Novels

Last night turned into one drawn out write fest. I rented Sahara for Craig, explaining to the gentleman behind the video store counter that I was renting it not because I wanted to see it, but because Craig does not buy into critics' reviews (whereas I myself hold their words as truths and wouldn't rent a movie that critics deemed unengaging). The cashier man confirmed that Sahara does indeed suck, just like the critics have warned. But I was thinking of my own interests as well as Craig's. I wanted to occupy him with Penelope Cruz while I unplugged the internet (major distraction), poured some wine, closed myself in the bedroom with Craig's laptop and went to town on this novel project for the month of November. All along my blooming writing process in the course of several months I've been thinking, This is so easy, I can do this. I'm considerably charming, intelligent, and can throw words together in a reasonably decent fashion, sometimes even thrill myself with an occasional semi-interesting metaphor. So I climbed onto the bed with the glass of wine on the nightstand and the laptop resting on a pillow on my legs, semi-fantasizing that I was important and staying at a hotel doing business on a laptop. That fantasy, which was really only yet another fleeting chance to procrastinate, diminished quickly as I embarked on the task at hand. The task consisted of bringing these two women to life at last. The first three pages of this thing are painful. I don't mean painful in a brilliant readable sort of tragedy painful, but in a This writing is the worst writing I've ever done in my life sort of way. So with music calming me from the stereo, the wine definitely numbing some of the fear of forming an unbearably ugly sentence (or several, as the case may be with this whole project), I did it, I just wrote. I launched into introducing one of the women to a man. I rattled on and on about the chemistry as it formed itself between them. I had them drinking coffee! I had them riding the same train! He's got teeth like marching soldiers in white uniform! It was incredible to just sit and do that. I'm not overly impressed with the end product of one evening but I certainly realized, after all this time imagining novel-writing to be this simple and accessible activity, the undeniably challenging feat of wrapping 50,000 words around a handful of characters and their histories and futures blended with current events, their fears, their loves, their turmoil, and as if it weren't daunting enough already, then making it interesting. And what I have yet to pin down, the advice given by some writer somewhere: prompting the reader to require answers. That is, pose questions. This is terrifying. I can move these people around and have them communicate with each other, meet one another, love one another or hurt each other, live in shacks, or in elegant town homes...I can mandate what they eat, or how often they sleep! It's amazing and adventurous but so, so very hard! So today I am fondly remembering falling in love with Marguerite Duras. She was likely the first opportunity I had to really understand that writing is a soul-driven mind maze. I had loved books well before meeting her, but her stories elevated everything I had ever known writing to be. Her sentences were so brief but were loaded with elements of grace and sadness, or love. I found this quote of hers which is excerpted from a book published posthumously. She died when I was a sophomore in college, I remember finding out about it in a lit class, someone had clipped her obit from a newspaper (what paper? Marguerite is French) and feeling overpowered by the news. Being that young and so passionate...sometimes I miss that capacity I had to love. I suppose my capacity hasn't lessened, has only since matured. To certain extents, anyway! Nonetheless, this is by far the most I've written in a year. Not just the pseudo-novel (the "project," I prefer to call it) but in this on line invention, and in emails to friends. The only regret looking backward is not physically pushing a pen around. I miss the intimacy of that. But the special and wondrous thing about writing, to me, is that no one can take it from me, it will always be mine, free of charge, and private if I wish it to remain so, between two covers of a journal, or here, where I direct only my closest friends and loved ones to find it. In addition to all of this, it continues to be so unbelievably difficult! November trudges on.