Moat

July 9, 2012 By in Porn 59 Comments

Yesterday my husband asked if we’d like to go to the beach. I had planned to start my next book, had the day all mapped out in my head, but as soon as he suggested a diversion, I leapt at it. I did take my notebook along, and circled round and round that nagging POV issue by writing out the pros and cons of the various choices, trying to figure whether I can pull off a first-person narrative from a male character, whether I’d miss any crucial scenes by limiting myself that way. I walked up the beach, assessing the possibilities. Then, when I got tired of that problem, I retraced my steps and headed back along the hard-packed sand, thinking of structure. How to control the pace, how to frame the story. Can I tell it with any hope of approaching what I imagine.

Down the beach, back again. I kept passing my guys, who were building a sandcastle with two spades and a bucket. Drew said they’d built it too high up the beach, the moat would never be filled even at high tide. Tragic.

Today I’m tired and irritated with myself for letting a diversion kill my momentum. I need to get in there and start laying down the story. All that shit about POV and structure is a stall tactic; I’m never right about either during the first draft, so puzzling about the details now is unhelpful. I need to start. One paragraph, a page, a scene. I should write a scene and see how it looks. Maybe I’ll write a scene and revise it and try to establish a voice. Maybe I’ve lost my voice. Maybe I never had one! What if people hate the idea and kill it. Or hate the idea and don’t kill it, but let me wallow around for ten months and tell me later that they knew all along it was a crap idea but felt I needed to get it out of my system. What if it hurts, again. What if this latest trip into the darkness is as exhausting and frustrating and lonely as the last?

Do I really want to do this?

What does your fear look like?

Photograph by Russell James

59 Responses

  1. My fear looks nothing like that chick on the beach, but I wish it did.

    My fear actually looks like a martini, which is why I now have my boyfriend take the vodka with him when he leaves for the city.

    There, I’ve said it.

  2. “What if it hurts, again. What if this latest trip into the darkness is as exhausting and frustrating and lonely as the last?” Well that sums it all up. Ouch, ouch. I’m right there with you.

  3. Are we talking about your last trip into the darkness where your mentor August *loved* your manuscript and you got an agent at the fucking speed of light? Yes indeed, it would be a tragedy to repeat that!

  5. Take heart. I recently heard Julia Glass say that being a writer is like having homework for life. And you’re pretty much doing your homework everyday, every waking (and even sleeping) minute. You can’t turn it off.

    And here’s the kicker: much of the “work” actually gets done when you’re far from your desk.

    You’re already on the pony.

      • It is. I struggle constantly with the idea that daydreaming is part of the job description. I always feel it’s about getting something on the page, which means that I end up with landfill-sized pages of debris when I could have hesitated a few days and worked things through beforehand.

  6. My fear looks like me.

    Gordon told me one night, “Callis, you have everything you need to get what you want, but you’re afraid.” He could see to the heart of things.

    My whole life I’ve been afraid. Fear is the angel I wrestle with at the crossing every night. On a good the night the angel is overthrown before daybreak, and blesses me.

  7. Little hearts and poppies drawn in my blood on the walls of a bus station, because I believed in fairy tales.

  8. My fear is what Josephine just brought up: Never writing it in the first place. Just time wasted in a cycle of worry and despair and procrastination and really stupid television. That those night I do nothing are not the exception but the rule. That I look back and know I could have worked harder. That this very fear won’t be enough to compel me to do more, to be enough, to find my way.

    • But without all that fear and doubt and insecurity and bad TV, we wouldn’t have enough angst to write about anything. We would sound too cheery and fake, like politicians!

      I’m sticking to this theory.

      • My mom read this post and told me over the phone, Enjoy the beach, Averil, for crying out loud. What’s with all the pacing?

        I couldn’t explain how much enjoyment I get from my misery. It’s too fucking crazy to explain outside the tribe.

  9. My fear looks about the same as yours: self doubt, second guessing, stalling.

    I’ve had some luck lately my just working on one scene and getting is close to right then expanding naturally from there. I don’t think too much about voice or POV (maybe it shows) but just get going with whatever comes into my head and following it where it leads.

    • That’s what I do as well. Or, usually I do. Except when the idea seems too big and scary, in which case I stall out and start pacing the sand.

  10. Mine looks like a person being chocked to death. That’s how it feels at least. Bulging eyes included

  12. My fear is the age-old imposter theory. THIS is going to be the time that everyone figures out I haven’t a clue about what I’m doing. And I will be forever exposed. It’s almost enough to make me stop, but not quite. It’s been the force behind whatever drive I’ve had over the years. Anything to keep the secret.

    • This post was a bad idea, because all my friends are reminding me of fears I’d forgotten to obsess over. Adding the imposter theory to the roster. It will get a turn in the rotation at about 2 am tomorrow morning.

