Robin Hood WIP diaries (1) - the need to write
As most of you know, I am really busy author-wise these days. I am doing the edits for my next book, promoting my previous one, and pumping out 5 to 6 articles every month for the magazine I’m working for.
I have been steadily outlining my new Robin Hood story over this past spring and summer, and although by now it’s pretty solid, little snippets of dialogues and scenes come to me every now and then (usually just when I wake up, or trying to sleep, super cool) and I just write them down and insert them into the outline. (Example: “he grabs her and kisses her for 2 pages” lol)
At this rate, the book will have been writen in its entirety by the time I sit down to write it. Which is good, more than good, it’s actually perfect, if you are at all familiar with the writing process. The book is SUPPOSED to have been half-written already by the time you sit down at your laptop/typewriter/notebook.
However, this creates a real problem for me.
You see, I write, because that’s who I am: a writer. Writing is what comes out of me. And when I don’t write, it feels like I’m not me. It feels like I’m not the best me I can be. I’m less, somehow. And much as I enjoy polishing up a story, getting feedback from betas and editors, and putting it out there for lovely readers to find, those things are not why I write. Those things are what I have to do in order to make a living out of storytelling. In order to be able to buy food, put simply. (Like, extremely simply).
But I need to write. Every day, if possible, Twice a day. The days on which I write, even if I’m sad or missing my dad, or crying, or in bed, are always 10 times better than the best days when I don’t write. Why is that? Is it because the writer me is the best version of myself? Is it because whenever I write, something good comes out of me, and that’s therapeutic and fulfilling? Is it because I always, always have something to say, and when I have said even a paragraph of it, I feel a little bit lighter and a little bit more whole?
They say don’t write to say something, write because you have something to say.
All these years, before I started writing and my health improved, I felt trapped. Trapped inside tears I could never cry (even crying all day long wasn’t enough), anger I couldn’t express (everyone else was grieving with me, I couldn’t rage against the unfairness and the insanity of a vain loss, could I?) and questions I couldn’t put into words (why did he have to go? why do I have to keep going now, if he’s not bere?). But now, especially with the Robin Hood story, I feel as if I can express all those things.
Robin has lost his father, too, and he feels as if he is being held underwater, suffocated slowly by the injustice and dissipation of all he sees around him. The first thing that pulls him out, and makes him take a metaphorical gulp of air for the first time, is the friendship of 3 other men who, like him, have lost all hope of happiness. So, before starting to fight for what’s right, he has to live. To stay alive. And to find a way to enjoy that.
So, after all, it’s beginning to make sense. Here they are, everything I need to be talking about, in this story:
My grief, the absence, the loss of all sense of what’s fair and what’s not.
I did channel a lot of those feelings into No Vain Loss (hmm the title is kind of a giveaway, isn’t it?) but I don’t know if one story was enough. Maybe no amount of stories ever wil be.
Maybe, to paraphrase something I saw in the Hitchcock film, Rebecca, I will be “drawing the same tree over and over again, because it’s perfect”. Well, neither my grief or depression are perfect, in fact they are horrible, but those are the monsters I need to leave behind.
And when I write, they never seem to catch me.
