I made two more breakthroughs recently on my ponderous novel, It Chose Three: The story of me watching my three sisters become legally blind from a hereditary eye disease I didn’t get.
A few posts back (How It Should Be Written) I wrote about finally realizing I need to write my story as an autobiography and not attempt to dress it as a YA Novel/picture book. I am not letting those ideas go, but I think I need to focus on getting the entire story out in all its raw beauty before I spiffy it up into poignant symbolism.
I made two more breakthroughs since then:
- I am shying away from divulging how truly hurt I was and still am by this because I don’t want people to feel sorry for me or be upset about how deep this wound is. I also do not want anyone to ask me the question I ask myself all the time: Why do you feel sorry for yourself? Because I still don’t have a good answer for that. The character I am writing is me. And allowing anyone to scrutinize that is terrifying.
- I have decided to write a novel in verse. Funny thing … that YA novel I keep telling you about is half prose, half poetry. As if a part of me were already trying to release the emotion that can be so powerfully captured by poetry. I love that about myself. It just took several more years for the rest of me to catch up (not so thrilled about that part).
I was driving when I thought about my next steps for my novel, and this remake came to mind. This is an example of why poetry will work, and why the first obstacle isn’t going away anytime soon.
This remake of a known nursery rhyme captures how I feel in a few lines, versus writing pages and pages. It’s so sharp, it’s so brutal, the cut is so visceral, my immediate reaction was NOPE! Too much!
Three Blind Sisters
Three blind sisters, three blind sisters.
See how they run, see how they run.
They all run after a normal life,
Who cut at their eyes with an acid knife!
Did you ever see such a heartless way
A life will be altered by DNA?
So, what was your reaction?
But seriously, this is how I best explain the pain … but can you also see how I’m afraid of people’s responses to that?
Yet I will hit publish on this blog, and a few of you will see it. And that means I can’t take it back.
And that also means I cannot go back.