a restoration of hope
creative living diaries
It’s still possible for me to complete a first draft of my manuscript before the end of the year, even though the writing is slow going.
My tendency is to work quickly. I usually dive into a project like a pirahna and finish it, but not this time.
This project feels a lot like walking through molasses. But I’m not ready to give up.
I made a realization this month about my protagonist, who is also the narrator of this story. I realized I had to raise the stakes for her and give her a backstory that was a little more dangerous. I had to make her more vulnerable.
I thought maybe an important discovery like that would spark my passion in a way that would enable me to write longer, faster sprints.
But it didn’t.
I’m still writing slowly.
If you think about it, the act of creation, particularly writing fiction, is an act of hope. You’re saying something about your faith in the future, your faith in humanity. And maybe that’s where my struggle lies.
Over the past few years, my hope for the future and my faith in humanity has been dramatically altered, and in order to really write this story, really love these characters, really give them what they deserve, I have to engage in a sort of restoration of hope.
To write stories about people is to love them.
To create a world, I have to believe in the world. To tell a story is to weave a pathway to a future possibility. Or the possibility that there is a future.
But maybe all fiction writing is really at its heart about mad, hungry desire.
Maybe it’s enough to desire a future for humanity.
Maybe it’s enough to choose to see our goodness in spite of all the evidence to the contrary. Maybe that’s precisely the sort of madness we need during times like these.
I went to a high school homecoming football game this month. It was the night of the full moon. I sat in the bleachers and watched the homecoming court walk out two by two into the center of the field while this huge glowing moon rose in the sky above them, and I remembered with every cell of my body what it was like to be sixteen and filled with passion, knowing that your whole life is ahead of you.
