I’m currently reading Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, and besides giving me my entire life, her theories are helping me to understand my creative process a little better. I’m not even halfway through it but already I’ve had more than one “lightbulb” moment. One in particular was about the novel I thought I needed to write.
Some backstory: I have a handful of short stories that are part of my (very elusive and incognito) MFA thesis, and every time I would workshop them, people would comment that the stories should, instead, be one big novel that tells one big story. My first instinct upon hearing that was “Nah. These are stories that just happen to be linked, but they are separate entities.”
But after the millionth person told me to get out of my own way, I decided that YES, FINALLY, I’m going to write this epic tome about this Dominican family in Brooklyn, with the grandmother as matriarch and head of family, and it will encompass everything I ever experienced in life and be an homage to my own grandmother and EVERYONE WOULD KNOW I’M THE GREATEST TO EVER DO IT.
And while putting it all together I crashed and burned.
In Gilbert’s book, there’s a section where she warns against writing in order to “save the world” or in my interpretation, for some bigger-than-life reason. Writing is a job, it is work, but if you’re not also enjoying it and writing from a pure place, if you’re writing for accolades or a big payday, or to appease an audience, it won’t always work well. It definitely didn’t work for me and my stories. I quickly abandoned that novel, egg on my face and all. But it’s OK.
Over Christmas, an idea was gifted to me by the Universe: a new Jaded NYer book. My main love is fiction, for sure, but that blog was my entire life for a very important period of time; it makes sense that my book ideas come from it.
My Passion Planner is helping me to focus!
It’s probably just not the time for a novel from me, and I’m more than OK with that. These butterflies in my tummy are letting me know I made the right choice. I’m excited for this new book and I can’t wait to release it to the world (in 2017 so don’t bother asking about it right now lol).
And the lesson here, of course, is to always listen to your gut.
xoxo,
Raquel Ivelisse