Last night I had a dream in which I started to write a new story. A glimpse of the sun behind the mountains where the protagonist stood.
I’ve never dreamt about writing before. At least not with such clarity. Envisioning the next scene in my head.
I recently revisited a fiction draft I wrote years ago and hadn’t looked at since last summer. I was surprised to find I liked it, and that I want to release it to the world.
Time is a beautiful editor. I love the feeling of finding enjoyment in past work with a detached and critical eye.
Self-publishing these newsletters has its drawbacks. A temptation to send something that could perhaps use more time to cook. I know there are different types of writing and that people often enjoy the half-baked missives. Journal entries that accompany the stories which themselves require years under lock.
I laughed at this book review of Haruki Murakami’s “Novelist as a Vocation”- a collection of essays on the novelist’s writing process that I’ve so far been unable to finish. Charles Finch, the reviewer, rightly calls the essays frustrating. For all his trying, Murakami is unable to explain his own brilliance. The review ends with a new-to-me quote by Saul Bellow: “I am not an ornithologist,” Bellow said. “I am a bird.”
In case the point gets lost, Murakami is a bird. He can’t explain himself the way an ornithologist would.
I love my fiction more than anything else I’ve written. It’s the only way I’m able to get to the truth. Essays are fine and all but, have you tried making everything up? An imagined world that’s here but also not?
I love reading other people’s essays and personal narratives. I just don’t often enjoy reading my own. They feel like byproducts - the sourdough discards instead of the bread. They are part of the work, a side note. But they aren’t the work. They aren’t the bird.
Dear reader and writer
put it this way when she shared why she subscribes to vessels: "I thoroughly enjoy experiencing Julia’s writing endeavors, and am so happy to support who I believe will go on to do even more amazing things."What struck me about this message was her belief in my potential. The hunch that I’m building something that’s not yet done. That’s how I feel too. I’m only just starting to discover that I am a bird.
Fiction takes so much time. It’s not the same as opening a browser tab and letting the thoughts flow. Instead, try many rounds of edits and a painful attention to each word. I still cringe when I didn’t get it right.
A wise person told me recently that it’s never wrong to be kind. Sometimes kindness means saying less.
What I love about fiction is the freedom to let a story be what it is. There’s no agenda. No argument or persuasion or words as swords or knives. People can take what they want. How someone reads a story reveals their agenda, not mine.
I am no ornithologist. I can’t tell you how or why.
Meanwhile, the gulls across the street build a nest and take turns sitting on it. Warming the gestating eggs until they’re ready to hatch. Waiting for the day when they fly.
Until then -