On Writing

So my C Jane post went up on Sunday and it was a fun ride. Interesting to think on how it's probably the most widely-read thing I've ever written: a blog post that I labored over for two whole days! It was an honor to be able to do it, though, and even if it doesn't really translate into many Dispensation sales or Irreantum subscriptions, it's satisfying that a few more people know now that such things exist. A step in the right direction, yes?

Now I just need to figure out what my plans are with my own writing. I'm stuck (again) on another novel, feeling like I'm going the wrong direction but a little sick about chucking it all and starting over again. It's easy to stand up and preach the gospel of revision, but man, it never stops being extraordinarily hard to do in practice. Especially when there's no guarantee of anyone actually reading the finished product: three, four years of your life, hours and hours and hours of work, all for the sliver of a chance that it might get an agent, then a tinier sliver of a chance that it will get published, then an even tinier sliver of a chance that, after publication, it will be read instead of slinking off into the ever-crowded corner of literary obscurity to curl up into a ball and die.

Wow. This is really uninspiring.

Part of my own problem has to do with permission.  It's hard for me to give myself permission to write toward such a nebulous goal. And it's galling for me to even write these words since I spend so much energy encouraging others to do that very thing (be brave! you can't be a successful writer until you allow yourself to carve out the time and space necessary to make it work! the vast majority of anything you write will end up discarded -- that's the process!).  But I'm still struggling with it.  Working on Irreantum, working on Dispensation, writing blog posts or essays for Segullah, all those things are easier for me to get my arms around because I know what I'm doing will eventually get out into the world and be read. It justifies the time away from my family, from cooking dinner or folding socks.  It also justifies the really really really hard work. Writing fiction (for me) isn't like reading, which is pure enjoyment, or even other activities that people would call leisurely, like (hey!) blogging or baking or gardening: activities that can be broken up into discrete blocks with discernible results at the end of the day. A new blog post, brownies, a planter of petunias on the front porch.  No, writing fiction requires this kind of leap of faith, coupled with the ability to work hard and be disciplined for the sake of working hard and being disciplined, coupled with a kind of single-mindedness that requires me to shut everyone and anyone else out.  (I can't even have somebody put a hand on my shoulder when I'm writing. Jerks me right out of where I need to be.)

But I'm going to keep plugging away.  Keep writing slowly. While I sit and simmer about my (possibly) abandoned novel, I've started working on a short story. I haven't started a short story in years because I've wanted to spend my fiction writing time on getting a *&(* novel finished, but I think I need the kick in the pants, the creative jolt that starting and finishing a work of fiction will give me.

Wish me luck.

And isn't the sound of all those Egyptians cheering in the streets an inspiring thing?