Art is Its Own Answer: What I Know About Depression and Art

For the first time in a long time, I found myself incapable of writing.

This has been my experience with depression—how it colors every other aspect of life. Rather, it drains the color from other aspects of life.

This was recent, and there were a lot of factors that contributed to my not being able to write.

Recently I lost my uncle to cancer. Grief has a way of pushing everything else to the side in our lives. That is something I will write more about one day, too.

There were other things that came up after this, these ones more personal that I’d prefer not to write about here. Not now, anyway.

Afterwards, outside of these things, I felt the burning need to be working on a novel. It’s what I do, I engage with writing novels, and literally months had gone by since I’d really worked on a new project. It felt strange. I felt strange. But I was learning some things about myself, too.

A few months before all of this, I experienced a short period of what I can only describe as depression.

It seemed to come out of nowhere, without source, without a trigger, without warning. I began to feel like I’d lost a level of awareness or control over my own thoughts.

And then, one morning, I nearly couldn’t rise out of bed. I didn’t know what had come over me, or why it was so hard—and I don’t just mean the feeling where you’re so comfortable and still tired and want to stay in bed. I mean I woke up, ready to rise and get into a shower and prepare for work, but almost literally couldn’t lift myself up to do it.

I described the feeling to a friend familiar with depression. I told him it felt like my bones were filled with concrete. He said he knew the feeling all too well.

That particular morning, it took a great deal of energy and willpower but I did it, I rose and dragged myself to the shower. I felt uncomfortable all the way down, like I couldn’t take deep enough breaths. I took a shower and for the last minute or so turned it as cold as it could get. This was early in the morning so it was already cold in the house. Normally I do this for fun, because it’s energizing and apparently it’s good for you. I did it this time because I still felt like I couldn’t breathe well enough, and wanted the shock of cold water to force me to breathe. And I still remember how strange a feeling it was, the water all the way to cold but not shocking at all. Not on the inside. My body registered it, and I found myself gasping, but it didn’t wake me up, didn’t get rid of that debilitating weight under my skin, and when it was done, I felt no different. But at least I’d been able to take deeper breaths.

I don’t know how I managed to go to work that day. But I’m glad that I did. This feeling has come over me before, in fact it is, in many ways, familiar, but never so intensely. And when it comes over me, I practically make it into a personal mission not to let it poison other aspects of my life. I do everything I can to make it to work. I unconsciously hide it and never talk about it (which is something I’m learning, like in writing this post, to overcome).

I have an erratic and inconsistent grasp of time, but I want to say this lasted about two weeks. There were a couple days I did call in sick to work, and on the days that I did, I felt terrible about it but also recognize that I absolutely needed to.

There were changes in myself I began to recognize as unusual, things I suppose you could call symptoms. Without intention or even noticing at first, my default walking pace had slowed. At its worst, I remember how small the steps were, how strange it was to me that I hadn’t even noticed before the way my own walk had simply changed. I stopped writing. I went on walks to sit outside or meditate but found myself singularly aware of the weight in my bones, and of what felt like pain.

When I say pain, I don’t mean that I know how to describe it. But it’s like all I was aware of, unless I really focused on something else, was of being in some kind of pain.

It’s really the weirdest thing to write about, because my mind tries to tell me I’m surely making it up. I’m not used to talking about it, either.

I think it helped when I was feeling okay enough to at least force myself into productivity in the morning, because often, by the afternoon, it wasn’t as bad. Sometimes, however, not doing much at all consumed an unusual amount of energy. I hated this, for those two weeks. I hate that it basically laid me low for awhile. I hate the way, once it passed after those two weeks or so, looking back felt like looking at memories through a thick fog. It’s like trying to remember something from when you were on the edge of sleep, too tired to keep your eyes open. That’s what it’s like, for me, to remember myself in the midst of depression.

Where had the rest of my mind gone? The way I felt afterwards was what I’d been trying so hard to find again through that fog, but it had been impossible. Why? What about all of my energy? What about the way I walked? Even the way I spoke? Strangest of all, what about my emotions? At times it alternated between an intensity of irritability and sourceless anger, and at other times would drop into such a flatness of mood that it’s scary to even remember. Scary because it’s like feeling nothing. Like I was aware of what I wanted to be feeling, what I should be feeling, but there was only this dull flatness. Like everything, my own emotions, were muffled.

One thing I am grateful for, at least, is the awareness it gave me of depression and what it’s capable of doing, especially to my perspective of myself which is fluid to begin with.

I read a small book called Darkness Visible, by William Styron, a memoir of a descent into near suicidal depression. I learned so much about the illness from this book, and it came at the perfect time as I began to read it in the midst of those two weeks, and finished it not long after. It gave me a valuable outside point of view, an objective one, that was educational and also emotionally difficult.

