Novel writing is not an easy business. In
fact, for most writers, myself included, most of it isn't even a fun business.
It's something to contemplate, power through, and struggle over. Every word
becomes an act of second-guessing. Should it be "contemplate" or
"ruminate on"? Is this character blonde or brunette? Sometimes, it
takes everything you have to keep going.
I'm made it no secret that I've been
having a hard time with this writing thing post MFA graduation. I felt
deflated. My time to write got so condensed down that I started pretending it
didn't exist at all and watching reruns of TV shows on Netflix instead. I got
really into my knitting, focused on that, because I'll be darned if I was
making any progress on this whole writing thing. A small voice inside my brain
started suggesting that perhaps I chose the wrong calling. Maybe I was meant to
be a knitwear designer or a piano bar singer or a stay-at-home mom.
I'd wager that this second-guessing is
part of the process of becoming a Writer rather than just being a person who writes.
The big problem for me is that I tend to
write a lot of my stuff subconsciously. I'll sit in the car staring blankly out
the window and it will look much like I'm zonked and dreaming. That's when I'm
writing. I'm writing in the kitchen when I make dinner. I'm writing when I
clean. I'm writing when I walk down the street. I'm writing when I'm sitting in
my office chair, tapping my pencil to the beat of "Semi-Charmed
Life." Still, the writing I do in my head doesn't always translate well to
the page at first. I have to sit on an idea for months sometimes before I get
the beginning right, and I can't keep going until I have somewhere to start.
A few days ago, though, something
happened. I found that place to start for one of my new story-chapters. I've
been thinking about the main character, a woman older than me going through
something I can't begin to fully understand. I've been writing scenes of her in
my frontal lobe… or wherever the words go before I write them down, but I
haven't been able to get at the core of her. Not until that day. I wrote a
first sentence on that spiral-bound, lined paper and I just knew instinctively
that it was the right first sentence,
that this was the sentence that would take me on to everything that
comes after this first sentence.
Then I wrote a second sentence and a
third. I could hear dialogue in my head. It all started coming together, and in
this moment, maybe 30 seconds long, maybe less, I felt it, that joy, that
exhilaration, the thing I feel that makes me sure once every month or so (if
I'm lucky) that I was meant to write and write often.
What was the key to this beginning place?
It's always hard to pinpoint inspiration and impossible to recreate it when
you're alone with a blank page and you just need to write something. I knew
bits and pieces of her, this elusive main character, but the thing that finally
clicked it all into place for me was in that first sentence, and she didn't
become real until she spoke to her son. This is a woman whose son calls her first.
Not dad, not best friend, not girlfriend, but mom. When the crap hits the fan,
he calls her. That bond, I didn't quite see it before, but that's what I'll
need to write the rest of the story. That's the one thing that will take me
through to the end. I also have an end point, one paragraph I scrabbled through
that is giving me a direction. Now all I have to do is fill in the middle.
I haven't made extensive progress
word-count wise (a couple pages as of yet), but I've been taking note. I've
been reading the right things. I've been quiet. I have a beginning and I have a
place to end. Lately, I've been feeling like a Writer, and it's days like these
that keep me sustained through all the not-fun that I know is coming to get
this story from thought to final draft.
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