Writing roots

Protector and friend

There was a writer on Twitter—initials CJ. I read CJ’s book. Thought it was raw. Thought it was true. A rare find—and so was CJ. We talked a little. And in our most important conversation, she was saying she wanted to get writing back to..back to..she wasn’t sure what. And I said, “Back to when we were in high school and we wrote in notebooks.”

And she said, “Yes.”

We weren’t trying to “get published” back then. We weren’t planning on showing those notebooks to anyone, except maybe half a page to our closest friends to explain our theories of the world.

We weren’t primarily writing those notebooks with the intention of sharing them at all—we were almost exclusively writing them for ourselves. High school was the wilds of Final Fantasy and Zelda, we were mages, and those were our goddamn spell books. We needed those books, not to impress anyone, but to survive.

That was getting back to the root of why we were writing in the first place, for me and CJ. We wanted to get back there. Fuck Twitter. Fuck the internet. Fuck publishing.

And then CJ really did fuck Twitter, the internet, and publishing—she disappeared. Deleted her Twitter. As far as I know, ended her blog. I can’t find her or her book anywhere.

Maybe she got back to her roots?

I remember when I decided to unpublish Things Said in Dreams, I got back to my roots and for me it was a big change in direction and it felt so good. I had been trying to “get published” for so long—assuming that’s what one did when one had written books—that I was on auto-pilot, and I had forgotten the root at which I had begun to write fiction:

When I was in the 5th-10th grades, I read the first books that made me idolize novels. I had never been so impressed with anything in all my life, than those first few great books—and I wanted to do it! Simple as that: I wanted to write a great book. And I may spend the rest of my life trying.

But notice:

Nowhere in the root of my desire did I ever say I wanted to publish a book. Nowhere did I ever say I wanted to be a famous writer. Those are fine for whoever wants them. But they were never in the root of what I wanted. Letting go of my list of literary agents, stopping all efforts to commercially publish my books, has felt right for me because it fits with the original idea of writing as planted in my head. Writing and publishing are distinct enterprises—I’m perfectly happy to be free of the latter.

Based on my brief but rich conversations with the author CJ, I have played extensively over many novels with my note-taking, outlining, and composition processes, sometimes taking a single-document approach that is very much like one of those messy, mage notebooks we all kept in high school—a garden of words and worms and moss and little sproutlings that with enough tilling and enough sunlight, sometimes turns into something readable and wild. And even though in some ways I’m moving into directions that weren’t even possible when I was in high school—I live-write every book now, showing my in-progress work at every stage in the composition process (so instead of being private, my notebooks are completely open)—I try to remain aware of that epiphany that CJ and I shared, and stay connected with the roots of my writing.

Writing for me first happened in the 4th grade, as journal writing—introspection that saved a sensitive boy from a harsh school, learning to talk hard situations out with myself in a little brown notebook my teacher gave me.

Then writing became a way to play with my bipolar disorder: listen to Michael Jackson and write poems, using both to amp up my mood to incredible heights—and to feel incredible sadness. A way to learn how to feel the highs and lows only a bipolar person can feel..and—to some degree—to control them.

Then came my notebooks. They were protector in school environments that continued to be too harsh for my sensitive head and heart to handle—and in a way they acted as friends when I didn’t have any.

Now I have written 22 books. And you know what? They’re the same thing to me now as my writing was in its root: introspection, a way to understand my emotions, protector—buffer between me and a world too harsh for me to interface with directly—and friends where friends are in short supply.

I don’t want that to ever change. I always want to be a black mage in a dangerous high school lunchroom, with my hoodie covering my head, roomy sleeves, carrying my notebooks containing spells that I use to keep myself moving and breathing and vital in an environment that, psychologically, spiritually, and intellectually..wants to kill me and every other creative person alive.