Ramble: On Escaping

As a milestone birthday gift to myself, I booked myself into an Airbnb for three nights. This brought raised eyebrows and confused comments from family and friends. Really? people asked. That's what you want? To be on your own for your birthday? The milestone gave a solid excuse--wanting to try my hand at starting to write a novel--but the choice itself baffled people.

I kind of get it. Leading up to my little escape, I came very close to cancelling. First, because it felt very selfish. Birthdays may be just another number counting our way to death, but people enjoy any excuse to gather together. To deny others that opportunity felt selfish--perverse, even, because at the end of the day I'd be an idiot to not recognize how blessed I am to have people to gather with in celebration. It's only because those social ties exist that I enjoy the privilege of choosing solitude.

It also felt selfish as it meant absconding for several days from the responsibilities of daily life. There's laundry to do and cats to clean up after. The constant demands of family and friends and work. Stepping away from all that felt--irresponsible.

And finally--well, the nature of the writing itself is problematic, isn't it? At some point, someone's going to ask, entirely reasonably--so, how'd it go? How's that novel going? Can I have a look? There may be a smirk or even worse, sympathy. Because of course, I'll have nothing to share. No, I'll say, you can't have a look. I'm sorry to say that there's nothing to share.

But what I'd like to say is: actually, it went very well, thank you. I completed an extremely challenging scene, a pivotal scene with major implications for the protagonist that also removed a major character from the story. I (re-)plotted out the rest of a long novel, and wrote around ten thousand words, and those words have me sitting at the cusp of two hundred thousand for the year to date. Not bad, right? Sorry, what's that--what's the story about? Um.

But here's the thing. Once I got past all of those doubts and embraced the opportunity, my escape was--wonderful.

The first night, after traveling and checking in, I didn't get much done. Explored the area a little, enjoyed a pint, and stocked up on a few beers and some microwaveable meals. I revised the chapter in progress and binge-watched Hazbin Hotel. And I read a little.

One wonderful takeaway of the time away was simply having the time and space for uninterrupted reading. In between bouts of writing, I read. I finished Sally Rooney's Conversation with Friends and Murakami's The Elephant Vanishes (both well underway before the escape) and almost finished Maas' A Court of Thorn and Roses (which I've been dipping in and out of since April). A couple days of intensive writing makes for attentive reading; or maybe the intensive reading makes for attentive writing.

But maybe the greatest takeaway of the weekend was simply experiencing a glimpse of what must be the daily existence of a 'real' writer. I woke up, showered and ate, and wrote. At a natural breaking point, I stepped out for a short walk and a coffee, maybe a slice of cake or a croissant. I returned and wrote some more. Occasionally, I procrastinated. The first full day, I wrote until pretty late in the evening. The second night I tried to do the same, and realised it wasn't working--I was tired and needed to stop. The first full day, I wrote 4,933 words, some of this expanding earlier content, most of it pushing Julia's scene to its conclusion. The second day, I wrote 4,249, all of it new, finishing Julia's final scene and pushing the story into its next major arc.

Along the way, I think I picked up a few things.

First: writing is lonely work. Obviously. But far too often, I checked my emails, looking for comments, feedback, something to connect with. This was one part procrastination to one part loneliness. Proper writers must develop a wonderful resilience that enable them to complete an entire novel without sharing, without needing comments or feedback. It's something to work on. I don’t know if I could produce a full hundred thousand words without some kind of reassurance that it’s worth completing along the way.

I also learned that there's no point in comparing myself to the likes of Rooney, King or Murakami--a random sampling of what I'd consider great writers, all for very different reasons. There's an entire infrastructure enabling the wonderful things they create, and I glimpsed a bit of that over the weekend. Obviously, they've got immense talent. But they have editors and financial grants and every writing day for them is what I briefly experienced these last few days. At some point, yes, Stephen King was an unpublished author perched at the counter at the end of his kitchen, and Murakami wrote against the backdrop of running a Jazz bar and working long hours. (Or so they tell their own tale, mythologizing their origin stories.) Now, however, they do enjoy that wonderful time and space in which to create, unhindered by the constant interruptions of daily life.

In comparison, I'm just some chump writing fiction of questionable literary merit against a backdrop of work and other real life concerns, within a genre guaranteed to raise eyebrows.

Looking over my most recent writing, I believe there's evidence of improvement. It's hard to judge, when you're this close to something you're doing. At times, it all feels like drivel, or boring. I stumble over the simplest of writerly concerns sometimes, like - how the fuck do I write this so every sentence doesn't just start with 'I'? I get derailed, searching for simple words. First drafts are overly wordy, and then I revise them and they get longer. I'll get lost in needless descriptions of scenery, or over-indulge in genre-specific attention to clothing. There's a enduring feeling of imposter syndrome.

But eventually I'll step back and look over a finished scene and wonder, did I write that? Sometimes it's even just a single paragraph and I'll read it and think: that's good. On occasion, it's a review or comment that appears in which a reader seems to genuinely connect or find meaning in my words. If people can find excitement in a scene, or simply find it compelling--and this, despite enjoying none of the advantages of time or space or an editor--well. I must be doing something right, right?

Maybe the greatest takeaway from this time away was simply a sense of: yes. Yes, I could see myself doing this, full-time. It remains a dream--maybe a fantasy--but for a couple of days I got to live that fantasy.

Again--at the risk of repetition--this was because of you, those who've supported this story and so once again: thank you.