I'm *Writing a Novel!
*I have made four playlists and one Pinterest board and not a single word I like has been put on a page!
I have had a novel sitting on a couch in the furthest room at the back of my head. She’s been there almost two years. It’s not a very large room, but there’s a bay window at least, which she reclines at sometimes. She tends to do this when I go on long walks in the park or to my babysitting gigs. She loves to look outside. Something tells me the cushions at the bay window are a warm pink. Warm pink with a subtle paisley print, because she’s stylish and into grandmacore.
Each day, in this little room, she wakes up when I do and we both prepare our coffee. I drink mine black, but I imagine she does hers up; Nespresso machine, CoffeeMate Creamer (Pumpkin Spice), caramel drizzle, the works. I wonder if she takes two sips and forgets about it like I do. She probably doesn’t, because she actually made hers taste good.
I have loved her like my own little baby ever since she arrived, even when we’re not on speaking terms (which is most of the time). Once in a while, I’ll come up with a pretty sentence or a piece of gripping dialogue; maybe a heart wrenching plot twist that I realize later isn’t as universal as I thought it was and is instead just a projection of my romantic bad luck. And that’s what this novel is; a projection of my fears. Particularly the fear of waking up when I’m forty and having both a failed career and not a single successful relationship under my belt.
(This is an irrational fear of course.)
((Is what I tell myself.))
I’ll put down these silly sentences into bullet point form on my Notes app. This note is titled “Book Shit???” The question marks are my favorite part - like, are we really doing this??? You do realize you’ve only taken one online writing course??? If this doesn’t become a New York Times Bestseller you know there was no point at all, right???
I love my novel and I am terrified of making her real. It’s the type of fear that numbs both my emotions and my fingertips; pretty much the same feeling I get after scrolling on TikTok for two hours straight, but a little sadder. Because all I want to do is fucking write her already. I’m sure she’s getting claustrophobic.. She deserves to get off the couch and away from bay window. She deserves to walk right outside my right eye and slide down my nose and hop on the keyboards like stepping stones in a river. She deserves to jump and lunge and do a messy double pirouette on my laptop screen.
This is the part where I reveal a secret. It’s not like I’ve written nothing. Currently, there’s a 187-page half-baked first draft collecting dust in my Google Docs. It felt so awful that I couldn’t even get myself to finish, even though I had an 80-page plot outline the next tab over. This non-draft was all the proof I needed to convince myself I was terrible at this. Since then, I’ve tried a few methods to get going again. My therapist told me I should write it out of order. After that didn’t work, I made a family tree of sorts, outlining (undeveloped) characters and their relationships to each other. I’ve done a lot of Pinterest-ing and playlist-ing which is very fun but hasn’t resulted in words. I’ve even started a faux journal for the main character, because I thought if I treated the writing like a diary entry then I would be more consistent. If only I remembered that each of my childhood bedrooms were filled with half-used diaries. In short, I am short of a real draft.
I’m not trying to sound so cynical. Ambition and hope are still leading the way, but they keep stopping along the trail to take a nap. One day I believe in myself so much that a tear falls stunningly down my cheek and the next there is nothing that can turn me away from believing I am simply a waste of resources. Okay, dramatic much??? See, those multiple question marks make me giggle. I’m glad I put them there, though I’m not sure they belong in a novel.
Come to think of it, there’s literally no way I can write a full novel. There are so many sentences in this essay/rant that start with “I”, so I must be kidding myself. What am I even doing introducing this essay with a metaphor, like who do I think I am?
Fucking boring and also stupid and a little ugly come to mention it, and also -
Okay, see, this is what happens. There is a genius, a ditz, and a mean girl from different sides of my brain that my novel invites over for a pity party. Likely it involves Bananagrams and Tito’s martinis. They all sit on the couch together; they laugh and gossip and look up Taylor Swift karaoke on YouTube and it’s really a wonderful time until they’ve realized they’ve spent the last two hours tearing each other apart. It happens every time my novel tries to put itself out there, and we never learn.
I’ve been my own best bully ever since they told me I was “gifted” in the fourth grade. All I did was memorize what to do so they would tell me how good I was, and then I had to keep that up. I now tell myself it would be impossible for me to pass as “gifted” now. I can’t get an agent. I sleep in. It’s become a chore to even read a single book; cue my well-intentioned mother with, “Well how are you supposed to write a book if you can’t read one?” She hit me with that over Christmas, and uhhhh she’s really not wrong.
Is that what this novel is for? Do I just want someone to tell me I’ve done something good after four years of flailing? (That’s “flailing” as in failing but I want it to sound less dire.)
In the fifth grade I actually wrote a novel. (That’s “novel” as in a twenty-page story but hey, that’s impressive for a ten year old I think.) My parents were so proud that they told my principal without my consent. I was called into her office and she beamed as she asked if she could read my book out loud. Mortified, I said yes. She was really very nice and she was looking at me like I did something good, so I didn’t want to let her down. So she read it, making sure to look into my eyes every tenth word to show just how delighted she was. After she was done, she asked if she could share it with the rest of the school.
Mortified, I said absolutely not.
This was the third grade school I had attended, and the second school in two years where I was the new kid. In a few months I had managed to make a couple best friends who didn’t laugh at me when I suggested we play “Squirrel Spies” during recess. No one else, except my teachers, seemed to be fan. I was a delight to have in class but not at the sleepover. Probably because of a few things - I had a snaggletooth, for one. I would also have my “zoning out” moments where I stared in one place and didn’t blink for a long time and that was probably a creepy thing to witness. Three, I wore a business-casual khaki blazer to Picture Day. So no, I didn’t want everyone else to know that I had written a novella about a girl and her dog discovering a magical portal in their backyard that took them inside the Hansel and Gretel fairytale.
If I could go back I would’ve said yes. Well, no, I wouldn’t actually, it still sounds like it’d be a nightmare.
The point is, I miss my weird fifth grade self. She could focus on reading for more than thirty minutes without thinking to herself, wow, look at me reading. She wasn’t afraid to write unoriginal song lyrics because she wanted to be Hannah Montana, and she wasn’t scared to share her cringey poetry with predictable rhyme schemes because she didn’t know it was so cringey. Or, even more admirable, she didn’t care. She just loved to get it all out. She was so creative before she got pimples and day jobs and felt like she was running out of time.
I don’t think my novel is going to come out of her room today. It likely won’t be tomorrow either, or the next day or the next month. It still seems like the door is locked and I can’t make a copy of the keys no matter how many locksmiths I go to. But maybe she can get a roommate, so she isn’t so lonely. My fifth grade self can move in. She knows there isn’t much space but she’s fine with an air mattress for now. My novel can help my fifth grade self hang up her Jonas Brothers posters, and they can drink their coffee together while they look outside the window and play Bananagrams and talk about their dreams.
I’ll be here, waiting. In the meantime I’ll do my best to manifest during new moons and not beat myself up as much or pick at my face. And I’ll be ready when they finally walk out, hand-in-hand.
I didn’t ask to be called out like this, but I also didn’t realize I’d been sitting around for a half hour reading it. I’d say that’s an even exchange.