Warning. This Story Does Not Have A Marketable Ending.
Warning. This Story Does Not Have A Marketable Ending.
Part 2: A Story of a Story - A Realistic Guide to Writing a First Novel
Hello friends,
Welcome back to Part Two. If you have already read Part One, you know this is not a -I wrote my book in a month - story. Instead, I am sharing an insight into my experience working on a big creative project.
We left off last week, with 70,000 words of draft, about to travel to Europe to find a place to live.
Chapter Three: Looking for A New Home
By this point, I no longer knew where I lived or where I wanted to live. I travelled for a few months around Spain, France and Luxembourg, staying in youth hostels or on friends' sofas. I wanted to live somewhere that would suit my freelance career but was also not too big or stressful. I also wanted to see if I could protect my European Union rights, as Brexit was imminently about to arrive.
As I travelled, I realised I had never consciously chosen any of the places I had previously lived. I had moved around the world for men and job opportunities. This time, I was moving for me. But that didn’t make it easy.
Over about 3 months, I visited Luxembourg, Chambery, Lyon, Toulouse, Pau, Sevilla, Valencia and Madrid, to name a few. Lots of beautiful places. I compared beaches and mountains. I stayed in lots of shared dorms. It was a odd time, finishing freelance projects in hostel dining rooms; and wandering streets and cafes to see if I could imagine a life in them. It is strange to ask of places you have just arrived to - will you be my home? None of them said yes, and so, as the months went by, I got increasingly tired and anxious.
That was when I arrived in Aix-en-Provence, a place I had lived in as a student but hadn’t visited for 15 years. I went on a whim, wondering what it was like after all those years. And immediately, I felt my nervous system relax. Not too big, not too small.
I was so lucky to live here when I was younger, I thought nostalgically, and then I realised, I could live here again.
And so I did.
I rented a studio flat on Airbnb, then I found a room in a shared apartment. When my housemates left for work in the morning, I got up, got dressed, walked through the cobbled streets, admiring the light on the yellow and orange hues of the buildings, bought a pastry (my favourite was the Pain Suisse au Chocolat - not known for their nutritional value), then I sat in a cafe, which was also a bookshop, and wrote my novel.
I did this for about four months, for about three hours each day. I did freelance work in the afternoon to pay my bills.
This was when I really wrote my novel.
Chapter Four: Writing The Novel
It was funny because, I thought I was doing a final edit of the book at this point, but these months, where I had the luxury to immerse myself in this story, I got to know the characters much better and the narrative started to take a clear form.
My characters surprised me, they twisted the plot in ways I hadn’t imagined. They whispered their secrets, sometimes, causing me to burst into tears in this coffee shop, as I realised the truth of what happened to them.
I took them for walks around this French town, asking them what they thought of the fancy boutiques and pastries on display. Mostly they were amazed. Keen to try but afraid to touch.
There was something that happened in this container, where I finally found stability and a sense of myself, after years of struggling to keep my head above water.
Yes, it was hard to make friends and life was often a bit boring but I also built a connection to what I was writing, which was deep, clear and in doing so, I strengthened myself.
As I wrote, I also realised that my experiences in the years since I started writing, fed into the book. They helped me better understand the story, and have greater compassion for the characters. The fiction also helped me process some of what had led up to this point in my life.
I still did online therapy and still had frequent mental health breakdowns - which were not easy to manage. Cures do not come overnight. I ran a lot, doing loops around the local park to beats of ‘Dance Monkey’ and ‘I Will Keep a Light On’.
On weekends, I sat on pretty outside terraces and wrote notes. I tried dating French men on dating apps (who reminded me of the downsides of France). I argued with my landlord, who liked to send me long lecturing emails about how I needed to improve myself and kept taking money out of my deposit. I did occasional phone calls with freelance clients, I wrote reports for NGOs and I unintentionally reduced my client numbers so significantly that I earned so little I wasn’t eligible to pay tax.
