23Nov

The Writer with the Master Number Clears the Deck

• Saved in: Chris Orcutt Books, Craft, Dramatic Writing, Fiction Writing, Memoir, Personal Essay, Process, The Dakota Stevens Mysteries Series, The Perfect Triple Threat, Writers, Writing Experiences, Writing Life
• by Chris Orcutt
• with 2 Comments

Two years ago, when I released the 3rd Dako­ta Stevens install­ment, I read one of those rare books that gave me a much-need­ed kick in the ass. Here is the quote from that book that had the great­est impact on me:

“So many unfin­ished projects wait in draw­ers, in clos­ets, and on hard dri­ves. They rep­re­sent the stunt­ed growth of their cre­ators. The projects wouldn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly have been ground­break­ing or huge­ly suc­cess­ful, but their true val­ue lies in the lost cre­ative poten­tial of their cre­ators. Ship­ping is the key to mov­ing on to the next adven­ture.”
— David Ush­er, Let the Ele­phants Run

After I read Ush­er’s inspir­ing book on cre­ativ­i­ty, the next day I went through my crates of writ­ing and iden­ti­fied the books I want­ed to fin­ish and ship so I could move on in my work.

I am begin­ning this task with the release of the fourth Dako­ta Stevens install­ment, The Per­fect Triple Threat. Ama­zon Kin­dle pre­orders for the book have already begun; the print ver­sion of the nov­el is avail­able now; the Kin­dle ebook comes out on Decem­ber 23; and the ebook will be avail­able for oth­er plat­forms (Nook, Google Play, etc.) around Christ­mas.

Then, through­out 2017 I plan on fin­ish­ing and releas­ing three books:

1.  A book of plays.

2. A book of humor­ous auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal stories/essays.

3. A Paris memoir/travelogue.

This is my way of clear­ing the deck to make room for the new writ­ing I’m doing now, a mem­oir, which I hope to release late in 2017, but more like­ly some­time in 2018.

The thing about writ­ing that most read­ers don’t real­ize is that there is often a con­sid­er­able time gap between when a writer writes a book and when it’s pub­lished. Usu­al­ly, a writer’s “new release” was start­ed 3–5 years ear­li­er and was fin­ished as much as two years before pub­li­ca­tion. Dur­ing that two years of wait­ing for the book to be pub­lished, the writer has often moved on to new char­ac­ters and new gen­res, and has grown in skill and what s/he has to say.

This has been the case with me. The book I’m writ­ing now (a mem­oir about my life at age 16) rep­re­sents a quan­tum leap in all aspects of my work: sub­ject, craft, depth and mean­ing.

Admit­ted­ly, up to now I have been pri­mar­i­ly focused on find­ing “suc­cess” as a writer. I’ve want­ed as many read­ers as possible—hundreds of thousands…no, mil­lions of them. I’ve want­ed ado­ra­tion from fans and praise from crit­ics. I’ve want­ed to be accost­ed by read­ers in air­ports and sub­ways cars and told how bril­liant I am, how amaz­ing my words and sto­ries are. In short, I’ve want­ed the world to notice me, and I’ve want­ed a big pile of mon­ey to show for my efforts.

Of course it would be nice to one day have these things—the vast read­er­ship, the crit­i­cal acclaim, the money—but they are no longer what dri­ve me.

This year, I under­went a spir­i­tu­al trans­for­ma­tion, dur­ing which I came to under­stand that I was giv­en my gifts as a writer for much more than mate­r­i­al “suc­cess”; I have been put here to be of greater ser­vice to human­i­ty.

Back when I read David Usher’s Let the Ele­phants Run and began decid­ing which projects I want­ed to fin­ish and “ship” so I could move on cre­ative­ly, I was guid­ed to read about numerol­o­gy. I learned about my rul­ing birth num­ber (22/4) and its sig­nif­i­cance. Here’s what one arti­cle has to say about us 22/4s:

“This is the mas­ter num­ber. Peo­ple born as 22/4s have almost lim­it­less poten­tial and often make their mark in life by achiev­ing seem­ing­ly impos­si­ble goals. … These peo­ple are suit­ed to work as lead­ers in prac­ti­cal­ly any busi­ness or cul­tur­al orga­ni­za­tion. They excel at what­ev­er they attempt, be it in art, writ­ing, pol­i­tics… This is the mas­ter num­ber whose bear­ers have the most respon­si­bil­i­ty to human­i­ty. They are self-con­fi­dent, high­ly intu­itive and sen­si­tive…”

Anoth­er arti­cle I read empha­sizes this respon­si­bil­i­ty to human­i­ty, how we 22/4s need to achieve and build things greater than our­selves:

“With the 22/4, it’s all about break­ing out of your safe­ty and secu­ri­ty zone and mak­ing more of an impact in the world around you. Know that this is rather scary and some­what for­eign for you because you grav­i­tate toward the tried-and-true and erring on the safe side. Yet know that the Mas­ter Num­ber 22/4 is the most pow­er­ful num­ber in Numerol­o­gy. (Did I just hear you gulp?) Yes. It’s a rather big deal. You’re meant to achieve and build some­thing that makes a dif­fer­ence on a grander scale—and that won’t feel com­fort­able.”

