You inhabit another realm when you are writing a novel. It’s like being in love - being “in novel”.
Luisa Valenzuela
I have been living in the realm of my novel for years, but never more so than in the last month. Determinedly working towards trying to ‘finish’ this project, I found myself turning more and more of myself over to the work. This is sometimes necessary in the face of a deadline; soon enough I was skipping gym sessions and social engagements in favour of a few more hours at the keyboard. I was in the other realm - ‘in novel’ as Valenzuela describes above. I did this despite recognising all the while that the idea of what is ‘finished’ remains a relative term. Am I even close to having a completed novel? Sort of. Not really. Despite all my best efforts, a ‘novel’ requires more than just myself to complete. I gave it all my effort for all that time, and now, I have to let go. But just for now.
Leaving anywhere is hard. Goodbyes are difficult. Given this isn’t a full goodbye - just a partial one - it is a strange kind of limbo to enter: one foot in the project, trying to hold all the threads in place in my mind. The other foot out the door, desperate to let the threads go and make it someone else’s problem. This is the strange thing about an ending: it’s not as final as it sounds.
Satisfaction, where you can get it
I think of this quote from Gabriel Garcia Marquez:
'I think that writing is very difficult, but so is any job carefully executed. What is a privilege, however, is to do a job to your own satisfaction… It is a privilege to do anything to a perfect degree.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
My work is far from ‘perfect’, but the sentiment reassures me: Doing my work to my own satisfaction (a goal post which will keep moving as my skills expand), is a privilege and a joy. Despite disappearing headfirst into this project, there is very little I could have done instead that would have given me half as much joy. Joyfully giving up the hours in pursuit of this partial end felt like the most reasonable choice in the world. It makes me think back to my old favourite, Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland:
To all viewers but yourself, what matters is the product: the finished artwork. To you, and you alone, what matters is the process: the experience.
Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland
I think the ‘viewer’ doesn’t even care about the product, as such. At least, not yet. Nobody is as invested in me, an emerging writer, as I am in myself. This is slowly changing - I do have some people who are increasingly invested in my completing the work - but this list is not long. While I have been so focused on trying to create a product in order to prove myself, I have had to begrudgingly accept that the process is what is truly mine. Most of what ‘the novel’ is from my point of view is therefore wrapped up in the process of creating it.
Seeing the wood from the trees
The mission is to complete the project so you can move on to the next. That next one is a stepping-stone to the following work. And so it continues in productive rhythm for the entirety of your creative life.
Rick Rubin, The Creative Act
As Rubin says, everything I have done is a stepping stone. It’s hard to see the project as such when you’re inside it - when it is your world, you can’t conceive of it as a stone. It’s the air itself that you’re breathing, not a means to an end. But once I let the project escape my hands alone, go into someone else’s, and travel beyond my sight, I have come to see its edges again. The words that I traced over a thousand times are now mysterious again as they get steadily further away from me.
‘In novel’ (or in any art form) you will soon struggle to see the wood from the trees. I think this is easily done in all aspects of life - it’s not mysterious that we begin to lose sight of the details in any sphere of life that were once particular and obvious, if we tread that ground over and over. We are novelty seekers, and so become inured to all things given enough time. But once you allow yourself the act of letting go, of stepping back, of just calling it ‘finished’ (whatever that means), you have the chance to see it anew, someday. While finishing a project can feel like a loss, I take comfort in the idea that I might get to rediscover it someday. With a fresh set of eyes, it may yet become new.
And so the cycle will begin again.
Until next time.
Be well,
CCx