Truth, novels, and ice palaces
Oct. 1st, 2003 07:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pegkerrI have been reading Lois McMaster Bujold's Paladin of Souls.
Lois has told me in the past that all of her work is about identity. I think it is all about truth. So strange, those who assert that science fiction and fantasy are about imaginary things, when Lois shows it is actually about truths that cut right to the core, that are so unflinching, honest and pure that they take the breath away. Whether they are about wondering what way one can regain lost honor, or about the terrible price of parenthood, or the question, how can I be myself, and not who the people who love me--or hate me--insist that I am?
I am reading Ista's story, and I feel shaken by the experience, as if a mirror is being held up before me. Here is a woman who feels as if she has been emptied out, who wonders why she still lives, who feels as if she has been used and abandoned.
Listen. Here are some truths that are difficult to say.
I wrote two books. One was I-did-it-to-learn-it, and one I truly thought was splendid. I was proud of it. And then, just as the gods used up and abandoned Ista, I felt my gift, bewilderingly, fade away inside of me. I have fought depression for thirty years, and only for the last ten have I truly understand that was what I was fighting. I want to write--not like Lois, but for the same purpose. I want to write truths, pure truths about the human heart, and all its fears and splendors and glories. And yet, since right after I finished Swans I have felt my human heart cracking and shriveling inside of me, and the voice that told stories, stories about fantastic things, yet paradoxically illuminated truth--well, that voice fell silent. And I didn't know how to get it back. I secretly came to believe that whatever-was-in-me that told stories couldn't do so any more because there wasn't anything left of me inside. All truths I might have told, all insight, all wonder and splendor that might have come from the deepest places inside of me: well, it had all been mysteriously used up. For almost thirty years I have written a daily journal page. This year, I have been barely able to write a quarter page, if that. I don't have anything to say anymore.
I always believed in the parable of the talents. I worried that if I didn't use my talent, the Lord who had given it to me would take it back, just as He had in the story. But I couldn't find my talent anymore, so how could I use it?
There is a story, half formed, that I have been taking tentative stabs at for a year. There is a woman, Solveig, who is a young mother who does a job that has somehow become diminished. She designs shopping malls and corporate offices now, when once she hoped to design little jewel-like houses. She took a risk once and dared to love, but her love betrayed her and left her cold and empty--and with a daughter that she fears she is unable to raise properly, as much as she loves her, because there is something fundamentally wrong with her, something cold and empty inside. And there is a character named Jack and another named Rolf, and I can't shake the feeling that they are only stick figures. How do I make them real? Solveig alone now, she's real: in her icy coldness, her black despair, the hungriness of her love for her daughter that she thinks that she is failing. Oh, yes. She is real.
There is an ice palace. What is it for? What does it symbolize? What truth does it represent? There are fish, who know something, a wisdom I have not grasped yet, just as Solveig does not see it yet. I don't understand yet what they have to do with the story.
Yet: Ista. Lois has somehow told the story of a woman who feels all used up, who feels like a dried out husk inside so that there is nothing but bitterness left--and made that a story in and of itself. It seemed that gods still had a use for her after all. And there is another story there, buried even deeper underneath that wells up under Lois's skillful touch, coming straight out of that pain, that Ista didn't even know was there. Yet that story was true.
Does that mean there is hope for me?
Are there still stories inside of me?
Can I still tell truths? I have feared to say what was inside me, because I have come to believe that it was nothing but empty husks, like chaff ready to blow away on the wind. But perhaps the first thing to do is simply to show that.
I have agonized whether to make this entry public or friends only, or even entirely private. Yet, if I wish to hold out any hope that I can be a truth-teller again someday, I know what I must do. I must do it even if there is no hope.
So: an experiment. Here I will be as nakedly honest as I can. Publicly.
I feel cold and empty inside. I truly fear I will never write fiction again.
Edited to add: I found, perhaps, an answer in the closing pages of Paladin of Souls:
Lois has told me in the past that all of her work is about identity. I think it is all about truth. So strange, those who assert that science fiction and fantasy are about imaginary things, when Lois shows it is actually about truths that cut right to the core, that are so unflinching, honest and pure that they take the breath away. Whether they are about wondering what way one can regain lost honor, or about the terrible price of parenthood, or the question, how can I be myself, and not who the people who love me--or hate me--insist that I am?
I am reading Ista's story, and I feel shaken by the experience, as if a mirror is being held up before me. Here is a woman who feels as if she has been emptied out, who wonders why she still lives, who feels as if she has been used and abandoned.
Listen. Here are some truths that are difficult to say.
