On inspiration

Notes on a Novel is my refreshed, irregular newsletter where I share thoughts about writing, as recorded in the notes app on my phone.

I plan to use this a bit like a journal, documenting the highs and lows of writing and publishing. Here, you’ll learn about my writing process and my experience of putting a book out into the world.

Like most people, I have a strange relationship with social media. I use it more than I’d like. Hence, why I’ve turned to Substack to share more about myself and my work in a space that feels less like it’s rotting my mind, which, as a writer, is my most important thing.

Now, on to today’s note…

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Last week, I taught a writing class to a group of undergrads. I talked about my journey as a writer. I highlighted challenges and lessons learned. But mostly, I tried to convince them that writing is revision. Meaning: the real writing happens when you start to take apart a draft and put it back together. I showed Sharon Bala’s recent reel that cleverly catalogues the work (and many drafts) that went into her new novel GOOD GUYS to underline this point.

At the end of the class, one student asked me: “What inspires you to write?”

My first answer, my gut reaction to the question, was: me. Or rather, how writing makes me feel. “It’s my favourite thing to do,” I explained. “When I write, I feel alive.”

This is very true. Even before I could actually write (as in, spell words), I dictated stories to my parents for them to transcribe. For the most part, the feeling I had “writing” then is the same one I have writing now: a sense of freedom, of possibility, of being carried away by a story and a world that reveals itself to me each time I sit down and spend time with it.

But the student didn’t really like this answer.

“Oh,” she said. “I was thinking more like… your child. Or nature. Or travel.”

I blushed. Did my answer seem self-interested?

I scrambled to come up with a second answer. I told her the commonality between all of my novels so far, including the one I’m currently working on, is that they are all, in a sense, mysteries.

“And life,” I told her, “feels to me like a mystery. So, maybe that’s my inspiration.”

The student liked this answer better. But after, I realized I should have stuck with the first answer.

Yes, I love thinking about the more mysterious aspects of human experience (friendship, love, art, connection, desire, taste, purpose … I could go on), but I would never be inspired to do any of that thinking on the page if it were not for how the act of writing makes me feel. And: of course writing is self-interested! Each time I choose to work on my new novel, I choose myself over others. I choose myself over spending time with friends, over helping out family, over taking care of my kid. And as a lifelong people pleaser, I can’t help but think this means writing, for me, and probably many others, is not just self-interested, but also, maybe, dare-I-say … radical? The radical choice to chase a feeling that makes you feel alive. Maybe I’ll add that to my answer, next time someone asks about my inspiration.

I hope to have an update about my new novel soon (!) Until then, I’ll be over here, choosing myself whenever I can find the time. I hope you can find time for that, too.

xo, DH