No. 5: When the Novel Finally Comes

on getting out of my own way

Note: I wrote this post last week because this week, I’m on my first-ever solo writing retreat! I hope it’s going well!

mixed media by Alexandra Valenti

At the beginning of my sophomore year of high school, I was brushing my hair in English class. My teacher called on me to answer a question, knowing full well that I wasn’t paying attention, clearly peeved by my lack of respect and eager to make an example out of me. He succeeded. I was embarrassed, and he enjoyed watching me squirm.

My alma mater is a large private school commonly criticized for fostering an elitist and cutthroat culture. An example of said culture can be seen in the way the administration doles out punishments. Instead of enduring something ordinary like detention, students face consequences in the form of demerits—knocks on their Citizenship Grade, which starts at A and is factored into their GPA. For the type of kid who thrives in such an academic environment, there is no better disciplinary tool than shame. Clearly, my English teacher knew that.

The following week, we turned in our first papers. I cannot for the life of me remember what they were on, but I do remember this: The next day, after class, my teacher called me up to his desk.

I approached apprehensively, preparing myself for further humiliation. Instead, my English teacher looked at me solemnly, steepled his hands atop a pile of binders, and said: “I owe you an apology. I was hard on you because I didn’t think you were taking this class seriously. But I see that I was wrong. You’re an exceptional writer, and you clearly put a lot of effort into this assignment.”

His name was Mr. Staab, and he changed my life—not because he was the first teacher to see something promising in me (he wasn’t) or because he was the first adult to apologize (this was my quick-tempered father’s specialty) but because our interaction showed me how the dichotomous aspects of my personality could confuse other people. He showed me how other people saw me—a new version of me that had only begun to take shape.

I felt comfortable as a writer, a good student. I’d been those things for years. But I was only starting to grow into a teenaged girl, and I wasn’t yet sure what type of teenaged girl I was. I was learning that I cared about my looks and sometimes got attention for them; that I liked getting drunk on the weekends and wearing glitter eyeliner and boys who surfed. I liked having fun—and while that sounds silly and obvious, it wasn’t for me. I was a serious child, and was thus used to being taken seriously. But high school was a portal; I came out the other side a different person.

One night, I was with a group of friends at someone’s house. One of the guys we were always trying to impress asked my friend a homework-related question.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “Ask Liana. She’s the smart one.”

That’s a compliment, right? I should have felt proud. I knew I was smart. I was in more AP classes than any of my friends; it wasn’t a secret. So then why did I instead feel shame? Why did I feel as though I’d done something wrong?

In college, I joined a sorority and majored in creative writing and spent four years floating between two worlds. Most of my classmates fit a certain stereotype. They were writing the Great American Novel. They fancied themselves a modern-day Faulkner or Steinbeck or (if they partied) Bukowski. In every workshop, they gave me the same critique: I was skilled, but my subjects were superficial, my plot points trivial. I could write, but I wasn’t writing about stuff that mattered. They didn’t see the point. What was the point?

Poetry class, where I could pare my sentences back to the few that meant everything, were kinder to me. But I wasn’t delusional; I knew that no one was making a living writing poetry. And that’s what writing would be for me: how I’d make my living while pursuing an acting career. I wanted to be both a writer and an actress, but so many people told me that I had to choose. I was told over and over that I couldn’t be both. Writing was my constant companion, the partner that never let me down. But acting was exciting and sexy and made my pulse race. I was 22 and a solid decade away from learning what was good for me—so when writing tried to pull me closer, I took a step back. (Side note: I now see that this self-sabotage was likely connected to the fact that I was suffering from undiagnosed ADHD.)

While my classmates went on to MFA programs and well-received literary debuts, I built a portfolio of product descriptions and web copy and brand blogs—safe stuff. I was writing a lot, and even getting paid to do it, but I was hesitant to call myself a writer because if you googled my name, it didn’t look like I was a writer. I wasn’t publishing short stories in The New Yorker, or even how-tos in Seventeen. I didn’t have a byline, but I did have a steady paycheck—and it was just a day job, anyway. I didn’t need to labor over every syllable, to push my most tender self out through my fingertips. But every time someone I knew sold a script or landed on some bestseller list, my inner monologue muttered: “Why aren’t you doing that? You could be doing that.”

