Confession #1:
I haven’t seen the point of writing fiction for a long time.
For some time now, I’ve seen writing novels as a way to bring in money, or to keep myself busy, or simply because I’ve done it before, but I’d lost the love of the genre I’d once possessed, lost my belief that novels matter.
Which has been frustrating because writing fiction is both the thing I do best and the thing that once most brought me the joy.
The problem is, as much as I wish I were not, as much as I would sometimes like to be anything but, I am a fiction writer. Writing fiction isn’t just something I do, it’s the way I make sense of the world. I’m one of those people with a very loud and opinionated internal narrator. When I’m at work on a novel, I can train that narrator to think in passages that will help me tell my story. The brutal and funny observer becomes my friend, confidant, and muse, but I’m under no illusion that it’s ME.
When I’m not at work on a novel, however, things get a little wonky in the brain department. The narrator still demands an audience, but I forget that the one demanding it is not me, but rather a witness, an observer—and not exactly an impartial one. If I’m not careful, it becomes a voice fed entirely by my ego, my fears, and my failures.
If I’m not careful, I can start to think that the horrible things it believes are things that I believe. The words which should be in the mouths of my characters start coming out of my mouth. And the worst-case scenarios which could make for great plot lines have a way of keeping me in a permanent state of anxiety and despair.
So why haven’t I been writing a novel?
Lots of reasons, but I’ll just highlight one.
I don’t know who I’m writing for anymore.
Confession #2:
The only person I’m really ever writing for is me.
A therapist once suggested that a good way to stay motivated with a YA novel I was working on was to think about who my books might benefit.
“Rebecca,” I said. “I really don’t care about other people, least of all children.”
(That was the narrator talking, but it had a point.)
“Then write for yourself,” she said. “Write a book for a younger version of yourself who needs to read what you have to say.”
That, I could do.
I could do it for a little while, anyway, before I got bored. “Teenage me” was too far away, too theoretical.
And there was another problem that started as a small problem, but was starting to become a Big Problem.
And so it’s time for my third, and final, confession.
Confession #3
I don’t like reading fiction anymore.
I’ve alluded to this before, but it’s time for me to just be out with it.
It’s been a long time since I’ve really enjoyed reading novels.
I’m not blaming my fellow novelists for this.
It’s my own damn fault.
I’ve either been too depressed or too distracted. I’ve been too jealous of other writers’ careers to enjoy their skills or their craft. I’ve been too busy doing the work of editing and writing books to actually enjoy the simple act of reading for pleasure. I’ve been too demoralized by the business of books, too aware of how the sausage gets made to enjoy making the sausage.
For whatever reason, it has been many months since I’ve felt joy doing the thing that once brought me more joy than anything else.
But I wasn’t entirely ready to throw in the towel.
And so, as I wrote a few months ago, I picked up an old favorite, The Secret History by Donna Tartt. I immediately remembered what I’d loved about the book, and about novels, and about reading a particular kind of novel.
I was back!
The reader, the novelist, the lover of fiction was back!
Or were they?
After a day or two of utter absorption, I put the book down and got busy with other things. Weeks went by and I’d see the book on my nightstand, look at it guiltily, then pick up a video game instead.
Maybe I just wasn’t a novelist anymore, wasn’t a reader, wasn’t a writer. I started looking up grad programs in fields that had nothing to do with writing. Maybe the whole writing thing had always been a big mistake. Maybe it was time to do something more meaningful.
Then a loved one had to go to the hospital.
I packed a few things for myself, knowing I might need to stay the night, and among those few things were my copy of The Secret History and a little nightlight.
And every time my fears started to arise, I picked up the book. Every time my narrator called out for communion with another narrator, I picked it up. Every time I let my own story go and fell into this marvelously constructed world, the anxiety and the loneliness and the despair disappeared.
I slept at the hospital, but I wasn’t really there.
I was at Hampden College with a bunch of classics majors grappling with life and death, but also grappling with the problem of the human mind, the problem of the all-powerful narrator who will destroy us and everything around us if we do not feed it properly.
The book was the perfect blend of high and low that I demand in my fiction. There were sex and drugs and murder and a literal bacchanal, but mostly this was a book of ideas, of philosophy, of the beauty and terror that is life on this earth.
And, mercifully, it’s a novel written in the first person. It’s the perspective I’d written my first novel in, but one I’d for some reason abandoned.
Perhaps because I was afraid people would confuse me with the narrator.
Perhaps because I was confusing myself with the narrator.
I’m not confused anymore. I know who I am, and what I love, and what I want to create during my time on this planet, and why it matters.
It is a good feeling to have and it’s one I haven’t felt in quite some time.
xoxo
the narrator
This is extraordinary and beautiful. What a touching statement on the power of our inner creators to be heard even through the chaos of our Narrators. You've put so much into perspective for me. Powerful and inspiring 💓