When you can't help yourself
I wrote a few days ago about how I’ve been at odds with a novel project that’s emotionally heavier than anything I’ve written before. I said I’d put it aside until I had an opportunity to get together with my therapist and talk about it. But sometimes a writer can’t help themselves.
A couple of days after I wrote my last entry, I wrote the first chapter of what will become a novel I’m currently working on. I’m calling it Untitled Marriage Story for now. It’s about identity, belonging, fidelity, betrayal, and pain. I get teary just thinking about it sometimes, which is why I’ve expressed a desire to create a safety net for my feelings. And yet, I wrote that chapter.
I’m glad I wrote it. While I hesitate to pat myself on the back whenever I’m working on something, I honestly feel those pages are the strongest pages I’ve ever written. They’re 2,928 words of pure emotion conveyed in prose, and even people with a longtime exposure to my work have immediately grasped the book’s themes and seen in my words the emotional fragility I’m bringing to the project.
Did I cry? You bet your ass, I did. I had to write the pages in bursts because I’d get overwhelmed and have to stop. I hope the rest of the manuscript isn’t like this, though I suspect it will be.
My emotional connection doesn’t mean the work is necessarily genius, but it does mean something: this writing matters to me.