Back to Square One

Today I did the thing I was never supposed to have done: I quit writing.

Written a million ways, in a million advice columns, said by a million authors to aspiring writers: Whatever you do, KEEP WRITING.

That’s what I have been doing, mind you, for nearly twenty years, since I first decided I wanted to be a writer in the prepubescent halls of middle school. My dad taught me the meaning of hard work and dedication to the cause, a loyal employee at his company for nearly thirty years. The work is hard and tedious at times – he prepared me for this. So head bent, I’ve been doing the work, writing, over and over and over, ceaseless since I first sparked upon The Idea for my novel.

The Idea was inspired, about a girl in a desert, begging the sky to bring rain, and only belatedly realizing the water had been stored deep underground all along, a wellspring hidden beneath a layer of crusted, dead earth at her feet. My entire novel conception was a thing of beautiful redemption, of death to self, of all the things I’d learned near the thin places. I told a friend once, over tea, about The Idea, and she was crying by the end. The Idea was everything, a pan of gold, the veil itself.

I had The Idea when I was barely an adult, and now, fifteen years underfoot, I have hundreds of documents, each with sparsely grown paragraphs in this sweeping desert, a beginning over and over and over. But as it was for my character in the desert, it never rained. Being wise to my own plot narrative, I asked the earth next to give up its secrets, to crack apart. “Don’t you know, ‘apart’ stays together,” God seemed to laugh, “and only cracks apart when it becomes ‘a part’.” “A part of what?” I screamed to the sky, the ground, to the infinite sand. I wailed. I wept at my computer, while the serene voices went ever on: just keep writing, whatever you do keep writing, my advice: keep writing. And then, an interview overheard: “It took me five years to write my novel!” “Wow, five years! That is so long! You are a champion! A warrior! You are long-suffering! You have been to Mount Doom and back!"

I am sure my condescension is ill-received within a writers community, as it should be, because writing itself, whether one word or a million, no matter its journey, is a feat. When Dolly Parton wrote “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You” in the same week, it was a feat. When Donna Tartt wrote “The Goldfinch” over the course of ten years painstakingly etched in ballpoint pen, it was a feat. But while everyone’s swimming among the rainbow fish, I’m treading in stagnant waters, flailing for a word - I'd take just one - any word that will make me move. I write everyday. I haven’t given up. I don’t give up. I’m the one who makes it, who remembers the ways of my dad. All my writing friends in school slowly drifted away from the page, got too busy, traveled a different road.

Fuck you, Robert Frost – why the hell am I still on this less-traveled road? Why haven’t I turned around, when I REALLY WANT TO TURN AROUND? I’m cursed with the answer – known it all along since its written in my gut: no matter how much I wish they would just leave me the hell alone, these woods are lovely, dark, and deep, and these trees stand sentient in me, holding my shape like bones.

I want to be good at something. I want to make money. I want to be appreciated, valued. I want to fucking publish the book everyone in my life thinks I’m writing, so I can say, “See- it’s here! Remember all the times you asked me what I was doing? This! This! Hold it in your hand! Here it is! Here it is!”

Today I quit. Was it only this morning? I can’t remember – my dad had a stroke sometime between then and now.

Elizabeth Gilbert once wrote about how an idea flies to you on a wind, and you must grab it and press it to page before it flies off to find another soul who will have it written instead. The Idea does not heed its bearer’s wishes, merely finds willing hands, someone to reel it in. Has my novel traveled elsewhere? Is it a fish that I attempted to wrangle in with my bare hands, and for that split second, when I lost my grip on its slippery, writhing body, the fishermen on the docks beside me glided it in with ease on a pitched reel? Have I forgotten I don’t even like the feel of fish against my skin – reminded of the time as a small child I was hit in the face by a hastily reeled in fish on those Seattle waterfront docks? I was knocked to the ground by the impact, the slimy thing flapping against my cheek, tail flicking at my lips. It took from me even my scream as I sealed my mouth shut. And all I really remember is the great chorus of laughter – like I would have won a million bucks on America’s Funniest Home Videos if it had been caught on camera.

There’s a girl in a desert. She’s fucking tired. She’s cried to the sky and has no voice left, so seals her lips. She scoops her hand into the sand and lets time sift between her fingers.

How many heartbeats has it been?

There’s a girl in a desert. The water doesn’t come. And so she dies. And it’s only when she dies that the water comes.

I ball my fist, place the near circle of it in my dad’s outstretched palm. He thinks he’s just holding the ball of my hand, but I’m giving him my novel, the lines in my palm like cracks in the earth. Finally, the thing I’ve worked so hard on. Finally the thing to make him proud. Finally here, for him.

Here it is, Dad!

Wake up.