A Dull Ache that’s Hard to Define
A let down.
Seems like overwhelming disappointment.
I got so into the characters I would dream plotlines.
Then allow doubt to infiltrate all the premises of my novel.
Spending a decade writing something, only to save it in 4 places.
To let it sit, to rot and petrify in multiple folders and thumb drives.
Tried to give the draft a final editing push, but fall back again.
It seems like trash, hardly worth the effort to whip it into shape.
Who am I kidding, no traditional publisher would want this crap?
I’ve been neglecting the manuscript again, a bird with just 1 tweet.
The ‘not-good-enough’ ear-worm haunts me for the millionth time.
My work won’t be in any person’s messy to-read pile beside the bed.
Another low point.
Came across a quote this morning.
It made my stomach drop to the tiles.
Recognition, like a scimitar to the intestines.
It happens each time I let my effing novel fall through the cracks.
Losing more self-love, respect and credibility in the process each time.
“There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside you.” — Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road
So, I’m persisting with the edit: tricky, overcomplicated and tortuous as it is.
I’m not saving it just to put away again. I’m seeing it through to publication. Like 7 week old puppies biting at ankles, I refuse to let it go this time.
I’m writing, culling, changing, clarifying, reducing, expanding, playing, scribbling, noting, striking and producing that big literary baby of mine.
And, while it’s a prick to get out of the birth canal, it must have a life.
Good or bad, melodrama or mash up, I can’t bear the agony of bearing the untold story inside me any longer.
Down boy, good dog; thank you Zora.
*All the photos are the author’s own.