I’ve since felt that same fog, but not to the same degree. It comes and goes and is, at the same time, ever-present. And the more I’ve journaled and written poetry about it, the more I’ve delved into it, the more I recognize that same feeling as something that goes all the way back to kindergarten. I don’t like the word depression, and I am resistant to the need to label something at all. But a friend told me recently that it can be good to name the beast. Even just to know, for one’s own sake. That’s where I am right now: resistant to the need to put a name to a struggle I’ve been aware of for most of my life, while genuinely curious to know what it is, and if it is what it seems to be.

I could write more about that, and about the importance of therapy and objectivity, but my intention here is to talk also about art. In this case, for me, about writing.

Over the past month or so, I’ve been sort of rediscovering writing. It’s felt as if I’m teaching myself how to do it all over again. This comes only a few months after I finished writing a novel, one I’m particularly proud of. I’ve been studying storytelling structure and craft for awhile now, and it has shaped and refined my process immensely. Yet the writing part, the line-by-line part, is something I feel I’m learning all over again—again.

Which is to say, in some sense this isn’t unusual. I think there’s a lesson there about any art, any craft. Each beginning really is a beginning. Each project is its own life and exists by its own rules that you have to learn by immersion and by doing. This is one of the hardest parts of writing, for me. The beginnings. The learning how to do it all over again. It just so happens there’s an extra dimension to it in wake of everything else that made it all the harder for the words to come.

Which echoes back to my last post—pushing that boulder perpetually up the mountain.

I’ve learned so far that, while depression, for instance, is its own struggle with its own requirements that deeply affects everything about life, it also deeply affects art. In fact, while going through those two weeks (and what I spoke of before, separate, but still depression links itself to everything), I simply couldn’t write. Not in the way that is most important to me. And learning to overcome that, seeking answers in so many places, has taught me so many things about my own creative process.

The biggest lesson is this: art is its own answer.

My experience with depression—again, I hesitate even to call it that, but I do believe it maybe unavoidable, and best to name it for myself—is that it colors all other aspects of life. Rather, it drains the color from other aspects of life. And with any artist, that is a terrifying thing, because your art isn’t exempt from that. Mine certainly wasn’t. When it comes over me, it’s like a glass dome falling around me that separates me from everything else that’s important to me in my life. The things I find joy in, or meaning in, suddenly it feels like those joys and those meanings have turned to ash. If you’re fortunate, you’ll have someone in your life—even just one person can make a difference—who is there to remind you otherwise, to leave you little reminders of the color that exists in life, or simply to be there and let you know you aren’t alone. I have friends and family I can talk to about it, and the powerful outlet of writing.

Which brings me back to this point. It can feel impossible to see things objectively when you’re in it—when you’re in what they call the fog of depression—but it is so important not to let it beat you, even if just in little ways. When it comes to art, I’ve seen friends of mine—fellow artists—fear that they’ve lost any joy or interest in their craft. This comes from people I’ve seen gush over their art, whatever it is—music, visual art, writing, etc. Suddenly it feels meaningless, it feels pointless, it doesn’t seem like it contains any joy or purpose anymore.

That’s how it was, and has been before—and will be again—for me with my own writing. The only answer to that in the world of art is to dive into it. To understand that you are not your mind, you are not your depression, you aren’t even what you are feeling. Wait it out, maybe even give your art some space. Sometimes that happens, sometimes it needs space as long as you can keep yourself full and occupied in little ways outside of it. And be ready to look at it again, and not make any definite decisions about it, because the fog will pass. And you will rediscover the color and the joy that you know is there even if there are times you can’t feel it—

—and yeah, it might feel like you’re picking up from the bottom of that mountain, and have to relearn it all over again. But that’s part of the joy, isn’t it? Not in the result, not in the top of the mountain, but in the climb.

That’s what I mean by art is its own answer. It isn’t the answer to depression, it isn’t the answer to life, but it is its own answer. And it can color everything else—and it can do it beautifully.

The Uncertainty of What to Say -- Where I Am in My Writing Journey

There is a great contradiction in what it means to be both an introvert and an artist. I have no doubt there’s been much written about this and I’m sure I would benefit from seeking those writings out; however, being someone who struggles with it, and with trying not to see it as a contradiction, I’ve found there’s much that can be said about it.

Over the past couple of years, I’ve changed profoundly as a writer. Part of this is the fundamental growth that comes with passing time: none of us is the same person we were a year ago, a month ago, even a day ago. And another part—the more active part—of my own growth as a writer is almost obsessively willful. I’ve been inconsistent with this blog, and will probably remain inconsistent because I don’t know what to say. In fact, it’s more than not knowing what to say, it’s the struggle of feeling whether I should be saying anything at all, and if I should, then how should I say it? This internal conflict mirrors the struggle of any artist when it comes to their own art, but in a much smaller way because, at least in this context, I’m talking about a blog that I’m not even sure anyone reads. So I decided that this is what I wanted to talk about, because I think talking about the creative process is both fun and incredibly interesting, in part because the creative process is such a depthless mystery for each one of us. And talking about things, or writing about them (especially that, for me), is both cathartic and insightful. It helps me process and understand things more, and there’s so much I can say about my growth as a writer—and hopefully provide some helpful insight or something of that sort, for someone reading this, about their own processes, or their own art.

