Resonance

Resonance: When something echoes something else and deepens it. Makes it mean something more than it meant at first.

Pondering this morning "the novel," the long-stranded stack of papers asleep somewhere in my office, or in several places in my office -- boxes, wire baskets, file cabinets, on two computers, in my mind, locked in the recesses. I've told myself that the novel was irrelevant to my life now, that I was uninterested in writing a long piece of fiction again, that I had moved on, that writing fiction seemed too mundane, too overly intense, too frivolous in light of world events. Oh, I've given myself lots and lots of excuses. Excuses have always been a forte of mine.

Here are some of the truths: It's hard. It takes more time than I've been willing to give it. More concentration, keeping all those details corraled in my head. I haven't felt I wanted to exit the world long enough to finish a novel, any novel. I'm disappointed with the business end of publishing, don't like the "appearances" a writer has to make, don't like the fact that my hard work isn't mine anymore once a publisher takes it on. It's partly fear of failure, and it's partly being a control freak and not liking when something so personal is taken out of my control. But it's also not knowing how to finish the damned thing.

I've said to myself so many times that it would only take about three months of pure concentration to get the thing done, and that's probably a pretty fair estimate. But there has also been this roadblock, this wondering just what in the hell the thing is REALLY about, feeling it needed that kernel of truth that would make it worth reading, that would make it resonate for any given reader. And not knowing how to give that, if it's even in me to give.

So here I am this morning, before daybreak, reading someone else's work and thinking about resonance, what it means, why it makes a piece of fiction work. It depends, of course, on why a person reads, and I can only speak for myself. But it's the stories that resonate, the ones that stick around, the ones that make me feel I've reached some new level of understanding, and it's this resonance that the "endless novel" doesn't have. Right now, it's pretty much of an exercise in history, of research, of character building, but it doesn't have any deeper meaning, anything that would cause it to especially stick in a reader's mind.

It opens with an unexpected death, and continues with what that death causes the primary character to do, choices he makes, the road he embarks upon, but nowhere is that death, or the propulsion it causes, echoed. Nowhere is there a deepening of meaning, a new understanding. And it has never occurred to me until this morning that it's really this thing that's lacking that has caused this novel to abort and languish.

Should it take ten years for a writer to figure such a simple thing out? No, not one who is focused and I have been completely unfocused for a long time. But just figuring out a way to express what's wrong with the thing doesn't fix it. Pondering the significance of this morning's revelation, there's still the fact that I have to devote real time to it if I ever want to see it to fruition. Think I've been too busy actually living life.

The friend I mentioned a few postings ago, who went into the hospital for knee-replacement surgery and ended up in a coma, has gone home and he is damaged. Everyone is hoping it isn't damage beyond repair, that in time his brain will finally right itself, but he's still confused, barely ambulatory, and maybe more upsetting, he's angry and depressed. My SO and I are driving over this morning later to look after him while his wife goes to the beauty shop. She needs the outing, but both of us are dreading the trip. Up until last night just the SO was going, but I could see how he was longing for me to offer my time, so I did. He jumped on it, and so I will set aside writing once again and help him with his good old friend. And I don't mind this, certainly not the way I probably should. There are times, though, when I do feel superficial, personally unproductive. And more troubling, it would be very easy for me to continue along this path. It's an easy path, it's fun, it's a lot less stressful than making myself vulnerable, which is what any writer does when they decide to open that proverbial vein and lay it all out on paper -- or more appropriately for the times -- the computer screen.

The first real norther is on its way. Windy as hell yesterday, and already gusty this morning as the sun starts to lighten the sky. For some reason we've had an outstanding crop of acorns, and they were pounding the ground yesterday as the wind threshed the limbs of all the oaks. The bed of the pickup was layered with them. They're underfoot wherever you walk. With the serious drought we've had the last two years, so many acorns are a shock, another example of nature assuring its continuance.

Onward ....