Sunday, August 28, 2011

Words as my Wolverine

I'm somewhere on page 64 in a story that I know will be my best yet. It's been under construction for more or less two years, on and off, and I've gone to great pains making sure every word is right, rewriting large chunks, digging deep into my own emotions and letting it take its time. There's a part I've rewritten a whole of five times, and it's still not just that right as it needs to be. Because it's important I get it right; it's built around emotions so deep and basic to me, that writing the story has been a way to cope with something bigger than I ever thought I could handle. And it's starring a character that's been in my head for an even longer time, and that I greatly love.

I'm at approximately 3/4, at the build up to the moment when they jump off the trampoline and really make the dive to the big finale, and I'm letting the conversation between two characters flow freely because if the story is right, they will naturally come to all the points I need them to. And then one of them says a line, that completely throws me off. Just like the veil that is supposed to come off the main character's eyes around now, I realize I've walked on air. It takes all momentum out of me, I've been writing nonstop for four hours and now my fingers just freeze.

I try to create some kind of comeback, a sensible answer. But what's happened, is that I've come forward in my attempts at processing the things that lay as ground for this story. The writing process has taken me to a new step in my own emotional state. Unfortunately, that means my head now decides that this story is crap. I've come around and gotten a grip on it and started to understand it, so suddenly I can't understand why I needed to write this story. I've passed the point of no return; knowledge.

It's an homage, in a way, to someone I loved, though. And a form of celebration of love itself, although that might seem twisted. So I will finish it. And I will hope that it isn't crap, that it is a story that need to be read as much as it needed to be written. I will hope I can still do it justice. While before I was a demon writing of inner demons, I'm now, well, not so much. And there is much of the demon in this story.

1 comment:

Sara said...

If you ever finish it I would love to read it. And as you say, it might be a story that other people need to read just as much as you needed to write it.