the course of the month of November.
The “Camp” is held in April and July, and it is a little less intense, because
you can set your own goals. In April, I set a goal of 20,000 words. The first
couple of weeks were great, my novel was moving forward at a respectable clip,
and the writing wasn’t even all that bad for a first draft. There is a fun word
count calculator to keep you motivated, and I was having fun comparing notes
with my “cabinmates.” But by the end of week two, I started to slack off, and
so did they. There wasn’t much at stake (other than the ruination of my writing
career), so I decided to find another way to be even more accountable. I roped
in a good friend.
2. Behavioral Therapy (or shall we call it pride?)
My friend Jen lives in London and I don’t. But I love her and I miss
her and I think she is an amazing writer and editor. She suffers from the
similar problem of trying to balance writing with a day job, a family, getting
to the gym and periodically appearing in public in a presentable manner. So
together we decided to create an online check-in spot where everyday we would
report our word counts and, if desired, share some pages. That worked for about
three days. An unanticipated turn made Jen’s day job take over her life, and a
similar thing happened with me. Because we are such good friends, we were too
supportive and understanding and hence gave each other too many outs. I didn’t
stop writing, but I wasn't writing enough. Not if I wanted to finish the novel
I am working on before my kids go to college (they are now six and eight).
Which is when I decided that the “gym incentive” might work. If you pay to join
a gym, you are more likely to go. If I paid someone to check on my progress, I
was more likely to make progress. So, I started sniffing around the catalogue
of The
Writer’s Center in Bethesda, MD, which isn’t too far
from my house. Which brings me to...
3. The Extreme Novelist
I flipped through the catalogue, and there it was. The perfect
solution. A local writer with more than a dozen published novels to her name
(and pen name) was offering a workshop that was essentially a boot camp for
writers. In order to join, you had to sign a contract that stipulated that you
would write at least 90 minutes a day, six days a week. It wasn’t cheap, but I
knew I had to do it. I signed up. The class provides a support group to check
in with and be accountable to. The teacher shares some tips, war stories, and
motivation, and then there is an hour and a half to write. So far, it’s
working. And, not unlike committing to an exercise regime, the more I do it—the
more I prioritize the time and show up to my laptop —the easier it becomes. But
it is a lot of work, sometimes requiring late nights and early mornings. Which
leads me to this:
Given all the above, one thing is clear. All of this requires energy.
So I find myself bemused by a current argument about whether caffeine helps or
hinders creativity. As one writer
surmises that, like Ritalin and Adderall, too much coffee makes us hyperfocus —
good for cleaning closets, not so good for synthesizing plot. "While caffeine has numerous
benefits,” writes Maria Konnikova in The New Yorker, “it appears that the drug may undermine
creativity more than it stimulates it." But as James Hamblin notes on TheAtlantic.com, “the most common barriers to
people creating are initiative, commitment, and self-doubt. Caffeine helps with
all three of those.” Well, considering
that I need to both clean the closets (and do the laundry, go to my day job, take
care of my kids...) and write the books, I’ll side with Mr. Hamblin and order
myself another cup of Joe. I still have 90 minutes I need to put in for today.
About
The Author:
Jennifer
Oko's first book, Lying Together: My Russian Affair (written
under her maiden name, Jennifer Beth Cohen), was published in 2004
and received numerous positive reviews. The New York Times Book
Review called Lying Together "riveting" and twice
named it an Editors' Choice. The San Francisco Chronicle raved,
saying it was "a heady cocktail" and "a quick, juicy
read." Her second book, a satirical novel about morning
television news entitled Gloss, was a Marie Claire "pick
of the month" in 2007 and chosen as a "hot summer read"
by USA Today.
Currently
working as a freelance writer and media consultant, Jennifer is a
"recovering" journalist and award-winning television news
producer. A graduate of Columbia University's Journalism School, her
career has taken her across the country and around the world.
Additionally,
Jennifer's writing has been published in a variety of magazines,
including The New York Times Magazine, New York Magazine, Maxim,
Self and Allure.
Jennifer
lives in Washington, DC with her husband and their son and daughter.
Website
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Head Case
Genre: Humorous Mystery
Publisher: Jennifer Oko
Release Date: February
2013
Book Description:
As
one reviewer states: "HEAD
CASE is an enjoyable gem of a
mystery, and more...There are drug-dealing grannies, pill-popping
celebrities, Russian mob bosses, eccentric ex-Soviet chemists,
feuding roommates, faltering friendships, bad bosses and a rat named
Raskolnikov - so how can you not have fun?"