My biggest expense was therapy - which, I recognise was a luxury, yet made possible because I lived in a shared flat, had no pension fund or mortgage and no other major life expenses.
From a career perspective, these years of novel writing and trauma recovery were a bit demoralising. I was in my mid-thirties, single, living in shared accommodation, my identity in the world of work and my earning potential both reduced. Yet, my life as an artist flourished, and not just as an artist but an artist on my terms, exploring what I needed to explore in my way.
Chapter Five: Mont Sainte Victoire
I eventually decided to leave this container, I hadn’t found a full life here and I wanted to find community and fuller participation in the world.Â
On my last day in Aix, I climbed the park behind my old university hall of residence and looked at the view of Mont Sainte Victoire, an unusually shaped peak, famous for being painted many times by Paul Cezanne.
I looked a long time at this mountain Cezanne had loved and painted with devotion throughout his life, recognising, I had done what I had come here to do. Create a piece of art I believed in.
That was the story. That was my story. That was my evidence of my devotion to myself and my goals.
That was the creative moment which mattered.
PostScript
A few years later, I realised that I had subconsciously expected this writing journey would lead to creative success and external celebration.
It didn’t.
For a while, I felt as if my creative work didn't matter until it had a place in the market and I felt frustrated at how difficult it was to attract even a response from agents.
After another few years, another complete edit of the manuscript, I finished reading a badly written best-seller, which had accolades for its ‘beautiful prose’. This book, with its not-very-beautiful prose, stereotypical characters and nonsensical plot freed me from thinking my book needed to find a publisher to be complete.
Because I didn’t write my book to appeal to the market. I wrote it as medicine for myself. I deliberately separated myself from the market to write it. It’s no surprise it didn’t immediately appeal to it.
Instead, I realised, there was something valuable about being a woman with the creative and financial agency to write exactly what I wanted to write. To be my own medicine.
One day I hope to find a way to offer my medicine to others but I do not need to let the market be the decider of my worth.
My worth was in turning up. My worth was in standing in front of that iconic mountain and declaring I had done it.
My worth was in creating a space for myself to follow my intuition and creative passions when the world and people I loved had taught me not to trust myself.
My worth was in knowing I had dreams and in realising them. My worth was in financing my creative aspirations and leveraging the agency I had - when generations of women did not have that opportunity.
My success was in finding the courage to make choices which enabled my dreams. It was in learning to give up an old way of living, to try something which felt soulful, heart-felt and authentic.
Final Warnings
This story does not have a marketable ending. I ultimately went back to a nine-to-five job because I needed the money.
This story also doesn’t have ‘I Saved Myself Through Art’ ending because I am still finding my way to share my art with an audience (this newsletter is one of those efforts).
And it doesn’t have ‘I Healed My Trauma’ ending either, as I still attend regular therapy to tend to all that complex trauma, slowly widening my window of tolerance by showing up, by trying new things, failing, trying again.
And it does not have ‘I Found True Love’ ending either because I still haven’t.
So no, all my dreams have not come true. But I did write a novel which has power and potency for me.
And I do not think you need to go live in a small French town to write a book. I do think you need a container - whatever form that takes.
I do think you need time and space to dive deep into an idea or concept. In our current systems, I think creating that space requires making choices, it requires renouncing and giving up on other things.
I think to create something powerful, you might have to go against what is marketable and already sellable. You need to find pockets of escape from the systems we live in.
I think that we all have our ways of doing that, depending on our circumstances.
This is my story. This was my way.
Travel With Me:
Let me know in the comments below
Have you made a journey to following a creative dream or is there one you would like to make?
What did you/will you have to renounce and what did you/might you gain on that journey?
How do you decide to frame creative success on your own terms?
A very relatable (but still wonderful) read - esp doing work from hostels! While a fairytale story is great, sometimes what we need is a huge dose of reality served up cold.
I love this Catriona! It's so important to have space around what you want to create to allow it to truly come to life the way its supposed to.