I Am Writing a Novel
I am going out today. While I am out, I hope that I take the time to sit in the bookstore with coffee and read something that is cunning enough to capture my interest. If I do, I will buy it and carry it home lovingly and I will read lustfully…. and then I will mourn when I’ve read the last line. I always mourn the endings, I grief the loss of those characters, they are friends, sometimes best friends! There is a lingering, a melancholy homesickness that never really goes away. Good books haunt me in pretty little ways that are never ending.
I yammer on about writing a book myself, and then, the dark dawn and the stark page confront me, and, I try to become honest and I ask myself, “Am I a writer or a reader, and what is the difference?” “How does one cross from one portal to the next?”
How will I ever send my beloved character to anyone and not be fearful that she will be tossed in the trash can, or scorned, abused, misunderstood, and rejected again and again? It feels much calmer for me to cover her with a warm quilt and put her to bed in a rose scented cedar drawer where I know that she is safe and warmly aromatic. I won’t forget her, I will visit her, and I will love her always. It's a romantic notion to want to be an author, the blush of the cheeks is the idea, the plot, the first tender kiss, the opening line. Then, things get complicated, one swells and leaks, the slender lines of flirtation grow bulky and awkward, one becomes emotional and constipated, one worries and frets, the tender romance becomes a raging complicated relationship, thoughts of divorce or murder come to mind. If a writer gets through the back breaking, soul bending agonies of a long labor, and then, the dull, endless grunting and pushing, the tearing and the messy spillage of their blood, sweat and tears, then finally, the glorious emptying of their literary wombs, how can they ever accomplish a graceful hand over with dripping breasts and the need to nurture pressing upon the heart in such urgent ways? Aren’t all writers “birth Moms,” it’s easy to say those two words, but, I imagine that it is not so easy to be one. I think it was Truman Capote who said that to finish a novel is like taking your child out into the back yard and shooting her, I am nowhere near finishing, but, I can understand what he is saying already and I cannot imagine that kind of courage.
I yammer on about writing a book myself, and then, the dark dawn and the stark page confront me, and, I try to become honest and I ask myself, “Am I a writer or a reader, and what is the difference?” “How does one cross from one portal to the next?”
How will I ever send my beloved character to anyone and not be fearful that she will be tossed in the trash can, or scorned, abused, misunderstood, and rejected again and again? It feels much calmer for me to cover her with a warm quilt and put her to bed in a rose scented cedar drawer where I know that she is safe and warmly aromatic. I won’t forget her, I will visit her, and I will love her always. It's a romantic notion to want to be an author, the blush of the cheeks is the idea, the plot, the first tender kiss, the opening line. Then, things get complicated, one swells and leaks, the slender lines of flirtation grow bulky and awkward, one becomes emotional and constipated, one worries and frets, the tender romance becomes a raging complicated relationship, thoughts of divorce or murder come to mind. If a writer gets through the back breaking, soul bending agonies of a long labor, and then, the dull, endless grunting and pushing, the tearing and the messy spillage of their blood, sweat and tears, then finally, the glorious emptying of their literary wombs, how can they ever accomplish a graceful hand over with dripping breasts and the need to nurture pressing upon the heart in such urgent ways? Aren’t all writers “birth Moms,” it’s easy to say those two words, but, I imagine that it is not so easy to be one. I think it was Truman Capote who said that to finish a novel is like taking your child out into the back yard and shooting her, I am nowhere near finishing, but, I can understand what he is saying already and I cannot imagine that kind of courage.
By:
hillbillycrone
Age:
51-55
,
Female
