a thin true line

So I was telling someone the other night about this novel project. Well, I wasn’t very revelatory. Fact is I am still in the throes of creation, I really don’t know what this book is about. Well, I know… but… it’s complicated. It’s about relationships. And… I’m hoping to avoid some clichés. So I resist describing it for fear of lumping myself into a formula.

A natural segue in the conversation and yet one that befuddled me even more was the question as to who in my real life I am writing about. I find that question about my writing half amusing… and okay, I’m going to say it, half painful. It is a natural curiosity… and one of which I am a constant perpetrator. We see a piece of art and want to know what elements within the artist fused to create the thing we observe.

It’s easy speculation… but really, in the end, it isn’t much more elevated than gossip. And… often gossip is wrong. I’ve been hurt deeply when someone ascribed a real life meaning to my writing that didn’t exist… because… well that interpretation wasn’t just remarking on my words. It was a decision to see how I see people and stain it with malice. Not cool. And definitely not true.

So… maybe I feel the need to set down these here thoughts as a way to protest too much. Not that it matters much. This manuscript is a sloshy compilation of words thrown onto my laptop screen in order to achieve a qualifying count. Nothing more. And maybe it will never leave this laptop after November 30th. Or maybe it will. 

It’s kind of like theater when I was younger. I was quiet and kept to myself. But put me on a stage, under the cover of a mask, and yeah, I was bold, daring, and loud. And then… somewhere in the veneer of pretend, I found my emotional truth. Through a character like Helena or Dabby Bryant. Women with whom I had no real commonalities, but in carving my interpretation of them, found the common emotion under the surface of my quiet heart.

So, yeah, in that way writing is a mask. Makeup under a light pretending to be sunshine. It isn’t a memoir. Seriously, the thing I spent a year and a half on was a book about a vampire. Obviously, I’m not drawing from real life. The set dressing… yes… and the emotions… well, yes. They are me. Not anyone else.

I realized over the course of the last two years that writing is, for better or worse, a form of therapy. Speech therapy, but mostly, comprehension therapy. My head fills with too much information. Too much hurt. Too much joy. Writing helps settle these things. It’s like a pair of glasses that focuses the astigmatism of my sensory overload.

Maybe this is indeed a silly thing to write about. Maybe I should be doing the writing over which I protest… yeah… that’s probably a good idea.