The first time I wrote about Jack I was in the Iwasaki Library on the 3rd Floor of the Walker Building on Emerson’s campus. I was sitting in one of the wooden cubicles lining the quiet stacks, meant for no-nonsense focus. I would later spend eight-hour shifts there banging out my senior thesis.
But that day, I just had a story due for my Intermediate Creative Fiction workshop and had no ideas. I opened a blank word document and started writing. It is the only time I have ever truly experience magic in my writing. I didn’t think at all, but a story, unpunctuated and rough, came out from beginning to end in ten or twelve pages. A story about Jack, who loved his mother, loved his brother, and loved his baby sister and had his world rented apart. A story about what a good kid does when he wants to stay, but the victory is to leave.
The experience of this story manifesting on the page was so alien to me that it was like I had conjured the characters rather than thought them up. I don’t take credit for the idea at all. I was just in its way when it blew through me.
I agonize over doing it justice. The novella that I eventually produced my senior year of college is my best work, it gave shape and heart and character to my short story and I felt like I had told it to the best that it could be told. But Jack wouldn’t let me go. There was an after that scratched at me, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. Finally, I saw that it wasn’t an after really, but a larger scope. That the story wasn’t just in the leaving, but in the healing.
I still don’t know if I’m going to do this story justice. I’m flooded with doubt. But after years of tracing the thread, I have never been closer to what feels like the truth of the story. Closer, not there just yet maybe. The doubts crash over me now that I’m on the edge of sharing my first readable (non-trash) draft of this novel.
I wrote a novel. It may never go out in the world but I got to the final scene tonight. I typed the final line. I wrote a novel. Tomorrow, I’ll spend the day reading it end to end, edit the obvious and send off to my first round of readers where I will finally get some desperately needed feedback. I just want to tell this story the right way. Getting closer.
With Love,
Natalie