For Keeps: On finishing my first novel

(and moments of irrevocable change)

A self-portrait, 2010 | Credit: Marcela Santos Brigida

I have been a bit absent from here, and the reason is, well, I’ve been a bit absent from pretty much everywhere. Months ago, I wrote a short story. I was pretty happy with it until I realised it wanted to be a novel, or rather, it was already a chapter in one. But I still had to figure out everything that led to that moment in time, as well as what followed. My creative writing tutor defines the short story as a moment of irrevocable change; it has also been described as an arrow in flight. I had that precious moment down. But it wanted more moments – the ones in between, where nothing changed, the ones that mattered but were perhaps not as intense. What are the conditions necessary for irrevocable change to take place?

I sat down and wrote, and wrote, and wrote. For months, I wrote on and on, entranced by the two fictional people at the centre of it as well as by the world(s) they inhabited. For the first time in a long time, it was stopping that was hard: forcing myself to go to sleep because I’d have an early morning the following day, or to show up to prearranged meetings and go through the normal motions of life. Life itself was suddenly on the back burner; the novel took up too much bandwidth — it pushed other things aside.

Last year, I read Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction by Patricia Highsmith. It was a time when I was forcing myself to make more room for my writing again after years and years of toiling away at academia. The book left a big impression on me at that time, and now that I’m revisiting it, I’m amazed at how many of Highsmith’s opinions and propositions about plotting have stayed with me. One quote in particular kept playing again and again inside my head as I shut myself away from the world with my novel:

Another cause of this lack of ideas is the wrong kind of people around a writer, or sometimes people of any sort. People can be stimulating, of course, and a chance phrase, a piece of a story, can start the writer's imagination off. But mostly, the plane of social intercourse is not the plane of creation, not the plane on which creative ideas fly. It is difficult to be aware of, or receptive to, one's own unconscious when one is with a group of people, or even with a single person, though that is easier. (my emphasis)

I could not fathom the possibility of bringing my novel up, sharing it with anybody. I was still enrolled in a creative writing course, but what did those other writers know about this — this particular beast that I was creating from nothing? It was fewer than a handful of friends who knew I had this massive project going on, so to all effects, I also had to affect not having this massive thing going on. But it was not just having to explain the novel, or the process, or pre-emptively addressing what it was about that put me off saying anything — it was the sharing itself. I was so enamoured, so jealous of it in a way, it was simply unthinkable to give it away to others, even through a superficial report. I finally, completely understood Jane Austen’s description of Pride and Prejudice to her sister as “my own darling child”. The book had just gone to press; people might love it, people might snub it. Still, she adored it wholeheartedly. She could not fathom that someone might not fall in love with Elizabeth Bennet.

I was listening to Lucy Dacus’s new album Forever Is a Feeling a lot through the rewrites, especially as “For Keeps” sort of reverberated with the melancholy of saying goodbye to that world in a way. It also just happened to remind me of the relationship between the main characters. But then I saw this post by Dacus on Instagram where she addresses her fans at the beginning of her tour. Something that she wrote resonated with me and made me think of Jane Austen’s letter again. I’ll share an excerpt here:

I hope my music can be something good in your life, although it is for myself more than it is for you. I made Forever Is A Feeling because I want to grow old and I want to remember how I felt. It’s uncomfortably close to my heart. Tour starts tonight, and if the music is for me, then the show is for you. (my emphasis)

And though I have been writing for what seems like forever — my first piece got published when I was sixteen, an essay about the heartache of having a best friend break up with me — finishing this novel established for me an entirely new kind of relationship with my writing. I felt pleased, of course, in finishing it, but it also hurt. A lot! To have it done means that, though, like Lucy, I mostly created this art for myself, it is also its own thing now. Other people will read it, will have their own views, their opinions and impressions, interpreting it in ways I did not plan. It sort of feels like a bond broken.

And so, I’ve been feeling bluish since I submitted it to a thing yesterday — not because I’m worried about what they will make of it, but because it’s not just my own darling child anymore. And I’ve never felt this before. With my short stories, yes, I may have dreaded workshops before or anticipated a contest win or felt disheartened by a rejection. But it did not feel like I was sending off a little person into the world. What an odd, odd feeling.

And yet, it is a gift to be able to feel this certain about something. I will turn thirty-two in less than 24 hours and though I could say, yes, I’ve done my fair share of cool stuff, this feels different. Maybe I will be able to elaborate on it more eloquently when I’ve put some distance between the thing and the feeling, but this wordlessness is also deserving of being committed to paper — or to pixel. Because I miss writing my novel, I arrived at the conclusion that maybe it would be nice to write about writing it, and maybe it would resonate with the people who read this newsletter, or with anyone who might chance upon it.

So yes, the world is kind of burning, society may be collapsing, but I still have hope and love enough to get me through it. Happy Easter and happy birthday to me.