In the summer of 2016, long after I’d left Hollywood, my boyfriend (now husband) and I had 8 weddings to attend, each in a different city. Among the books I read on those flights, two left a profound impact: the memoir Cheap Cabernet by Cathie Beck, who was my boss at the time, and Sweetbitter by Stephanie Danler. The first reminded me that you don’t have to be a certain type of person to write a book, and the second reminded me of my own writing. Now, don’t get me wrong—I’m not saying that the quality of my writing is anywhere near Stephanie Danler’s. What I mean is that so many passages of that book felt lifted from my own life, from the lives of my friends—and they were also poetry. I’d never read anything so true to my lived experience as a young Millennial woman coming into her own while being kind of a scumbag about it, and the fact that the writing was also unequivocally literary blew my mind wide open. If people like me were writing books like that, then I had no excuse not to. Later that year, I began to write.

My shitty first draft was built in sporadic fits and starts, without an outline, over the course of four years. During that time, I also co-founded and grew my business, got married, and became pregnant; writing was never my main priority. It was a secret hobby performed in the quietest parts of night, after my brain had had a chance to empty itself of everything else. I didn’t like to talk about it, partly because I didn’t know how to describe what I was making, and partly because I was afraid that I wouldn’t finish it. But I did. I finished my first draft—and then, after taking a two-year hiatus to transform into a mom, I finished my second. The second one happened a lot faster, and now I’m halfway through the third, and I can describe what it is: a vibey coming-of-age story set in Los Angeles in the mid-aughts, about an aspiring actress who makes some questionable choices in the name of chasing her dreams. It’s exactly the type of book that I like to read—cerebral, but also a little smutty.

While reading through the first draft and cringing a lot, I created a reverse outline on color-coded Post-Its that I mapped onto a large piece of plywood. After finishing the second draft late last year, I created another outline in a Google sheet. It’s not as detailed as the first but instead breaks things down by chapter. Each has columns for word count, major moments and themes, new changes, and things that I want to be sure to double-check or revisit or change in the next round. I should finish this current draft with plenty of time to prepare for my year-long novel generator workshop that starts mid-May.

I’m not sure which pieces of this process I’ll keep the second time around (because yes, I do plan on writing a second book!) but the point is that I have a process—and more than that, I have a book. It’s not done, but it’s whole. Being able to say that makes me feel incredibly proud, but also strangely disconnected—as though I momentarily left my body, and when I returned, it had somehow written an entire fucking novel.

I know a common connection here is to childbirth, but I understand how my son was made; it’s biology. I don’t understand how a piece of art—a book, a performance, a song—materializes out of nothing. I liken the sensation to how I felt when I was acting. I’d spend hours memorizing and rehearsing, pacing around a studio or a theater or my bedroom. I knew that I was making something. But when it came time to finally step out onto the stage or in front of the camera, my everyday consciousness disappeared and in its absence occurred a strange alchemy that I’ve never been able to describe. It’s actually something that I’m actively trying to describe in my novel, and I fear that I keep falling short. It’s in the “revisit” column.

I want to get this novel ready to submit to agents, and while I figure that out, I want to start writing the next one. “This is the year I become a real writer,” I say to myself like a mantra, willing it to be true.

Momentum is vital for any creative endeavor. The artist must work hard to build that momentum, and then, once it begins to build itself, get out of the way. That sounds simple, but we know that in reality, getting out of the way can be hard. We’re afraid of change or success or losing control, and so many other things—work, family, laundry, healthy sleep habits—vie for our attention. We feel pulled in too many directions—and if you’re gonna drop one thing, it’s gonna be the thing that no one else is holding you accountable for. You find yourself' stepping in to block Momentum’s path, raising a hand, yelling: “Hold on, wait! Wait! Let me just take care of this one thing.” But that one thing is followed by another, and another—and before you know it, the trail’s overgrown or the weather’s changed or your legs are tired and wouldn’t it be so much easier to just choose a different direction, do something else?

One reason I launched this newsletter was to make something that would hold me accountable to my writing. Declaring that this “is the year I become a real writer” in public raises the stakes. Call it my Citizenship Grade.

I don’t want to change course. I’m too far gone, and I’m having fun. I want to let this novel flood my brain so I can empty it out onto the page; let it run wild and racing down the trail, doing things that I don’t remember being part of. I want to jump out of the way and watch it rush past, better than I remember. I want to chase it, to see where it goes.