N.K. Murray

I blew up my book today.

I should explain that. It sounds like I doused it in lighter fluid and torched it ala Angela Basset, walking away triumphant that I slayed the beast.

It wasn’t that at all, as fun as that sounds. There wasn’t a ceremonious Viking-esque funeral held for the book that remained stuck at 40,000 words for nearly a year. Instead, I blew my book up in my head, while sitting on my back porch this morning drinking coffee.

It’s no secret in the universe that 2020 has been tough for everyone. I mean, if it hasn’t been hard, you’re either oblivious or the biggest badass on the planet. I haven’t worked on the damn book for the better part of the year. Every so often, I’ll pull up Scrivener on my phone (after redownloading it from the cloud because…🤷🏼‍♀️) and read the words I’d slammed on the page so I could get them out of this crowded mind. I didn’t love them. They didn’t speak to me. They didn’t tell the story that played through my head in the wee hours. When the stress from work and life kept me awake, the only solace came from this story that wound its way through the annals of my brain like I wend my way through an old bookstore. The words were more the haphazard scribbles of 3-year old’s crayon – you get the gist, albeit not as cleanly or clearly as you might have if someone more skilled happened to work on it. My story felt like it was scribbled in angry black and white, like I needed to prove I could write something that touched someone again, instead of just writing because I loved it. And needed it.

You know that feeling you get when you’re just so fucking mentally tired from being that you can’t process another word? That’s how this year felt. I could’ve written more. It’d have been utter garbage, but I could have put another 20,000 on the page and patted myself on the back in a sort of false accomplishment, like “Look what *I* did in the midst of the world losing its bloody mind.” The idea of saying ‘Fuck it’ and trashing it has been ruminating for months – especially as I got more and more tired. The story that had once charmed me into a fitful sleep, now kept me awake in a sort of ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ theme park ride from hell. (Note – watch Class Action Park on HBO. You’ll get what I’m saying.)

What was I to do? This iteration of the story is not the story that I started with in my head in 2002-2003. I might even be on version 12.0 at this point, but it is 40,000 fucking words that took hours of my time and energy. I feel almost like the guy that bought an old house wanting to flip it, only to realize the foundation was rotting and there’s close to no way it could be salvaged.

Except…it is, and I can? My characters, all beautifully complicated, fully- fleshed creatures won’t really change, much. My back story will be as circuitous as ever, and won’t change much. But my path forward has become much more clear than it has been these few months, and the story that has kept me awake at night has morphed into one that I can see and believe in. My road forward, though still foggy and uncertain, does have a glimmer of sunshine peeking through the haze.

What was the impetus for this monumental shift in my head? A simple conversation, over a drink by the fire pit with a friend who can level set with me because she knows I won’t be offended by her words. (Not for nothing, it takes a lot and a little all at once to offend me so it’s a grab bag some days.)

To paraphrase, she asked me when it was going to be enough for me. When was I going to let myself be happy, and stop fighting and pushing and allowing myself to be beat up by the weight of the expectations my history laid on me. She might have well asked when I would be enough for me. It’s no secret to anyone who truly knows me that I’m an overachiever with a huge inferiority complex. (Massive. HUGE in the dulcet tones of Billy Fucillo.). The chip on my shoulder might belong in Monument Valley. I’m the fucking queen of saying I’m going to do something and then muscling my way through it to the detriment of my health or my sanity. It’s one thing to not accept no for an answer, but it’s another thing entirely to not be aware of that line we all have when things go from “this is great” to “oh shit, what did I get myself into?” I live in spite. In spite of my dad’s echoing words in my head telling me I’m going to be flipping burgers if I don’t do better, do more. His flippant statement that he loved me, but just didn’t like me very much is truly the thing I remember most of the many phrases he tossed my way, and sits as an asterisk to any memory of being or feeling loved. (Ironically Dad, I didn’t like me much either for most of my life, so I get it now.) I can’t say that I’ll be able to change that ingrained philosophy of doing things because “they” said I couldn’t or shouldn’t, but perhaps I need to give myself the grace that just because I can and could, doesn’t mean I need to.

How does that relate to the mental explosion that occurred in my head this morning, you might ask? I realized, once the caffeine set into my synapses, that I’d never publish THIS book if I didn’t. I’d never let fucking garbage be associated with my name. I may not be Nora Roberts or Jodi Picoult, but I am N.K. Murray and that means something to me. And it means something to the people who know me and believe in me.

So what now, you may ask, since I legitimately haven’t done anything other than say I’m going to not show you words that I wasn’t showing you anyway?

I have to kill it.

I have to take a sharp knife, and slice that bitch to ribbons. It’ll be significantly more than a pound of flesh off of my tale, but I truly believe that it’ll be easier to cull the words that are terrible, than to sit there and let them beat me bloody every time I guiltily pull up Scrivener. There’ll be no more feeling of inadequacy when I read how my story choked along, and I’m crossing my fingers that the bits that I’ve salvaged will give me the skeleton I can begin to flesh out with a new tale.

I know I didn’t need to say any of this to anyone. But I truly did because I have this sense that if I don’t hold myself accountable in some sort of manor where I can’t renege on my words, then I’ll sit there and stare at this screen without doing what I need to do. My 2020 goal was to get a first draft of this book and I very well may not get there. But, if on December 31st, I have 40,000 words of a story that makes me go hmmmm….then I’ll consider that a victory after a year for the ages.