Remember when I tried to write a science fiction novel in a month?
I bought the notecards, I researched space, I probably got myself some new pens. I did the things that I thought it would take to write 50,000 words in 30 days.
I did not write those 50,000 words in 30 days; or in any days since.
I created the protagonist during a yoga class with a teacher I did not care for; instead of focusing on the bad time I was having, I decided to tell myself a story. When I spent a whole November writing that story down, I became infatuated with the bravery and resilience of a being that has never existed.
I plotted most of the novel in space, on a series of man-made moons orbiting the earth called The Seven Sisters. I named the moons. I developed a history for them, a timeline, a reason. Each one was created on earth as an economic recovery project for factory workers laid off in the wake of automation.
But for all my extraterrestrial planning, most of the scenes I wrote were planted earthside. In Indianapolis, actually, a city I already know. I wrote a scene about stargazing in familiar cornfields. I created characters only based on women I’ve met. I constructed a home from memories of a historic neighborhood I once went garage sale-ing in. (Where I met a dominatrix-turned-activist who wanted to sell me her book “Spanking City Hall” instead of the home goods and jewelry she had set out for sale.)
My characters never got liftoff, because I couldn’t handle space. I researched and re-created the rules of gravity, began plotting out the physics so that I wouldn’t get called out for inaccuracies. I found I had to create a new universe. I became God. And it was too much pressure.
Later, after I wrapped myself in the consolation of 17,000 words, I understood that I never had to do it that way. The story didn’t need to bounce from moon to moon to be interesting, and it didn’t need to be a scathing perspective on technology and poverty and women’s bodily autonomy. All I had to do was to write the story I enjoyed telling myself. Everything, everything everything, comes down to this: if you like doing it, then it is worthwhile. I didn’t have to be God, I just had to be Emily.
Someday everyone will meet her. And they’ll know how much I’ve enjoyed building her life in bits and pieces since that sleepy yoga class in 2017.
All in good time.
Next Steps: Drink a glass of water, open the Google Doc where she lives, and say hello to that old friend. Is this the year she becomes real?
The novel that never was, but might be someday