Novel...

It bounces around my head, scratches at the inside of my brain, conjures up stories, and ideas on how to put it together. It’ll keep me up at night, tap me on the shoulder in the mornings, consume my thoughts while doing mindless activities during the day. I want to write a novel.
My dream is to sign a book deal ahead of time, and take a stack of notebooks, pens and my laptop to Stockholm where I’ll sit in cafes all day drinking coffee, eating unidentifiable chocolate objects while getting the project done. I want to explore the depths of my memories, thoughts, feelings and share them with the world. I feel that if I accomplish this, I will be able to put a lot of residual feelings about work in Atlanta behind me. I’ll also be able to better understand my feelings about Rob, and about life. I want this. I want it so badly, to accomplish this feat. Starting is the problem. How do I start something this huge? How do I tell the story? How do I get to a place where nothing else matters but what I’m trying to get out. How do I find a place where I’m comfortable enough to “go there”? Where I’m not someone’s daughter, employee, friend, etc…
I’m scared of where my head might go, what might come up and how I’ll feel about it. I also fear failure and judgment so much that I keep the idea as that. Only an idea.
Charlie replaces my battery for my computer on my birthday telling me it’s to start my novel.
“You can now take the computer with you to Lovely and write.” he smiles. (Lovely is the the coffee shop where we met and is my favorite.) The electrical outlets don’t work there so I only bring things I’m hand writing, or I use his computer for the internet if we’re there together. “I want two chapters!” he exclaims.
I laugh and tell him that will take an eternity at the rate I’m going.
“Does it bother you that I bug you about it?” he asks.
“Not at all. I need it apparently.”
I do begin. It’s excruciating. That first sentence is agonizing. I peck out two pages instead of two chapters. I can’t quite figure out how to start. What I wrote doesn’t feel right. It has it’s place just not at the beginning. I keep waiting for the perfect idea to come along forgetting that it’s simply going to take starting and some trial and error before I figure it out. I keep going though, hoping it’ll resemble something soon.
Weeks later I start looking for people to meet with and bounce ideas off of on couchsurfing.com. A guy sends me an amazing article about the process famous writers go through to get to a place where they can begin and write their novels. Receiving this electronic, orgasmic treat is just what I needed to get up off my ass. I so enjoyed reading about the obscure things people do to go to their “happy place” to write. From creating storyboards, to sitting on the edge of the bathtub, to dressing up in character to get the story out, reading about other people’s process helped me to stop judging my own, accepting it as the way I do things and be ok with that.
“What is my process?” I ask myself. This is what I know for sure. I’m controlling. I want it to go the way I want it to go, often being resistant to the story taking on a mind of it’s own. I love writing in the mornings. I don’t do so well at night. With my blogs, I write them in the morning, “sleep on it”, wake up the next morning, revise it, making sure it’s something I want to post, then post it. I know my journals must be handwritten and my blogs must be typed to effectively get my point across. I sometimes write in fragments when I’m upset. I’m easily overwhelmed at times with emotion while writing and other times, there is nothing that comes to mind when I feel I should write. I’ve learned that patience is something I need to work on and trust that whatever it is I need to say, it’ll come out on it’s own, in it’s own time.
I read that this one author writes only what she knows and eventually puts it all together. She has a huge bulletin board in her room where she tacks up stories, thoughts and ideas she scribbles on various pieces of paper and torn out notebook pages. This lights me up and I start to explore this idea. I know that I’m haphazard in a lot of areas in my life. I’ve noticed, or recently acknowledged that when I close the salons alone, there is no rhyme or reason as to how it gets done it just does. If I approach my writing this way, maybe, just maybe, I’ll be able to get this done.
At Borders I buy a huge notebook. I start pouring over past journals, trying to pick out something to start with. I begin writing random thoughts and ideas in the notebook. Some of those thoughts become full sentences that grow into paragraphs. When one paragraph gets stuck I move to another story. When I can’t think of how to start it, I begin writing the ending. When that gets tough to piece together I write about something that happened that I wanted to explore with words, stringing them together as if I were painting a picture. I move the words around, crossing them out putting new ones in the old ones places, I fill the pages that were once blank and while it doesn’t look like much I am on top of the world. I’m learning so much about how to get this done in a way I can accept. I feel in control of something finally. Starting this has helped me see that a lot of areas in my life are out of control and I’ve been acting out in a lot of ways and need to get my act together.
I write while riding trains, in coffee shops, restaurants, and even at home briefly. I type thoughts into my phone, and scribble them on scratch pieces of paper as I move through each day, knowing that whatever I come up with will have it’s own place just as soon as I figure out where that place is.
I start walking more, working through things in my head, start taking the gym more seriously, and feel something in my head is shifting, changing and opening up. I’m letting go of something I can’t identify yet but it feels good so I go with it. I love how in this little corner of my world I can be myself, I can tell or omit anything I choose to. The paper has no opinion. It doesn’t pass any judgment. I can take any direction I want with this project. That knowledge is both daunting and exhilarating at the same time. The process is different than blogging or journaling. I seriously feel I’m constructing a work of art at the moment.
“Where are my two chapters?” Charlie asks over the phone one evening.
“I’m working on it!” I exclaim. I tell him about the email I got about the process of writing various authors use and how excited it’s made me. “I started writing and it doesn’t look like much now but I’m really happy with what I came up with. I’ll show it to you when you get home.”
Charlie’s been in Orlando for a little bit. I hear the words exit my mouth but feel that I won’t be sharing this with him for some reason. I honestly don’t know how to first of all, but something doesn’t feel totally right. I dismiss the thought. Of course I’ll show it to him. Of course. Right?
I my mind there is suddenly no reason in the world I can’t have this and reach my goal of being published. I don’t have all the answers yet. I don’t know where I’m going to find an agent to represent me, but I feel that person is out there. If not, I will self publish and go from there. For now, I’ll keep working and trust that the answers to my questions will find their way to me in their own time.