A stack of my manuscript pages for Isn’t It Pretty To Think So? and a pile of the newly published paperbacks!
Nick Miller
Hi, I'm Nick Miller. I like to write things.
My debut novel, Isn't It Pretty To Think So?, will be released in 2012.
You can pre-order a copy from Amazon now.
Follow @nickmiller
My debut novel, Isn't It Pretty To Think So?, will be released in 2012.
You can pre-order a copy from Amazon now.
Follow @nickmiller
“Jake, I want you to imagine a world where writing is a very uncool talent. Imagine that there’s very little money in it. Imagine that your parents will hate you for embracing it, that your friends will make fun of you, that no girl will be impressed by it. Imagine that you’ll never truly be fulfilled by anything that you write. Imagine a life stacked with frustrating days and lonely nights. Imagine a life of unrelenting criticism. And then imagine that after you finish writing something you’re proud of, no one will read it, but that if someone does happen to read it, he will hate it. Now…if you learned that all those conditions were part of the world you were currently living in, would you still believe that you were capable of rising from bed in the morning with the desire to write?”
As he stared at me earnestly, I dutifully imagined living in the world he’d described, looked at him in the eyes, and then answered him truthfully, “Yes.”
Chapters 1-3 of my novel Isn’t It Pretty To Think So? are now available for download here. I hope you enjoy. I truly appreciate all the wonderful support.
The airport wasn’t just clean, it was shiny, like the glass frame of my college diploma hanging on the wall in my mother’s living room or the wine glasses set around the table for my father’s dinner parties; shiny like the veneers on the housewives who lived in my childhood neighborhood or the Mercedes my bosses drove.
On that night, I would have been more comfortable in a dirty airport—a place where cancelled flights forced travelers to crowd together on the floor and use their luggage as pillows, their jackets as blankets; a place that pulsated through the entire night with the chatter of whiskey-drinking storytellers, all settling into the cozy dirtiness.
—An excerpt from my forthcoming novel Isn’t It Pretty To Think So? The first 40 pages have been uploaded here.
“I hate the taste of alcohol—beer, wine, whiskey, all of it,” he said to me once, a statement which bemused me initially because he was always drinking.
But there came a time when I understood that it was never about the actual act of consumption or the actual act of sex for Parker; rather, it was about doing what he could to keep the deadness alive within him. His pain didn’t thrive within the deadness, it prospered within the aliveness. It latched on to hope and ambition. It proliferated in love. It succeeded in passion and concern and enthusiasm. But, as Parker had discovered, his pain withered in apathy and detachment and indifference.
—An excerpt from my forthcoming novel Isn’t It Pretty To Think So? The first 40 pages have been uploaded here.
When we awoke to the summer-afternoon streams of yellow sunlight, tinged with a leafy green from passing through the trees, Tatiana and I rested in the white sheets until they became extensions of our nude bodies: they became Tatiana’s wings and her bonnet and her dress; they became my cape and my hood and my jacket. Together, we went on white-sheet expeditions to the far corners of the bed, leaving imprints of our bodies along the way, and explored each new spot with the wide-eyed bewilderment of young travelers discovering beauty off the beaten path.
Sometimes we talked as I lay on my back and tossed a pillow into the air while she lay on her stomach and swung her foot down on the bed and raised it back up again. Sometimes, we rolled over to our own corners of the bed, curious about the experience of a solo journey, but soon, starting with the outstretched tips of our touching fingers, followed the path back toward each other until we were intertwined and as close as any young lovers in the world had ever been.
The distant, muffled sound of people lunching in the hotel restaurant—forks against plates, glasses clinking, people chatting—was soothing background music mostly because it reminded us that whatever was happening in our world was far more intimate, as if we had discovered something everyone else sought but had not yet found; they were close, near to our paradise, but we would surely have more time to revel in our togetherness before they uncovered our secret.
It was an afternoon free of doubt and meaninglessness and screams and tears, measured not in the minutes and hours of the human clock but by the slow-swaying, unremitting rhythm of the branches outside our window, their only mission to lull us toward tranquility. Sometimes they succeeded too well and we took naps. Only in the evening, when the thought of a meal began to rouse us, did we remove ourselves from the bed and reacquaint ourselves with our feet.
—An excerpt from my forthcoming novel Isn’t It Pretty To Think So? You can start reading the novel from the beginning here. Every Monday and Thursday I’ll add more sections of the book at that link until it’s officially released in the spring.
I told a story the other day and realized halfway through it wasn’t my story but my protagonist’s story—I kept telling it anyway. I can no longer demarcate the truths of my past from what I’ve written as fiction.
