I’m over 15,500 words into my Camp NaNoWriMo goal.
And what happens today? I come up with a new project idea. It’s still new and I have a lot of reading to do (and writing, of course) before I’m ready to start really plugging away at it. But I am excited by it. It…I don’t know, came to me so easily, almost like an afterthought, that now I wonder how it wasn’t obvious to me before. I guess that’s how inspiration works sometimes, right? Maybe all this poetry I’m writing freed up some space in my imagination and this idea was finally able to present itself.
The idea is old, but new for me. I’ve been playing with form and specifically blending the boundaries between genres (like prose and poetry, essay and poetry, memoir and essay, memoir and poetry, etc), and now I’m looking at blending the lines between essay and fiction, using fiction as a way of exploring my marriage, my education, my friendships, the loss of some of those friendships, the death of my grandmother, navigating the pandemic, dating during the pandemic, and other struggles that have gone on in 2020.
I’ve read two books this year (one of them I’m still reading) that have influenced me in this decision: O, Fallen Angel by Kate Zambreno and Slater Orchard by Darcie Dennigan. Both of these works of fiction utilize narrative and story structure in unique and unconventional ways that create stories that feel almost folkloreish, like fairy tales even thought they’re not. These writers aren’t blurring the lines between fiction and nonfiction, but they are approaching narrative from a place that allows it to be true and untrue simultaneously.
I have a few reasons for considering this project, most of them I can’t go into yet. One reason I can give is that the idea is intriguing to me. As writers, we are supposed to follow where inspiration leads us, right? Inspiration has become, for me, a kind of river, a magical space that flows along, carving its way through the mind, through the earth, through flesh, through heart ache and love; it carried me to the form of the essay; it carried me to poetry; and now it’s carrying me to this.
I can’t wait to see what comes from this.
“Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow until the faucet is turned on.”
I think that L’Amour quote fits perfectly well with what you’re going through right now. Wishing you a continual stream of inspiration throughout!
Absolutely! My M.F.A. director said to me in April that the point of the first year of an M.F.A. is to write as much as possible, to explore on the page and produce as much creative writing as we can. And we can’t do that if we’re constantly shutting off the faucet, as it were. I think there is something to be said for picking a project and sticking with it until it’s done, but knowing when that’s necessary is also important. Sometimes we can get ourselves hung up on one thing when what we need is to just let the words flow.
I look at it like cross training in fitness. Just cardio is good, and just resistance training is good, but putting them together produces the best results because you’re working out more of your body. Allowing myself to work on fiction and nonfiction and poetry at the same time will allow me to really build those creative muscles, especially since I’m interested in the crossover between the different genres.
Thanks for the comment and the inspiring quote!