I've spent a lot of time this week on my novel. I switched up the beginning, started in a new place, added some depth to the narrator, gave fuel to a love triangle. All told, probably seven or eight hours more into this novel on top of the who knows how many I spent in 2009-2010. Really, friends, it's nice to have a hobby. If only I had woodworking. I'd have something to show for all this time.
"This is the year," I told my family. Beloved seemed to think you should go so far before you cut bait. I'm sure it's not as harsh to him as it sounded, but I'm finding this process takes so much more time than I ever thought it would. It could take five more years to really get it right. I doubt I'll spend five more years on it. I live in a fast-paced Internet world.
First and foremost, I just want it to be good. I fear I've lost the ability to gauge "good." Move up the bridge. Add another verse. Cut back the bass. Who knows?
I want readers to think about these characters after they close the cover. I want Diana, the narrator, the heroine, to weasel her way into your brain. I want you to care about her the way I do. I want you to see her for all her many and obvious flaws, but also for her hope, for her strength, for her fortitude. I want you to hear her on the subway, on the highway, in the bathtub. I want teenaged girls to read her and remember her when they are 30. I never claimed to be anything less than delusions of grandeur here, people. If you don't believe in your characters, it's hard to spend so much time on something that might be nothing.
It is hard to craft her from nothing.
On New Year's Eve, we spent the evening with friends taking the kids bowling and to get pizza. I talked with a friend of mine who is working on a horror novel. I told him how I'd been immersing myself this week in 1990 to get in the headspace of my fifteen-year-old narrator. We laughed, all of us, to think of 1990. Goddamn, that was 21 years ago.
Goddamn. That was 21 years ago.
How, exactly, did I get to be 36, almost 37 years old? And why didn't anyone ever tell me that even as your body grows older, your head stays 24 years old?
In my head, I'll be 24 forever. Not a child, not an adult. Somewhere in the in-between.
This novel isn't done yet. But it's a lot closer. God, this is painful. But also, awesome. This is living.
