🕊 On Writing & Hope

My current writing project -- an LGBT young adult novel -- began in the summer of 2013. I was attending the third residency in my MFA program at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA. My mentor at that residency had just informed me that she thought my then-current novel-in-progress was "a little too ambitious for a first novel." I agreed, as I felt a little overwhelmed by how wide the story had gotten. Thus, the current WIP was born.

Fast-forward to today, March 5, 2024 -- nearly eleven years later. The novel still isn't finished.

To be perfectly honest, writing fiction has sometimes felt dumb and -- dare I say, pointless -- with so much going on in the world, little of it good, over these last several years. The want to write is simply not there as often as it used to be. Most of the time, there's little hope that it'll return. That's a difficult thing to deal with. 

However, I'm reminded of a few things that Flannery O’Connor said:

“I’m always highly irritated by people who imply that writing fiction is an escape from reality. It is a plunge into reality and it’s very shocking to the system.”

And then there was this as well:

“People without hope not only don’t write novels, but what is more to the point, they don’t read them. They don’t take long looks at anything, because they lack the courage. The way to despair is to refuse to have any kind of experience, and the novel, of course, is a way to have experience.”

This serves to remind me that, even though times are incredibly challenging for a variety of reasons, hope is eternal. Because it is, there's always a will to write. To continue writing. To finish this novel. And perhaps, to write further things.

Without hope, what else is there?