December Thirty-First, Two Thousand And Nine

December 31, 2009. A day that will live in...disappointment. And, hopefully, growth.

I remember the day I turned ten. My whole life prior, I told people I was a single digit years old. That magical single digit. I was one, I was two, I was three, four, five. Six. Seven. Eight. Nine. Those years where only the children belong. I only had that for nine years. Then I left it behind forever. I turned ten. I joined the ranks of the double-digits. For most of the rest of my life, I would be double-digits years old.

Ten.

Ten is the beginning of a new kind of growth. You're still an innocent, carefree little kid...except then you become eleven. You are a preteen. You have preteen angst, even as you turn twelve, and then at thirteen you leave even that behind and turn into a teenager. Fourteen and you're in high school. Fifteen. Sixteen. Seventeen. College.

The new millennium is about to turn ten. And where am I?

Two summers ago, I started working on a project. A piece of writing. It was just a little piece of writing then. I didn't even think it would mean anything more than an email venting my frustration in the form of a two paragraph story.

But this piece of writing grew. For a year and a half, I have written - and not written - around that first email. I'd spend many, many days - weeks - not writing anything at all. And then inspiration would strike and I'd churn out another little writing episode. That's all it was. A collection of writing episodes.

But by the end of this year - by the end of December 31, 2009, I'm supposed to have a first draft of a novel. And I don't. Not even close.

So I'm sorry to anyone who was expecting me to have completed that draft. And I'm sorry to myself, because it's myself who I've let down the most.

I really dislike being disappointing. And I'm sad that I have to end the year feeling like I did not accomplish what I should have accomplished.

One thing I learned through months of experience now is that it is extremely difficult to write creatively when you are not inspired to. And that is what being a writer is all about - writing under all conditions: when people are around, when people are not around, when it's too loud, when it's too quiet, when it's too hot, too cold, when you're exhausted, or when you really want to get out and do something. Being a writer is not writing whenever the fancy takes hold of you. It's writing even when you don't feel like it - because you have to. You have to for you and you have to for your story. And I desperately want to be that kind of writer. A real one. One who is primarily writing, not occasionally writing. It's a lot harder than I thought.

I don't want to give up. I can't give up. I'll never forgive myself if I do. So I hope that no one loses faith in me, even if I am disappointing right now. It's about to be 2010. A new year for writing. If I've learned anything, it's that you can't be a writer based on talent alone. I don't have a natural skill for perseverance, but I sure am going to try and develop one.

And one thing that redeems this post is that it is part of my novel, too. And it's 637 words.

Here's to a new year of writing, and of reaching any goal just within your grasp. I hope you all accomplish everything you set out to do, and remember, even if you fail, a new fight starts tomorrow. Make it count.

-----

My ical alarm just went off. A little message popped up on my screen saying, “300 pages of novel due.” I wish so badly that I was there. I’m so sorry that I’m not. So disappointed.

But…I am closer every day to finishing this ever-growing piece of writing. And I am at least a hundred pages closer to having a real novel than I’ve ever been in my entire life. That’s not nothing. I hope my book continues to grow and develop as it should, and at a more regular, steady pace.

The Painter

We sat, the four of us, on a yellow sheet in the middle of Fort Tryon Park. The field was filled with people on their day off from work: a father and son playing baseball with a plastic bat, a toddler grasping fiercely to his mother's finger as he took a few steps, a couple with an actual picnic basket romantically eating squid on crackers.

"Look!" hissed my roommate, pointing to the road behind me. I turned my head and watched as a late middle aged man slowly walked by. His face was wrinkled and somewhat sad looking. His scraggly gray hair hung in streaks down the sides of his face. And in his arms, he carried one of the most beautiful paintings I had ever seen.

"Oh, I love Pointillism!" my roommate exclaimed, nearly jumping up in excitement. I did not know what Pointillism was. I assumed it meant the dotted way the painting was colored. Two trees stroked carefully and precisely in blends of pink and red stood on either side of a golden-colored road. Other pastels floated about in the background trees, as though the scene in the painting was a soft entryway into a magical fairyland, each dot a fairy come to help make up the picture.

