Bits & Pieces #9

On works in progress.

The number of in-action desk photos I have like this is… definitely not weird.

One of the hardest parts of being a writer, especially while working on a book-length project, is how long of a long-game you’re playing. It can be literally years from the time you begin writing a novel to the time it’s out there in the world - and sometimes, the “out there in the world” phase just never happens. I think this is part of what makes writing as a creative pursuit feel so selfish. If I put years of my life into something that nobody else will ever really see, is it worth it? I spend a lot of time, energy, and financial resources to pursue my art - and I ask my family to give up a lot, too.

Of course, this is capitalism talking - this is white supremacy, and patriarchy, and colonialism - but simply having an awareness of how my feelings are being influenced by these systems doesn’t always completely resolve those negative feelings. And art is always more meaningful when it is shared with others.

But to wait years - or even, in the event that neither of my manuscripts ever see the light of day, to wait forever - for the moment when the world interacts with my work feels really, really, hard. And because I’m an extremely impatient person, sometimes the discomfort of waiting means I share things before they’re ready. I submit that short story with urgency and then realize it has a typo on the first page - I query that manuscript and then realize months later the huge glaring plot hole - I send off a resume for an amazing opportunity without personalizing it to the specific details of the job.

In order to temper some of this urgency (and to balance my impatience in perhaps a slightly more helpful and less destructive way) I went through my current work-in-progress and found a few quotes to share with you all.

Come When I Call: A Work in Progress

I’m resisting the urge to give all of these more context - but there’s something really thrilling about thrusting these bits (and pieces, ha!) of my rough draft out into the world and letting them speak for themselves.

Maybe singing was another form of dissociation – letting your voice lift and rise and melt and disappear into the voices around you.

The look fluttered onto him, all bat wings and guano. Gross, but purposeful. Holding meaning, nutrition - an important part of the food chain. You just had to hold your nose whenever you went under the bridge, that was all.

Out here on the Minnesota prairie, an inch makes a difference. An inch of rain, an inch of snow. A few grains of wheat pilfered by a mole. A robin’s egg shattered by pinching toddler fingers. Deciding which seedlings to thin. It was amazing, wasn’t it, the way that you could live on acres and acres of fields and trees and corn and cloud and still notice inches? Life could feel very small, if you let it. Life could feel very small if you compared inches to miles. Caspar knew better. He knew the life that lived in a seed, the magic in mycelia, the world contained in a raindrop.

But what was she supposed to do? That was Zoya’s whole issue, wasn’t it – trying to control everyone, not letting loose enough to be able to have fun, to enjoy. Yes, there would be singing and dancing and probably even fucking stand-up comedy in their revolution, but Zoya would be the one frowning at the set list backstage, or pestering someone about one light in a thousand that had burned out.

Shy’Ann became briefly aware of a twinge in her hip. She shifted on the barstool, debating how to optimize this singular cup of coffee in front of her. Maybe if she focused on caffeine optimization, the correct response to the news that an old friend was dead would somehow manifest at the bottom of the coffee cup.

When you know someone for a long time, when they were woven into the fabric of your life just as the garment of your life was being patterned out and pinned together, it’s tangible – you can touch the places where their hem crosses yours, the knots in the fabric, the snarls in the thread that you’ve had to cut and tie off and disassemble and start anew.

There were things Anthony would never do. Recite a poem, for one, except for the reading Shy’Ann had chosen for him on their wedding day. Build a fence. Shoot a gun. Sleep in a yurt buoyed to dreamland by the breath of fifteen other young men. Drive a tractor. Read Malatesta – heck, read Marx. Every day the world spiraled tighter into some kind of inevitable conclusion, and whether it would be good or bad depended on the people doing all of the things Anthony would never do.

A pit then, in Meg’s stomach. Like the moment right before falling off of a horse. And she knew, even before the long block of blue text from Zoya appeared on her screen with an explanation about police, frantic dogs barking in their cages, and a declared suicide, that Summer was dead.

Smith was wide open. Smith had removed the door from its hinges. Smith had removed the hinges and the door frame and the front wall and he was in the process of peeling the roof back like a smooth strip of old gel nail polish. He’d never done any kind of demolition work, before; he’d considered himself reconstructing, but somehow now it was obvious that he’d been trying to build a new kind of life as a kind of second story on top of the original first floor, and the building was warped and the foundation had been compromised and he kept sliding all around trying to make railings out of books and words and what he’d really needed to do all along was to sink a little bit back down into the earth, and oh, this is what it meant to burn it all down.

I sat down on the floor, apologized to myself for the millionth time that I’d never made the apartment more homey. I closed my eyes. I imagined jasmine and lavender and honeysuckle. Remember how we used to hide pocket knives in the Flatwoods, and we’d run hunched over through the high grass? Like we were wolves, hunting, on the prowl. That’s when I felt the most like myself – with you, in the woods. With the honeysuckle.

I have a dream of creating art - not just for creation’s sake, but because I dream to share my stories with the world. It feels like a huge gift and responsibility to be able to learn from my own creations and to pass their messages on, to be their instrument. I hope you all have begun to hear a little of their music in these passages - and I look forward to the time, someday, when the whole orchestra comes together.