The Whale Belly

How do authors commit to long pieces of writing? I struggle with this. I’m constantly beginning projects only to lose the romance in the early stages and begin looking elsewhere for a newer, sexier idea.

Part of this is personality. I’ve shied away from long term relationships, whether romantic, platonic, or professional. I’ve pursued several careers only to burn out and change direction. I’ve moved residences nearly every year, sometimes multiple times in one year, while always telling myself that I will never move again.

It’s anxiety, I assume. A fear of missing out, a fear of being trapped. It’s a longing for a destiny, of desire for the click of the puzzle piece.

Perhaps for many of us writers who are ensconced in a form that traditionally has sought to unify experience, we tend to want this in our own lives. Order, appropriateness, inevitableness, resolution — we would like our own lives to play out like novels, where things make sense in the end, even if it’s not a happy ending.

We want the Muse to be the author of our works, dictating to us what we are meant to transcribe. We want her to grab us by the lapels and slap us across the face, chain our leg to the desk, force the pen into our hands, then crack a whip over us while we dutifully record her extraordinary words. We want to relinquish our pesky freedom for something more meaningful.

At the end of Milton’s Paradise Lost, the fallen and miserable Adam and Eve look beyond the threshold of Eden to a wasteland when the angel Michael tells them that although the world they are banished to will be one of suffering, they have the opportunity of a more meaningful return to God’s grace. Their loss of innocence means they now have to choose God over sin, and this free exercise of choice is a far greater than the habituated lives of purity. This seems a great existential metaphor for just about any pursuit in our lives that we dare to deem noble, the creative arts especially. For, yes, it would be easier to be an empty vessel, to be filled up and poured out by some higher being, but it is ultimately more meaningful to choose and act.

I’ve steered a bit from the initial problem, the one of commitment. How do we choose a topic or a project that is truthful? Even though I’ve spent some time musing about this, I don’t have a solid answer. I think it has something to do with confronting our painful secrets, the things we most repress. I believe those hidden aspects of ourselves are what prevent us from attaining authenticity. I don’t think this has to look like a lifetime of writing maudlin confessionals, but, in the very least, exploring the things we fear and hate about ourselves is a path towards better understanding, a path to Truth.