One Star Review
I started writing a novel. I write roughly 800 words a day. It's slow going, and I have to wonder if the burn is too slow - if when we recount stories, ones we'd like to tell others, the candle actually burns in the other direction.
I have to wonder if my novel will get a one star review. If at the end of the day, the novel is for the audience, and not for the author themselves - but is surviving - writing prose that feeds some internal flame, living to see another day - for ourselves, or is it for others?
What if my novel never fills the void? Where does candle smoke go when there's no oxygen to even feed the flame; if a writer writes a novel and no one reads it, did it exist? Where does it go to make itself known?
This is already too abstract, and short, because I'm shot. I'm glad I'm embarking on this journey, but at what emotional cost? In the words of poet and writer Ocean Vuong, in his second-to-last Instagram post (because I'm not stalking him or anything), he says that he has completed his second novel - and that it took something from him that he may never get back.
Here's to leaving it all behind, to never getting back the pain, and the trauma, and instead making our stories of survival ones of hope, of our inner turmoil's flames going in one direction: skyward, where we can see the smoke spell out our dreams.