To date I have three novels published under a small traditional press called Black Rose Writing. My first, OTHER ENDINGS, is a bizarre and emotional ghost story that I look back on and try not to cringe about. The second, FAIRLANE ROAD, is a dark urban fantasy thriller with a heavier focus on philosophy than on plot, with interesting characters and an exciting story. My third, THE GIRL WITH A FAIRY’S HEART, delves deeper into the world alluded to in FAIRLANE ROAD, and which I still regard as a truly strange book, but which I’m still fond of. I have a complicated relationship with each of these books on their own, and even more so on a broader scale when I look at them all at once. For most of my life I’ve simply blazed forward with my writing, story after story, the creativity flowing and bursting out as if of its own accord. And it’s produced some fun, odd things.

And things have changed so much since those books, even since my writing of the third book, which was released just last year.

At the end of 2018, I finished a book that was unlike anything I’d ever written before. It embodied themes I’d been wanting to explore for a long time, and seemed to be the kind of story I wanted to write going forward. I was excited and nervous and uncertain about it, especially because, for the first time, it was a very personal story. It’s called WHEN TIME WAS KIND TO YOU, and it’s the book that helped me cut through much of the other kinds of writing I’d done in the past. It opened the doors of the revision process to me, teaching me how to do it more productively and extensively. I did roughly six or seven drafts of it, approaching every read-through from a different angle, smoothing it out and tweaking it, erasing or replacing scenes and entire segments. It was such a process.

And what I’ve had to come to terms with recently is that I’m no longer in love with it—which is a new record. It usually takes me awhile longer to look at one of my stories in a new light, or to feel that I’ve outgrown it. This happened with WHEN TIME WAS KIND TO YOU within a few months. It’s an important book in my development, perhaps to date the most important, but it’s one I will likely leave behind and maybe, one day, revisit and rewrite from scratch.

My writing of that book straddled a line in my development as a writer. Partway through that book, I began to seek out ways to educate myself in the craft of storytelling in ways I never had before, and this opened up doors into my creativity and growth as a writer—and person—that I had never even known were there. I devoured lectures on writing (there are quite a few different kinds that can be found for free on YouTube, practically amounting to free college classes) and devoured them again and again, absorbing everything I could. I’ve done this with narrative storytelling and literature, and have done so with similar lectures on screenwriting and storytelling in film, realizing that there’s as much to be learned from the world of cinema as there is from literature. In fact, the crossroads where they meet is an incredibly interesting one. Where screenwriting requires immense efficiency, novel writing has much more room and space for experimentation and tangents of various kinds, and I think there’s a middle ground that great writers have found.

This education process has given me a clearer view of my own writing than I’ve ever had. For example, I’m a pantser, or a gardener, in the sense that I don’t outline my stories and then write them, I simply write them “by the seat of my pants.” It’s always been this way and will likely always be this way, unless I decide to write an intricate mystery one day. However, I’ve learned to retroactively outline my stories, or at least break down the components in order to get a clearer view of my work, which will aid me immensely in the revision process.

The difference here, between the kind of writer I used to be—even just a year ago—and the kind of writer I am now, boils down to intention. In the book I’m currently working on and almost done with, there is a clearer, more focused intention behind the story’s components, behind the story’s tensions. There is a clarity to how the characters contrast each other, to how each of them grows across the story, and it is so exciting and so exhilarating. This is especially the case when I realized how important it is to be mean to your characters.

I decided I wanted never to stop growing as an artist and as a person, whatever that means. The path to success as an artist has much more to do with discipline and persistence than it does raw talent—although that is, of course, fundamentally important—and, for the first time, I’ve begun to feel confident about that. And it is an incredible, hungry feeling, to keep striving, to keep going, to never allow myself satisfaction in this.

But there remains the problem of deep introversion in the world of art. I’m not good at marketing myself, I’m terrible at selling my own books, not only because quality matters to me and I know I have grown so much since my published books, but because it’s deeply hard for me to feel okay about going up to someone and basically saying “Hey, I’m an author and I have some published books. You should read them.” I’m basically my own worst enemy in this scenario, and it’s ironic because I’m literally a bookseller and have the opportunity to sell my own books at the bookstore I work at. Which leaves me emotionally conflicted and nervous and wondering, “What the hell is wrong with me?”

