Running Experiments
on furniture arrangements, failed novels, and other necessary attempts
I spent the past month dabbling in fiction. I was running it as an “experiment,” something I tell myself so my inner censor doesn’t turn on. A failed experiment is still a successful experiment, so truly, there’s no such thing as failure.
I wrote 42,000 words, bringing me to a total of 48,000 overall, which sounds successful, except when I tell you that in the final 11 days, I wrote maybe 2,000. Perhaps because my inner censor turned itself on or perhaps because I need to adopt a different balance of structure and discovery writing, or perhaps because of the thing I kept telling myself in those last eleven days: “Who are you to try to write a whole novel?” As I reread my words and murmured “shit” under my breath every morning.
There is no such thing as a failed experiment, though. When I talked to a longtime novelist last week, she asked me how it was going, and I responded, “It’s terrible.”
“Well, these things take time.”
***
***
I’m a very good ideator. I’m also a very good starter. But somewhere along the way, I quit starting because I was too embarrassed by my tally of abandoned projects. Bringing up the memory of things I started and then got bored with was mortifying.
So starting a new project, starting a new idea, and even telling people about it (gross gross).
This is how I wrote a feature screenplay and it still sits on my desktop in the middle of its second draft. (I will pick it back up again someday.)
Or the different storytelling projects or websites I have started. (RIP)
A couple of feature documentaries I spent months working on and filming just sit on hard drives.
And my novel, which needs some thickening in its plot but has a premise I like (but not enough to tell you or anyone else about), would add to that tally… but this one, I will finish.
But not starting things due to the shame of not being a good manager of said things is not the answer either.
I’ve learned that the hard way. In my non-creating years, I got used to the groans from my children and husband when they’d come home to the house being rearranged, yet again. Or the 100+ books I’d read every year (which Julia Cameron says is a sign of a blocked artist— rude). Or online shopping when I can’t sleep in the middle of the night, thinking that this book or this thing is going to be the key that will finally set at rest my churning mind.
One of my favorite comfort movies is Where’d You Go Bernadette by Richard Linklater. It’s based on the novel by Maria Semple (which I will confess, I have never read). I’ve tried to be sophisticated, but I really prefer to consume media that is more buttery servings of mashed potatoes rather than goat cheese and beet salad. Cate Blanchett’s character is a neurotic, agoraphobic woman who is described as “notorious” and a “disgrace.”
And there’s one spot in the movie when she is lunching with an old friend and former colleague and obsessing about all of her things and he stops her and says, “People like you must create. That's what you were brought into this world to do, Bernadette. If you don't you become a menace to society. I think there's one very simple answer to all of your problems get your ass back to work and create something.”
And because I’ve already spoiled it, here he is saying it:
***
I watched this and felt so offended because even though I would refuse to refer to myself as an artist or a creative or writer or anything really other than a person trying, it exposed something deep in my gut.
And I know that even if I may have no title other than that, I also have to create, or else my insides will begin to rot, and I’ll be a bitter old woman in five years’ time.
So, to begin, I started experiments. And I am still running them. And this novel was just another one of my experiments. I insist I must try every furniture arrangement, even the bad ones to know that I have the best design (much to my family’s chagrin), the stubbed toes and shin bruises are part of my process of understanding what I like and don’t like. This project is like that. I have to try because the process of trying is what will show me if this is something I like. If the words flow, and if the story can find me, as I sit, unaware, thinking the story is about something else (and it worked).
And while the experiment for November ended, I am 85 days into morning pages, and somewhere around day 50, I sat in my living room, trying to write what I thought would be the scene, when I stumbled into a place I’ve never seen— somewhere deep, deep inside of me. I told my husband after: “The writing may be shit, but I’ve never had an experience like that in my life.”
The experiment was a success.
It was a success in the way I showed up each day, committing to myself. It was a success in learning that I need a half-and-half mixture of plot and discovery, some markers along the way, that I fluidly move as I uncover what the story wants to be. It was a success because there are some stories I want to tell that I need fiction to tell, and I realized how much I loved writing it.
But mostly, it was a success because I'm finally learning not to avoid failure or rearranged furniture. And instead, I’ve decided to keep creating, keep trying new arrangements, and keep at things (even if it sometimes leads to a little embarrassment or stubbed toes).
And if not, I’ll just become a menace to society (which may also be okay).
P.S. And yes, the novel will get finished—because I’m finally learning to keep at it.
Hi, if you’re new here, I’m Lex.
I used to aspire to many things, but I mostly just aspire to be a human. I write here because I genuinely love to write— it’s for me, but I find it really special when you read along. Here are a few essays that are important to me.
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Much love to you all.
“Or the 100+ books I’d read every year (which Julia Cameron says is a sign of a blocked artist— rude).”
Right? So rude haha
What a beautiful, beautiful stack of revelations. A MENACE TO SOCIETY NO MORE!!!