Art Monster: Or, How I Finally Wrote My Novel

If it hadn’t been for Harvey Weinstein, I might never have written a novel.

I know, I know. What a thing to say. But, it’s true. I’ve been writing stories since I was six years old, but I became serious about writing in middle and high school, when poems and short stories just seemed to pour out of me. I was published in my high school literary journal, won writing contests, and got As on all my creative writing assignments; it was if words flowed through my veins instead of blood. My dream was to become a published author, and right on through my senior year of high school, I was convinced nothing could ever stand in the way of that dream.

I stopped writing early on in my freshman year in college. It wasn’t an abrupt stop, but there were significant reasons as to why I just didn’t put pen to paper as often as I used to, and, gradually, my love of writing started slipping away. I tried halfheartedly to pick it up again, but I was too busy living my college life – parties, studying, late night bonding sessions with friends fueled by 3am pizza deliveries – to be as into it as I once was. When I write, I dissolve into the world I am creating, and I was afraid that doing this would alienate the social circle I had worked so hard to form and maintain.

So, I stopped writing. I tried to start up again in my early twenties, but, as with before, things got in the way – trying to build my career, trying to make rent, trying to maintain a successful romantic relationship, etc. Writing was always so easily pushed aside–the one expendable. This pattern of start-then-stop repeated every few years. The “start” period would usually result in a few pages of mediocre storyline, and maybe a few chapters, if I was lucky. The “stop” period would often come with a sense of guilt and sadness, but not so much of either that I was persuaded to continue writing. After awhile, I started to give up on the idea of becoming a published author altogether. I convinced myself that if I really wanted to make it happen, I would make it happen; since I hadn’t yet, it must mean I didn’t want that dream badly enough.

Enter Fall 2017. Harvey Weinstein was the first to be brought under fire for sexual misconduct with an alarming amount of women, and then the accusations started popping up every week against so many entertainment industry giants that we all knew and thought we loved. In November, my very brilliant and savvy friend posted a link to a related article on her Facebook page, and, enraged as I was about the developing news, I clicked on it and started reading.

The article was “What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men?” by Claire Dederer.

It addresses the moral dilemma of how to enjoy works of art (movies, plays, books, paintings) by men who are creative geniuses but monsters in their personal lives (rapists, misogynists, opportunists, and just plain scumbags). I was intrigued by this concept since one of my favorite writers is John Milton. I am in love with his Paradise Lost, and I used to go around saying that if I had lived in his time, I would have been his wife. An English teacher once set me straight, telling me, “You know he was a complete schmuck to his wife and daughters, right?” Erm, NO. I hadn’t gotten that far. I like to subscribe to the “never meet your heroes” theory. However, with so many monsters now popping up in our artistic midst, I felt that I should read what Dederer had to say.

While the article addressed men who are lauded for their brilliant works but demonized for their Neanderthal behavior, the author segued into what I thought was a far more interesting point—aren’t all artists, in some way and on some small level, monsters?

“There are many qualities one must possess to be a working writer or artist. Talent, brains, tenacity. Wealthy parents are good. You should definitely try to have those. But first among equals, when it comes to necessary ingredients, is selfishness. A book is made out of small selfishnesses. The selfishness of shutting the door against your family. The selfishness of ignoring the pram in the hall. The selfishness of forgetting the real world to create a new one. The selfishness of stealing stories from real people. The selfishness of saving the best of yourself for that blank-faced anonymous paramour, the reader. The selfishness that comes from simply saying what you have to say. I have to wonder: maybe I’m not monstrous enough. I’m aware of my own failings as a writer…but a little part of me has to ask: if I were more selfish, would my work be better? Should I aspire to greater selfishness?”

This rationale, to paraphrase Kafka, was the axe for the frozen sea within me. This was — and still is — exactly how I feel about writing.

When I used to write in high school, I wrote selfishly — dare I say, monstrously. It was glorious. Being a teenager with few non-school-related responsibilities, I was able to give myself over completely to the muses whenever they called. Ideas would often come in the middle of class, and my teachers, who knew I was “a writer,” would let me disappear into whatever scribbling haze I needed to for the duration of their lectures; I was a good student and a polite teenager, and apparently that combination will buy you a lot of leeway.

In college, though, it became harder to lose myself in my ideas the moment that they hit; lectures were only once or twice a week, and I would be lost in class if I didn’t pay complete attention to the professor. Exams and readings were all-consuming, and I was trying my best to make friends without appearing to be that weirdo who detached herself from a party for an hour to write a five-line poem. Similar obstacles appeared in my twenties and early thirties, and eventually the only time I would get to write would be an hour here and an hour there, and that just wasn’t enough for me. In order to be a good writer, I need to immerse myself fully, selfishly, monstrously in whatever world I am creating. I need to block everything—and everyone – else out.

After reading Dederer’s article, I mused over the thought of becoming a “monster” for the sake of one’s art. My first (bittersweet) thought was, This is why I’ll never write a novel. How could I do this again? How could I just block out the world and my husband and my friends and all my adult responsibilities…to write??? I sighed reluctantly, and then bid a silent farewell to my dream of becoming a writer. It clearly just wasn’t meant to be.