I know that self-doubt is a fundamental part of being an artist, and I believe that goes for every artist. The battle against resistance—the “War of Art,” which happens to be the title of an excellent book I recommend to anyone, especially any artist who struggles with resistance—is rooted in the mere act of creating art. It is the upward climb of creating honestly and truly and effectively, and it is equally the climb of knowing you have something to say, and then getting past the resistance of feeling that you have a right to say it, and then getting past the resistance of knowing how to say it, and then getting past the resistance of finally fucking saying it—and saying it again, and again, and again.

In a past blog post I talked about struggling with impostor syndrome. This is something I do struggle with and feel, but, more recently, I realized—and have been processing, through a great deal of resistance and anguish—that I attributed far too many fundamental things about myself and my own mind to impostor syndrome than makes sense. I could go on about that, about coming to understand depression, and then realizing I don’t understand it at all, and trying to come to terms that it is, in fact, something I struggle with and have struggled with for long, long time, in far more acute ways recently than in the past, but for now I think this is all that needs to be said.

These are things I struggle with, these things are part of the climb of creativity and art for me. They won’t be for everyone, as we all have our own struggles, obstacles, resistances.

One of the most important things I realized, somewhat recently, is this:

I used to think that, were I to become a successful enough writer to support myself as a full-time writer, I would adjust my writing schedule to be much more disciplined. I used to think there was some line I needed to cross, some validation I needed to receive, in order to become the kind of writer I someday wanted to be. And I used to fall into the trap that life was in the way of art, like having to go to work.

I don’t think that way anymore. I genuinely feel my life has changed since coming to this realization.

I decided to write as if I were already a successful writer, and the result is that I’m more productive than i’ve ever been. For a few weeks, recently, I was writing 2,000 words a day, striving for that word count because that’s the number Stephen King names in his book “On Writing.” I didn’t always reach 2,000 words, but I was always close enough to feel content, and the striving was more important than the actual quota. This was interrupted by an intense, unrelated drop into depression, but I’ve been working back towards that and coming up strong. I set time aside every day, sometimes in short bursts, to write, and some days it comes smoothly, other days it’s like pulling teeth out—to borrow a metaphor I’ve heard a few times. I’ve learned it’s more important to get it written instead of getting it right, which is all the more comforting because of my refined revision process. You can’t revise and improve what isn’t written at all. So get it written.

I decided to stop valuing the wrong opinions, to stop looking at art any way aside from how I chose to look at it, and this has brought me peace. Everyone has their opinion, everyone has their influence—positive or negative—and everyone, most important, has their own process. There is no “This should be done this way,” or “This is how art is,” there is only the individual’s opinion and personal process, each as valid as the other. What is true of one person’s creative process—or even life, for that matter—won’t necessarily be true of yours. Sometimes one person’s can even be toxic to yours. Sometimes inspiring.

And I’ve learned that life and art aren’t ever in the way of each other. If I could become a full-time writer, I’d absolutely make adjustments in my life, but I wouldn’t quit my job, wouldn’t turn into a different person or drop off the face of the world. On the contrary, I value the various aspects of my life in how they feed each other and enrich each other, especially the work, the grind, the hard parts, even when those parts feel impossible to trudge through or threaten to drive me mad.

That’s life.

That’s art, too.

In his essay “The Myth of Sisyphus,” Albert Camus illustrates a profound point about life using the Greek myth of Sisyphus, who was punished by the gods to push a giant boulder up a mountain. Whenever he finally reached the top, the boulder was doomed to roll back down to the bottom, and Sisyphus was doomed to return back down the mountain in order to push it back to the top. Over and over in eternity. But the idea is to imagine Sisyphus happy. The struggle isn’t something to be overcome in our relationships, in our art, in our lives. It’s something to revere. Work doesn’t have to be done with the goal of finishing, otherwise the work becomes torture on the way to the end.

Camus said it best.

“The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

Looking Back at My Unpublished Work - A Book Called "Starlight"

Before I can feel capable—or ready—to make a post like this for my most recent book, “The Girl with a Fairy’s Heart,” I thought it’d be fun to take an excursion through some of my old, developmental, unpublished work. This is in no particular order. I like to think, without meaning it at all, that this is somewhat brave of me—only because some of this old stuff is TERRIBLE. Delightfully, even insightfully, terrible.

But reading back on old stuff has lately been a wonderfully enlightening experience for how it makes me able to see my growth as a writer. I suggest to any writer who’s reading this to try this sometime, if it’s something you don’t already do. Emotionally prepare yourself to look back at some early work of your own. See how much you’ve grown, where and how you’ve improved, and cringe and laugh and be appalled.

I thought I’d start with a story of mine I came across recently. It was a short novel—about 50,000 words—called “Starlight,” written around 2012 and finished, I think, in 2013.

For some context, I was ten years old when I first tried writing a novel. So I’d been writing for about seven years or so. I don’t know how many books I’d written by that point, exactly, but it was a decent amount (not that any of them would be considered “readable” by my own standards, or by any standards).

