Getting There
The story is what you carry and every time you add to it, it gets heavier. All over the world there are half-finished books––memoirs, poetry, novels, surefire plans for getting thin or getting rich––in desk drawers, because the work got too heavy for the people trying to carry it and they put it down. ––Stephen King
Every other Saturday morning, I leave my house at 7AM and start the one-hour commute to my writing group, which meets on the other side of the Chesapeake Bay. The most dreaded part of the drive is the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel, aka “The HRBT,” notorious for its miles-long traffic jams and near-constant construction. Most locals have their own HRBT horror stories. Thankfully, it’s smooth sailing on early Saturday mornings, but each time I cross, obstacle-free, I feel I’ve somehow cheated the system.
Last weekend, as I approached the bridge-tunnel, the sun was rising behind me, casting its fresh morning light upon the scene ahead: orange and white construction cylinders littering the shoulder, rusted metal pilings jutting out of the water, colorful cranes and bulldozers high in the sky, and the frigid Chesapeake chopping beneath. The industrial still-life struck me with its surprising, steely beauty. The world appeared so clear, defined, and navigable, qualities that are hard to come by on the page.
I’ve been revising my memoir for two years now and I’m still on the second draft. (In my defense, experts claim the second draft is the hardest!) Two years isn’t that long in the grand scheme of things, but I can’t help feeling like my manuscript is the HRBT, a backed-up disaster of highway, perpetually under construction with no end in sight. What a mess, my internal critic mutters as she encounters endless word-piles and structural detours. It will never be finished.
But amid the mess of rewriting, I’ve also realized that if I stick with the resistance long enough, an open stretch of road will present itself. It always does. And on the other side of the dark, pressurized tunnel, the story releases. Connections I’ve been searching for become brighter and clearer. The struggle of the past two years has at least given me this: increased endurance and the ability to tolerate frustration. It reminds me of this Melissa Febos quote from her craft book, Body Work:
Over the years, I’ve come to look forward to the point in my own writing at which continuing seems both incomprehensible and loathsome. That resistance, rather than marking the dead end of the day’s words, marks the beginning of the truly interesting part...It is on the other side of that threshold that the truly creative awaits me, where I might make something that did not already exist. I just have to punch through the false wall.
I’ve reached multiple points in the past two years when revision is both incomprehensible and loathsome. You might find desperate phrases such as F#$% this or I officially hate writing or What am I doing with my life? sporadically penned throughout my journal. But I now understand that the work feels heaviest when I’m closest to making connections essential to the story. Like Febos, I’m learning to look forward to the hard parts because they signal that something truer awaits on the other side of resistance. I’m growing more confident in my ability to bear uncertainty.
On the drive to writing group last month, I was listening to this podcast interview: The Art of Rough Drafts with George Saunders. He discusses the courage of uncertainty and the benefit of letting frustration percolate. He tells his students, “I always think that a work of fiction is perfect somewhere in your subconscious. It’s perfect like a sheet of glass, so beautiful, but in trying to tell it, you drop it, and it hits the ground and it shatters, and revising is the process of putting it back together, which means you have to be really patient and you have to look for connections.”
I was thinking that in memoir writing, you’d don’t start with a perfect story in your subconscious. You start with the shattered pieces (because LIFE!) and it’s your job to construct the beautiful sheet of glass from the shards at your feet. There are connections between the fractured pieces, and these connections will hold the story together but they cannot be rushed. You’ll often be forced to sit in the traffic jam of your mind for days or weeks or years to find them. You may suffer frustration akin to road rage. But if your subconscious is telling you they’re there, they usually are, and if you’re persistent enough, you’ll eventually break through the barrier and dart out the other side.
(And when the story gets too congested inside of you, I suggest getting feedback from trusted sources. Also, prayer. Please God let me see what I’m not yet seeing.)
For more encouragement to keep going, check out this fun interview with Stephen King about what he does when a story gets too heavy to continue. Killing off characters may be a viable option in fiction but it sure seems problematic in memoir!
What obstacles or false walls are you struggling with in your writing?
How do you endure frustration and uncertainty?
Upcoming Events and Classes
I’m so excited to be part of a panel at the upcoming Association of Writers & Writing Programs (AWP) conference in Kansas City, MO. The panel is called Writing About Your Trauma Without Re-Traumatizing Yourself. I’ll be joining memoirists Elizabeth Kleinfeld (moderator), Athena Dixon, Lisa Cooper Ellison, and Margo Steines in discussing what keeps us grounded and motivated as we consistently engage and transform our most disturbing memories on the page. Here’s an outline of the questions we’ll be discussing.
Our panel meets on Thursday, February 8th from 3:20PM TO 4:35PM in Room 3501CD of the Kansas City Convention Center. If you’re going to AWP this year, I would love to meet you. Please come and say hello!
In mid-February, I’ll be teaching another term of The Memoir Studio at The Muse Writers Center. This session is full, but I plan on offering more memoir courses in 2024, so stay tuned!
Things take the time they take. Don’t worry.
––Mary Oliver