Preemptive Retaliation

So a storm is raging outside. Every time the wind blows I can feel the house move. No, that’s not quite right. I can feel the house stand firm against it. It’s like a ship slicing through rough seas, where the spray strikes against the hull as if trying to crash through it. It’s worse upstairs where my children sleep. Their bedrooms are in the eaves, and the wind and rain pound down on their windows, sometimes waking them up. Nights like these I think about their future, and what the world will be like, and how often storms will rage for them. I don’t know.

I’m writing again, back on my bullshit. At the end of last year I was working on yet another new project but it wasn’t taking off in the way that I wanted it to. I think that I still had unsaid things about The Making Of which needed to be addressed. I like this novel a lot, and I haven’t given it its fair shake, or any shake at all, so it was time to go back and seriously work on it. I read through the whole thing and left myself silly comments in the margins (“This is bad and you should feel bad.” “You should call yourself a tellytubby because all you do is TELL” “My name is Joe and I think my readers are stupid”) and I left my friends voicenotes on what I was having issues with and thought about plot and structure and acts and all the things that you should be thinking about as a capital W Writer who is Taking Themselves Seriously.

And I came to the conclusion that I had already came to almost two years ago – the beginning sucks. It’s too slow. With the way the novel is set up, it’s almost like I do it twice. It’s overwritten. When I told friends about it I mentioned that it starts slow but really gets good after the first part, neglecting to tell them that the first part is twenty thousand words. Still, the book really picks up in its second act, it’s where it gets most interesting. I felt like I should’ve done a Stephen King and killed my darlings by starting at the second act, but it doesn’t work like that. Instead I have to rewrite the start. Again. And I’m in two minds about it all because I’m writing again, and that’s exciting and I really like doing it. For weeks now I’ve ignored videogames to satisfy that ache in my chest to create something. But it also means that this novel, this finished piece of work, still has so much work ahead of it. I thought I was done, save a few adjustments, but I’m not. I still have miles and miles to go before I sleep.

Part of this is down to circumstances in my Real Life. My other job is unsatisfying, and I feel out of place in my body, and slow in the mind, and I am filled with this deep rooted anxiety that I need to do something. I need to achieve something. It’s an anxiety that, of course, ignores all the things I have done, all the things I have achieved. I don’t know. I’m filled with this pressure that I need to make something out of myself, that this book needs to succeed otherwise I’ll just die. And that’s ridiculous, because the law of averages means this book won’t succeed, and the chance of that reduces to zero if I don’t even finish the thing.

Ah, another spiraling post.

Mike and I have spoken about writing a creativity. He shares his writing with me and I have thoughts, and I have criticisms, and I have ideas to make it better than it is – and I tell him, “The story has no meaning. It’s a lovely scene. It’s an insightful collection of thoughts. But there’s no meaning. It’s like a soup without the meat.” And he scoffed, reminding me that not everything needs a meaning, that not everything is a metaphor. He told me that I shouldn’t take myself so seriously. He’s said this to me, in one form or another, for a few years now. Don’t take yourself so seriously, Joe. And I’m trying to remember that. When I do remember that, my writing is easier. It flows out of me, and I have fun. And that’s the main thing, right?

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After publishing this I took a read through some of my other posts, looking to confirm my suspicion that they were all melancholy in some fashion. What struck me is that I seem to be making the same post over and over. Oh I’m not successful. Oh I haven’t submitted my work. Oh the world hasn’t recognised me as a genius, yet. God, it’s getting a little boring, right?

Next post will be a better one.