“Starlight” was about a teenage girl named Carly Tills. The story begins with the death of her father—an apparent suicide. Later, in the course of her grieving, she begins to learn more about the man her father really was. For years he’d been obsessed with a serial killer he called Starlight. and had written several books on the killer. In some ways this was a coming-of-age story as Carly learns that her father was never the man she knew him to be. In other ways it was a meditative thriller as Carly suspects the serial killer is still out there and may have killed her father, and may now be targeting her.

It was a pretty strange story. But I remember it was incredibly fun to write.

And the writing… oh god, the writing…

What’s amazing to me about looking back on this book now, and on the writer I used to be, is how much I’ve grown since. My writing was very close to stream-of-consciousness back then, and I was able to pour writing out unself-consciously, charging forward. This is exactly what I needed to do. I’d have it no other way. But I just didn’t have the tools that I have now as a writer and storyteller.

Some of this is fundamental, which makes the story a delight to look back on. Filler words are in abundance, plenty of “that,” and “very”; or broader fillers like “began to,” or such stuff as “completely full.” I had also never heard what it meant to cut out filters in narrative, so there’s a lot of descriptions filtered through the character’s point of view rather than presented directly to the reader. By that I mean, I wrote “Carly saw…” instead of just describing what she saw. This creates an unconscious distance between the details of the story and the reader. This is so rampant in “Starlight,” I can’t even give any specific examples. It is, however, a mistake that all writers have to make at least once, or through a period of time as they develop, in able to learn not to do it.

Thankfully there are no mistakes of the “would of” instead of “would have” variety. I realize, as I look back over this story, that I’ve always been good at grammar and the technical nature of writing. I wasn’t great, but I had an intuition for it. That wasn’t always the case with sentence structure, but I was using semicolons correctly, for the most part (yes, I’m far too proud). So there’s that.

Many of my descriptions were abstract rather than visual. You’d get the feeling of a place without much to visualize it.

Oh, and this is a big one. Luckily it wasn’t something I overdid, but it’s something I’ve certainly overdone in some of my earliest stories. Occasionally, in “Starlight,” you will find such offenders as “a harsh gasp rattled violently through her.” This isn’t as bad as it could be. But it’s an unfortunate mistake to describe emotion as something that “strikes” or “rattles through” or “grips.” Well… I shouldn’t say this with authority, and I don’t mean to, because there is a proper way of doing this that isn’t so verbose or flat or, simply put, amateur. The key is usually, in my experience, simplicity and in how visual it is. Fortunately, there are such lines as this in “Starlight,” to balance it out:

“What? Me? What do you want?” She gripped the strap of her messenger bag at the hollow of her shoulder, tightened her lips shut.

It’s not great, but it’s not “shock swarmed her body” or something… godawful like that. This harkens back to one of the oldest but most useful pieces of writing advice, when employed properly: Show, don’t tell.

Also a cringeworthy delight to encounter in this book is the way I used words to excess. Non-visual descriptions pepper every paragraph, needless nuanced additions and modifiers engorge every sentence. And sometimes, as it is with young, developmental writing, there’s just unexplainably awkward sentence constructions, like this big old winner:

Having forgotten her phone on her bed, Carly had no way of knowing what time it was nor how long she had been out, but it wasn’t long before she turned—hugging herself, constantly wiping tears from her eyes and cheeks—for her house and started walking for it.

The awkwardness of it speaks for itself. I mean… what was I thinking?

Although there is a great deal of potential for character in this story, as in character arcs, the fact that it could be a coming-of-age crossed with a thriller, the story never really grasped that potential. I wasn’t talented enough for that yet. Therefore, as with many of my early work, “Starlight” is a work of great potential and very little meeting of that potential. But that’s how we grow.

The endearing element of this is how I threw myself into writing and, though I didn’t know it at the time, learned a lot from it. Even now, here I am, learning from it.

Recently I’ve discovered that the fantasy writer Brandon Sanderson has entire series of lectures available to watch on YouTube. While I’ve yet to read any Sanderson, I now fully intend to. I’ve learned so much from these lectures on the anatomy of storytelling, you could say, as well as on the business of writing. Whether you read fantasy doesn’t matter; if you’re a writer, I highly recommend seeking out those lectures. I bring this up because of some of the things Sanderson has to say about progressing as a writer, and certain markers and stepping stones that show you are progressing in the right direction.

Not long after completing “Starlight,” and being young and with only a surface-level understanding of the business of publishing—and knowing even less about the importance of editing and the power of the revision process—I sent the book out to publishers and agents. This is something I was always persistent with, happily so. I have a hefty pile of rejection letters both physical and virtual, and a few of those are for “Starlight.”

