The novel’s change in me

I’m sitting here at work, and am feeling like I want to start connecting with people with my work, and so I’m writing this. It’s 11:00am, about.

I’ve been thinking recently about….hmmm. I finished writing my novel this past Saturday, and the ending the book suggested felt electric. It pointed towards, or made me feel, a sort of catharsis. A total freedom. It was overwhelming, and I went for a drive to the beach, and fell asleep on the sand. And only after waking up did I feel normal again. I saw past all the ways I limited myself, and I saw that all my doubts had become so reflexive that they seemed like my world. But it’s not. And in one brief moment, I felt–I believe this–actually free. In the religious sense, even.

Of course, I’m back to my old head-bickering self today. But I felt supreme at that moment. And that’s why I knew the novel was done. It had worked through me, and pointed to the things that I need to change in my life. John Gardner said about the novel that you can’t teach the denouement, and you can’t plan for it. And Toni Morrison said something about a uniting force or an idea–pursuing the idea–being the sort of guiding energy in one’s life. I think the idea of the novel has left me here, on the eve of my Saturn Return (lol) with the knowledge that I might have to leave everything of my life I’ve built here, and go live somewhere else. I’ve fought that change for so long. I think it’s coming soon.

“I see my light come shining/ from the West down to the East/ and day now/ any day now/ I shall be released.”