Fail Better and Better and Better

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First, let me acknowledge that the first snowflakes of the year where I am have just started falling. First time best time with snow, IMHO.

I have been holed up in my room all week after testing positive in the middle of the night between Monday and Tuesday. I was fortunate enough to have a box of Paxlovid in hand by Tuesday afternoon and have had an easy go of it. I have tested negative twice in 48 hours, and now have fingers crossed that symptoms don’t re-emerge after the suppressant of Paxlovid is out of my system. There’s nothing I can do about it so I am moving on but not going out yet.

I had three spacey days. On the first I watched a few of my favorite comfort movies, The Descendants, Michael Clayton, Cold Mountain. Sadly I had watched a few of my other favorites too recently to bear repeating. On the second day I was too out of it to watch TV and lay in bed all day looking out the window. I have had days like that before but not for a long time. It was deeply restful, I felt not only my innards recalibrating but my brain being rinsed. On the third day I was able to watch TV again and headed for Howard’s End, the TV series. It’s so wonderful. I confess I have never loved the Leonard Bast subplot but assume one day I’ll get it. The Schlegel sisters become more and more beloved with every reread, and watching remembers the generosity of the book to me. Forster gave and gave and gave. I wish he were alive so I could do something for him.

Yesterday I woke up and started my new novel again. I have started it probably ten times so far, meaning I have written anywhere from ten to 100 pages testing out a voice, a POV, a tone. I go until I know it’s not the thing. Neti, neti, not this, not this. It sounds effortful but it’s the only way for me to get to what the book wants. It’s truly that…what the book wants, not me. A lot of the failed attempts turn out to be me and my ideas. Not good enough. The book is always smarter, and this preliminary work is a form of looking for the path that will lead me to what I hold as an image of a glen in a forest. That’s the book, an opening among the trees, a shelter, a secret spot. The work is gradual coaxing the sentences from my head down into the body where the rhythms are. I accept this process, which is not to say that the abandonment of a hundred pages eeked out of packed days when I am also working and promoting a book isn’t rough. It is. I always want it to be easy. I always think it will be easy, because I can sense the texture of the book. It’s not been easy yet, or mostly not.

A day comes when I know, I just know, I am on the wrong track. Big sigh.

I have mentioned in interviews that I find writing fun and I have gotten pushback about that—how can it be fun when it is so hard? Or is it not hard for me? It’s hard for me, it’s very hard for me, because I want a particular thing. But knowing that has liberated me. I get who I am as a writer and what I can do and I don’t want to try for more or to settle for less. I no longer wish I were as good as Forster, and so on. I do what I can. When I am on the wrong track, I can stop and change courses. It’s a fail but not a loss. I say to myself, you can do better. It’s simple, but it’s a lot nicer than the things I used to say to myself. And I believe it and try again. It’s fail and fail and fail until finally I’m riding the bike with no hands, knowing my balance is trustworthy.

I’m hoping this new start will be the one, but I don’t know yet, it’s too soon to tell. I’m hoping that COVID somehow took me down a peg and I am under my skin now, but we’ll see. I’m heading into winter break and will have some time to find out.

I’m ready for it, either way. If I fail again, I won’t like it, but it will be fine.