There are patterns everywhere.
The trick is to locate and identify the patterns in our own lives, especially the destructive ones.
Last night, after hours of work, I discovered that this is what the novel I'm writing is about, apparently.
Each time I go back in and open up the file, I rewrite it slightly from the top.
(This has long been my habit as a writer. I write very quickly, but then, edit, edit, edit until the draft feels right.
(Not so much here, of course. A blog is meant to stay informal, looser...)
But the novel, which is still in its early stages, is about a journey through time and space, but much more critically, through the maze of events and relationships that either reveal or conceal the necessary degree of self-knowledge to say, write a book.
It's an addictive activity, once you start, but it occasionally turns brutal. The only way this book ever can succeed, in my eyes, (forget financial success), is if I can attain a degree of emotional honesty that normally proves too intense to sustain.
At some point, we all want to retreat back to the states of denial and articles of faith that normally permit us to live out our routines without thinking too hard about it all. The problem is no one ever writes a good book of the sort I am attempting now without setting these regular routines aside, and pushing further into places most of us, especially me, rarely wishes to go.
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1 comment:
You are so right. I can tell when an author has been totally vulnerable in the writing of a book- and when the author hasn't. Although both books may be readable- the first is so much more enriching.
I look forward to purchasing your novel one day & I have a strong suspicion it will be enriching!
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