First draft and book title!
I finished the first draft today! I’m so thrilled to have actually made it this far, after so many years of thinking and working towards it. I first started writing this in the fall of 2019, but it had been a much longer time that I had been thinking about it and forming the idea for the overarching story somewhere in the back recesses of my mind. When I was in college - some many years before this - I had originally thought this would be a graphic novel. I was still drawing as a hobby and wanted to blend the storytelling with visual elements. To me, this is still actually a very visual story that I feel like I can see but am just desperately trying to translate those visions into words to share and hopefully get the point across. There’s a type of writing for me that the words are helpful and easy, especially around poetry or abstract feelings or thoughts. But when I try to describe what I’m seeing in my minds eye, I’m often unsure if the words are failing me, or if they are compete enough to paint the picture so to speak.
I’ll be curious how this works out when other people actually read it. It’s an odd feeling because I feel I can only really write as myself when I don’t think anyone else will ever read it. So this is a new step for me. Although a ways off still. I am going to begin the editing process, which is not somethings I do with my personal writings and definitely not on this scale. I rarely edit anything I write and when I have it’s been mostly short stories or essays (or things I’m writing in my professional life that require it).
I printed out the entire draft today when I finished, which was actually more satisfying than actually finishing the draft. Something about seeing it actually manifested into the world was more meaningful than I expected. The smell of the toner and the feel of the warm pages as they piled up was really exciting for me. It’s a whopping 225 printed pages! My usual process would involve spreading it all out on the floor and working on it as a whole piece of work rather than going through line by line or page by page at this point. I really struggle to grok my writing in a digital format. I still handwrite my notes and to do lists in other areas of my life, because I just can’t see it and visualize it properly when it’s typed on a computer versus in front of me on a physical page. I also am very visual in my editing process and I like to mark up and draw on the pages to better understand myself. But at this volume I am unsure how I will physically do this process without using every single surface, wall and floor space. So I will keep you posted!
Aside from this technical part of the process, it was the first time since I started the book that I felt really compelled and sure of what to write and in a deep flow state around the creative process. When I first started writing at the start of the book, it felt almost frenetic. I had so many pent up thoughts and ideas and ways of phrasing and being that I just poured it out over many hours and many days of continuous writing. I was actually kind of frightened by the feeling. I was newly sober and it was difficult for me to tell if this was a healthy thing for me, or just some kind of manic leftover from my addictive brain. I delved in, partially writing in a small cabin like home I rented in the Santa Fe desert, and partially writing in my actual cabin in the woods I was living in at the time. I had always regretted not going full in on the muse when it struck then, I pulled back, prioritized other things, and a newish relationship I had at the time and quickly lost the fire.
I worked on it on and off over the years after that initial binge writing. Sometimes the flow hit and sometimes I would just pick it up and write anything, just to see if it would inspire me to do more. It ebbed and flowed and at some point I was burning myself out at work and so drained that the idea of writing was more of a chore. I had found some other ways to express myself, mostly though movement and dance. Last year I began thinking about it again though and spent time over the summer re-reading the entire document and seeing it with new eyes and a new perspective. This has always been my story, but it’s also mirrored and reflected back at me the extreme volume of changes I had been going through during this period. I will have seven years sober this spring and as time marches forward I’ve found the pace at which I am becoming a new person has slowed - although I would still not consider it slow by any means!
I’ve settled in much more to myself and settled into the idea that I’m a creative person and that this kind of expression is actually vitally important to me. And that’s fine. Not everything has to be a hustle and not everything needs to be a commodity. This can just be something that is important to me as a human and fulfills my desire to turn what I see and experience into something new, to transform what I take in, into another form. Alchemy as it were. And this alchemy is what led me to finally see a missing puzzle piece from the middle of the story into the ending. I have always known how it ended, and in fact I have the beginning and end of the rest of the series sketched out as well. But I just wasn’t quite sure how I was getting there exactly.
Something I feared a lot when I got sober and also delved deep into the emotional recovery from trauma and confronted my many internal demons, was that my dreams and by extension my writing would change and suffer from the healing. I had always used my writing as a way to try and get out the pain and confusion and as that dulled, so did my writing. It felt like a fair trade, or at least a necessary one. And I just had to hope that it would also transform alongside me. I think these last few years felt like that might not be the case anymore. I’ve barely written, in any form that wasn’t related to my day job, which mostly consists of emails and chat communications. But lately that had been changing for me, and over the last six months or so I had begun dreaming and visioning the ending in the back of my mind. I had been forcing myself to pick it up again and write, something, anything. At first it felt stilted, but around the new year I caught myself off guard when I dove into the beginning of the end, and realized that I was ready to finish it. It was time. And today, it poured out. I wrote over 10k words, maybe 15k? in one sitting. The muse had returned and unleashed what I had been afraid I had lost, either to time, to my healing or just abandoned in myself. It was a relief, but also familiar feeling. And instead of being afraid, I embraced.
After printing the book and thinking about the process of editing and actually publishing this thing I was also reflecting that I still didn’t know what to call it. I’ve been using a temporary name that I actually kind of hated, but at least let me save the document and identify it to myself. I had written a short story a few years ago when I was processing something painful and scary, and had recently shared the writing with my partner. Who I had never shown any of my writing to before. He had echoed back the title of that one to me, multiple times since then. I think he resonated with it, and it had struck me that something I wrote seemed to have a genuine effect on someone. Albeit it is the person who purports to loves me, so it’s not hard evidence, but it did stir a certain feeling for me and I enjoyed seeing it through his eyes. I had also integrated it into a scene in the book which I really loved and held deep meaning for me. And it occurred to me, this would be a perfect title for the book:
why does the end of the world look so beautiful?
