Please welcome Loooola Mellowsky! (This picture is headed to my vision board…)
Three months ago Meryl Streep
threw down. (She didn’t call me directly, but her people have been in touch.) Inspired by Julie and Julia, Nora Ephron’s fall film in which Streep played Julia Child opposite Amy Adams’ modern-day office grunt turned successful writer, Julie Powell, I set out to finish a rough draft of a book or “bookish” in three months. It should be noted that Powell, whose mission was to whip up all of the recipes from Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” and blog about it, gave herself a year. Dan, my often wise and sometimes right husband, recommended that I also take a year. But, having been playing around with a bookish idea in my head for over two years already, I was sure its execution would be smooth like buttah, sizzling then settling on my computer screen in three-months time, maybe less. The result:
Dan: 1
Lola: 0
I don’t want to give you Melliterary blue balls, but this is about as anticlimactic as it gets. (I suppose that could be disputed.) While it would be oodles of fun to post an offer letter from some powerhouse publisher, three months does not a bookish make. (At least from this writer.) That said, I haven’t been twiddling my shift keys all this time. This is what three months of my life look like in paper:
Much of this was actually written (hand-written) before this challenge even started but it certainly wasn’t the neat stack of Dunder Mifflin’s finest you see here. It was a mess of notes, half-essays and haiku-like scribbles, spread around marble-covered composition notebooks, fancy leather bound writer-y journals, Moleskine shorties, flip-flop-shaped list paper, index cards and practically every other form of paper with the exception of a cocktail napkin (which is where every great book seems to be born from these days...perhaps this is what ultimately doomed me.) Before I could go forward, I wanted to know what I already had so I went to work transferring my horrific handwriting to the computer while doing some light editing, organizing and outlining along the way. I took notes on where I wanted to go with certain pieces, what I thought some sentences meant or could mean if I developed them further, and where things might fit in the big-picture bookish. I got lots of manila folders which I labeled in black Sharpie and began sorting by topic and subtopic and then later chronologically.
There was real effort but it was time consuming; three-months consuming, in fact. I could look at this two ways:
1) Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah, I had more than I even realized!
or
2) Dagnammit, I’m no further along than I was three months ago.
I’m choosing both: Zip-a-Dee-Dag, I have a ways to go but I’ve done and learned a lot already.
It’s not that I didn’t do
any actual writing. (Exhibit A: this blog.) Some days I’d show up at my desk with a fresh batch of ideas to get down and experience my favorite part of writing---ending up at a place that you didn’t know you were going or at a thought that you didn’t know you were thinking. That is where I find my writing high. The buzzkill? Editing. The high becomes a low in equal proportion. If I stay with a piece long enough (which is unavoidable in long-term work like a bookish), I undoubtedly end up hating it and there’s a wounding defeat that comes from getting so fired up by an idea only to decide that in its execution it has become utter crap. Most writers would advise to keep going anyway and I did and am. (But can you imagine the pressure? My family kept making comments about how they couldn’t wait to hear about the bookish and in my head I’m all, “Fuckity fuck fuck.”) I was clinging to the idea of getting everything organized by December 1 (I didn’t) so I would have something to point to, but the lesson I learned is that finding balance between writing the writing and cleaning the writing is essential. That lesson is something I feel comfortable pointing to as the fruit of three months of work. (That’s also some stack of paper.)
But how fucking unsatisfying is that for you?! If I followed a blog in which someone promised a product, documented their progress and then as a big finish delivered a lesson on balance as a way to atone for their not having anything to show, I would click that baby x in the corner of the screen with all my pissy might. (I would also leave hostile comments using words like bullshit and ho-bag but I’m not advising that you do this.)
So, I feel I owe you at least a little something concerning what this bookish is all about. Until now I’ve been talking about it in only generic terms---chapters, topics, outlines---and this has been all about self preservation. What if I write that this bookish is about one thing and it ends up being about something else? What if I never finish it but I finish something else and people say weren’t you writing a book about that other thing and I’m all, shut up asshole. What if someone steals my ideas?
