(I recently wrote a book on writing call The Glorious Grind: Meditations on Crafting Fiction & The Writing Life and have decided to simply publish it in installments here.)

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Dostoyevsky

I’ve had this poster of Russian author Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1821-1881) hanging above my toilet in every place I’ve lived since 2000. I purchased it at a museum in Staraya Russa, Russia, which was actually the summer house where Dostoyevsky wrote Demons and The Brothers Karamazov. The poster looks ancient now but the water stains are actually from a bathroom pipe leak and the tear in the lower right corner is from when an old girlfriend of mine thought it would be funny to stick a maxi pad on it (when she removed the pad its adhesive side ripped off a big poster chunk).

Dostoyevsky was by no means a perfect man—for instance he hated Jews and basically all foreigners and he also gambled like a fiend—but if nothing else he was a true Grinder. He worked and he worked and he worked. He followed his dark visions and he wrote for money. His mother died when he was fifteen. He endured a realistic mock execution, ten hard years in a Siberian labor camp, the onset of epilepsy, and came out more inspired to write than ever. He was a man of faith, but it was not an unexamined faith by any means. Dostoyevsky knew what he was about and went about it. He worked at night while the world was sleeping.

I like having his dark Russian eyes staring at me every time I visit the bathroom. They remind me that no matter how tough life may be at times you can always be a little tougher yourself. New characters and worlds are always sitting inside you, waiting for extraction. You can find them if you’re willing to put the work in.