I'm mostly a writer of small pages

On the home stretch of finishing my novel. 62K words! But right now, this is how I feel. Come read me on The Holmes County Bargain Hunter


I don’t want to write anymore. My brain is tired, and my novel is snugly tucked inside Microsoft Word, where it can’t hurt anyone; yet, I can feel its sharp teeth biting at me, pulling me slowly under where I must acquiesce to the venom it exudes. When it’s done, I will offer it to you like a sacrifice on a golden alter because it had to be written.

I’m mostly a writer of small pages, words made shiny and formed cohesively to hold your attention for 10 minutes at a time. I can take a subject and spin it on its head, the heft of the word document filed neatly in the time it takes to ride the words to their crest. I’m a wordsmith of tidy detailed musings, and what possessed me to think I could write a novel still baffles me as the coffee goes down bitter.

My husband, lover of all things me, born adrift on a story that propelled him to me long ago, he is why I am compelled to finish. His story, told to me over and over, the words gently orbiting in outer space, presses me to go, go, go. It’s a novel born of blood, love and warm countries where joy are found in the daily lilt of life. 

It’s a story of hate and consuming loss that didn’t define him and the pulling up of who he was into the relentless partner he is to me today. His words and life swirl in my brain, savagely mixing until all I can do is sit at my computer and either purge or be stifled. 

I am nearing completion, paragraphs methodically arranged, sentences that await their birth, spilling from brain to finger to screen. I’ve said repeatedly that writing a novel is like having your guts spill onto the floor and rolling around in them. Too graphic? Well I’m not sorry because I feel that every day as I sit down to write. I’m awash in a sea of grit. The last words are in me, and they’re coming down the pike hard and fast. Blessed culmination is near. 

I’ve told others I have more books to write, which is like choosing a dare instead of a truth. It’s a thrill that never ceases to perplex and amaze me as I hurtle through the cosmos, but until my husband completes the cycle of his younger self in this book, until he finishes these feral and vicious years I’m writing and looks up and sees my younger face for the first time, I will be unable to write anything else. 

This afternoon I will take his 16-year-old hand from 1984 and sit down to find the concluding content. I will do this every day until I’m done.

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