The fact is I don’t really know
exactly what the bookish is about. Lame, but true. I can tell you this: The whole thing was born from the idea of documenting the first year of marriage. (I’m now a few months past the two-year mark though it seems like it’s been eons longer than that, perhaps indicative of why it’s book-worthy.) My experience early on when looking for resources about marriage was that most of the stories I read and heard were those of women who were years into (or out of) their marriages and looking back at the those tough early days with the wisdom that time provides. Helpful? Yes. Relatable? Not totally. I wanted to read a book from someone in the trenches and thus wanted to write a book from in the trenches. It wasn’t just the stuff of toilet seats and snoring that Dan and I dealt with. Nor could the questions and issues that arose be settled with advice about never going to bed angry and always kissing good night.
It was the stuff of money: Do we merge our bank accounts or keep our money separate? Also, we’re starting our life tens of thousands of dollars in debt---how do ya want to handle that?
It was the stuff of religion: You’re Catholic and I’m totally not, how do you want to handle that? And what’s your mom going to say when we don’t baptize our kids? Also, wanna convert to Buddhism?
It was the stuff of principles: Despite initially thinking I could handle it, I ultimately decided it went against my values to change my last name. To Dan’s credit, this was never an issue for him. He even said he was “proud” that I kept my last name. (I understand and respect whatever decision anyone else makes and reserve the right to change my mind or merge our last names which would be my preference.)
It was the stuff of communication: We’re not really good at talking about things---wanna talk about it?
(I recognize that many people---many wise, insightful people---talk about these things before they get married but given our aforementioned struggles with communication, we decided to wing it.)
The bookish I wanted to write was certainly not going to be a how-to guide (we still don’t know anything) but just one couple’s experience littered with some research, anecdotes and much of the humor that exists between Dan and me. There are real struggles here (as in all marriages) but every day---every single day---we laugh. Maybe it’s because I watched two of my sisters get divorced within a few years of marriage or maybe it’s just because I’m overly analytical, but I find myself a student of this institution as I live it. (Dan
loves this.) The complexities fascinate and frighten me in equal measure.
But, from what I’ve observed, it’s rare for a woman (I could never speak for a man because I know nothing about them) to speak of the difficult aspects of marriage, particularly in the early years. It almost seems that to admit that things are hard would be a betrayal of our marriages or spouses; a failure of sorts. I really adore Dan and our marriage is sometimes difficult and takes work. Those are not mutually exclusive concepts, but if even I’m biting my tongue about it then I know others are too. Maybe if we talked about it more we would feel less isolated. I remember having dinner with a friend of mine and her new husband a few times in the early years of their marriage. Though I knew she loved him, she always seemed so unhappy, so disillusioned. I often wonder now if she needed an outlet or just to hear that somebody else was feeling the same thing.
This bookish idea came to me while I was still only engaged. Once we got married I observed things and kept a daily log like I was studying the mating habits of tree frogs. Then I got pregnant and miscarried and all bets were off. The pregnancy, the miscarriage, the depression which followed; these were among the defining elements of my first year of marriage (and my life for that matter).
And then I was so crazed after my miscarriage about how little
this topic is discussed and the grief spoken that I wanted to write about that, too. We all know how common miscarriage is, we all know someone who has had one or even several, but have you ever heard the story of their loss? Women don’t often go into specifics. To grieve for someone who was never real to anyone but you is beyond lonely not only because it’s yours alone to bear but also because it is near impossible to express this grief in a culture where miscarriage is depicted as a medical complication instead of as a death (which is how most women feel it). I could go on and on but the fact is that I see this as another situation, like abortion or even the decision to not have children at all, in which women feel they must maintain a polite silence. The sad injustice of this is how little it serves our gender; how once again we are alone with our secrets.
It is both maddening and terribly sad how the truths of both these topics are unspoken. Worse still is the shame that always shadows secrecy. It is hard for me to just accept such things especially when I see that it could be easier for others if we women just got to talking. Or writing.
But do you see why I’m not really sure what
specifically this bookish is about? Although most women say it takes having another child to really move on after miscarriage, I chose not to go that route (and still feel I am in a healthy place). Does that belong in the marriage book or the miscarriage book? Are they one bookish? And then I have moments when I feel that the book I want to write involves traveling the country and visiting friends, family and whomever else will let me in their kitchen, to talk to them about their marriages. Should I be talking to them about their miscarriages too? Their abortions?
So what can I say? I’m clearly working but the “on what” is less obvious. And it’s certainly not easy to articulate---except for maybe in a soapbox-y blog (and I’m not so sure I’ve done even that).
It’s not quite a zygote of an idea, nor is it a fully-born book. It’s an in-between; a growing, developing not-quite-book. I can’t think of another word. It’s a friggin' bookish.
