Opening the Door

Most people know that I write. It’s one of my longest running interests, and anyone who has ever spent much time with me, has probably seen me at it. In school, I’ve had a lot of success in writing, and most people know that too. Still, before I started this blog, the only person who knew I was writing a novel was my friend Lisa.

Why have I kept it a secret? I don’t know exactly, but I have some guesses. First, I have always written fiction just for fun and just for myself. Telling people felt like letting them into my secret world, and I wasn’t sure if I wanted visitors. I definitely wasn’t sure I wanted critics. I get enough of that with my academic work. Second, to be honest, I have never taken creative writing seriously, because I have never thought I was very good at it. And, finally, I have tried to explain this before and failed, but I think there’s something obnoxious about telling people you’re writing a novel. It just seems like something you only tell people, because you want them to be impressed.

Once I decided to take myself seriously enough to just write the damn thing, it started to take over a large portion of my thoughts, and I was thankful to have this blog as an outlet. Checking in here has reminded me that I love to talk about writing, and provided me with a place to be accountable. Blogging has served as a small step between going it alone and inviting in the people who know me best.

So, I told my dad. He has since told everyone he knows and brought it up every time we’ve spoken. My dad’s passion in life is business, and though it took him a while to realize that I wasn’t just messing around with this humanities stuff before hunkering down and getting a business degree, he has been extremely supportive of my less-than-completely-practical pursuits. Our love of reading has always been a middle ground between us, and so while he’s already making plans for me to finance the rest of my education with the profits from my first best-selling novel (ha!), he’s also interested in the process of spinning out a story that wasn’t there before.

After telling my dad, I had to quickly tell my mom and step-dad, because, though my parents have been divorced for twenty years, when I tell one of them something, I always hear back on it shortly from the other. Then I started telling friends. Between my dad, my step-dad, and I, everyone now knows. The response has surprised me. I guess I expected something like the response I get when people find out I’m pursuing a PhD in theology; most of the are impressed by it (ugh), but pretty uninterested, except for this small group of people who share my fascination and want to sit and talk with me for hours about religion and souls and creation and all that good stuff.

Some people are not interested in the novel—my brother and sister, for example. But, most people have responded with genuine excitement. Amazingly, they want me to hurry up and finish so they can read it. It’s more than I ever expected, and their excitement is exhilarating to me. My fear that people would find this whole pursuit annoying and even pretentious, was mostly for not. But, there’s a new fear now. I have exposed myself, I have admitted to the world what I want, and now I am open for criticism. There’s no going back now. The next step is letting people read what I’ve written. The whole idea of having the novel out of my hands fills me full of anxiety, but it’s a risk I’m building up the courage to take.

I won’t pretend not to like the attention, but it’s pretty obvious to me that people relate to the novel writing (like anything) with motivations that aren’t selfless. Most of them are readers and some of them are readers who aspire to one day writing a novel. The latter are particularly interested in the process. They ask me questions about motivation and inspiration, and tell me all the reasons they’ve never started novels of their own. Nearly all have the self-awareness to realize they have no good reason to stall. They know all of their justifications are excuses, because they know you can’t wait for inspiration.

Still, from the questions they ask, I think they picture me pounding out page after page like a maniac with a single focus. The boring truth is that I wrote this novel while working in the library, checking people in and out, answering questions about copy cards, and looking at the clock to see how much time I had left. I outlined chapters while waiting for my number to be called at the DMV. Scenes haunted me as I stood in the grocery store gawking at the price of bread. Even when I sat at my desk at home, I was distracted by hunger, the heat, stress about finding a job, and that damn internet! Never was I so inspired that I forgot all those little things. Many times, especially near the end, writing was painful and I struggled to put every word on the screen.

When I talk theology with those interested, I often hold back. I don’t want to arrogantly shatter illusions as someone who has thought about these questions more than most. But, I don’t hesitate to shatter the illusion of the inspired writer. There’s nothing more to writing a novel than starting and continuing and finishing. Of course you can say it’s more complicated than that, and maybe it is, but no one ever said you had to write a good novel, and, in my book (ha!), a terrible novel is infinitely better than one that doesn’t exist at all. Plus, the only way to become a better writer is to write.