The Atheneum is Over
The weekend of June 3rd and 4th was the Atheneum’s final retreat. An educational ending to the year program. There was plenty of wine and amazing food. Each teacher/mentor spoke on something that they felt was important for us to take away with us, now that we would be embarking on a post-writing school life.
I proudly walked away with a Certificate in the Mastery of Writing, thank you very much, and I had a nice glass of champagne thanks to Paulann Peterson. Paulann had invited Berry Sanders and his wife to speak to us on our last day. Then we all said, good-bye and good luck.
One Last Assignment
One of the things that we were requested to do was to present a project as a sort of team effort (our teams were, fiction, poetry, and non-fiction) as a part of the fiction group I was asked to write a memoir. I decided to write about what it was like to finish my first novel, and since my first love is theatre, I couldn’t help but to compare the two in the world of endings.
How I Wrote My First Novel
Prague
Although I had wanted to be a writer I never consider myself a writer, because I didn’t feel like a writer. So, I journaled. I journaled from the time I was 16, sometimes daily sometimes with an absence of many months. When I turned 26, I moved to Europe, and I took a journal along with me. I spent two years living abroad sometimes journaling sometimes not, but it was during my short life in Prague that I had faithfully journaled, recording every moment daily. I had captured nuances and conversations, in fact, it may have been the first time I wrote my observations versus my inner feelings.
Colorado to Oregon
When I reluctantly returned to the states, I found myself sitting on my aunt’s bed in her one bedroom apartment hiding out from a hot Colorado summer storm, flipping through the pages of my journaled history in Prague, longingly reading over the transcripts, and it was at that moment (eleven years ago) that I realized I had a story. It wasn’t an amazing story. It wasn’t going to save lives or change the way people felt about the world. It was in the words of Sylvia Plath: a potboiler. Yet, to me, it was a necessary story and it wanted to be told. Right then and there on my aunt’s computer in two to three days I wrote the entire first draft except for the end. I didn’t want it to end how it really ended. But how did I turn fact into fiction?
I traveled across the western United States with a man, his dog, his depressed mother and her bottle of vodka, and ended up in Oregon, but that is another story. I carried a printed copy of my endless manuscript along for the ride. The electronic copy had been lost. I shoved my novel in a folder and ignored it.
Back to School
Two years later, I decided to return to school. I applied to a community college to focus on mathematics, but while there I decided to take a fiction writing class for fun. It rekindled my interest in my previous novel attempt. I thought about finishing it, but it took me another three years before I sat down and retyped the entire thing out again, and still with out the needed ending.
I had an incredible love hate relationship with my work. There were moments when I wanted to burn the thing and moments when I thought it was brilliant, but ultimately it was the characters that kept talking to me. They would interrupt my dreams and daily thoughts living out their lives as if I were still writing them.
An Office Job, A Retreat, and a Recession
In 2007, seven years after I got my initial idea to write the book that I was now calling Žižkov, I started working at  a corporate office. It was the most secure job I had ever had in my life. I had actually made payments on my student loans, I could buy clothes, I could save money, but I during my time there I didn’t write. I felt my dreams of living a creative life into a nostalgic past.
Around this time my grandmother passed away and I received a small inheritance. I used my inheritance and a small savings; I had saved enough money to quit my job for 3 months and still live comfortably. Once and for all I was going to write this damn book. I was confident I would complete it in three months and then find another corporate job as a receptionist. I would feel accomplished and be safe and secure and sound. September 15th, 2008 was my first day as a full-time writer and it was also the day the stock market plummeted into the sea like a mobster in cement shoes.
I kept writing.
I rewrote the entire novel in 3rd person. I created charts and back stories for all the characters. I did research on Prague and read Czech writers in order to refresh my memories of the city. I fantasized about the money my book would make me once it was turned into a movie. I rewrote it again in first person (not recommended). I wrote the first half at least in six different drafts, but never found my way to the true ending. Simultaneously, I was sending out my resume. I sent out many applications. Resume after resume with no response, not even a rejection, till I ran out of all my savings. I lost the room I was renting, and I had to rely on the generosity of my friends to house me until I could find work.
Acting Saved Me for a Bit
When I auditioned for Inviting Desire, I was literally auditioning for my life. It was a miracle of fate that the one job that would save me from homelessness would be theatre. It was almost ironic.
While on tour I wrote a rough draft of an ending for Žižkov. When we ended the tour and talked about future projects I swore up and down that I would complete this book because although it had an ending it was not finished.
Acceptance into The Atheneum
Another year passed. I returned to retail, and various side hustles before I could really commit to working daily on my manuscript. On a whim I applied to the Attic Atheneum. At first I was rejected, but due to a drop out and me being next in line, I was accepted. My goal was to complete my novel.
I Wrote a Novel Titled Žižkov
On May 27th, eleven years after I knew I had a story, I finished the book, but it was not like theatre. There was no applause, no one to clink pint glasses with, and no one to drown in the amazement that it was finally completed. There had been people to support me along the way, encouraging friends; friends who helped finance my schooling; my peers and teachers in the atheneum, but at the end of the experience I was alone.
It was my idea to take the journey alone and I ended it alone. Sitting in front of my computer typing the last words I whispered a “holy shit it’s done” and felt a whoop rise up inside me like we just won the world cup, but then I looked around the room, and there was no ‘we’. There was only me. I felt empty, weird, almost apathetic toward my work. All those years of fighting and this was it? And that was it in its entirety: who cares but me? I was a writer. I didn’t need an audience to finish the book. I didn’t need anything but me, and what did I really want? What did I expect?
How it Feels to Write a Book Vs. Closing Night of a Play
When you create a play, when you perform you perform for an audience. Everything is for the play itself and the audience. I can write for an audience and a publisher, after all I did dream about the movie, but in the end that isn’t what it’s all about. It doesn’t take an audience to write a book. I can put that manuscript in a drawer or erase it because it’s finished already. No one else needs to read it in order for it to be complete. A play just isn’t a play without the audience, but a book is a book even if it isn’t read. Though, it should be published to complete the job. Working toward publishing is something completely different.
So why did I write it? Did I write it to have my voice heard or was it that I wanted to return to Prague? Was it that I wanted to be someone other than me, and be purely me simultaneously? Does it even matter? The answers were not there for me. So, I turned off the light, closed my laptop, and took a walk to shake off the feelings of loneliness. I had felt like I had just gone through a mutual break-up; we both knew it was over, but why, we had so much love? And still it was over.
Feeling Like a Writer?
As I wandered through the streets near my apartment I heard a voice inside my head. The voice of a young girl as she crouched on a rooftop:
“I watched as J.P. threw the television from the roof of Jesse’s parent’s house. I don’t know why he does those things. He’s not even drunk. J.P. is straight edge, he just fucks shit up purely because he’s an asshole, but I don’t give a shit, I’m an asshole too.“
And I knew I was listening to the voice of a new character, she was talking through me, and she was completely fiction —well—mostly.
My friend told me about a writing retreat with A Room of Her Own or AROHO a writing retreat for women. We decided to attend because you can never get enough writing support. I may have completed my novel without fan fair, but I don’t need to learn alone.
I didn’t try to publish Žižkov. I still have it. Perhaps one day it will be seen in print and have a book cover, I’m not sure. My program is over. My first book has been written and I have another story idea brewing in my head, but I still don’t feel like an author. Perhaps one day I will feel like one. As for today, I’ll keep writing. What is a writer supposed to feel like anyway? What a silly thing to want to feel. The saying is actions speak louder than words. If that is true I never need to hear someone tell me that I’m a writer because my actions prove I already am.
An Accidental Vagabond 