The author con­fronting an imag­i­nary critic of his unwrit­ten novel.

Mark Dunst, a Hal­i­fax author, may be Canada’s first diag­nosed case of Pre-Traumatic Stress Dis­or­der.  Dunst is con­sumed by debil­i­tat­ing anx­i­ety over a book which he is yet to write. “It’s an idea that I’ve been think­ing about for a while, it’s nar­rated by the protagonist’s penis, and this is the really inter­est­ing part, he’s com­pletely unreliable.”

Though Dunst, a patho­log­i­cal pro­cras­ti­na­tor, has yet to write a word of the actual man­u­script thoughts about how it will be received, if he ever does actu­ally write and pub­lish it, tor­ment him day and night. “I’m con­fi­dent I will be mis­un­der­stood and sav­aged by the crit­ics.  And with all that stuff about the character’s dick, my mother is going to be extremely disappointed.”

Unable to sleep at night Dunst hears the cho­rus of com­plaint about the yet-to-be novel com­ing from an imag­i­nary read­ing group. “They hate it, obvi­ously,” says Dunst.  “It’ll have the mawk­ish lyri­cism that peo­ple expect of Can­lit but it’s set in the present,which is a seri­ous a no-no. That, and the talk­ing cock part.” Despite a heavy self-directed med­ica­tion régime Dunst can do noth­ing to quiet the voices of the spec­tral read­ing group. “One of the gals in the group could become so obsessed that, blasted on pinot gri­gio, she’ll track me down and kill me.”  Dunst tried futilely, to rea­son with him­self. “Though most likely they won’t even fin­ish it because I’m guess­ing that, if I ever did write it, it would be impos­si­bly dense.”

Fan­ci­ful thoughts of how poor will be the recep­tion for the book have made it impos­si­ble for Dunst to work, on the novel, or at any­thing else. “My friends think this whole writ­ing thing is so pre­ten­tious but I’m telling you, it’s a liv­ing hell.”

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