What Stresses Me the Most About Writing a Novel
Being interested in a book and being ready to receive a book are two different things.
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When I was 4 years old, my mom asked me how preschool was going a couple of weeks in.
“It’s going okay, but they haven’t taught me how to read yet.” is what I said.
There’s a lot I could go into about this response, where my mind was and what elicits a reply like this, but for now I’m bringing this up to help illustrate where I’m coming from in all of this.
In my natural state, I am blissfully unseen. I take pleasure in the joys of missing out. I’m content with being a quiet observer that leaves the Earth untouched, quietly escaping out the back door of death whenever it comes to greet me.
I’m not writing because I want to be a writer, to be visible and have eyes on the inner world I so carefully guarded into my adult life.
For whatever reason, writing is simply something that I can’t not do. Metanoia haunts me. It’s not something that I can put down for good, only make slow progress on as time drags on. Four-year-old Kerry was on a mission to learn about words, and I’m not going to fight her on that.
Here, I am brought to the odd dilemma that many have faced and many have talked about at length:
The fear of being seen.
The fear of not being seen.
I am still trying to figure out this paradox, but I think one possible explanation for it is this:
When you finally overcome the barrier that makes you want to hide, which in my case is fueled by surrender to muse and the inner workings of my mind, you then think ‘well, this is going to be a lot of hard work just for nobody to see it’.
And then it weighs on you.
You think about all the ways you will be misinterpreted, or worse- you think about all the ways you will be overlooked.
Best case scenario, I manage to pull this off somehow. I just might get this right. My hope is that my skill set is able to catch up with my vision just enough to make something worthy of publication. Someone passes by the book on a shelf and is curious…
Here’s the thing though… being interested in a book and being in the right mindset to receive said book are two completely different things.
There are so many songs, books, films, etc., I like today that I wouldn’t have liked 5 years ago. There are so many forms of media I read in the past that I adored, but am not sure I would give the time of day as I am right now. I wasn’t in the right headspace, heart space, or time to receive them. There is a limited timeframe for what I am gravitating towards, and this is what weighs on my mind the most.
Not only do we have to jump through all the hoops, pull the ideas out of the ether, tame them and present them well, it also has to reach the right eyes, the eyes that are receptive to the wavelength we were on when we wrote it.
I have no idea who those people are.
This is where marketing comes in, because advertisers understand this part of human psychology. They understand that it’s not enough to make something good. You also have to put consumers under a spell so that they will be receptive to said work.
This is, pardon my french, fucking exhausting - especially when my whole publication is subtly based on influencing you to not be influenced, on denouncing the marketplace planet, confronting its smoke and mirrors and instilling a sense of empowerment towards metamorphosis.
As someone whose soul was never translatable to this world, I worry that my work, the best physical creation I can summon at this time, will also not be what readers happen to want at any given moment.
Perhaps not everyone all at once, but one person at a time. People who are interested in a kind of science fiction/fantasy that instills wonder and the depth of conflict rather than just horror and thrill. People struggling to navigate their own path on the marketplace planet. People looking around at this paradigm and scratching their heads. I am wondering if there will be an intersection of people who want to experience vast fantasy worlds and people who want to confront everything I’ve mentioned up until this point.
Sometimes I feel this is a very rare kind of person, not the person a publisher pays mind to, needing the attention of the masses to survive.
I digress. This is a bit of a long winded way of saying what I am most worried about, and what I find most demoralizing about writing, which is even if I write something that is pretty good, it still might not be what anyone will give the time of day.
How do I manage this? Well, as I’ve already hinted at, I simply keep going, just because it would be going against my nature to stop making things and become a passive consumer of this existence. I am an odd creation of time and space that has set out to create in said time and space. I don’t know why I need to write Metanoia, I just know that I have to. That’s it. Maybe that’s because it will help one person. Maybe it’s because it will help many people. Maybe it’s because the unfolding of it is unfolding something in me. I have no way of knowing, and at the very least what I lack in my writing ability I make up for in courage to keep on going anyway.
What do you fear the most about writing? What slows you down and what keeps you going?
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I know Im reading a real and genuine writer when i read this. I feel this too, the need to write and the conflicting feelings of wanting to hide what I write, but also the fear that I will never be legitimized by anyone but myself. And so, we carry on
I think I understand what you mean. Finding the right audience is not necessarily the same skill set as writing. I don't really have it.
So I resign myself to thinking that hardly anyone will read what I write - but only in my own lifetime. Like you I am not well-adjusted or compatible with a marketplace dystopia like this one, so I shall live and die poor and unrecognised. On the other paw, because I also don't like to be seen, there is some comfort in that.
I have however given myself an ability to believe that in several hundred years time, lots of people will read what I do and those are the ones I will be helping. Some might call that a delusion, but I have consciously decided to call it faith.
But for now, my advice to myself is simply to write for myself first. And definitely not compromise what I write in view of any expectations of what others might or might not want.
Not sure that helps, though!