On Choosing Disorientation

Sometimes getting lost takes us right where we need to be.

“One of the beautiful things about art is the way that our practice can allow us to lift out of our normal, habitual selves and into someone better/more interesting.”
-George Saunders

A writer from my Wednesday Group talks about purposefully climbing into her car to drive around until she gets lost. She loves the process of wandering, seeing what the road brings her.

Me, I like a map and a plan. I like the well-trodden path. I eat essentially the same meals day after day; I am monogamous; I stubbornly pull out my Beatles and Bob Dylan CDs when I’m in need of an emotional lift or some inspiration.

I suspect I’ve been re-writing the same books for two decades because I initially resist the disorientation inherent in a blank page. When a friendly voice suggests I write something new, my mind flips frantically through the memory rolodex searching for any old story about my life I might have hanging around rather than conjuring something out of thin air.

That said, I wrote a new song over the course of the past month. It started because a friendly voice told me it was time, and because I was tired of fighting with my novel. I had no inspiration—zero. But I did have a file in my Notes app called “Song Ideas” which I keep for when I get an idea, or Katryna has an idea, but the moment isn’t conducive to engaging it (usually when I am driving around and cannot possibly pick up a guitar). So I type it or speak it into my phone or scribble it into a notebook with a lot of passion but very little direction for Future Me about what I exactly mean. Months, sometimes years, later when I want to write a song, I have only a list of baffling clues. The original spark is long dead.

As it was earlier this month. I had only a random collection of phrases. So I played the guitar and hummed and bumbled around for a week until some coherence appeared. I really DO NOT know how that happened. I just kept playing it and messing around until the song began to tell me what it was and what it meant. And I was surprised, and I was delighted.

This is where it gets dangerous—the moment where I suddenly know what the song is about. Because at this point, I want to tell the listener, AHA!!! Here’s the point!!!

But a lot of listeners—including me—don’t like to be told what the point is. They want to figure it out, have it be revealed.

This time, I got lucky. I was patient and let the song inch along until it was brave enough to show up fully. Now it’s written, and we will perform it at some point. Here’s the first verse:

It’s a matter of degree my impossible geometry
Is it too late to be somebody else?
So I took an online test to see how happy I am meant to be
It said, “if you believe you are free does it matter that you’re not?
Is there a difference?
Do you want to know what you don’t know?
Or guard your ignorance?”

All our gods are growing up and the sky it cannot hide them
We follow them as they ascend,
Watch them bend, watch them stall
Then turn before they fall.

After I wrote the song, I dusted off the novel draft and sent it to an editor who told me to cut the first seventy-five pages. It’s too soon for me to know if she is right, but there was something thrilling about jumping into the story at the point she chose. If I’d written this scene as the beginning, I would have thoughtfully guided my reader into understanding who each character was, like a good host of a dinner party. I would have given my reader a subtle intro to each character and explained their relationship to each other. But the editor pointed out that actually it becomes very clear immediately who each of the characters are without my gallantry and helpfulness, which is another case of me wanting to say, AHA! Here’s the point!

I’d really wanted my novel to be finished by now. By “finished” I mean “undeniably great in the eyes of a vast majority of people who will bestow upon me all manner of accolades and publishing contracts.” Instead of jumping immediately to next revision steps, though, this time, I’m going to take a page from my friend the wanderer. I’m going to drive to the other side of the world, in fact.

To wit: Tom (my husband) wants us to learn a language together. I suggested Italian, since I speak French, he speaks Spanish and we’re thinking of taking our son to Italy this summer. È logico, no?

But Tom said, “I was thinking more of something with a different alphabet. Like Greek, Arabic or Russian.”

I said Ancient Greek! He said, No, Modern Greek! So we settled on Russian because I wanted Indo-European, the better to mine the cognates. Do either of us want to go to Russia? Do we even know any Russian people? Nyet. But there is something to be said for doing something JUST FOR FUN. Just to get lost and wander. (I feel like a first grader with my terrible Russian handwriting. Look:)

Russian has so many vowel! And seemingly familiar letters in disguise like spies.

Our teachers are Duolingo and various YouTube videos, which means they jump around and give us prizes even when we mess up. “Playing” with this language, wandering around in the absolute woods like a true foreigner, is good for my equilibrium, making me braver about the choices I’m going to have to make in my literary life.

I will return to the Big Idea novels, probably tomorrow, actually. And I will have plenty of opportunities to confront the blank page starting November 1 when 30 Poems in November officially begins. I’ll be the one emailing out the prompts this years, so the element of surprise diminishes, but because I’ve been collecting them in another Note file, I can’t remember a bunch of them. So Future me will still be somewhat disoriented. I promise to be brave on the page. I promise to be honest. I will raise money through my efforts for Center for New Americans and because of this, my wanderings will make a real difference to the life of a newcomer to this country, giving them a map and the language to help them navigate their way in this strange land.

Ok, your turn. Do you like to be disoriented? When do your ideas come—in the shower? In the middle of working on the problem? And also, if you could learn another language what would it be?

Read Nalini Jones’s amazing novel The Unbroken Coast! She’s a genius and you will love it and thank me for the recommendation. I got to hear her read at Amherst Books on Monday and it was a pure joy.

Monday Seeding & Tending is going strong! Every weekday, we gather for a quick hello and a prompt, then hunker down to write for an hour. Free to all paid subscribers to this newsletter!

Write with me the weekend of November 7-9! If you can’t come for the entire weekend, join for a day.

Thanks to Matt Bell for hosting author Amber Sparks who discusses her “maximalist” practice of novel writing in his most recent newsletter.

Hey! If you liked this, check out The Nields Newsletter, also on Substack.

Thanks for reading!

Love, Nerissa

Me eating the same lunch I ate the day before and the day before that…. Photo by Katryna.