HEAD
CASE is a new, exciting and
sometimes laugh-out-loud funny mystery from an author whose work has
been called "SIMPLY RIVETING" by The
New York Times and "SHARP AND
FAST-PACED" by Publisher's
Weekly. It's like Alice Sebold's The
Lovely Bones meets Carl Hiaasen's
Nature Girl (with
a dash of Janet Evanovich's One for
the Money) as Olivia embarks on a
postmortem quest to deconstruct the remarkable events that lead up to
her mind-altering death.
A comic
satire of the influence of the psychopharmaceutical industry on
American life, HEAD CASE takes Olivia and her estranged friend and
roommate Polly Warner on a collision course involving ethically
challenged executives, spotlight-hungry celebrities, third-rate
mobsters and drug-dealing babushkas. A smart and savvy page-turner,
HEAD CASE explores the meaning of personal relationships, emotional
intelligence, and mental health while taking the reader on a
synapse-stirring, neurotransmitting rollicking ride.
Praise
for Head Case
"Head
Case is an enjoyable gem!" ~Dan
McGirt, Amazon Reviewer
"Oko's
writing is as addictive as the pills she pokes fun at!"
~ElevenelevenAM, Amazon
Reviewer
"All
I can say is that if you don't put ALL YOUR OTHER BOOKS AWAY and read
just the FIRST chapter you are NUTS; you will find yourself going and
going and I will just say it now --your welcome!" ~Jennifer
Elizabeth Hyndman, Amazon Reviewer
Excerpt
EXCERPT
one:
It's
all very dramatic. Although I suppose on some level, in the end, that
is what Polly wanted. I mean, she didn't want anyone dead, certainly
not anyone she knew. The opposite really. She once told me she just
wanted it all to be very alive. Life. Which is drama, right?
I
think she was probably right, that to some degree that's what we all
want. Or wanted. If we were going to be satisfied just living our
lives with the dull drudgery of the everyday, then why would we spend
so much time fantasizing about what's next, what's in, what's hot? If
dull drudgery made us fly, Polly wouldn't even have the silly career
she has. Celebrity publicists wouldn't exist. No one would aspire to
anything. And without aspirational living, who would care about
celebrities, luxury goods, or, hear me out now, the pursuit of
happiness. Right? So maybe there's a very direct link between our
celebrity culture and our societal eagerness to pop a pill.
I
know it might sound like a stretch that there could be a connection
between designer psychopharmaceuticals and, say, designer fashions,
but if you stop to consider that, with the exception of certain
celebrity Scientologists, just about everyone who is anyone in the
world of the aspirational has certainly popped a few in their time,
it makes sense. We live by these assumptions that overnight success
is possible, that shiny happy people are models to uphold, that
tomorrow any of us could be the next A-lister, the next
gazillionaire. Couldn't there be a connection here? If there is a
pill for every little micro-problem in our brains, why not believe
that there's a quick fix for everything else too? I'm sure Polly used
to believe that. I know she did.
This
is what's so nice about being dead.
I
get to play the role of wise sage, and with an amazing perspective.
Because when you die, not only can you flit around the present, you
also get to watch stuff in rewind. You get to go inside peoples'
heads in the past tense and follow the firings of their synapses,
medicated or not, as they spit them toward the present. Yes, Cher, it
turns out that you can turn back time. But the catch is-drum roll
please-you can't be alive to do it. And so, proverbial remote in
hand, I'm now able to backtrack; I can take a look and try to figure
out how this all happened to my best friend. And by extension, of
course, how this happened to me. How, at the ripe age of
twenty-eight, with a future as bright as whatever cliché the
tabloids will soon be gushing, my body-the body of Olivia Zack-is
lying down there in the back of a black Lexus SUV (license plate
NYX1KZ, in the event anyone can do anything with this information)
while I'm up here, floating around bodiless in the ether,
shape-shifting, wall-transgressing, house-haunting, and whatever else
it might be that you imagine we ghosts can do. I'm trying to figure
that out as well. After all, this is fairly new for me, too. I've
only been like this for a few minutes, just long enough to zip up to
Polly's apartment and witness her flailing about, waiting for me to
come and comfort her once again.
Anyway,
in order to figure this out, it seems logical that before I can fully
focus on my ending, I need to go back to the source of the whole
mess. Because it's very clear, especially considering the other blood
that was spilled near my remains, that I seem to have gotten caught
up in a drug war. And I'm not talking crack cocaine. I'm talking
Prozac. I'm talking Ritalin. I'm talking Adderall, Lexapro, Zyprexa,
Klonopin and what have you. The good stuff. The blockbusters. The
billion-dollar babies.
Go
get some popcorn. The show's about to begin.
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