We Write What We Will

I just finished writing the second installment of what I hope to be an episodic novella series that follows the wanderings of a unique woman I call “Jane.”  I’m not going to go into any detail about her quite yet, but I will say she’s a little out in left field in comparison to much of my other writing.  With all of the dystopian and Gothic fiction I’ve been writing over the past few years, I’d expected Jane to be a slight break from all the darkness.  Her character is lighthearted, and when I initially planned the series, I’d hoped to exchange a bit of darkness for something deep yet a little less weighty.

Sometimes a story takes a dark turn
when the writer least expects it.

The first novella did just that, with the exception of a few scenes—one tragic and the others somewhat horrific.  Still, Jane’s light shined through.  This second installment, albeit succeeding in capturing her personality and maintaining a similar voice, went to a much darker place.  I’d known what I was going to write before I’d begun, the entire story pretty reasonably outlined in my head, but I hadn’t anticipated just how heavy some of the elements would end up being.

Writing is a psychological, physical, and emotional experience.  I’m not sure those who’ve never invested themselves in a written work can appreciate the effects a given piece can have on the person writing it.  Any avid bookworm can tell you that reading can be extremely immersive; any willing slave to the muses will tell you writing is no different.  The other night, while I was bringing Jane’s most recent adventure toward its climax, her story took me by surprise.  She and another character decided to share some particularly emotional events—and writing them affected me profoundly.  I stepped back awhile after finishing a particularly poignant scene then read it aloud for my husband.  About 2/3 of the way through, my throat began to tighten, my voice cracked, and the tears began to pool in my eyes.  It was all I could do to get through the scene.  The feeling was heavy yet sublime.

It’s a difficult tack to relay effectually the drive behind writing any particular piece.  It might seem clichéd, but when M. Somerset Maugham said writers “have to” write, he wasn’t exaggerating.  Writing is not a choice for many of us; it is a necessity.  I’ve described in the past the need to write as the perception of words, characters, and storylines building in the mind much like steam builds in a hot kettle—force it to build for too long, and eventually it’s going to blow.  Not only must we write, however, but we must write as a story dictates.  We don’t always have a choice in the matter when it comes to certain directions a story is going to take.  We merely relay it as it must be.  The muses are wiser than we.

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As the great Kurt Vonnegut
used to say, "So it goes."

I did the math, and I wrote just shy of a quarter million words last year.  I didn’t do it because I wanted to.  I did it because I had to.  Many of those words came on their time, their individual agendas, and of their own accord.  Sometimes I wrote until it felt as though there were nothing left of me, like I’d emptied my soul onto the pages.  Often, I wrote until I became physically ill, putting myself in bed for days or weeks, all in the name of appeasing the muses.  Don’t get me wrong; I do take pride in my work, owning as much of it as I see due, and I would never want to live without those words haunting my mind, ever building and pulling at my sanity, though I’d be lying if I said it didn’t come with a price.

With all that said, however, writing is an important part of who I am.  It’s what I do.

And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

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