In some way, the first.
Partly because: I have been telling myself that I’m writing a novel, so it’s the switch, the no to that narrative and the learning of —and an eventually "yes" to— another. I'm not not writing a novel, I'm just not focusing on it right now. My writing and my mind are here, on this blog post and the 50-page-long Google Doc of ideas for it.
So I suppose I'm in this stage of both letting go and re-learning / re-orienting / starting anew, which feels both like a loss and an opening.
The larger part of it is: that the novel has this inherent value, a built-in respect when you tell anyone that you're writing one. It seems more impressive, I suppose, than a blog. It’s a physical object, it has heft and is bound and takes a long time to create. You and your ideas, generally, need to be “said yes to” by multiple people, editors, copywriters, etc. You have—they think, when you tell them you're writing a book—immense drive and great ideas, ideas that will be syphoned and rearranged through other people. And because these experienced, literary-minded people said yes to your book, it must be something, it must be good / interesting / fill-in-the-blank adjective.
A blog is something less knowable, it's harder to picture. Anyone can do it, you don't have to jump through any of the hoops that you do to publish a book. Anyone can download Wix (look at me, I just did a few weeks ago). And bloggers themselves can be so many different people, writing about myriad subjects. They could be anyone writing about anything. They’re plebeian to the novel’s perceived nobility.
Another part is: the feedback loop, the comment option, the constant posting. The novel that I write, that you're waiting for, that you've been hearing about on my Facebook and Instagram for months, is more protected. As you're reading the book, maybe you like some of it and not other parts of it, but if I see you, you probably say congratulations.
A blog is different / subject to such a different audience experience. The blog is smaller, easier to read and critique each week. It lacks the heft of a novel and the admiration of the novel's author. A blog is something many can do and therefore: many can rip apart.
The novel, by its perceived difficulty, is more protected from this critique—at least coming from those who haven’t written a novel. I suppose a blog is protected from the critics a little more, buried in the far recesses of the internet.
And yet: if I choose to, I get to care a little less. I don’t have to consider cohesion and character development, I can simply listen to my mind and the ideas that are floating around, still settling in it from today or last week, and I can turn / churn them into words. I can experiment with virgules, colons, lowercase, made-up words. I can make something / throw it out there (post it) / and then make something else. Sort of like a creation windstorm.
And I suppose that’s what I want right now.
I don’t want to edit and figure out plot-points. I don’t want to have to keep the plot's momentum going or make sure that each chapter has enough character development to warrant the scenes I feel moved to write.
My novel was—and is— centered on a character named Ellie, who was very obviously based on me. But she was still different, and she was a “she,” not an “I”. And now, I get to talk about myself. Which, in that sentence just there, sounds somewhat narcissistic—but actually (and also), it’s scary. I will be talking about myself, my own thoughts; I can’t couch them in other characters, I can’t create characters with redeemable facets that make up for their other inadequacies / blind spots / whatever we all have that we wish we didn’t / hadn’t/ etc.
Instead, it will be me: raw. My thoughts about my day, something I saw at the restaurant I work at, some moment of intense clarity I felt while on a run listening to a podcast. Plebeian things, probably lots of mistakes, too. Literary experiments that don’t translate from my mind to my page, things I shouldn’t have said, ways in which my privilege needs to be checked.
These fears have kept me from typing these past few weeks, but I decided that the fear of writing a blog—of not sharing and giving and asking through words posted online—was smaller than the fear of not writing, of not trying.
(Yes, I am playing off of the famous quote which you should definitely Google right now by Anaïs Nin, the French-Cuban American author, and also here in case you haven’t Googled it already, here it is: “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”)
Prompts and thoughts:
What’s a bud you’ve broken out of?
What’s something you used to want and no longer do?
Are all losses openings too? Is that too optimistic?