One of the major things Brandon Sanderson spoke about in one of his lectures was about querying literary agents. He said a good indication that you, as a writer, have gone from amateur to semi-pro, is when you begin to receive personalized notes on rejection letters. When it isn’t merely a generic “This isn’t the right time for us” or something of that sort, but comes with something personal, even if it’s just a tiny note, that’s when you know that you’re approaching a readiness for real publication. I can still remember the first time I got a personal rejection letter—it was on a manuscript I sent to Tor, one of the largest publishers out there. I don’t remember how long ago that was, exactly, but it was long before “Starlight.” To receive a personal note from such a major publisher is still, to me, very cool to think about. In fact, I forgot about that until recently. The note was for a book called “Charlie Louise,” and it was a small note, but said something to the effect of, “This is pretty good. Keep writing.”

“Starlight” was one of those early books that I actually got a couple of requests on. I sent it to a few publishers (and even sent it to Black Rose Writing, the current publisher of my first three books, which means that I proudly have a few rejection letters from them), and sent it to a few agents. If I recall correctly, two agents got back to me wanting to see more pages, which in itself is a stepping stone. One of the personal notes I got back on “Starlight” was this: “While the voice on this is excellent, we had trouble connecting with your main character.” A disappointment? Sure. But in the writing business, and for me, this was such a great thing to hear back. Rejection letters are reason to celebrate; they’ve always made me excited because they’re what I expect. It’s only now, years later, that I look back on this particular rejection letter and realize how big of a stepping stone this was, and how important it is to me now.

Reading through a few pages of “Starlight,” I see exactly what that agent meant. I’d been writing long enough to begin developing a voice. That may be one of my strongest areas as a writer: my voice. Then again, I’m still terrible at objectivity when it comes to my own writing, and am evidently insecure about it in a number of ways, but I think I can say that with confidence: My voice is one of my strong spots. The writing in “Starlight” is permeated by a lack of experience and room for growth, but that’s exactly what was meant to be happening with that book. That’s the age I was, both as a person and a writer. And it’s such fun to look back on now, because yes, I think it’s pretty terrible. But there are elements of it that are strong enough to remain interesting, especially because I can see how I’ve developed those elements—even more so, how I’ve grown through so many of the faults that “Starlight” is riddled with. For an early story, however, it dealt with some interesting themes, blending morality in bold ways, exploring the intricacies of growing up and facing reality.

One thing I didn’t expect from looking back at old unpublished work is how it charts my growth as a writer and storyteller. It’s been a refreshing experience, insightful and enlightening. It’s even helping me gain some perspective, helping me look at myself now in a different way. I can see more clearly how I’ve grown as a writer, how I continue to grow. It’s making me feel proud of myself and more confident than I normally feel going forward in my career. All the more reason that I suggest this to you, any writers or artists reading this. Try taking a look at the stuff that you’re normally embarrassed to look back on. You may just end up feeling proud of yourself.

Looking Back at My Own Work - Fairlane Road (2017)

I began writing Fairlane Road not long after finishing Other Endings. I knew from the start that it was a strange story, and knew very little about where it was going. The rest of the book, especially the end product, was a surprise to me—in some ways, it’s still a surprise.

I think part of that is because I don’t always know how to classify my own books. That is especially true of Fairlane Road, though time and reflection have given me some perspective.

I finished writing it in February of 2016. Although the book is only about 150 pages, it took me roughly a whole year to write. At the time, it was the hardest book to finish that I had ever written despite its small size.

Looking back at this book, I can see how it was a struggle to find my voice. I was emerging from some important parts of my life and stepping into a new stage in my progression as a writer. My relationship to language—how I used language—was changing, especially after my discovery of Raymond Carver, who remains possibly my favorite writer of all time (I’ll likely do a post about him, someday). And over the course of Fairlane Road, I think my voice evolved and settled into a comfortable rhythm. Of course, I’ve evolved so much more as a writer since then, but this was an instrumental book in my development.

Partway through, in fact roughly halfway through the story, my writing slowed down almost to a stop. I realized that the antagonist of the story—Charlie Knox—was not who I’d originally thought. The story took on a deeper philosophical meaning, and from there it was complex to me, harder to write. At one point I got so stumped and writing felt like such a chore, I abandoned the book and began to write short stories. I needed to write, I always need to write, but it was no longer fun working on this book. Taking a break turned out to be a fantastic thing to do. It gave me space to breathe. I had fun coming up with short stories and finishing them within a day or two.

It was as if I’d rediscovered the joy of writing. Reminded myself of what it’s supposed to be, what it can be. And I was able to return to Fairlane Road after about a month (if I recall correctly) and the rest of the story went much more smoothly.

And, as with any past work, there’s plenty to critique.

I think the very beginning of the story is a bit stilted, primarily in the dialogue. I’ve had a friend confirm this, though luckily it isn’t so bad as to be unforgivable, and the story cruises along nicely so that this stiltedness dissolves.

There are a couple of small early scenes with Charlie Knox that feel a little overly theatrical, again with dialogue. This makes the scenes pretty fun, even if they skirt a bit with the cartoonish. I believe this is a result of my not knowing Charlie Knox well enough yet. Had I been a better editor, I could’ve fixed this in subsequent drafts, since I came to know him better later in the story.

