Like so many of us, I’ve been trying to write a novel for, oh, thirteen years now.
My first attempt was so long ago that the technology needed to access that draft no longer exists.
A few weeks ago, I took a class on plotting your novel, because I have a terrible habit of writing ten pages of some story that occurs to me and then forgetting about it completely.
It’s not even giving up - giving up implies some form of active plan. Instead it just vanishes from my mind, like I’m a goldfish with a laptop.
Having a plan in this area of my life might serve me well, even if plans do very little for me otherwise. So I show up to the class with my brand new Harry Potter moleskine and diligently take pages of notes.
When the instructor started talking about the crisis point that leads into the third act of a novel, I felt a deep sense of relief unwinding through my being.
I thought, “I’m not failing at life, I’m just at my crisis point.”
Someone please print that on a t-shirt, and make it available in pink.
I’m not sure why this was such a revelation, but I have an Instagram account and so maybe can be forgiven for thinking that life needs to be an endless upward cycle of victory.
Sure, my crisis point has lasted about a year - approximately 51 weeks longer than the crisis point in most movies (or maybe life isn’t served up in montage form, though it should be) - and instead of reaching a resolution, it seems to be extending itself via world circumstances and socially-isolated lockdown for the foreseeable future because apparently our lives have turned into a dystopian novel. (I never realized those were supposed to be instructional.)
I’m now realizing that maybe I was in preparation for this moment. Maybe that’s all my crisis was about. I’m not sure why preparation had to be “Learn the lessons early” rather than “enjoy your last months outside with friends” but the universe works in mysterious ways.
As for my novel, I’m not forcing anything right now. I’m going to let myself write for fun, write to entertain myself. Write something I would like to read, rather than something that feels Important. Because we are not required to write King Lear right now, plague or no plague.
