Novel reflections
Guys it's hard
Writing a novel is like stripping your body of its skin. At least, that’s what it’s been like for me, and there’s no approaching end to that feeling. Each time I come back to the page, I have to willingly accept the forthcoming pain. I may emerge from my novel feeling something else—catharsis, exhilaration, relief, adrenaline, exhaustion—or I may not.
The problem is that I must write the novel. Writing is the one thing that makes my life make sense to me, and this novel is the story I need to tell before I can tell any other. So, I am bound, knotted tight, over and over, to the act of peeling back my defenses. I am bound to this rawness.
Too, I am bound to the unpredictable and strange process of healing from these self-imposed wounds. I used to believe that once I’d written something down and gotten it out that I had exorcised it from my body. That I can heal, sew myself up, more space inside of me. But it’s not really true. It’s like how talking to someone about your feelings doesn’t get rid of them, it just translates, solidifies, momentarily makes tangible what is intangible. That’s not to say that getting things out of your mind isn’t good, because it is. But it doesn’t get rid of them. Maybe it makes them easier to hold, perhaps less heavy when some shame or guilt has been released.
I suppose that this truth, that writing something down won’t get rid of it, is very difficult to accept. I haven’t accepted it, really, truly. I’m still trying. I guess I’m just also trying to do other things in my writing, which makes this truth bearable.
One of those things is something I haven’t explicitly thought about until recently. I was thinking about how it feels when other people read my work, and about the gratification that comes from finally feeling like people can see me as I am (even if just in pieces). I was thinking about how there is a different side of me in the work: a truer, stranger, uglier, messier, more expansive version of me. More more more. Because the page is a space that most easy for me to take up.
It feels right, being seen through the lens of my work. It can be scary. But the adrenaline rush, the relief of being understood, is the best feeling I’ve ever had. I can’t give it up now that I’ve had it.
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If you’re here, reading this, know that I deeply appreciate you seeing me more fully through my words. Thank you <3
