I’ve reread my novel after being away from it for well over a year.
I did so with some trepidation. Much earlier in the writing process, after I had completed and revised the first draft, I put it away for several months. Then read it with a fresh and very critical eye. The result was terrifying: I hated it.
Eventually I came to realize that if you approach any piece of writing with too critical an eye, from a disdaining or resisting distance, you fail to grasp the thing that connects reader/writer. There must be, at the very least, a willingness to allow the story to lead you forward.
I was pleased that my reading of the novel this time did grab hold and keep me reading, keep me involved. I’m going over it again for a final edit but finding little that wants or needs work. The place I’m spending the most time now are the those crucial opening pages, and these too I now feel are ready to go.
I plan to write more about this novel on these pages in the coming months. For I find that I enjoy writing about writing, as so many writers do. And the topics the novel touches upon and themes it explores are important to me, painful as they sometimes are: addiction, homelessness, poverty, life on the street, father-son-mother-daughter relationships, the inability of ever truly knowing anyone, loss and grief, art as self-discovery and redemption, love and romance, spiritual transformation.
In some ways, all I care about, all I am, why I write, why I care, are contained in these pages.
Recently I came across an essay on writing that captures so clearly why I write, and perhaps, why I read. The passages excerpted below reflect my own writing experience.
From Why Writers Write about Writing by Brianna Wiest
Writing is speaking to yourself, but letting other people overhear the conversation.
The people who are compelled to write down what they feel are the ones who feel it hardest. They make up truths where they didn’t exist before. They put to words what would otherwise go muddled in their minds. Every single writer who can be honest can stand and ratify the fact that wedged between their words, laid subconsciously before them, were great loves and greater losses and deeper insecurities and projected fears. Nothing gets written without the intrinsic motivation to make something confusing and painful clear and beautiful.
I recently saw a quote that went like this: “we’re all just walking each other home.” And sometimes our maps and hands are offered in words. Sometimes we are lighthouses and sometimes we are lost sailors. Writers know you are best crafted out of being both.
And ultimately, the thing about writing is that it forces you to surrender yourself to uncertainty and vulnerability, which, if you ask me, is the most important task to master. My favorite writer . . . Cheryl Strayed once said something along those lines: that the place of unknowing is where the real work gets done — the vulnerable, uncertain place.
Because the best things are written out of the dark parts of us. Because things are always scary when they matter. Because things are inherently neutral and we assign value to them, and looking deeply into the words that touch us may be the greatest way — or the only way — of understanding those parts of us.
“To make something confusing and painful clear and beautiful.”
To help “walk each other home.”
That’s why I wrote this novel.
Thanks for this today, Deborah. I’ve been submitting short stories hither and yon and getting the inevitable rejections. I needed this reminder about why I write. I absolutely love this line: “…the best things are written out of the dark parts of us.” Hard to do but when you can, the work really does sing. Good luck with sending out your novel. How wonderful that on this reading you are pleased with your hard work. What a great feeling!
I totally understand, Susanne. I have to reconnect to that all the time, why I write, to keep me going. It’s a rocky process with any piece of writing whether a short story (I’ve written plenty of those too!) or a novel. The initial excitement and elation when things are going well. the self-doubt and depression when things are going badly, the determination and measured optimism when you are just keeping on keeping on. Then the wait, the possible or real rejection, finding the faith to keep going, keep sending it out . . . . I’m at a good stage now, feeling positive, hopeful, and enjoying the momentum. We’l see what comes next. 🙂
Deborah, I think you’ll enjoy this interview with Sheryl Strayed. The interviewer says she’s been called a fearless writer, and she replies that she writes in the company of fear, but she is not afraid to tell the truth. You can listen to it on YouTube about 14 minutes in: https://youtu.be/M_1eY1xQExM. But the part I like, what she says afterwards, is this: “I think that writers are here, and artists are here, to be the truth-tellers of the human experience, the world we live in. And so, if you’re not going to tell the truth, don’t bother.”
Thanks Ken. I’ll look forward to listening to that interview. I like the quote on truth-telling too. That’s essential is writing.
Deborah, here’s another inspiring quote about writing I thought you might like. It’s by Burghild Nina Holzer, from the back cover of her book: A Walk Between Heaven and Earth: A Personal Journal on Writing and the Creative Process.
Talking to paper is talking to the divine. Paper is infinitely patient. Each time you scratch on it, you trace part of yourself, and thus part of the world, and thus part of the grammar of the universe. It is a huge language, but each of us tracks his or her particular understanding of it.
It was edited down, but I copied the complete quote on my blog, with links to what other writers say about the writing process. https://theuncarvedblog.com/2014/08/20/burghild-nina-holzer-inspires-us-to-write-and-discover-who-we-are-and-what-we-have-to-say/
I love that. It does seem that way sometimes, as if the “paper” is drawing from you things you never knew you knew until you wrote it. I like that part about being part of the “grammar of the universe too. Thank you for sharing this. Lovely.
“I was pleased that my reading of the novel this time did grab hold and keep me reading, keep me involved. I’m going over it again for a final edit but finding little that wants or needs work.”
That indeed was a gift your writing gave back to yourself!
Thank you for a peek into your artistic journey…makes me smile.
Yes, that was a gift. It makes me smile too.
Beautiful post! I want to read your novel! I love that I can play, agonize and adventure in and with emotions of all kinds through writing.
Thank you so much. I’d love for you to read it too.
Wonderful post… nothing moves me more than writers writing about writing… and what wonderful words from Brianna Wiest… as I’m writing my autobiography on my blog, I found her words so validating ad inspirational too.. thank you Deborah for this…
I’m glad you like this, Valerie. It’s what inspires me too. I love reading about how other writers understand their craft. I just read a quote from Ursula K. LeGuinn: “We read books to find out who we are . . . and may become.” I think we write books for the same reason sometimes.
‘Writing is speaking to yourself, but letting other people overhear the conversation.’
Oh, I love that. Spot on.
I’ve discovered that the way I feel about my writing when I re-read it has a lot to do with my current state of mind. I had no idea (until recently) that the way I was feeling could effect how I perceived my writing. Something to watch out for.
I love that too, and you are right. How we are feeling can effect the way we read our writing, or another’s. Thank you for sharing that.
I got a little bit emotional reading this. It’s so true! 😮
What is your book about, if you don’t mind me asking? I’m curious now 🙂
I get a little emotional thinking about that concept too, of walking each other home. In a way, that is what my novel is about. It’s about what happens to the family left behind when the mother who has been holding them all together disappears. It’s about falling apart and helping each other pick up the pieces and become whole again. Mother/daughter/son/father/sister/brother relationships are front and center. Key themes or threads are addiction and recovery, homelessness, poverty, art-making as self-discovery and redemption, the fallibility of memory and of ever truly knowing another person. I’ll be writing in more detail about some of these themes in a series of blog posts in the near future.
What a beautiful treatise on writing! I love the idea of writing to clarify, heal, share, and walk each other home. I look forward to walking with you in 2019 Deborah.
And I with you, Brad. Thank you for coming here and responding to this post.
Thanks! 🙂