An Interview with Keith Martin-Smith: Author of Only Everything

Only Everything is Keith’s fourth book and first novel. A collection of short stories, ‘The Mysterious Divination of Tea Leaves’, was published in 2009, followed in 2012 by the award-winning memoir A Heart Blown Open and its follow-up, The Heart of Zen. He is also a professional book coach.

Tell us about your book.

Only Everything is a reflection on the costs and promises of following your dreams, and what it means to live a life on your own terms. It also explores the sometimes terrible costs of doing this, through the lives of a number of artists who have made different deals with life.

Why did you want to write a book?

Historically, I’ve struggled with relationships. In my previous relationship that ended in early 2016, I cheated, covered it up, and only reluctantly came clean. The impact of my behavior is still reverberating through my life. Afterwards I wanted to understand the conditions that drove me, and uncovered a caldron of unspoken rage and sadness and a long list of unmet needs. It was these things that had derailed my life, leaving me inside of early-middle age depression, alcoholism, and self-centeredness.

My unwillingness to take a stand for what was true for me, and the fear of overturning the applecart of my relationship (never minding the relationship had become full of rotten apples) was the toxic thing I refused to address. Instead I took the easier path of affairs and deceit. The impact of that decision would blow my life, and that of my former partner, to pieces. Yet, sadly, that breakdown was the breakthrough I needed. In the end, it was the only path left open to me. And there’s an unnerving irony that it helped create the frame needed to finish a novel that had become as stuck and soulless as I had become.

Logan, the central character of Only Everything, is uncomfortably similar to me, an alter ego who is a bit of a self-absorbed artist, you see, unable to speak what’s true for him and more than a little emotionally constipated. As his life races to ruin, he’s busy living in the past and ignoring the impact of his behavior in the present, until an all too human lapse of judgement smashes the false against the real. Art and wisdom, when they’re worth something, seem to be born of pain. The good news for Logan is that once everything is gone he’s free to see things closer to as they really are. But he has to live through the destruction the false, first. As did I.

How do you deal with writer’s block?

Just keep working. Everyday. But real work, not “I’m on Facebook for 4 hours” work, or editing something you like for the 10th time. Creation, new territory, expansion. And then, finally, a willingness to go into the dark places that scare you, that are keeping you from moving forward with your work — the real reason you can’t finish that book. Once that’s seen, and understood, the work will finish itself.

Why did you write about this particular subject?

I’m a writer – this is my fourth book. I’ve been called to do this since I was a teenager. But the path has been far from easy, or profitable, or linear. For my second book, the award-winning A Heart Blown Open (Divine Arts Media), I sold my house in Philly so I could spend the 1.5 years working exclusively on it. That was one helluva gamble! After I wrote the book I was broke and had nothing to show for it, and then had to go and get a job to pay the bills. But the book did well, and it impacted a lot of people powerfully. I still get emails about once a week, telling me how much someone loved the story. It’s rewarding beyond words. And A Heart Blown Open was recently option for movie rights, and so 8 years after I sold my house and 6 years after the book came out, I’m seeing the potential for a return on my financial investment. The potential, though, not the actual cash! So the gamble continues.

My older brother is a fine artist. His closest friend is a photographer and illustrator, and versions of both of them are in Only Everything. I’ve watched the 3 of us go through life, choosing freedom and the path of creation over steady paychecks, family, a life of safety. I wanted to cover the two areas of interest – us as young people who chose, in the mid-90’s, to follow their dreams. And the middle-aged men who are now saddled with the consequences of those decisions. Costs, and benefits, of choosing less ordinary lives. My goal was to tell of those things in an unvarnished way, in a savagely honest way that laid bare the vulnerability and sacrifice of this path. My hope is that this novel will inspire, caution, and ultimately help to guide others through the mine field of artistic ambition and talent, and entertain those who have taken a more sober path.

There is some extremely personal elements to this novel. How much of it is true?

Well, very little in the novel happened as it’s presented. The book is more of a compilation of events, and the people have been changed to fit the story rather than my feeling any need to honor people as they exist in the real world. So while there are shades of me and my brother and my former fiancé, none of them are reliable depictions in a journalistic sense. Logan, while a lot like me, is also denser, more closed-off, more self-absorbed, and far more alone in his world. it is fiction, but there is a great deal of emotional truth to the book.