I wrote two books. One was I-did-it-to-learn-it, and one I truly thought was splendid. I was proud of it. And then, just as the gods used up and abandoned Ista, I felt my gift, bewilderingly, fade away inside of me. I have fought depression for thirty years, and only for the last ten have I truly understand that was what I was fighting. I want to write--not like Lois, but for the same purpose. I want to write truths, pure truths about the human heart, and all its fears and splendors and glories. And yet, since right after I finished Swans I have felt my human heart cracking and shriveling inside of me, and the voice that told stories, stories about fantastic things, yet paradoxically illuminated truth--well, that voice fell silent. And I didn't know how to get it back. I secretly came to believe that whatever-was-in-me that told stories couldn't do so any more because there wasn't anything left of me inside. All truths I might have told, all insight, all wonder and splendor that might have come from the deepest places inside of me: well, it had all been mysteriously used up. For almost thirty years I have written a daily journal page. This year, I have been barely able to write a quarter page, if that. I don't have anything to say anymore.
I always believed in the parable of the talents. I worried that if I didn't use my talent, the Lord who had given it to me would take it back, just as He had in the story. But I couldn't find my talent anymore, so how could I use it?
There is a story, half formed, that I have been taking tentative stabs at for a year. There is a woman, Solveig, who is a young mother who does a job that has somehow become diminished. She designs shopping malls and corporate offices now, when once she hoped to design little jewel-like houses. She took a risk once and dared to love, but her love betrayed her and left her cold and empty--and with a daughter that she fears she is unable to raise properly, as much as she loves her, because there is something fundamentally wrong with her, something cold and empty inside. And there is a character named Jack and another named Rolf, and I can't shake the feeling that they are only stick figures. How do I make them real? Solveig alone now, she's real: in her icy coldness, her black despair, the hungriness of her love for her daughter that she thinks that she is failing. Oh, yes. She is real.
There is an ice palace. What is it for? What does it symbolize? What truth does it represent? There are fish, who know something, a wisdom I have not grasped yet, just as Solveig does not see it yet. I don't understand yet what they have to do with the story.
Yet: Ista. Lois has somehow told the story of a woman who feels all used up, who feels like a dried out husk inside so that there is nothing but bitterness left--and made that a story in and of itself. It seemed that gods still had a use for her after all. And there is another story there, buried even deeper underneath that wells up under Lois's skillful touch, coming straight out of that pain, that Ista didn't even know was there. Yet that story was true.
Does that mean there is hope for me?
Are there still stories inside of me?
Can I still tell truths? I have feared to say what was inside me, because I have come to believe that it was nothing but empty husks, like chaff ready to blow away on the wind. But perhaps the first thing to do is simply to show that.
I have agonized whether to make this entry public or friends only, or even entirely private. Yet, if I wish to hold out any hope that I can be a truth-teller again someday, I know what I must do. I must do it even if there is no hope.
So: an experiment. Here I will be as nakedly honest as I can. Publicly.
I feel cold and empty inside. I truly fear I will never write fiction again.
Edited to add: I found, perhaps, an answer in the closing pages of Paladin of Souls:
. . . the gods did not desire flawless souls, but great ones. I think that very darkness is where the greatness grows from, as flowers from the soil. I am not sure, in fact, if greatness can bloom without it.
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(no subject)
Date: 2003-10-02 08:43 am (UTC)Your ability to share deeply in your lj - speaks volumes about your ability to tell stories. You tell us wonderful stories everytime you post. Even if it is just your watermelon's being smashed - or - the fact that you need to work full time again. I consider the line between fiction and real life to be moot if you are a writer. Stories only work if their inner logic carries some conviction - some truth - no matter how mundane or outrageous the tale is. In fact - I would say that you don't know how to communicate without story. I don't think I do either.
I am also struggling with depression. I have a huge unmanageable manuscript for my first novel. And I have to keep going. Even when I feel like I can't. And I don't have any published novels - any signs that I'll ever be published. I was rejected by the seven of the best MFA programs last year. I'm waiting to hear from Bennington now. And I have four more schools selected to apply to if I am rejected from there. Everything feels scary and bleak right now. I feel like I have no future. I feel hopeless. But I'm not going to sit down here and wait for the grey emptiness to consume me. I watched my mother flounder. I watched her die when I was twenty. even when I feel I am not making progress and the depression makes me want to lie down and sleep forver - I won't. (I let the depression put me out of commission for two years - because I didn't understand. And my only lifeline then was HP.)
And the small snippets of your new novel are enticing. Maybe your male characters are shadowy and elusive on purpose? Maybe they fear intimacy? Especially the strong and frozen intimacy Solveig would demand... (just guessing here)
Anyway - I know you still have stories. You are telling one now. And I don't think you'd be breathing if you didn't have any more to tell. I wish I had some old war story for you about how I felt that way with my novel - and I solved it. But I don't. I'm still mucking about here in the trenches. I don't know what I'm doing most of the time, and I'm okay as long as I don't dwell on the fact that I don't know what I'm doing. Then I paralyze myself. But cheese or a cocktail or even writing fanfic helps that.
Last year I pushed the whole story out in odd pieces. Now - I'm rewritting. Its hard - and sometimes it isn't fun. But I make progress - slowly. Sometimes is easier to just write fanfiction. But I always have to come back to the novel. Clio will not let me sleep at night otherwise.
Much love and admiration,
Katie