The Best Writing Advice I've Ever Gotten
I finished my novel (again!) Also, a discovery.
“It is six a.m., and I am working. I am absent-minded, reckless, heedless of social obligations, etc. It is as it must be. The tire goes flat, the tooth falls out, there will be a hundred meals without mustard. The poem gets written. I have wrestled with the angel and I am stained with light and I have no shame.”
— Mary Oliver, “Of Power and Time”
Two days ago, I finished another revision of my manuscript. I have no idea what number draft at this point—there’s been that many.
I’ve been working on this novel since 2017. Seven years. It feels long, but it really isn’t. My husband likes to remind me that it took William Gass 25 years to write The Tunnel. Just write it. Not revise, not copyedit, not anything.
Perspective.
I planned to finish this draft in December. Then January came. February went by. Spend a few hours rearranging the flow of three sentences and the time melts. Days collapse. March? Nope. Mid-March, for sure. End of March? Close, but no cigar. April? Yes, finally.
But also…I should read it again.
Just to make sure. Even though I know I’ll read it again anyway, and again and again. And once it’s out, with its pretty cover and glossy jacket and crackable spine, I’ll still look inside and find things I could have changed.
Writers know this: there is never being done. There is simply letting go.
This project has been my power source. My winding road, my north star, my source of struggle and frustration, my anchor, my future, my home base. I bet everything on it. Even at my most doubtful, exhausted, dust in my eyes, haunted by the facts—displaced single mom, no savings, no actual career, 27 years old, then 30, 32, 34, digging this underground tunnel while watching my peers achieve everything I wanted, taking this uncalculated risk, throwing all my energy toward…what, exactly?
Surely there was no one more delusional, I thought. Especially when rejections started to come in. Lots of them. When there was nothing but waiting, silence, failure. When everything was going so wrong it felt like somewhere along the line I’d made a critical mistake, misjudged who I was. Maybe there was still time to go to med school.
When this happened (often), my husband would say (quoting Billy Beane in Moneyball):
Do you believe in this thing or not?
And I would say, I do.
Then he’d say, Good. Keep pushing.
Keep pushing, and don’t kill yourself.
In other news:
We almost got a third husky! Almost. My very wonderful, very supportive husband (who I am steadily appreciating more and more now that I’m reading about some truly egregious marriages—highly recommend This American Ex-Wife by Lyz Lenz!) thought I was out of my mind to even suggest it, but he said, with mild defeat and some trepidation, I can’t say no to you. Joy! Off we went to Rescue Village to meet a nutty little firecracker named Rogue. We came, we saw, we fell in love, we promised to be back in the morning to adopt.
I couldn’t sleep. The reality settled in. Three dogs?! Insane. I only have two hands. How can we afford it? How am I gonna walk them by myself? We need a bigger car. We need a real yard. We’ll never be able to go anywhere again. We already can’t go anywhere! But and also—all decisions made with love are good decisions. We promised this sweet baby she was coming home, so come home she must.
I went on Zillow at 4 a.m. Beyond some vague warnings from home buying enthusiasts that this was the worst time to buy a house (isn’t it always?) the offerings looked bleak. The ancient “rustic” fixer-uppers with any decent acreage looked attractive at $300k but hid $12 million in repairs.1 Lots of land for the dogs to run on, but also lots of land to mow. Ugh. Not the life I pictured for myself, but neither was the life I was living, married with dogs and kid (at 25, I was almost certain I’d be dead in a gutter). Maybe I could be the Pioneer Woman. I already kind of am, given our locale (pictured above). I looked up our condo to see what we could sell it for. It had appreciated a bit, that was good. But then, further down, in the specs…pet limit. My heart dropped. I dug up the unopened HOA rulebook from the file cabinet. And there, in plain English: “A Unit Owner may have and keep a maximum of two dogs.”
Heartbreak.
We can never adopt another dog as long as we live here.
But then another realization moved in:
I don’t want to live here.
Here, here.
I started typing other cities in the search bar.
After reading the chapter entitled “The Heterosexual Repair Project,” I don’t want to buy anything with history or charm, really any house, anything without a clear history and a super. Not when there might be a secret 300-year-old well filled with god knows what hidden under the kitchen floorboards. Nope. Big thanks to
for steering me away.
my new favorite quote of your is “all decisions made with love are good decisions” and I promise I won’t use it recklessly ♥️
Loved this, especially “there is never being done. There is simply letting go.”