And that’s when it happened. Something inside of me let out a scream. I kid you not – “NO!” rang out through my head, as if someone were charging at me with a knife and threatening to kill me. Next, I felt a deep and visceral ache right in the middle of my body, followed by a profound sense of loss at the thought of never writing again. Of never being “a writer.” Of never even taking a real shot at writing that novel and trying to get it published. Which was crazy, since at that point I hadn’t written in months, if not years. But, the thought of giving up something that I once loved so much physically pained me, and then I knew. I knew I had to try.

Dederer’s entire article was great, but her one paragraph changed my entire world. I knew I had to aspire to greater selfishness, and I decided I needed to become a monster in order to fulfill my dreams. Not a full-on sexual predator type monster – just the kind that blocks out the world around her in order to bring the world in her head to life. An “Art Monster,” as my friend who originally posted the article link now calls me.

I told my husband about the article and how it made me feel. I told him how I had this crazy idea of taking my upcoming vacation time between Christmas and New Year’s Day to write, and only write – I would hole myself up in the guest room of our house, and I would work on the novel that I started writing a decade ago and have worked on here-and-there ever since. It would be five straight days of writing solitude; no calls, no texts, no email, no social media, no contact with the outside world. I would see only my husband and my cat, at night and once I was finished writing, and that was only because they lived with me. I emphasized that I could not be disturbed at all as I worked because I would need total immersion in order to write like I used to be able to write. The goal of my “writing retreat” wasn’t going to be to finish a novel, or even to write a certain number pages. My only goal would be to see 1) if I could still write as well as I used to, and 2) if I still absolutely loved writing and wanted it to remain in my life. I figured that after five days, I’d know the answers, one way or the other. I asked my husband, “Is this a totally stupid idea?” And my wonderful, loving, supportive, amazing spouse responded immediately: “I think it’s a fantastic idea.”

On December 25, we hosted our first family Christmas dinner at our house. On December 26, I kissed my husband goodbye before he went to work in the morning, then retreated to the guest room with a cauldron of tea and started to write. Five days later, I was not only the proud yet disbelieving author of eight chapters, but I had also deeply, passionately, and irrevocably fallen back in love with writing.

I can’t even begin to describe the experience that my self-imposed writing retreat offered me. Most of the days were spent in a haze, dizzy from the voices, characters, plot lines, and timelines that whirled through my mind. I would take short breaks here and there for food, bathroom, and sleeping, but other than that, I was at my computer desk the entire time. Here are some things I learned along the way:

Writing like it’s your job is HARD. I always knew writing wasn’t easy, but up until then, I’d always written “for fun” – at my own leisure, for my own pleasure, and without any deadlines, unless you count school assignments, which I thoroughly enjoyed, so I don’t. During my retreat, I devoted entire 9-5+ days to writing as if I were paid to write my own thoughts instead of publish someone else’s. I treated it as my full-time job, and it made me appreciate just how intense the creative process is.

I discovered that the life of a writer is rather isolating. I’m used to texting my friends during the week, calling them on lunch breaks, and meeting up sometimes for dinner in the evenings. I’m used to scrolling through social media for updates when I need a little five-minute break from the workday. I vowed not to do any of that during the retreat, and staying away from it wasn’t that difficult. Really getting into your story is all-consuming, and I found that it left no time for the outside world. It’s what I wanted, but it’s strange to get what you want and find out how different it really is from how you thought it would be. The extreme isolation was good and necessary to get me started, but I’m happy to say that I have now learned to balance time in the world I create and time in the world that actually exists. Although I occasionally have to revert to being a full-fledged “art monster,” I am able to do most of my writing these days without shunning my loved ones.

I think what amazed me most is how quickly the time went by that week. I was lucky enough to be overflowing with ideas and therefore never suffered from writer’s block. I’d switch on my music, get into “the zone,” and then start typing. It’s like I would be in a time warp; each time I glanced at the clock, it had zipped ahead an hour and a half. It felt like that Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode, “Life Serial,” when Buffy has some chip planted on her that causes time to fast-forward, so she’s constantly playing catch up because so much time has passed and she doesn’t know how.  At the beginning of the experiment, I had thought five days of writing would be more than enough and that I’d want to bail out early. By the middle of the first day, I realized that five days was not going to be enough at all—I wanted more. And I wanted to keep writing like it’s my job forever.

At the end of my retreat, I could easily say that writing my novel was the most satisfying, rewarding, and wonderful work I had done in years. And, despite being completely isolated from technology, the outside world, and most of my friends and family, I felt happier, lighter, and more alive those five days than I had felt in a long time.

I’m proud to say that I’ve since finished my novel and am working on sending it to agents and publishing houses. And, now I have this wonderful little blog that allows me to occasionally share my thoughts on writing, which is awesome.

If you had told me back in November that I would have written a novel and started a blog by June of the following year, I would have thought you were bat-shit crazy. I thought I was crazy for seriously contemplating any of this. But, I’ve learned over the past few months that anything is truly possible, and that sometimes you should just trust your crazy ideas.