The man with the painting passed by, and we returned to our picnic.

As the afternoon passed, it became time to go. We walked alongside the fortress wall of Fort Tryon Park, winding our way back towards the entrance. It was time to re-enter the world of cars, school, work, and responsibilities. Surrounding us was a brambling ensemble of shrubs, flowers, trees, and stone, with the bluish white sky shining overhead.

Suddenly, in the distance, we could see a man at an easel.

"It's the painter!"

We walked eagerly, yet cautiously, up to him. His painting was on an easel now and a paintbrush was in his hand. He had rested a few jars of paint on the fortress wall.

"Excuse me," one of our party suddenly spoke up. "We just wanted to let you know that we love your painting. You got us talking about Pointillism for about half an hour back there."

"Well, not quite half an hour."

"Is Pointillism common nowadays?"

"No, it's not very common," the man said. His voice was hardly a hoarse whisper, like it had not been used for a number of years and was trying to remember how to make sounds. "I'm glad you like my picture! I'm going to show all my pictures soon. This is my ninth one."

"Do you come here often?" I asked shyly.

"Every day," he answered, looking not at me but at the trees around him. "For about an hour or two. You see these trees here?" He pointed.

I looked where he was pointing and saw. There were the two trees from the painting, and where we were standing must be the road.

"How long have you been working on this painting for?" asked someone else.

"About four months now."

Four months!

We thanked the man and began an ascent up stone steps. As we walked, I thought - four months. Imagine working on a painting for four months and still not being finished.

Patience, I realized, really is a virtue. Because in order to have perseverance, one must have patience. And if one has patience, one can do things like paint one of the most beautiful paintings I have ever seen. If one has patience, one can really do anything in the world.

Perseverance

I love this monologue by Sam Gamgee in The Two Towers movie:

Sam: It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo—the ones that really mattered… full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end, because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened? but in the end, it’s only a passing thing. Even darkness will pass—a new day will come. And when the sun shines, it will shine all the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you and meant something, even if you were too small to understand why. But I think I do understand—I know now. The folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back. Only they didn’t—they kept going, because they were holding onto something.
Frodo: What are we holding onto, Sam?
Sam: That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for.

And you can watch it here:

This monologue really wields a sort of power which human beings through the ages have brought forth in order to persevere. This talk of courage, of finding good in the midst of evil, of really having hope that there will be a way to succeed, even if it is not clear today and even if it is not clear tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after. We have to keep fighting, because if we give up, if we give in, then we lose not only in the struggle but in our own faith, our own strength. People sometimes forget, this world can have a bright future. We just have to bring it about. And this applies not only to world struggles but also to our own, personal ones. It applies to everything we have to work for, everything that's a fight, a struggle. We just have to believe that the end is there, it's there somewhere in the future, and every small battle we overcome, every bit of writer's block or sleepless night or bureaucracy that we get past is yet one more step closer toward our goal, toward the end, toward the prize.

But...but I have a problem with this. I like this idea, but in those stories Sam refers to - even in his own story - there's always a way to take away the power of evil. Whether it is melting a witch or killing a pirate or breaking a spell or destroying a magic ring. But today, in real life, there is never just one thing that will fix everything else. There is no ring of power to destroy, there are no horcruxes to demolish, there is no spell to break or witch to melt or magic object to find. The world is so much more complex than that. The problems of the world don't have such easy, black and white answers. So how can we fix them? They are like weeds, you start to cut them down from one side and they spring up in new places that you cannot get to. So what is there to do? Why can we not just have a ring of power and be done with it? Why does it always have to be so complex...and how can Sam's speech apply when we don't have the key to destroying evil the way he and Frodo do?

If I seem to be contradictory here, this is because I like to be rather contrary - or maybe it's because I see both sides and don't know which one to take.