In Constant Conversation With Myself
a novel update
Six weeks ago, my year-long writing workshop began. It’s a virtual course, with the fourteen of us spread across the U.S. (and one intrepid writer who joins in the middle of the night from Europe.) I wish I could attend our weekly Zoom sessions via my pretty home office, with its perfect backdrop of floor-to-ceiling books, but my family’s schedule and our house’s layout (said home office is a pass-through with no doors, near my son’s bedroom) render that impossible. So instead, I drive across town each week to my husband’s office, and attend class there. This is all fine—better than fine, in fact. I’m really, really enjoying the course. The other writers are talented and supportive and smart; our instructor is brilliant; the deadlines and exercises and required reading have awoken parts of my brain I haven’t used since college. It’s been a while since I’ve been in any sort of school environment, and I’m reminded that I love it. And I’m going to finally finish this fucking book.
Right now, our class is structured so that every two weeks, we critique two writers’ manuscripts—and this week, I’m up. I submitted the first twenty-five pages of my novel, and the next day, I left with my family for our annual group trip in the mountains to celebrate the start of summer. The timing was intentional; I knew I’d be feeling anxious for my upcoming workshop, and that the long weekend of swimming and spritzes and campfires with friends and their kids who are my kid’s friends would take my mind off it. It did, but now we’re back and so is the anxiety.
On Sunday, while we were driving home, I received one classmate’s written critique several days early. It points out a few flaws in the book that I already know about but don’t know how to fix, which is somehow both a relief and incredibly frustrating. I’ve been on my own with this project for so long. This is the first time anyone has read it in its current iteration. I know that this is a vital part of the process, and that it will improve my writing. I also know that the writing is not bad, or I wouldn’t have gotten into this class. And yet, I’m scared that I’m about to learn that the work this novel needs to become good is beyond my resources or capabilities. I’m also scared of the opposite. My thoughts bounce among good panic and bad panic. I can’t explain it well, but I can say that it feels similar to stage fright.
Whenever I booked a new role, especially if it was for the theater, I curated a collection of artistic works—across film, literature, visual art—that to me felt representative of the character’s psyche. Sometimes I was able to pull clues from the script (i.e. how the character spoke or what she ate; if she was from a specific time or place) but more often, I went off pure vibes—how I imagined the character saw and interacted with the world, and what types of art drew from me the emotions I needed to morph into that other person, night after night.
Sometimes, the focal point of the collection was a collage of torn magazines or an outfit. If only Pinterest had been a thing back then! But more often than not, the most important piece in the collection was a playlist. Music was the quickest way to trigger a Pavlovian response: I could hear a few bars of a song, and immediately be pulled from myself and dropped into someone else.
The last leading role I played as part of my theater company was one of my favorites: a war correspondent in Kabul, battling emotional demons while also navigating a decade-long love triangle. The role required me to conduct extensive research. I read a lot of articles; watched some documentaries. And I made a playlist designed to conjure my own experiences with heartache and longing and loss. The first song was “Un-Thinkable (I’m Ready)” by Alicia Keys, and it was sometimes the only song I listened to, over and over, as I drove up Highland Avenue at dusk, my sense of self softening in preparation. The opening chords still send a chill down my spine.
From a craft standpoint, what I was doing was pulling psychological triggers; creating shortcuts to my most visceral memories, the ones I knew (from years of training and practice) could change the look of my face, the sound of my voice. The armchair psychologists on Twitter will tell you psychological triggers are meant to be avoided, but for actors, they’re tools used to manipulate themselves; to open and access the parts of them they might otherwise drown. Often, the hardest step comes at the end of excavation, when it’s time to leave a character behind and put the tools away. Often, the triggers keep working when we no longer want them to, becoming an uncontrollable form of time travel. They can swallow people whole.
I think a lot about when Heath Ledger died, and Jack Nicholson was recorded saying in response: “That’s awful. I warned him.” Now, if you google it, you’ll read that he was referring to the dangers of Ambien. But I distinctly remember when it happened, and what actors around Hollywood were saying in hushed, superstitious circles: He was talking about playing the Joker; about how if you’re not careful, that kind of darkness can grab ahold and pull you under.
Since leaving the theater and LA long ago, I’ve had little use for my arsenal of psychological triggers. I wish I could somehow repurpose them for my writing, but in this mostly solitary setting, the ability to perform for an audience feels impractical at best. If I ever cry in a writing workshop, it won’t be intentional. I’m saving that for the next time I’m pulled over for speeding.
In our classes, we’ve been discussing the shapes a novel can take, and how it can be (to use our teacher’s phrasing) in constant conversation with itself, through the use of literary devices like repetition and theme. This contained communication is a way to make a novel feel complete and specific, rather than an arbitrary, floating story that could start and stop anywhere. A novel can circle around itself, folding and layering and connecting loose threads. I want to figure out how—how to make mine echo and reverberate; have it answer its own questions. My brain has been whirring like an overheated laptop, spinning, searching for patterns and keywords and happy accidents. I keep it focused on my book as much as possible, in every spare moment I can find.
As a mother, this is guilt-inducing. But as a writer, I have no choice. Whether or not I want or condone it, this book has become magnetized. It has grown its own gravitational pull.
I used to spend endless hours stuck nearly-still on the freeways of LA, wondering how the non-actors passed the time, with no lines to memorize. Since then, I’ve managed to fill the void with imaginary conversations; mental drafts of emails and texts I’ll never send. There are now problem-solving sessions; plotlines and motifs and lines of dialogue to add to the novel I’m working on or one I haven’t even started yet (yes, there are more but I need to finish this one first or I may explode.)
Art imitates life imitates art. I’m in constant conversation with myself, like the people who wander the Venice Beach Boardwalk at six a.m., wrapped in patchwork quilts and muttering obscenities. I’m rambling, circling, lost in my own echoes. I’m slipping in and out of the present moment, being a bad mom, wife, friend. And I can’t stop, because sometimes, it works. Sometimes, someone says something or does something, or a shadow falls across one of my son’s toys just so, and something clicks into place. I’ve added another layer, another fold. I’ve gotten closer to solving the mystery of my own brain by teasing this story out of it, holding it to the light. And now fourteen other people are peering over my shoulder, gearing up to tell me what they see in it, good lord.
Six weeks ago, I was driving to my husband’s office for my first writing class, propelled by nervous excitement as I pulled away from my house, my neighborhood. I hit the parkway that would lead me across town, and stepped on the gas. I turned the dial on the radio and there it was: the unmistakable intro to Alicia Keys’ “Un-Thinkable (I’m Ready.)” I turned it up and felt my eyes begin to water, my throat constrict. It was a perfect moment, when the story of my life circled back, repeated, folded over onto itself. I wish I’d thought of it.
The way this made me lol. And also, what’s your personal culture? Portrait of a mother’s brain. How did I not know that my favorite museum has a print shop? A stone fruit panzanella I’ve made twice in just as many weeks. (Related: this oddly satisfying harvest video.) So many ways to upgrade an IKEA kitchen. A fun, camp-themed lamp. The origin of the Thong Song blew my mind. Invite me to your bread dinner and I’ll bring a bouquet of butter roses. A home with a sundial dinner bell. Thoughts on a platform as a savings account, and on writing toward personal fantasy. I loved Babes, am currently enjoying Trying, and cannot wait for this book.
I got such a jolt hearing about your experience in the workshop ⚡️
Also the stills of Ken and Charlie made me laugh out loud.
On my way to YouTube to find that song!