Every person I have a conversation with now runs a chance of being fictionalized. The other night, I was talking with a girl who said she dumped a guy because he was a “30-year-old writer still renting a place.”
I get random bouts of anxiety throughout the day—a feeling I will never quite understand. I go through a medley of thoughts about my writing ranging from “this is the worst thing ever written” to “that’s a nice sentence” to “what the fuck am I doing with my life?” to “this is the only thing in the world that makes me happy.” I’ve known few greater feelings in my life than someone appreciating my work.
I know there’s very little money in my profession and I’m fine with that. The best part of my day is when I’m overwhelmed with the potential my book has to make people feel something; the worst part of my day is when I’m fearful my book will make people feel nothing.
The other day, someone introduced me to a group of people with: “This is Nick Miller. He’s Internet famous.”
The day I decided to start writing my book was the day I stopped worrying about being judged for the thoughts in my head.
When I’m writing, meaninglessness inspires me. When I’m not writing, meaninglessness depresses me.
Since I’ve started my journey, I’ve received many messages from people seeking advice on writing. Because I’m just as lost as everyone else, I usually respond with the only advice I know to be true: write every day, write as much as you can.
I have an insatiable need to keep moving, to see new places, to have new adventures. I don’t think I will date another girl who doesn’t understand or love the artistic process. Whiskey is my greatest weakness. People confuse me. Nature calms me. I haven’t had sober sex in a long time. I love writing. I believe words have the power to change us all. I couldn’t be happier.
“I had this dream once that I visited every motel in America and replaced the Bible in the drawer with The Great Gatsby. What do you think that means?” I said, angrily.
“Well, I’m quite certain it means that you—”
“It means that I had a goddamn good dream.”
As I stared out over the fluorescent city, I remembered something a teacher had told my class in middle school long ago. She stood in front of the classroom, glaring at us with her pious eyes, and said that drinking alcohol or smoking tobacco were sinful choices along the path of evil. Sitting in my little student desk attached to a blue, plastic chair, I imagined walking down a road decorated with syringes, hanging there like Christmas tree lights and brimming to the touch with horrific, unspeakable drugs, and, as I passed through, the needles dripped and taunted me like low-hanging, forbidden fruit. I stopped dreaming of my past and took a sip of whiskey and lighted another cigarette.
-A tiny excerpt from my forthcoming novel: Isn’t It Pretty To Think So?
Sprawled sideways on the sand, I tried to get through the first sentence of a short story in my book, but each time my eyes reached the end of it I’d already forgotten what I’d just read and was forced to start from the beginning again. I certainly was reading the words, just not processing them—a realization that frustrated me.
Usually, when I concentrated on reading the words, they traveled from the page into my brain, but, given my newfound incompetency, I wondered where the words went after I read them if they never made it into my brain. I doubted the existence of a word limbo, a special place to harbor all the lost words, but I also knew that they had to go somewhere. I imagined the words coming off the page and floating toward my brain but then, inexplicably, falling from midair into the sand where they were lost forever.
I feared the guilt I would inherit when I looked back to the page of my book and saw, in place of the words I had just read, a blank space. I would have to be careful not to read any more of the words because I would be the one responsible for losing them in the sand—the monster infamous for destroying all the beautiful words in all the great books of literature.
-A tiny excerpt from my forthcoming novel: Isn’t It Pretty To Think So?
“
I think it was mostly truth I was after. I know now that truth is a troubling thing. You can’t snort your way to it. You can’t drink your way to it. You can’t fuck your way to it. You can’t cheat your way to it. You can’t love your way to it. You can only let it envelop you and try to make sense of it all.
”
“Will you kiss me?” she said.
“Yes,” I said before kissing her.
“Now, come here,” she said, turning her back to me but pulling me closer with her hand.
I positioned my body like an outer shell to hers. She guided my arm around her body and held my hand tightly at the center of her chest. I lay there next to her, trying not to breathe too loudly, and felt her warmth on my hand and my chest and the fronts of my thighs. My chin rested on the top of her head, and the bottoms of her bare feet rested on the tops of my bare feet, and everything was warm from the top to the bottom. It wasn’t just a warmth; it was a weighted warmth.
Every night when I tried to fall asleep, I could bring myself more warmth by adding a blanket or turning on a heater, but a weighted warmth could never be attained without the warmth and weight of another living being. It would be impossible to simulate. She lay next to me, almost in me like books in a shelf, and I felt her warmth but I also felt the light pressure of her weight, and it was so goddamn addicting. The addition of something, some weight beside my own, made me feel relevant, like I was contributing to the world by carrying something beautiful through it.
-A tiny excerpt from my forthcoming novel: Isn’t It Pretty To Think So?
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