Two manuscripts

Two manuscripts await me. Both are first drafts, one a novel (my first and only) and one a screenplay (my second of two). I wrote them both during an annus mirabilis while living in Chicago and working at Cool but Aimless job. The whole time I worked on them, I glowed with purpose. No longer did I spend my hours fruitlessly going online for inspiration--instead, I wrote, and dreamed, and plotted, and read.

And then I finished, and followed everyone’s advice. I put them away.

Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to pick them up again.

They both need a lot of work. In spite of my experience in publishing (or maybe because of it), I’m a lousy editor, and a worse rewriter. I’m usually so grateful that I found ANY words, ANY story that I can’t conceive of throwing them out and starting again. Every time I write anything, I dread that there won’t be a next time.

I know that every fledging writer should write many bad manuscripts while learning her craft. I should be able to chalk up those two stories to experience, a sacrifice to the Amateur Writer gods, and begin to work on my next stories.

I think I left too much of myself behind, though.

My novel’s main character came to me as a disembodied voice--one with a familiar rhythm. It was the street smart, swaggering sing-song that typified my mother and her friends, and the women in my neighborhood. So I listened to her tell me a bit about her weariness with living, and about the great regret that darkened her life. And I realized in the writing that as she grew into her story, the boundaries were blurring, and several elements of my own life were seeping in. I learned that at her core she felt inferior...like an outsider in her family, in her clan, and in her skin. Her path was to see that she had created something beautiful with her life because of, not in spite of, her wrong turns. I wanted to show the nobility and secret tenderness in an ordinary woman’s life.

She haunts me, in no small part because I’d like so badly to give her what I’ve never quite felt...that feeling of belonging in my own life, instead of feeling like a fraud. Perhaps I lack the skills to imagine what that might look like.

She represents the road not taken--she made an impulsive mistake to avoid being in a situation where she felt like she would never measure up. I followed the path, dutifully, and feel like I never measured up.

My other heroine is almost the polar opposite of the first. All she wants is to feel like a part of something greater than herself, so she creates a history for herself that gives her life meaning and connects her to that dream. Unfortunately, she doesn’t really belong there, so she’s excluded and mocked. It doesn’t derail her, though, so strongly does she believe in herself...until she finds evidence that suggests that the foundational truth of her life is a lie. Her struggle then becomes to find a way to consciously choose her identity.

I’ve never been able to do that either. I would never have been able to keep the faith in the face of so much opposition. I can barely keep the faith in the face of applause and support.

Rilke said that its important to live the questions themselves, and these are mine--"Why do I feel like a Wrong in a world that is Right?" and "How can I have the courage to invent myself and the life I want to lead?" It’s easy for me to intellectualize this, to seek insights and explanations. I’m good at that part. The harder part is LIVING the questions--taking action that pushes back at these created boundaries.

"Write what you know," they say. I’m trying. I’m trying to KNOW how to sit with those lowdown, shameful feelings and questions...trying to KNOW how to live with and in spite of them.

Otherwise, my writing will remain in a drawer, forgotten by everyone except me.