"adam's toes" (rodin sculpture garden, palo alto) by devi laskar

For as long as I can remember, everybody (family, teachers, friends, frenemies) has asked me “What’s wrong?” I scowl a lot, and they assume something’s wrong. All I’m doing is thinking, but somehow my uninviting expression invites interrogation.

My parents, especially my father, had a better way of asking: “Where are you?” He knew I was deep in thought–in the Land of Revision, basically–and my mind has been constantly engaged in that journey since sometime in high school. The good thing is that it’s been quite a journey. The problematic part is, that, metaphorically speaking, I’m rarely home.

Confession: But I like to dwell. I like to revisit old experiences and feelings, considering how I did some things as well as I could but, of course, how things could have turned out differently.

Related confession: Yeah, sometimes I think about things too much, drive myself off course, force good ideas off cliffs. For example, I’m revising an old story that I started more than a decade ago and have abandoned numerous times. I haven’t gotten it right so far [see 3a inside this post], but letting it go wouldn’t be the right thing to do. The content of the story is very personal, drawn from grief inspired by dead friends and failed relationships. I’m tempted to keep dealing with the old feelings, but I question how much value this story could possibly have for anyone else. Maybe it’s a vanity project or journal entry that really doesn’t deserve to be a short story.

Finding what’s valuable about a topic is what drives me to write anything. Devotion to “what really happened” isn’t an obstacle for me when I write fiction–that’s the point. I have no problem taking my experiences apart, rearranging details, and omitting moments that don’t serve my purposes, whatever they may be. If anything I worry that I’m too willing to play fast and loose with the events of my life? What am I doing by stir-frying my memories? Am I avoiding pain? Am I callous to my and others’ feelings about some pretty awful experiences?

In her book Writing Alone and with Others, Pat Schneider advises, “All our memories are already fictions.” She suggests that writers keep first drafts private, delaying decisions about disguising or omitting people and details until it’s time to revise. Her advice helps me understand I’ve been worried that someone in the know would accuse me of getting things very wrong in my version of the various situations I’ve culled.

Simply put, I’ve spent a lot of years over-thinking this story, yet afraid to think deeply about it. The events that inspired the story have faded into the past, which admittedly helps a lot. As I work on the current draft, I’m focusing on the story’s structure and key plot points. What does the reader need to know for the sake of the story, and when do I think s/he needs to know it? Doing that has required me to carefully, patiently nudge my way through the draft and let the story tell me what I need to write, sketching as I go.

In the next draft, I will flesh things out, inspired by the revisited memories of real events but not married to them. That was my intention when I started this project. It has taken years of dwelling on real-life stuff to get to the point where I could dwell on “art making.” At this point, I can’t even tell you if the story is going to work or not. All I know is that I’m excited about finishing it so I can let it go and move on.

James Black is a founding member of Book Writing World. He earned a masters degree in comparative literature at the University of Missouri at Columbia. His work has been published in the anthology The New Queer Aesthetic on Television and in the journal Anon. He’s writing his first novel about the family of a closeted, gay soldier stationed in Iraq. Check out his blog, Quota. He contributes to the BWW weekly!