2015 + Reflections of an (Aspiring) Author

I finished the book.

It's so weird and awesome to say that. I finished it. It's taken me several years (6.5 to be exact). I started writing it just before turning fourteen. Maybe it wouldn't have taken me so long if I didn't need to learn so much, if I had already had within me all the experience and skill that years of writing brings, if life hadn't gotten in the way multiple times, and if I had had a fully-functioning computer from the start to it's finish. (As it happens, I'm still bumming off of my sister's fully-functioning laptop, ha di ha.) It's something I have worked towards for so long. How can it be finished?! Gahh. 

And it’s only ever been real in my head. That's the weird part. Friends have drifted in and out of our lives for as long as I can remember and I've never spoken about my book, not unless asked (my father would make a great agent: he tells everybody and anybody!). Even speaking about it amongst the family is something I've shied away from: the subject (and all the memories it brings with it) is a sure way to shut down their faces and bring that certain look of silent torment to their eyes. I have avoided it at all costs. Did I have their full support and the constant assertion that if I ever needed help it was mine? Absolutely. But writing this book was still lonely. While life went on and we taught ourselves to forget, I went back. Over and over again. I went back while we struggled to make ends meet with no income, living off coupons and our friends' charity. I went back while we welcomed two more babies into the family. I went back while the owner of our old house brought us to court and marshals stalked our gate and the electricity got turned off (...and stayed off). I went back while we moved into the apartment of a friend and hunkered down for three years of cramped living while looking for a new home. It became a silent world within my head inhabited only by me, something I couldn't share with anyone else... no one but God. 

He was patient with me. Whenever I would hit a rough patch and stumble into a memory I wasn't prepared to face, I would pull a Jonah and run to the land where procrastination thrives: the Internet. I would remain there for several weeks and then come crawling back, stricken with guilt. I was plagued with a sense of inferiority: how could I write a book? Having grown up an avid reader, books were something I was only too familiar with... I read anything I could get my hands on: Austen, Dickens, Alcott, Bronte. As a teenager, my horizons broadened: E.M. Forster, John Steinbeck, Salman Rushdie, Irving Stone. My standards were high; my expectations even higher. I didn't want to just tell our story - I wanted to write something epic, something revolutionary, something life-changing. Something that would climb its way into its reader's heart and stay there. I wrote and rewrote the manuscript multiple times. It was never good enough; it could always be better. I wrestled with my sense of duty: why was I doing this? Was there a point to all this private torture? Would it do any good? 

Towards the end, the real thing that kept me going was digging deep into the nitty-gritty details of what Matthew suffered and realizing all over again the absolute anguish that his last five months of life contained. Don't I owe it to him, to tell his story? Isn't it the least I could do? To make sure that people don't forget, to make sure that his name and his existence doesn't get swallowed up by time? 

This year is going to bring so much change, I can feel it already. It's daunting, but I'm praying that God gives me strength to face it. Last year was a tidal wave of craziness: I realize, reading over my old posts, that if an absolute stranger were to look at my blog, they would have no idea what I was going on about. I was purposefully vague, and in no position to be starting a blog... but maybe its a blessing in disguise, because there's the evidence of the turmoil we were experiencing. My next blog post will hopefully clear up a few things in that department.

I realize that this is turning into the never-ending blog so I'll sign off... I'm really going to dedicate myself to this thing (even though I haven't exactly told anyone I've started a blog... eh) and hopefully, it'll actually be something people enjoy reading! 

Five Months Later

So much has happened since I last blogged on here, I almost don't know where to begin!

Our circumstances have dramatically improved for one thing, thank God. We no longer live in the small, dusty apartment that saw so much trial and sorrow in those last few months. Not many people know where we live now, and we intend to keep it that way for as long as we can. Happily, our home is the very mountain home that we dreamed of in the midst of our tribulations back in April. It's more than what we could have ever hoped for, and I still look around me in amazement when I remember the miracle and the circumstances that led us here.

I haven't been able to get a laptop of my own as of yet, but my sister generously lets me use hers and I have been writing. Nearly every day for a month now, for two to three hour stretches. I've rewritten (so far) the first twenty chapters of my book and for the first time since I started writing it, I am almost satisfied when I reread it. Not totally satisfied but more than I've ever been before, which is saying a lot.