And perhaps one of the most interesting things about my own relationship with this book, to me, is how I think of the character of Andrew Jean, Jezebel’s father. When I first wrote the book, he was one of my favorite characters to write. He’s a bit cynical, pensive and philosophical and stubborn, and he has a troubling connection with Charlie Knox. This connection isn’t as interesting as Jezebel’s, but it’s enough to make Andrew’s and Charlie’s confrontation a tense one. As time has passed and I’ve reread the book, now that it’s been published for awhile, I don’t feel the same about Andrew Jean. I think he’s overly serious, and his cynicism is a sad weakness since his philosophies border on nihilistic. There is a self-importance about him that makes him a compelling character, but not one I’m as personally fond of anymore.

That isn’t so much a flaw in the story as it is interesting to me, and kind of exciting. The way my relationship with my own characters changes over the years. I’m sure any writer might find joy in exploring this with their own past work.

Perhaps the biggest thing about Fairlane Road to me is how I feel about its philosophies, because it is decidedly a philosophical book.

While there is much discussed by the characters on the deeper nature of good and evil, right and wrong, and other similar things, I think the most important and impactful philosophies are the unspoken ones. It’s all good and fine what the characters speak about, even if I would rewrite much of it now if I could, but the heart of the story is in what the story says without saying.

Vague spoilers, by the way, if you’ve not read the book.

My last reread revealed this to me about it. How, really, the main opposing characters represent light and darkness at odds with each other. And, by the end, the course of events implies the powerful importance of meeting our dark sides and embracing them, seeing darkness as the other face of light, death as the other face of life. It’s a simple message, but I still find the way my book explores it to be compelling and thought-provoking. And very weird, too.

On the note of positive aspects of the story, I’m still proud of some of its structural tricks and the unfolding of the narrative. And the characters have stayed with me, especially Jezebel who, though embodying the light, is far from perfect and whose actions are often questionable. I love writing closely in her perspective (though still in third person), meaning I almost never judge her actions as the narrator, meaning it’s up to you to judge her as you will. This wasn’t intentional in Fairlane Road, but is something I tried to do in the sequel, which I’ll discuss more in my next post. But the effect of this has been a delightful range of interpretations of Jezebel; it’s different for almost every reader I’ve talked to. Some of those perspectives were surprising and enlightening. I love that.

This book was a culmination of many things. Its primary thematic elements stem from far back in my life as a writer. I have a number of developmental works from my youth that deal with young people who straddle the line between our world and another. This goes way back with me, for some reason—and is part of the reason the writer Neil Gaiman is such a beloved favorite, and a definite influence. I’ve even had characters who very much resembled Jezebel in past books, and they too were torn between our world and another strange world. Fairlane Road was the first time this ever came together successfully in a story of mine.

It is also a book of many influences, from the poetry of William Butler Yeats, to the screenplays of Ingmar Bergman and also the first season of the show True Detective. And the character of Charlie Knox began in a dream. Early in my conceiving of the story, I had the character of Jezebel, I had the town of Lamplight, I had an idea of what the Higher World was like. And then I had a dream about a ruined city where the streets are full of trash and degradation, and there is a cult run by a married couple. The married couple were psychopaths, completely insane and depraved. And they had a child. The rest of the dream was simple fun and strangeness, but the idea of a child of two cult leaders, and who that child would grow up to be, is how the character of Charlie Knox originated. It’s one of the few times that a dream has truly inspired me.

Feel free to comment to let me know what you think, leave any feedback, or let me know what you’d like to see in future posts. Thanks for reading!

Looking Back at My Own Work - Other Endings (2016)

I thought it might be interesting to take a small journey back through some of my own writing. And this blog seemed like the perfect place to do it. What I plan to do is make this into a small series of posts as I periodically take a look back at my own work, mainly my three published books. I may also do the same with some of my older books, which for now shall remain unnamed and will forever remain unpublished (for the better). It might be fun.

Feel free to leave feedback, let me know what you’d like to see in these posts (or any future posts, in general).

For now, cringing as little as possible, let’s take a look at my first published book, Other Endings (2016). This should be interesting. For me, at least. Hopefully for you, too.

Other Endings is the story of an emotionally battered and despondent man named Lester Halley who flees his life and ends up in a small English town called Margaret’s Mourning. He begins to learn more about the mysterious small town, comes to know some of its people—the good and bad—and learns that it is haunted by ghosts. For him, these ghosts are both literal and metaphorical, seeming to arise from the darkest part of his past, connected with a love he lost long ago.

