About the time I wrote a book
About 20 years ago, I wrote a book. It was called Fearless Mortals. It was about nothing and everything at once. Very typical, I know… It was a collection of personally inspired stories that I fictionalised into the lives of four key characters… Each one had their own trauma to heal from and their own ambitions in life…. And yet, they were intertwined as they were a family. People often say that single one of us has at least one fictionalized novel inside of them and this was mine.
I loved that book! I wrote it on and off in evenings and weekends for nearly three years… I believed it mattered and I still do. It poured out of me. I told myself to just write it…. That I needed to write it… to not be too hard on myself if I couldn’t find the right words or if the dialogue felt trite but to just write it…. And so I did.
I started writing that book in the aftermath of 9/11 when I was working in a bank near Wall Street. On the surface, my book had nothing to do with 9/11 at all in the sense that there was no mention of that event… But it had everything to do with 9/11 in that its very existence was because of 9/11… because of that wake-up call that life is not guaranteed and that doing something in a few years down the road when you had time to do it was not a given. It never is. Nothing is…
After New York, I moved to Washington DC, and continued writing in coffee shops, in my apartment… It was part of my new identity in a new city — the identity of the undiscovered tortured writer pouring her heart out in her literary triumph of a book. And then, about two years later, I finally finished the book. I don’t quite remember now whether the story reached its natural end, or whether I fell out of love with my literary creation. After all, it was a form of love for my budding novel and writing talent that kept me going, typing away in secret for those three years.
When I finished the book, I told myself that I would have a break and then go back to edit it and then pursue one of my many dreams — to be a published writer. But for now, for then, I needed a break, so I put it down and walked away… When I wrote the book, my ambition was to have it published. And secretly, it still is… but when I went back to it a few months later, I couldn’t help but hate it. Everything about it felt wrong. The story seemed unnecessarily complex as if I was trying to shove three separate stories into one book. The wording felt clunky as if I was trying too hard to sound intelligent or insightful, which let’s be honest, I was. The dialogue was atrocious, never feeling quite natural or honest… I couldn’t decide which grammar rules to follow to sound intelligent and coherent and which ones to ignore to give my book a modern presence.
I tried to edit it, I truly did, but it seemed that the more I changed the worse it became. And so, dispirited, I let it be…. I allowed it to become one of those adventures that I had during a time of my life when I needed to have it… maybe one day, I’ll look at it again. Or maybe I won’t quite get there…. And that’s ok. For me, the important part of that process was giving me some sort of goal and focus during a time when I felt lost. When I wanted to so deeply believe that I had something unique and interesting to say but when I wasn’t sure at all if that was true…
What I remember most about that book was its length. I remember I just could not stop writing. I felt that I had so much to say. The first drafts was nearly 500 pages. It felt like pure torture to try to edit it down or cut down the number of words. I just couldn’t. I now know that as a person and as a writer, that is one of my tendencies… to over-explain. To say too much when nothing needs to be said. To say the exact same thing in three different ways using various synonyms just to make sure that the point comes across and there is no misunderstanding.
I’m not sure why, but I’ve always struggled with short precise language. It’s just not me. Part of what’s always bothered me about fewer words and shorter sentences is the room for misinterpretation. After all, the meaning of a sentence is the result of the writer’s intent and the reader’s interpretation — two highly personal subjective experiences. My goal was to ensure that the words on the page were what I as the writer meant them to be… that they could not be misinterpreted. I wanted the reader to truly feel every emotion and see every picture exactly as I painted it… and to me that was good writing. Hence, my love affair with words.
But maybe I’ve gotten it all wrong. And maybe, in most creative pursuits, just as in life, a little ambiguity is not a bad thing. Perhaps the lack of clinical clarity is more reflective of the way life truly is — confusing and muddled with all sorts of conflicting messages and lessons. Maybe it’s okay that certain words connect with people in different ways because of their own stories, upbringing and desires. Perhaps, it is not such a negative thing that with single words and with simpler shorter sentences, the reader can connect with the words in a deeper more meaningful way. Maybe, the fact that with fewer words, the reader can chose how to interpret or intertwine those words into their own being is a good thing. And even still, through that experience, the words can mean more than they would if they were over explained in excruciating detail.
People say that there are certain universal experiences in life but when they happen to you, they feel uniquely personal. Falling in love is one such experience that billions of people experience and yet when it happens to you it feels so personal. And you feel simultaneously connected to others who have had the same experience and completely alone as you believe that only you must have had such a deeply personal and unique experience. In this vein, I started to think about single words. Words that really speak to me. Words that I identify with particularly. And words that in the current climate bring forth some positivity into the world. And it is these words that I wanted to focus on because, words matter. Saying them, reading them, looking at them, believing them.
So… why am I telling you about this unpublished book that I’m not quite sure is any good and that will likely never be published…. Because, I’ve realised that sometimes the “goal” is not the goal. And that is ok. Sometimes, you can spend three years writing a book only to understand years later that it was the needed focus at a time when you felt lost. Sometimes, by using more words, you diminish the substance of what you are trying to communicate and you limit its ability to travel. And sometimes, in a world that is ever more connected, the simplest way to connect can be with a single word.
Inspiration behind my new collection of NFT artworks focusing on Flow
Words matter. In a modern day world drowning in social media postings and tweets and neverending blogs shouting for somebody to listen, a single word can be still hold power. Sometimes, simplicity is key. One word…. Many possible meanings… many possible connections that feel so personal and so intertwined with our own individual histories and ambitions. But still universal. One word, created in the flow, whose purpose is to inspire, to comfort, and to uplift.
The starting point for my NFTs are my original physical original artworks that I then transform through painstakingly photographing, documenting, recording, reshaping, and composing an entirely new original one of a kind artwork that only exists in the digital world. An artwork that combines the idea of flow with the importance of words…
Interested to see my original digital artworks inspired by words?
Head on over to OpenSea! https://opensea.io/collection/word-flow
