Over the past three-hundred and sixty-five days, everything changed. Everything became important. As this city finally wrapped its arms around me for good, as my heart leaped and loved and shattered, all of the minute details of physical environments, of action and inaction, of human capacity became important. Whether they ended up influencing my pages, or ended up as a part of me, they all mattered. And the fact that they’ve mattered has mattered more than anything.
We know we are growing daily. Physiologically, mentally, intellectually. It’s science, and it happens whether we acknowledge it or not. Scarely do people seem to stop and actually examine the fact they’ve grown, and how they’re so sure of it. While I’ve had journals for the past ten years (before the word “blog” was viable vocabulary) to help me see my changes, this year, I’ve had the art of fiction as autobiography. Though sometimes informed by real people and events, my novel is a work of pure fiction. But give me any page, any sentence, and I’ll tell you where I was physically and emotionally as I was writing it. And even if I’m simply slashing a modifier or changing a punctuation mark, I can’t sit down with a scene without feeling the history, seeing the visuals, understanding what it all meant in sequence. It’s a hell of a juxtaposition - one’s truest form of autobiography discovered in her fiction. From the hours and hours I’ve spent in revision and workshop since March, I’ve been constantly floored by the strength with which these 60,000 words (and all of the baggage that’s come with them) have taught me, nurtured me, destroyed me, and most importantly, forced me to grow.
This year, I finished a first draft of a novel at twenty-two. I edited to the point where I became physically sick at the mere thought of my own work. I started to pique professional interest. I hit bottom before I learned enough about myself to level out for real. I started the process of understanding balance.
This year, I lived for the first time. This year, I figured out life is much better when you live it. Next year, I want to call myself a writer.
“You live, you learn, you love. Nothing will change what I’m made of.”
M