I began writing Other Endings in 2014, and finished in April of 2015. Since then, the amount I’ve grown as a writer is… immense, in every single way. For this reason, as this book was published at the end of 2016, it’s hard to look back on. As a writer, I suffer from the constant feeling that I can always do better, always make something better. It’s a driving force, one that I’ve managed to discipline and transform into productivity, but sometimes it is a torment. I’ve learned that that’s the case with anything of mine that gets put out into the world. I look back at my own work and think, If I could have just one more draft. And any number of variations of that. For me, no book is ever completely done. This is especially true of Other Endings. Oh, the things I could do to improve this book, given the chance.

I ramble.

In the way of critique, there is much to say about it.

There are a handful of logical issues with the book, mostly ones involving its setting of a small English town.

There is an issue of genuine wordiness, as this was a truly developmental book for me as a writer. It came out of a difficult and tumultuous time in my life—and was almost a much darker story. I was adrift, lacking a grounded sense of self and relying on exterior things and people for a feeling of meaning and self-worth. I learned a lot about myself during this time, and regret a lot about how I was, but it was a learning experience and it helped me become who I am today. I took the world, I took life itself, for granted. I took people for granted. I isolated myself behind barriers of opinion and judgment and fear and cynicism. I’m sure these feelings, in some ways, made their way into the book, into the characters, making it, for me, quite an interesting one to look back on. Maybe that’s why there are parts that still make me cringe. I was a much different person, a much different writer, when I wrote this book. Much younger, in so many ways.

Plus I was doing a lot to experiment with language and sentence structure and words. The result is that it is a book of excess from the point of view of writing.

While there are a few good characters in the book, there is so much more that could’ve been done in the way of characterization. As the writer of the book looking back on it, I think a lot of the dialogue could’ve been rewritten and given more subtext. I remember trying to be very direct with how the characters expressed themselves, but that doesn’t always work here.

I also feel that there are elements of it that come from too raw of an emotional place, and perhaps misrepresent mental illness from a broader perspective. I haven’t reread the book with this in mind to confirm whether or not that is the case, more so it is a feeling I have about it.

It is also straight-up incredibly weird. There are some reviews of the book that show me it was misinterpreted on a surface level, as to me this book was always much more metaphorical in nature not only with some of its specifics, but in a broader sense as well. There’s even a point in the book when it goes almost full allegory, with Lester Halley’s confrontation of the “agony god” of Margaret’s Mourning. Weird stuff.

That’s where, I think, the book’s strengths are. Not that its being metaphorical justifies its flaws at all, it simply offers explanation for certain aspects from which it can be critiqued.

For as much as I can critique it negatively, I’m still proud of it some ways. It may not be a particularly well-written novel, but I do think one of my strengths is simply in storytelling. Once the story picks up speed, which may be around the halfway point or so, it carries real momentum. At least that’s what I’ve found on rereads. And many of its emotional notes strike quite as I intended them.

It is a first novel, and I’ve been assured that there are so many authors out there who look back at their past books, especially their first books, and have something to this effect to say: “It’s a first novel, I know what’s wrong with it, and I’ve come to peace with it.” The “coming to peace” part is what I’m working on.

One of my favorite things that I’ve heard said about Other Endings is that it isn’t a fun book to read, it isn’t one that you read and necessarily “like,” in a conventional sense, but it’ll stay with you. That kind of feedback makes me happy. I’d like to write books that are fun to read, too, but this book was never intended to be that. It was never really intended to be anything. I wrote this before I even knew how it felt to be published, or how it felt to have an audience in any substantial sense. And I may not have a truly substantial audience still, but it’s a published book, it’s out there in the world, and that is both scary and exciting. As for Other Endings, the general feeling is: Yes, I’m published, and I’d love for you to read my work… but if you don’t mind, maybe don’t start with my first one?

And yet it’s fun being able to say that at all. The part of my mind where my impostor syndrome resides goes crazy with the thought of this book and everything I think is wrong with it and everything I want to be as a writer, but that’s always how it’s going to be with pretty much anything I write.

Another of my favorite things about the book, brought to light by a review I read of it, is my treatment of ghosts. A reviewer described how unique it was that I treated the ghosts of this story with empathy, as interested in their stories and their feelings as in the feelings of the living characters. The funnest parts of it to write were the haunted elements, the ghosts—and the character of Angie, the little blind girl who “sees” the ghosts and is connected to them. She’s probably my favorite character of the book, though undoubtedly I’d be able to write her so much better now.

So, in conclusion, Other Endings has a lot of problems both on the surface and beneath. Some of its problems are broad enough that, if I were given the chance and wished to devote that much time to it, I would probably rewrite the whole thing from scratch. But that’s a given with any past work, isn’t it? I’m gradually, continually learning to see—always with support—how cringing at past work is a gift, a sign of having grown.

There is some good to be found at the core of Other Endings, but the book needed research put into it, it needed a heavy editorial hand (the kind I have long since developed). But there are aspects of it that shine through, and I’ll always have an awkward fondness for it in my heart. It’s my first published novel, after all. And that remains the biggest stepping stone of my life as a writer so far.