Earning the Turn

i am trying to write a novel. i have put everything on hold for it and sometimes i'm so afraid that i'm making a mistake in pursuing this that i can't sleep at night. i worry that i'll never finish, that when i do, no one will want it, that i would have spent months and months on this novel and nothing would come from it. nothing at all. there is so much more that i have to do that i'm despairing a little. really and truly losing hope.

i was told by a man, a writer, that you can't write a story without getting some of it on yourself. I'm saturated in this one, rolling in it, inhaling it in large gasps hoping that somehow i'll discover the one thing that will make the entire novel work. honest to God, there are portions i've written that make me happy to be alive and they keep me going--but there aren't enough. sometimes i think my ambitions are too high, but i refuse to give this one up to work on something else. i have to finish it. i have to. i already know the ending. i've already written the ending, it's just about getting there. i'm on the fourth draft and so many things have changed and unchanged from the time i first conceived this story. i set out to write a book that would sell, an average romance, a light read. but somewhere along the line it has become something else.

the thing about what i set out to do and what i am actually trying to do is that i'm conscious of what is required of me as a writer. what i set out to do was write a light romance, something that would sell . what i'm trying to do is earn the turn. in all my writing workshops, i was taught to earn the story. so many romances today follow a similar format. this is fine, i have no objection to this. but not many romance writers have their workshops to answer to, creative writing workshops with highly critical workshop members. i am incapable of writing a light romance because light romances are very one-dimensional. because they follow the format of a typical romance, nothing is earned, everything is predicted by the reader. there are no moments when the author has to make their readers understand. everything automatically makes sense because the reader has read it all before. in workshop, we were taught to earn the turn. if you have a character who realizes something, who undergoes an experience that changes them, you have to write it credibly. you have to earn your reader's understanding, you have to earn their acceptance of this change in your character. the way you do this is by properly setting up the groundwork, arranging everything in the beginning so that it compliments the turn. what you don't want to do is write, "And suddenly everything changed." that is not considered earning the turn. while that may work for simpler forms of fiction it is not exactly credible to the reader because in real life that never happens. real life is never that easily explained. when suddenly everything changes, specific things happen: when your dog dies, you don't need to change the water in his bowl anymore; when someone steals your car, you lose the tassel you wore to your graduation because it was hanging on the rear view mirror. these are the little things, the small details that are real, that really and truly happen. that is how we fathom change in real life, through the little things. a writer must earn that sense of reality. real life's a mess and writing a mess that is coherent and logical and profound is the real challenge. earning the turn is convincing the reader that what you have written is the truth, that it is real.

in this novel i am trying to write, i have two characters that develop--the best ones do, you know. and i am trying as best i can to earn the turn they undergo. the center of all the problems i'm having is the conflict. the conflict drives their development, leads them to that inevitable turn and i can't seem to get the conflict right. i know what i want to do and i've done some of it, but not all of it. i'm trying to make the mess coherent. it took me three drafts to get the timeline right. by the fourth draft i felt like i was finally passing the middle marker--the end was somewhere in sight. but the other day, after having checked off all the crucial moments i needed to write to round out the plot, i looked at the ending i had and was not satisfied. i realized, as i lay on the sofa considering it, that i needed to rewrite the ending. as it is now, its a circumstantial ending: this leads to that which leads to this misunderstanding which leads to that argument which leads to this reconciliation and they all live happily ever after. it is not a strong ending, it is not an ending deserving of the turn i tried so hard to earn. if you think of it in terms of the law, a circumstantial case is never a strong one: you have to put the murder weapon in the defendant's hand. he can't just happen to be at the right place at the right time to commit the murder, the jury won't believe it. and now? now that i have to rewrite the ending, i will have to rewrite a lot of the key scenes so that everything fits. i have to get a hold of the conflict and really analyze it. just thinking about it makes me want to throw up my hands and admit defeat. i am on the fourth draft of a novel! how much more do i have to do? when does it end? does it ever? am i just not good enough to write? i refuse to believe it and yet refusing means that i have to keep trying, that i have to keep pushing forward even when all i want to do is give in to the exhaustion.

i want it to be exceptional. i want it to be familiar and new all at once. i want it to be startling. i want it to redeem all the one-dimensional, romances. i want to be proud of it. i want to be proud of it.

because there is something so sublime about this dream of mine. it is being able to show people themselves; to look at life and tell it back to you and have you say that, yeah, actually it is like that, its just like i said, just like i wrote. its getting it right, having people trust in me to show them the real thing. its understanding, earning it and gaining it and always studying. its proving that English is a beautiful language too, as beautiful as French or German or Spanish or Japanese. its the sentence, long and lovely and circuitous and misleading. its verbs in the passive, gerundives and commas. its the clause, subordinate or otherwise.

its loving books, knowing that i am capable of writing one, and doing it. i just have to keep on doing it. i just have to keep on.