  13. Fear of giving up. Fear of not knowing when to give up. Fear that whichever I choose I have wasted all this time.

    • You don’t need me to tell you the time’s not wasted, Joe, if it’s spent in pursuit of beauty and a greater truth. Don’t give up.

  14. I had anxiety dreams about my teaching methods last night -trying and failing to speak or be understood by my student. I ground my teeth, woke up many times. In the morning my lesson went as perfectly as these things go. The fear wasn’t from teaching itself, which I’ve done a lot of recently and really enjoy. It came from spare anxiety over my draft of this second novel, and the silence on the first.

    I’m like a one-woman anxiety factory, so my fear would be boxy, grey, with strange grinding noises coming out of it at night.

    • I used to get really nervous the night before a big (for me) photo shoot. I’d flop all over the bed worrying about it, then wake up the next day and have the shoot go perfectly. It used to piss me off in a strange way, that nothing awful ever happened. I felt the stress had been wasted.

  16. My writing fear looks like jealousy when I’m worn out (most of the tme lately.) It’s green, prickly, a little sticky, and I try to keep it away from people. When I’m not worn out it looks like my all incompassing life fear — failure, whether I’ve done my best, or even a good job, or not.

    • Your all-encompassing life fear is the same as mine, though I’ve failed so many times now that the fear is muted, like seeing Halloween for the fourteenth time.

      • Averil, I’ve failed so many times, and been misdirected into feeling like I had at times when I hadn’t, that my fear of failure is strong. It was taught to me early and so well that now I only pretend I don’t expect it around every corner.

        I’m trying to “fake it until I make it” and get away from the spell. Maybe soon we can both break away from this particular fear.

        • You are Sparks in Shadow. Though an avatar, that you chose it tells a truth of your being. You are not the Shadow–you are the light. The feelings are ghosts. The spell is an echo. The memories are dreams from which you awaken and with your hands and heart and mind, in the present, you create and achieve. No one can take the present away from you. It is yours to grasp and fashion as you will.

  17. God, this post hits the mark. I’ve tried writing three novels and stalled out each time. Now I’m onto my fourth attempt, and this one I really care about. But man, the insecurities are crowding out my inner voice. I know that I can’t do justice to the idea of it. I know I can’t write as beautifully as I would like. I spent two hours the other day staring at my laptop, trying to choke out a beginning, and only managed a single paragraph which I know I’ll delete.

    I guess I fear not writing as well as I wish I could, and consequently never being satisfied with a novel – or worse yet, allowing myself to finish another first draft.

    • Phil, I hear you. I spent years unable to get anywhere near where I wanted to be on the page. It’s still not easy, but it’s easier. It has taken–well hell, you look kind of young–it has taken almost certainly more years than you’ve been alive for me to be able to do anything readable with my writing.

      I don’t know if that’s any consolation. What I want you to know, if you don’t know it, is it does get better. It does get easier. It never gets easy, but what you get through the ceaseless toil is a confidence and a camaraderie with the dissatisfaction. (While a certain amount of satisfaction in the work is necessary, you don’t want to get complacent. Be on your guard you don’t get too satisfied.)

      Stick around. Be present for your muse. It will come at its own pace, but it will come, as sure as sunrise, if you are present for it.

      • Tetman has said all I wanted to say and so much more. Keep going, Phil. You’re a talented, passionate guy and you already write beautifully. Keep writing, keep evolving, and realize that no one is ever completely satisfied with his work. (Well, I mean some people are, but we won’t think about them–it’s too depressing.)

        XO

      • “t never gets easy, but what you get through the ceaseless toil is a confidence and a camaraderie with the dissatisfaction.”

        I like that a lot.

        Thanks for the words, Tetman. They’re much appreciated.

    • I think the important thing is not to consider writing well as the goal. Just be you, natural, easy, interesting. Just be YOU, Phil, and write as you write this comment. Have you tried a first person voice?

      • Averil – thanks for the kind words. Do you know, reading this Moat post really helped me with my own demons. So thanks again.

        ThreeKingsBooks – That’s excellent advice, but so hard to follow. Every time I read a novel by a brilliant writer I stare at their words and think about how different and striking their work is from mine. But you’re right. Maybe I should climb down from this ledge of false erudition and over-sophistication and just write the book as it comes, however that may be. It’s almost as if I’m learning how to write a first draft all over again.

  18. Averil,

    I can’t see a way to contact you (am I dense?) and I wanted to get your okay on what I’ve written about your blog, on a soon-to-be published post on MY blog. I’ll link it to your blog, of course, but I’d first like to make sure you are happy with what I’ve said.

    Jody
    3kingsbooks@gmail.com

    • Not dense at all. My email is over there –> but so small it’s hard to see (and I still haven’t located my glasses since the move!).

      averildean(at)gmail.com

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