A Culmination of Effort

Sunday marked a historic day for me.  At exactly 3:02 am, June 24, 2012, I wrote the final words to the first complete draft of my first complete novel.  I use complete because I've been writing another novel for 6 years.  7?  I don't even know.  An eternity.  But that's a different story.  Today I want to talk about the first project I've ever really finished and the sense of accomplishment that comes with setting and achieving a goal.

Last August, an amalgamate of events began what I think of as my personal renaissance.  After years of mental deterioration that reached a low around February/ March 2011, I had completely lost the sense of who I was as a person due to a multitude of issues in my life spanning from having to work at Starbucks with my 3.9 GPA college degree, unstable employment followed by eventual high stress employment, and relationship or lack thereof struggles, etc.  For a while, it seemed nothing was going right, as has been discussed in a previous post, and as a result, I was really just a blob of a human.

In August, I was free of my blood-sucking excuse of a job, and a bunch of maybe coincidental things sparked what would eventually lead into this novel.  First, I read through all of my college papers one lonely night and as a result, started missing myself.  I read them and thought "Oh my God, this person was creative and witty and intelligent and dedicated.  Who IS she?"  And it made me sad.  It also made me realize that somewhere deep down, that person still had to exist somewhere.

One day on my way home from work, I thought to myself, "You know what I haven't done in a while? I haven't listened to some good old-fashioned Eminem.  What's up Marshall Mathers and Slim Shady LPs?"  And I played my entire arsenal of Eminem classics (which only dated through The Eminem Show because I don't know what happened to my Relapse CD and I never liked it that much.  Sorry Marshall.).  The result was that I remembered that Eminem is awesome and bought Recovery, one year late on the bandwagon.  If you're struggling with something in your life or are just coming out of a dark place, I highly recommend this album.  There is so much passion and inspiration and genuine self-reflection.  Anyway, I can't say I was conscious of the effect it had on me at the time.  I just thought it was dope (haha, I sound funny using that word) and I played it a lot.  Because, I didn't really know I was coming out of darkness.  I didn't fully grasp what I was going through at the time.  Eminem's affinity for wordsmithing is also, um, attractive.  Not to mention, I figured, if this dude can literally rise from rock bottom out of the ashes TWICE, I think I can do something with my pathetic excuse for a life.  I mean, seriously!

Around this time, I started writing songs and poems again.  Whenever something was on my mind, I wrote it down on the nearest medium, as I used to do when I was feeling anything.  I was proud of some of what came out.  And then I'm sure some of it was shit.  But I just was writing again and it wasn't empty the way my writing had felt for so long any time I tried it.  I'm a person who has to write. There is too much going on my head to not let it out somewhere.   So when I can't write, well, it sucks.

The last thing was almost ridiculous.  I saw the movie Friends with Benefits.  For anyone that remembers, this was the second movie to come out in a rather short time span concerning friends who are having sex just to be having sex (No Strings Attached being the other).  SPOILER ALERT:  Both of these movies are full of crap.  They don't realistically view a friends with benefits situation because in both movies, the characters are exclusively having sex with each other and are clearly crazy about each other from Day 1.  It dawned on me while in the bathroom of the theater that a real story existed in examining a true "more than friends but less than a couple" relationship, and I happened to understand the subject.  I believe August 12 is when I wrote the first chapter of my book.

When I started writing, I didn't have any clue where the book would go.  I was only writing it for the casual relationship aspect I wanted to examine as I was just in the middle of the end of one.  What came out is a story of a mid-twenties girl surrounded by people who have things seemingly more figured out than her and it's her own struggle to re-discover her identity.  Along the way there is friendship drama, jealousy issues, the well-meaning debacle that is family expecting everyone to get married, and a lot of self-awareness efforts.

Ten months later, I have an entire story with a fictional ending and somehow, I have managed to become the person I always wanted to be.  I don't have much to show for it, but it doesn't matter.  I'm using my brain again.  I wrote 342 pages, 85,500 words of consecutive story line.  It's only in step one. It needs a lot of editing and maybe, just maybe there is a glimmer of hope that it will find an agent who will maybe, just maybe get it to a real publisher.  But that's not the important thing right now.  I DID something.  I did something I really really wanted to do.

Sure, I've written a lot of song lyrics this year, and I taught myself how to play the piano and sing at the same time, and I made it to the second round of a huge singing competition (Oh yeah, that contest I didn't think I did great in?  I advanced at least one round), I won a karaoke contest, I started cooking and baking and blogging again.  And those things are making me feel unbelievably alive.  But those things aren't finished products.  I suppose this isn't yet either.  But step one is.  And it's huge.  I'm in the best place of my life right now.  It's amazing what ten months can do.

This Fine Line.  The greatest thing I've ever accomplished... yet.  :)