I just read The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen for the first time.

This delay happened despite buying it shortly after its release and attending an event with Franzen in San Francisco in December of 2001, where he signed my copy.

I also have a signed copy of his follow-up essay collection How to Be Alone, from a subsequent event in December 2002. I could be wrong, but I think both books were signed a year apart at separate events, rather than both in 2002.

It was during a time when I kept telling myself, and literally anyone who would listen, that I was nearing completion on a novel. It wasn’t entirely untrue, but I didn’t really know at the time how close to completion I was but, in hindsight, I now know the proper approach was just to shut up and finish it.

Instead, getting my book signed by Franzen in that moment, the most talked-about author with the most celebrated novel of the time, I said, “I’m about to finish my first novel!”

This was not a lie. You could have hooked me up to a lie detector in that moment, and everything I was saying I honestly believed to be true.

Franzen looked at me, sized me up and, as he was signing my book, said, “In that case, let me be the first…” and signed my book.

As I walked away and opened the novel to the page he signed, inside of his ornate, double-looping signature, he wrote “Congratulations!”

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Given his stature as the craftsman of The Great American Novel, I decided to honor that small, throwaway exchange. I vowed that The Corrections would be the first novel I read upon finishing my own novel Haterobics.

I kept that promise.

The Corrections was indeed the first novel I read after finishing my own, devouring all 568 pages in a breakneck four-day session this past weekend.

It just happened 22 and a half years after my exchange with Franzen.

It seems pointless to hear someone’s hot take on The Corrections at this point, so I’ll spare you, but it definitely lost none of its power or magic in that time. And, unlike everyone else, I still have Freedom, Purity, and Crossroads to read now! I always wanted The Corrections to be my first Franzen experience.

This is all a long way of saying that Haterobics is finished!

It still seems weird to say such a thing, but here we are. I should first disavow anyone from thinking I am the ultimate perfectionist and have been slaving and tinkering over every line and it took this long.

Haterobics mainly sat as a file on my computer, ignored for years at a time. When I would work on it again, I would start with Chapter One and then drift off before ever getting close to the end.

I found it hard to work on it when I had a job, since I was usually writing in some capacity for technology companies, and this just seemed like even more writing. I tried staying up late or shifting my sleep patterns to get up at 4 a.m. and do it before work, but it seemed impossible to sustain the level of focus required for as long as it would take.

Since I worked in the tech sector, there were also periods between jobs, but then all of the associated financial crises of being unemployed made it difficult to generate the level of whimsy required to escape into a novel and ignore everything else.

I even decided to abandon social media as a means to free the necessary time, making a pronouncement on November 13, 2016 that I “want to dedicate my free time to more deeply follow narratives of my own,” which was also a reference to being captured by the political narratives then, as that post was five days after an election. That will likely change since I’m unfortunately not famous enough to be a reclusive author.

The turning point was two-fold. First, you start realizing how quickly time passes, and that you can easily distract yourself into not accomplishing what you desire. Second, I took actual steps to shift my life toward jobs and lifestyles that would better support accomplishing big picture goals like this.

Basically, a year ago, on June 8, 2024, I decided it was time to finish (or abandon) Haterobics. And I spent 90-120 minutes per day editing the existing draft of the book, reading several chapters aloud at a time, to ensure it read okay and had a decent pace. I never missed a day until January 20 of this year, when I considered it to finally be finished.

In early June, I spent a full day reading the finished draft. Since the editing process took seven months to finalize, I wanted to read it in one uninterrupted session to see if the pacing seemed to work. Which brings us up to date.

Nothing else is happening yet. Some friends are reading it (if you’re wondering why you weren’t asked, let me know and we’ll make it happen). I’m reaching out for advice. Reading about publishing and self-publishing. And, of course, becoming a bit more public again.

Basically, this site is going to be where I unpack the sordid history and as-yet-unknown future of Haterobics. As far as what comes next, I truly don’t know.

But thanks for the well-wishes, Mr. Franzen!

