The Sagging Middle

Written from a Natalie Goldberg writing trigger - Tell me where you have failed

It just keeps going and going, on and on, sagging in the middle, getting looser and looser as I try to keep it tight. It moves away from me or perhaps I from it. It’s there in my Google Drive in many pieces, each a version, some dated, some not, same titled The Final Copy, never completed. I have failed. I have failed at writing a novel, of pulling together pieces. How I loved the pieces, each a burst, an aha moment, each a truth and yet they don’t like coming together. Claire Keegan speaks on my computer screen, “Stories find you. You have to listen for it, wait for it, and not force it and be patient while it’s making up it’s mind.” She says it’s like a dog’s nose on a wet rainy day and you don’t want to take the dog for a walk “but the nose keeps coming” she says. “When stories start doing that to you it’s time to write them or they’ll go off and find somebody else who will.”

Perhaps my novel has found someone else. It has been almost ten years now and I have failed. Just as I fail some mornings to take the dog out. Her nose keeps coming and I tell her “It’s raining” She doesn’t care about the rain. She’s not convinced but she eventually gives up. It gnaws at me all day, that voice that says “you didn’t take the dog out.” And I am riddled with guilt. It would have just been easier to take the dog out in the rain.

It’s the pulling together that I have failed at. I live in scattered pieces, huge chunks of life I can never pull together to make a story. My story keeps changing, moving. I eat, drink, smoke, write in frenzied bursts, get bored easily, see something shinny and lose interest. But like the nose they never truly go away. It’s always there the nose of guilt. So I gather them and stuff them away. I believe they live in my belly. Perhaps that is why I can never lose weight. Perhaps if I cut my belly open they will all pour out and demand attention. And who would I be if one day they were all to disappear.

So I keep my novel, sagging, old and worn right here in my belly. I cannot write her, but I will not let her go to someone else. Perhaps it would have been easier to just sit down and write it.