Samain Moon of the Winter Solstice
Today, the novel. Rereading old work, this material is from the beginning of this year, has an odd flavor. Some of it I read and, boy, what was I thinking? The pencil scratches out words, lines, paragraphs. Sections get moved, some eliminated. Other parts. Hmmm. The bones of something is here, not all bad.
This world, Tailte and the mythos of the Great Goddess, has an expansiveness to it, a rich and textured feeling, as if I might write in it for a long time. That aspect of this work feels very good.
Rereading though goes slowly and until I’m done I won’t start writing new material. I have about 2/3’s of the novel written, maybe a little less. If all goes well, I might have a manuscript finished by May. Then, I’ll set it aside for another six months and return to either Superior Wolf or Jennie’s Dead, two novels I’ve had underway for several years.
The other feeling, maybe inescapable unless you write like Maughm, Kafka, Tolstoy, is the considerable insignificance of the work. It feels small, as if the world it is in might matter too little, be of too small a consequence.
No writer can make that judgment for their own work, no artist can, but the thought of laboring for years and cranking out filler, well, that can be deadly. At times this notion, the matter of mattering, has stopped me. Knocked me out cold. Sent me to reading or politics or volunteering at the art museum or growing a vegetable garden.
Not this time. In the end this is my work. For whatever value it has beyond me, it is my work and it is the best that I can do. That’s enough. It has to be.
