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by its_petrichor

by its_petrichor

indeed
I am supposed to be writing my book at this hour
but I haven't been able to write it for months

I've come to realise over the years
it happens
and what do you do when you can't write a book?
you write about writing

I remember with I'll See You Tomorrow
a non-stop shape-shifting labour of four years
I had a crisis somewhere towards the end when I decided
that's it
I am not going to finish this book
I had grown so tired of my own misery
of everything I had poured into it over the course of the most traumatising years of my life
and then I got covid and finished the damned thing

you know why I finished it?
not out of boredom
that's for sure
I finished it because I wanted to know how it's going to end
isn't that silly?
to say I wanted to know the ending about my own book
but it's true
I never know the ending when I start writing a book
I know how I want the ending to feel
but oftentimes
like now
I struggle with carrying my story to that feeling

I've spent the last ten
at least
writing sessions listening to every chapter I've written
merely to postpone that one scene I dread writing
it is a scene
an event
which holds a lot of importance and a lot of meaningful conversations
and these conversations I cannot wait to write
but my god
the setting
it is the most basic setting on the face of the earth
and for the life of me
I don't understand why I put myself through this
only today it occurred to me that
hey
this is my book
I don't have to include a shitty setting if I don't want to
we'll see where I forward with that

I only ever did character descriptions and plot planning once and I hated it
because I never know these things
I never know what's going to happen
and I never know who my characters are going to turn into in the light of the events
I don't want to know before I have to
writing a book is a lot like reading one
usually you don't want anyone to spoil it for you

or maybe my writing is just too reality-related
I base everything on my emotion
lately I've been feeling numb
that's why I can't write
maybe
probably
I'm grasping at straws here
and waiting
I am waiting for being ready to write again
because I need this book
I need it more than anything I have ever needed
I've been grieving my brother for so long
and I have to write the ending
all the love I would've given him
I have poured it in those pages
and all that grief
that pain
I know how it ends
I owe it to myself to carry it through

most of all
I suppose I write for the ending
I always have
since the very beginning

I read a lot when I was a kid
and there was this one book that left me completely paralysed
the ending was so utterly simple and predictable
yet heart-gripping
that I couldn't think about anything else for weeks
I remember thinking
I want to be able to do that
I want the people who read my work to feel the most beautiful pain
and so I stuck to it
I embraced it
I have spilled tears at my own endings
and it hurts so good
it does because happy endings
well
they're not very relatable
are they?
they're unrealistic and most of all
they're boring
a happy ending is never going to make you feel

it's a lot like in life
no thing is just black or white
no ending is just good or bad
life
as it were
is a kind of grey area
there is good
but there is a lot of pain too
us humans know it better than anyone
and isn't that what we look for in a book?
a story relatable enough to reach into our hearts and pull that pain to the surface
make it bleed out of us
so that the next time we feel it
it hurts a tiny bit less