I was 23 when I accepted that I was gay. I remember it being such a rush to finally talk to other gay people on my home computer. At that point I thought falling in love and living a happy life were things I could never have. I’ll also never forget how alone I used to feel a􏰀fter I shut off my computer because that was the only place my gay community existed.

I live in a conservative􏰁 Catholic closeted town and at the ti􏰁me didn’t know anyone else here. The only media coverage of gays was about pride parades or activists screaming with queer rage about AIDS. I needed much tamer images to help me accept myself. So every night while my parents slept upstairs, I’d spend hours in the basement on my computer. Normally I spent my time attempting to write a screenplay, which was about three teenagers trying to get their lives in order. All my writings included gay characters, though I never consciously put them in to deal with my own gay feelings. They always just seemed to work well in the story.

The script I was writing featured Paul, a gay teen, as one of the main characters. Whenever I wrote a scene involving Paul, however, I got writer’s block. I would normally attribute it to my not being gay. How could I know what it was like to be a gay teen in high school?

I decided to take some 􏰁me off from my writing after receiving a trial membership to America Online (AOL) computer network. I didn’t plan to become a member, but a trial subscription offered ten free hours on-line. I figured I’d look around, grab some free files, and then cancel my membership. The night I planned to cancel, though, I found live on-line chat rooms where up to 23 people could talk on any subject. That night, a chat room existed for ”hot young gay teens.” This will be great, I thought. I can ask these guys what it’s like being a gay teen.

I entered the room and informed everyone that I was a heterosexual screenwriter writing about a gay teen and needed to talk about what being a gay teen is like. Everyone was supportive, but the more everyone talked, the more confused I became. I’d had many of the same feelings they did growing up, so their stories didn’t seem to only apply only to gay teens. So much for helping Paul.

I then arranged to meet one of the teens for a private on-line chat. I was hoping it would lead to more revelations, and it certainly did. When we met the next night in a private room, he willingly answered my questions. Then he asked me a few. I told him I had wondered whether I was gay but had attributed those feelings to my desire to overcome being overweight. I merely wanted to have a nice body like some of the guys I admired, but that was where it ended. I knew I didn’t want the guy physically because I couldn’t picture anything past nudity. If I had been gay or bisexual, I figured, I would have been able to picture sexual contact.

I talked with the teen on-line for a long 􏰁me that night. He initially told me he was bisexual. Five hours and many questions later, we both typed to each other that we thought we were gay. As for my screenplay, it ended up being more catharsis than fiction and is still unfinished. I did, however, do a lot of work on what it meant to be gay that summer in 1992.

Since I still didn’t have anyone local to talk with, I made on-line friends with guys all over the country. However, on-line services are not free, and my chats with my new friends – as well as calls to some of them on the phone – ran up large bills. Within three months I was broke, my credit card filled, and my entire paycheck going to pay my phone bills. I had to leave AOL and pay off my debt.

But my time on-line had indeed been fruitful. I started coming out to my mother and my co-workers. I began making friends locally and became the cochair of my university’s gay student group. And when the semester started, I wrote gay columns in the student newspaper and for a local gay ’zine.

This year I was finally able to sign back on to AOL. This time, I’m 26, I’m comfortable about being gay, and I’ve even lost some weight. Now it’s my turn to help others. I’ve talked to many people who are gay, some as young as 13, and I find it rewarding to be able to help them feel more comfortable about their sexuality.

The on-line world offers a lot more than just a chance to make new friends. With even the most basic computer, anyone can tap into a wide array of services. Gays on-line can E-mail President Clinton, make new friends, talk about gay issues in message boards, get support, or contact a number of national gay groups.

Just about everything you are looking for you can find on-line. In fact, within the past few weeks, I met someone on-line who lives close to me. We’ve been talking for a while now, and hopefully, we’ll be getting together soon. So perhaps once again my computer will help me find something that’s been missing in my life.

This article initially appeared on page 6 of The Advocate, Issue #666, October 18, 1994.