10/31/2023
Seattle
Dear Friend,
Soon the trick or treaters will bang on the door. I’m in Queen Anne, one of the fancier neighborhoods in Seattle. I’m snuggling in a pile of fuzzy blankets that belong to one of my best friends. I’m here for a week to laugh and cowork. My friend has gone out on a run around the block to fill her lungs with fresh autumn air and I take this opportunity to video call my husband.
“Hey love, what’s up.” He says.
“Hey my love, I’m feeling frustrated this morning. I went to Fremont Coffee Company and drank a match latte with oak milk and spent two hours feeling gross inside as I wrote a new scene in the novel. I had the characters riding dragons in space and kissing each other and then I doubted if I should be focusing on this scene at all. I feel like I just spent hours on pages I’m going to end up deleting.”
And then I nod as he coaches me for ten minutes, reminding me that I’ve already written the first part of my story, the first book in my series, the first 200 pages.
“Just go back to the beginning and continue translating the first section into fantasy. It’s good right? Maybe it’s not the story you expected or wanted to tell but it’s still a story. The most important thing is that you finish this project. Your deadline to complete a book is March 17. You have to have something to publish or you’re going to be floating around in unfinished project land for eternity. Once you publish something then you’ll feel great. You’ll feel so much freedom and you can reassess at that point if you want to write more books in the series, write something else entirely, or just go back to writing music. You can do whatever you want after you publish a book but first you just have to complete a book. It’s not going to be perfect and it might not be what you set out to create but the most important thing is to have something to publish when that deadline arrives. You have to ship.”
We hang up the call and I make some tea, eat some salty chocolate, pet my cat and open up the iPad again. The morning writing session was uncomfortable because I doubted if I was focusing on the right story. The afternoon writing session was just as uncomfortable but for different reasons. I still feel I need to spend more time crafting the story structure rather than just writing by flowing wild intuition. I feel so much resistance to structure though and writing has always been a free flowing form of expression for me. This project is forcing me, inviting me, coxing me into a balance of the two. We need structure for healthy flow. The stronger my structure, the more fun it is to flow through it.
Oh, how tempted I am to keep adding new pages to this novel AND how much discipline it takes to focus on the rewriting process. I’ve decided to trust my wonderful husband who is so full of encouragement for me. Instead of writing forward into the land of dragons and mermaids and pirates, I’m going to go back to the beginning of the story on human land and transform it, convert it, magically turn everything from reality into fantasy. We’re about to head off the beaten path and let my life get twisted into something unexpected.
I have two hundred pages of autobiographical fiction to tap on the head with a magic wand and watch it transfigure into something completely unrecognizable. When I’m done, I’ll have a fantasy novel which might be the first book in a series or perhaps the first and final book of my life. I have a desire to write a saga, an epic journey, with all the details I can possibly remember from the realms of imagination AND I have a desire to finish this blessed project and move on with my life.
When I began this project I listed my reasons for embarking on such a creative quest. Why write a novel? My intention was to take on an extremely challenging project to build self-respect as I crossed the finish line, proving to myself I could do it. I wanted to write a story that would give me a safe space to creatively process the traumatic memories I’d been hauling around for a couple years with CPTSD. I wanted to write my way through healing and find clarity in my relationships with my husband and my music. I also wanted to become a better writer in general and specially for my songs. I’ve also dreamed of writing a book since I was a child. I’ve held a fantasy story in my head, loosely in random chunks, for years and I thought it a beautiful idea to actually jot it down into a novel. Now I’m so deep in this writing project — I’m wading through an organized chaos on my devices — and I’m just grateful to have accomplished most of my goals already. The big one now is to reach the finish line and just complete a book. So maybe I won’t tell the story I’d been dreaming of but my god, we’re going to tell a story and see it through to the final page…whatever it may be. It is an act of surrender to let the creative process have its way with me. I must release the reins and let it run away with the current.
Love & Rainbows,
Cha Wilde
