Learning to Surrender: Writing a Novel Through Darkness to Light
Dear Reader,
Today the sun shines on Bali and the island and all her people are at the grand ceremony. Shops are closed or they open late because the gods are gathering for the offerings. I arrive at the cafe two hours before it opens and I sit on the seat outside, laptop open, alone and ready to edit.
We’ve come to the part of this journey when I must bring out my swords and my scalpel. I open the pages I’ve written and read through with a monocle and a stiff spine. I click the delete button all morning long, slicing away paragraphs, pages and phrases.
I read what I wrote long ago and some pieces impress me. Wow, I wrote that? Is a lovely thought to hear in my head. I’m smiling at my own imagination and memories. There is so much joy alive in this story. And there is darkness.
The air is full of Balinese prayers today so I decide to drop myself into the heaviest words I’ve written. I’m rereading the most depressing part of the story, written when my hands were holding myself up and my words were washed out by a withering spirit.
The resistance was real this morning. I do not feel like reading this sad stuff. I do it anyway and celebrate that I no longer think these thoughts or feel these feelings. Sure, the voice sounds familiar and I remember where I was sitting when I wrote all this but it’s so long gone now. I’m grateful it will all only sink further away with time.
A part of me does a happy dance to feel done with the darkness, excited that we moved through it and that writing our way through it was effective. Another part wants to delete it all and forget about it, ready to end the reflection and dwelling in the past. Another part wants to publish it and pray it helps someone out there who needs it because even if I’m done feeling these feelings, they’re still true and being lived by someone else. I wrote myself out of the darkness and someone else will read their way out when they find my words. So I keep writing and editing. Little steps of progress towards the finish line where I believe some completed story awaits me. I imagine a bound novel all sparkly and fresh, ready to be devoured by someone’s imagination. By that point, how will my own imagination feel? Ready for a new adventure?
Every day, I’m asked to surrender more. This story is becoming something different than the something I envisioned it to be. I feel pulled between telling the story exactly as it happened to me and embracing the creative license to spice it up and switch things around in a way that feels more playful. I’m loyal to playfulness and I’m practicing letting go of whatever feels stiff and unhelpful. Writing this book is a spiritual bootcamp and I feel like a very different woman than the one who started this project.
Love & Rainbows,
Cha Wilde
8/2/23
Amed, Bali