A blog of procrastination about being between stories, journals and things that should probably be fed to the fire…
Between stories is a new experience for me.
I realised I was in this space as a space only last night. I was sort of fidgeting around my laptop opening and closing apps and tabs like I was looking for something, as if someone had started calling to me and although my ears couldn’t hear it, my subconscious was scrambling around the empty spaces of my day trying to find where the sound was coming from. Like Joe in the snow.
I know lots of authors kind of fall from one story to the next, starting the next one and the next before the one before and the one before that is finished. I don’t know what kind of author I am, but certainly with The Fulcrum, all other writing and creation is in this suspended animation until The Book is Done.
I don’t know why.
I guess so much comes to end with its publication in physical form that I’m just waiting to see what that new landscape looks like before I venture out into the void again with my next story. Self-publishing is very strange. I don’t think I’m enough of a fantasist to support the illusion of my old purpose anymore. Everything I thought I would be has been whittled away to reveal that any storytelling I do now is only in service of the story that’s come to me and the pleasure of writing it.
At the very least, I’m coming to grips with the ego-blow that I am not universeel (said in boho-afrikaans lit-crit) enough. And that’s okay I guess.
This reminds me.
I’m supposed to be writing a column now, one for October, and I’m already behind schedule and so instead of starting that, I am writing here. At least it’s more or less on topic because the column is about journaling and in a way writing up a short blog here is a sort of mind wash for that.
Columns and blogging have a lot more in common than blogging and journaling. At least when it comes to the sort of journaling I do, which is mostly just emo purging. Not reader friendly. Not writer friendly either, actually; far too revealing of the petty and peevish.
Still. I’ve kept all my journals and yesterday plucked out the very first one.
I was given this ‘Dairy For a Lady’ by my step-mother at the start of high school. Three things jump out at me in this time-travel…
One, it is strange to see that mostly I’m as petty and peevish as I was when I was 13. At least now these less gracious traits are somewhat muted and balanced by maturity and I have the benefit of some self-awareness about it.
Two, it is interesting to observe how memory reveals all that is not said in recording for the unknown witness (as I was then): there is the fight with Natalie, but not the awareness and admittance that I was at fault; there is the anger at my parents, but not the recognition of the hurt; there is the bedroom change, but nothing about the nightmares that forced it.
Three, the innocuous notes about soon-to-be horrors: the gift of the yellow jersey, which would become my ritualistic robe for my eating disorder; the shopping expedition where I discovered I was ‘fat’; the ‘sexy’ comment from church brother ****** about my body, four years before he sexually assaulted me…
Sigh.
When misty-coloured memories reveal themselves in full technicolour.
Not a great feeling.
Suddenly I’m not sure why I’m keeping these journals anymore. If you journal, do you keep yours?
Maybe it’s time for a bonfire.
Anyway. Back to the column. And waiting for the printers to mail me about the proof copy of The Fulcrum.
Laters.
Photo by Hans Isaacson on Unsplash
:: TANYA MEESON :: 