Blog RSS FeedThe leap.
Lucky for me, I’m obsessive compulsive. Or maybe obsessive impulsive. I don’t have to open and close the door four times, but if I eat one of the truffles, chances are I will eat all of the truffles, and too bad for you if you didn’t show up early enough to get one.
Similarly, when my brain made the transition from writing casually to writing full length, completed novels, suddenly there was no question that I was going to write full length, completed novels. There was the question of whether anyone would like them or want to read them (that question still remains, of course), but there was no longer doubt that the rambling story would find a conclusion and then be revised into something resembling a book.
But how, I wonder, did that decision come about? I don’t remember making it. And yet, at some point, between the 50,000 aimless words of “The Ashley Incident” and the first draft of “The Girl Least Likely”, I made the leap.
And now, like people who never wanted kids and then had one, or people who do an exotic liver cleanse, or Scientologists, I want this for everyone I know and love, especially my writer friends. I want them to write a full-length, completed book. And I know they have it in them, is the thing. But I remember what it looked like from the other side of the canyon (figuratively, although from my dining room, I can see the other side of the actual canyon), and part of me is paralyzed by the same fear that gripped me during “Ashley Incident” (and won, considering that Ashley & pals have been relegated to the Longform – Back Burner folder).
When I was a senior in high school, I worked on a short “film” called “Count Milkula”. It was the story of a vampire who ignites a revolution because of his milk-drinking ways. He is imprisoned and ultimately poisoned, and his vampire BFF takes up the cause for him. I planned the everloving daylights out of that project. I have a notebook of shot lists, prop lists, set diagrams, etc. The day I shot it, things went slowly. We didn’t get everything we needed. One of the actors got in big trouble for missing class.
The end result being that I never finished the damn thing. The set was too complicated to recreate. The actors couldn’t miss class anymore. I lost the will to go on, so to speak. And I’m not exaggerating when I say that the unfinished business took an enormous dent out of my self-confidence that I’m probably still repairing to this day — or at least compensating for, with my manic determination to finish my books, to get through the process and begin again. By God, I’m going to start something and then I’m going to finish it!
That story makes it sound like I need to find peace with Count Milkula, to soothe that delicate teenager who was suddenly confronted by the sad fact that, no, not everything turns out right, no matter how much you plan it all out. Part of me is convinced that, if the tape were still lurking in my parents’ house, I would edit the damn thing just to get it off my lifelong to-do list.
But… maybe not. After all, every writer needs a neurosis, yes? And maybe what drives every word I write is the unfinished business of a milk-drinking vampire.
I don’t know. What I meant was for this post to be encouragement to people on the verge of going for the longform writing project (*cough* you know who you are).
How do I tie this up neatly?
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January 21st, 2007 Katie Alender
