Learning At This Late Stage
I can not expect to be a good writer if I am not constantly reading
I suppose, since I don’t remember anything about what I wrote last week, I should probably take a second to review it.
Okay, got it.
I see that I mentioned that I finished my first draft of my first novel and started my second novel. I do apologize for being redundant. Covid is some serious shit and even though my symptoms were relatively mild, it did suck out a lot of my energy and mess a little with my mind.
To be honest, I was pretty excited about having a whole week off. I figured I’d be up every morning and really going at it. I could even be halfway done at this point. 30 or 40,000 words into this manuscript. That was not how things happened. First, my main character has a very sad and poignant issue in her life and, although the idea came to me quickly and without much trouble, being able to write about it with empathy and believability is something else altogether.
As a matter of fact, instead of just plowing ahead from chapter to chapter–the advice that most writers give to anyone attempting a first draft of anything–I went back and rewrote the entire first four chapters. When I wasn’t doing this, I was reading memoirs about people who had histories like my character. I was watching documentaries from the BBC and South Africa. I still can’t tell if I was doing all of this to avoid doing what was scaring me or if I truly wanted to know what the f*ck I was talking about.
For argument’s sake, let’s say it was a little of both.
As someone who is pretty new to novel writing, I only just barely began to have a system down. I didn’t realize it when I first found out I’d be out of work all week, but there seemed to be just as much going on with my writing when I was out in the world working as there was when I was sitting at the desk. I got in the habit of not listening to podcasts or audiobooks but simply sitting in silence and allowing my imagination to plan the next day’s plot movement.
Without that portion of the routine, I may have been a little lost. When it comes to these sorts of diagnoses, a person is safest when they assume that it is never any one thing, as I said earlier. It’s likely a little bit of Covid, a little bit of fish out of water and a little bit of sensitive subject matter.
I had to drive ten miles to do some banking earlier today and while I was out driving around, I listened to the audio version of what I have been able to accomplish. I will admit, I may have approached the topic with trepidation, but I feel like I’m doing a good job with it. Not everything is a breeze to write about. There are certain topics that crawl under our skin and make us feel a little funny. They give us weird dreams and we wake up feeling sad or alone or empty. This has been happening lately.
I suppose it’s a good indication that you are pouring your all into something. One thing I noticed when I watched the BBC documentary that I mentioned before, was that there was a real story of a girl in the UK whose history was very close to the one I invented in my head. This also happened when I was researching for my first novel. We live in a world where there are very few “what if’s” left to imagine. The thing about fiction is that a writer has the ability to have all of the loose ends tie up a lot better than they tend to do in real life and the writer can get deep into the head of the character as opposed to these awkward documentaries where the people don’t know how much they feel comfortable revealing. This is why I tend to prefer art over reality.
Regardless, my idea is that when I am back in the normal routine, getting up before work, and getting out there and busting my ass everyday, I will probably have a much better handle on things. But this little Covid reprieve was important. It’s been a long time since I got the right amount of rest, plenty of hydration and enough solitude to read long into the night.
I can not expect to be a good writer if I am not constantly reading. I can not expect to be a good writer if I don’t relish the idea of reading over social media and all other pastimes. It’s highly competitive out there.
And I don’t know if it will be just as difficult to find a publisher and an agent for my fiction as it was to find for my nonfiction, but I do know I plan on fighting just as hard to make that happen as I fought to make the other thing happen.
But first, I have to give them something to be excited about. So I will leave this little epistle right here and get back to “Of Mice and Men”. There is so much to learn from Steinbeck, from Hemingway, from Fitzgerald, from Plath and from Atwood.
And when I am feeling down, I just remember that all of them are on my shelf, just waiting for me to show up.
First, I hope each day brings a sunnier one to clear out the last of COVID from you. A week of rest, recovery and hydration is good. Glad you got in reading time, real reading and not social media scrolling. I am so immersed in study these days, that picking up a fiction book is too far down the list. I need to schedule some breaks. However, I am enjoying the course work. This is a good piece, a glimpse of the mind making the switch from writing nonfiction to fiction. Time for me to explore the world of fiction. I did some short stories twenty years ago, sent them to a friend to review and loved her ideas. But they sat in a folder for a long time, and I finally tore them to pieces. Don't ask why, I do not know. Maybe a romance novel with no porn, just good imaginative prose. Take care Billy. Maybe another few days off work would be a good idea.