This arti­cle goes on to say, “Under­stand that you prob­a­bly won’t come into your full pow­er as a Mas­ter Num­ber 22/4 Life Path until lat­er in life—into your 50s and beyond. It takes a while to get enough expe­ri­ence under your belt to find your pas­sion­ate focus. Be patient and know that you’re here for high­er-lev­el ser­vice in the world.”

Some promi­nent 22/4s in his­to­ry include Mark Twain, J.D. Salinger, Woody Allen, Frank Sina­tra, Clint East­wood, Steve McQueen, James Mich­en­er, J.D. Rock­e­feller, Immanuel Kant, and Mar­garet Thatch­er.

Besides each being one of my idols, what do they all have in com­mon?

They’re mav­er­icks.

And so am I.

So, why do I bring up all of this numerol­o­gy and 22/4 stuff? Because over the next year, read­ers are going to see a dis­tinct shift in my work—away from safe, tried-and-true genre books (e.g., The Dako­ta Stevens Mys­ter­ies) to writ­ing of a grander scale that has more to say.

Over 25 years ago, as a young writer read­ing every­thing he could on the sub­ject of writ­ing, I read The Writ­ing Life by Amer­i­can essay­ist Annie Dil­lard, and came upon a pas­sage that grabbed me by the spine and shook me. As any good writer does when s/he reads such a pas­sage, I wrote it down in my jour­nal:

“Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audi­ence con­sist­ing sole­ly of ter­mi­nal patients. That is, after all, the case. What would you begin writ­ing if you knew you would die soon? What could you say to a dying per­son that would not enrage by its triv­i­al­i­ty?”

Every day I now remind myself that I’m writ­ing “for an audi­ence con­sist­ing sole­ly of ter­mi­nal patients,” and that I, too, am one of those ter­mi­nal patients.

And although I’m mov­ing on to write oth­er, more mean­ing­ful work, by no means am I aban­don­ing Dako­ta and Svet­lana. I will return to them in time, and when I do, my ulti­mate ambi­tion is, in the tra­di­tion of my hero, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, to write a series of per­fect gem short sto­ries fea­tur­ing them. I envi­sion myself work­ing on these sto­ries over a peri­od of years, so that the result­ing col­lec­tion is a mas­ter­piece. It will be my homage to Doyle, Holmes and Wat­son. In the mean­time, if read­ers miss Dako­ta and Svet­lana, they can just reread the four books I’ve already writ­ten.

Besides Usher’s remark­able book on cre­ativ­i­ty and works on numerol­o­gy, through­out 2015 and 2016 I read a num­ber of Great Books that I hadn’t read in their entire­ty before, includ­ing the Bible, War and Peace, The Ili­ad, and The Odyssey. As a phi­los­o­phy and reli­gion major in col­lege, I read a lot of the Old Tes­ta­ment and the New Tes­ta­ment piece­meal, but nev­er the Bible cov­er to cov­er; and I’d read Tolstoy’s Anna Karen­i­na half a dozen times, but nev­er dared to crack open War and Peace. The point is, these incred­i­ble mas­ter­works have inspired me to aim high­er as a writer. I know I was put here to write some­thing great, so it’s time for me to put behind me the work I’ve already writ­ten and move on to new adven­tures.

The jour­ney ahead for me and my writ­ing is uncer­tain. There will be pit­falls (and a cou­ple of “lame” books), I’m sure, but I’m hop­ing that those of you who have been my loy­al read­ers up to now will stick with me.

I don’t know exact­ly what form(s) my writ­ing is going to take in the com­ing years, because instead of focus­ing on myself and my own suc­cess, I’m shift­ing my focus to writ­ing work “that makes a dif­fer­ence on a grander scale,” that some­how ben­e­fits all of human­i­ty.

With grat­i­tude for all of my read­ers,

Chris

Tagged: 22/4, Amazon, Chris Orcutt, Dakota Stevens, drama, master, master number, memoir, mystery, novelist, novels, numerology, Odyssey, Svetlana Krüsh, The Perfect Triple Threat, War and Peace, writer, writer's life, writing

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