book finished, after a fashion

my love has the color of the night

My novel is finished. Again! I considered not sharing this here because, well, it gets kind of embarrassing to say that you finished something over and over and over again. I imagine it would be sort of like telling people that you quit smoking; until there’s further proof that you mean it this time, everyone can give you a pat on the head, but they won’t be shocked if they see you sneaking out to the corner store later.

But (sigh!) this time it feels different. There was something that I had been holding back from writing because it feels so painful and vulnerable to go there. Some essential motivating aspects of the narrator of my second novel had been missing, something different people had expressed to me in various ways over the years. Inwardly, I had framed my objection to going there as a purely aesthetic one. As in, why do we need to know this character’s trauma in order to empathize with her? Can’t we just characterize her based on the mood of the present and trust that the well runs deep and she has her reasons, etc. etc., the way Jackie Brown is characterized largely by the soundtrack and by the tidy particularities of her apartment, etc. etc. Intellectually, that’s why I kept steering the book away from the past.

characterized fittingly by the present moment

---