I'm over it. I don't want to write this book any more. I really don't. I'm so close to the end, and the thought that I have to keep going back in and fixing this bit and that, is just too depressing.
You are nearly there, I keep telling myself — just a few more hours, days, weeks, is all you need, don't give up now!
But I want to chuck in the towel. I want to put it in the drawer. let one of my descendants find it after I'm gone and say — oh, what a great pity, grandma was onto something here, this would have been a great book!
I have around 70,000 words, it's been read several times by trusted writer friends, a couple of editors even. I've made most of the suggested changes, but there is still one section in the end of the second act that's still not working, I need some kind of reveal, some kind of 'all is lost' moment, some kind of shocking event maybe. But how to do that in memoir? How do I manipulate the truth to bring about this kind of affect?
It's 11.07 am. I go to the kitchen to make tea. This week I have set up a new routine for myself. (It's my old routine actually, i just had to reactivate it by giving myself a good talking to).
The rule is to be at my desk 9am - 12 noon each week day, no matter what, working on my book. That's it. That's all I have to do. No emails, no phone calls, no Instagram, no Facebook. I can use Google for research but nothing else. But when I am dragging the chain and searching for a way in, like today, I have permission to listen to related podcasts.
I click on the Philospher's Zone, a fascinating talk on Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy. I take notes, it's very interesting though nothing I can immediately use. Next I listen to my dear friends on This Jungian Life. (I don't know them personally but I listen to them so often they feel like my best buddies!) They are discussing creativity: 'how ideas arise from mysterious sources yet creativity is such an intrinsically human function that Jung regarded it as one of the five instincts, together with hunger, sexuality, activity and reflection.'
I go back to the kitchen to top up my tea. It's a well worn track. I bring my Jungian buddies with me.
I stare out the kitchen window while the kettle boils. Do my heel lifts. A couple of balancing exercises.
Then it comes to me.
There's a scene I brush over earlier in my book in a passing matter-of-fact way — my mother's suicide attempt. It had a huge impact on me. It was 1976. I was in the USA playing in an all girl latin jazz band (as you do). I came back for six weeks to help out, give moral support. The first thing she said when she saw me was she still wanted to die, but would never attempt it again — to fail at suicide twice would be too embarrassing.
I've written about it before in my novel Take Me To Paradise. You can read the excerpt here.
It's 12 noon. My writing session is officially over but I'm still glued to my desk.
I'm tempted start writing that scene. But I'll save it for tomorrow.
Tomorrow I'll be In like Flynn!
This blog is a place I come to try out ideas, vent, scrapbook, doodle and follow the process of the writing of my book currently called, Looking for Duras, Finding My Mother. I began it in 2013 with this post, but you can dip in and out from the menu to the right of this page. Clearly it's been a long process with big breaks when I was occupied with other things and still going!
If you are interested you can read my novel/ fictional memoir, Take Me To Paradise for free here on Smashwords. Based on my first trip to Bali in 2002, names and places have been changed and fictional characters created.
Marilyn wakes up one morning and instead of catching the bus to work, catches a flight to Bali. But is she too late to indulge her paradise dream? And how many Western women have arrived before her falling headlong for the lush green island, its exotic culture and their attractive driver? Set in the artisan hill town of Ubud, Bali, between the Bali bombings of 2002 and 2005, Jan Cornall's witty and insightful novel explores notions of paradise and a modern woman's quest for meaning and passion in a post 9/11 world. Marilyn finds her paradise. But is she prepared for the demands paradise will make of her?
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