I think my biggest fear when it comes to telling our story is that I won't do it justice. I won't give it the depth and the meaning that it deserves. But I've learned to submit that fear to God - to trust that whatever piece I eventually end up with is the one that it was always meant to be. I've given it my all, this book, and I know I haven't done it all on my own. To be honest, the days where I get the most done, the days where I see my best work, are the days where I first pray for the Holy Spirit to touch me, to anoint me in what I must do, and then it's almost easy. The words flow quicker, the phrases fit together. I could spend hours writing if I didn't have to turn off the computer and return to the reality of present life. At least our reality has changed enough so that the present no longer mimics the past. But I still struggle with fitting the two together... Half the time, I might as well be sleepwalking. I'm always half-in that other realm, that other atmosphere, and there are days where I barely shift back to the reality of this one. But the beauty of the present is a gift and I don't take it for granted.

There are still questions I have concerning my book, and I wait patiently for God to lead me in the answers. Questions like - should it be two volumes or just one? Do I self-publish or find a publishing company? Do I need a literary agent? If so, where do I find one? I don't worry about these questions though, because God has never failed in providing what we've needed. He'll show me.

For now, blogging must remain somewhat of a backburner concept since our internet is slow. In the meantime, I'll continue writing. Something tells me that I'll be finished (at least with the first volume) by the end of this year.

Showing vs. Telling

Something I learned over the course of the past few years writing this book is how important it is show the reader what happened rather than tell them what happened... For example, instead of writing, "Mr. Johnson was a cruel man," the author ought to show the reader, through dialogue, circumstance, and situations, Mr. Johnson's character without resorting to topic sentence style summaries which gives the reader nothing more than an adjective or a label to go off of. The goal is to create a reaction; it's to dig it's way into someone's heart and get them to feel something for the character.

My struggle with this book has always been doing that very thing. When I don't want to face writing a particular memory or describing a certain situation (the majority of the book) I distance myself from the material. To get it over with as quickly as possible, I tell a summary of the event without emotionally involving myself and the result is a relatively eloquent piece lacking in grit and true feeling. Today I was reading over the last portion of writing I've added to my manuscript and I got so frustrated as I realized how much telling I've been doing lately. I'm working on the events that were taking place towards the end of 2006 and it's blatantly clear by the style of writing I automatically fall into how much I don't want to be writing about that time and those memories.

It's my struggle and my own private battle that I wrestle over daily, even if I don't write, even if I do nothing but open the manuscript and stare blankly at the computer screen. It's always there. And only by turning to the Lord and asking for help do I find relief.

Past and Present

These past two weeks have been like having an up close and personal revisit from the past. After several years of gradually growing immune to the sound of police sirens, of learning not to flinch when someone calls from the gate outside, of training myself to revisit old memories, old fears, without breaking down and shutting off, it feels like I'm starting all over again. And how can I write when I feel this way? How can I write about the past, as if it's safely nestled in a healed corner of my heart, a mere experience to look back upon without the adjoining fear to accompany it, when it feels like it isn't past anymore - when it feels all too painfully present?

I open up the manuscript file on my computer and I stare unseeingly at the screen. It's so overwhelming. You'd think after all these years I would have grown used to it, facing the seemingly insurmountable mountain of expressing so much with so little time, of putting down feelings and pains and wounds that I've hardly begun to unravel and take apart in my own heart and mind. How am I to share that jumbled mess with the world, and expect them to make sense of it all when I can't even do that?

I still go back to the beginning of my manuscript to write more about my childhood. I don't remember it very well anymore, and it feels almost like another lifetime, a different era. It's easier for me to face those faded but happy memories, to struggle over expressing them than it is to face the actual bulk of the book, which is everything that happened to us from the year 2004 and on. That's the most important part and I mentally shy away from even reading it over. It all seems impossible sometimes. How could I finish writing a book that I don't want to even think about looking at? But I know it's not - "with God, all things are possible" - and it's through His grace alone that I've persisted this long. He will help me. I'll face today by His strength and I'll face the past by His strength. Alone, I would have given up long ago.

INTRODUCING Mere Suspicion: Writing the Story

I created this blog for the purpose of documenting my journey of writing my autobiography/memoir titled MERE SUSPICION. It's a book dedicated to describing what was the most painful, overwhelming time of my family's life. I started it in 2009 and I hope to finish it this year, God willing. By posting daily blogs, I'll be sharing my trials and triumphs throughout the phases of writing, editing, revising, translating and ultimately, publishing Mere Suspicion.