Starting Over
I’ve been reflecting recently on everything that has happened in my life since the first agents who read my novel Memorial Day suggested that I rewrite it, and when I finally decided to publish it as an independent author. Going back through my journal, the theme that kept surfacing was “starting over.”
It could also be that “starting over” is a theme that I am reading for at this point of my life, but it seems to be almost as consistent as my resistance to giving myself over to a full restart. So, what better way to get over “starting over” than to get on with it and put it out there?
I’ve written and talked before about how difficult it was to feel so close to finding an agent to represent Memorial Day, only to have them pass with the suggestion that I rewrite it. There were things going on in my personal and professional life that kept me from seeing that their feedback actually was an invitation to start fresh rather than a recommendation to give up. It was not confirmation that I should stop right there, but rather encouragement to keep going. Why did I not see it that way then?
Because starting over is hard!
When it comes to creative restarts, we get bogged down in so many things that we associate with our personal sense of worth. They didn’t like it. They didn’t like me. They didn’t want it because it’s no good. Why did I believe in it in the first place?
Starting over can feel like admitting defeat. It can feel like having to accept as true all of the doubts that occupy our thoughts when first we dare to share. Sometimes the prospect of starting over looms as proof that the thing we really wanted never is going to happen.
Or, it could be that starting over is an opportunity for the original creative impulse to emerge anew.
Many years ago, in another life, I used to do an exercise with young college students that tasked them with describing their future-day fantasy. It was one of those “blue sky” exercises that most colleges do to help students develop a plan for college, set their goals, and identify milestones for them to measure their progress. However, there was no injection in the scenario to ask the students what they would do if any one of the things in their plan did not happen.
What if milestone two or three were delayed? What if you took a different course and found out you want to do something different? Could you still have your “future-day fantasy” (the dream, I suppose) if things were to turn out very differently than what you just described?
Those are heavy things for a first-year college student to consider, but it is the exact same thing that creative people face when their work meets a critical audience. It could be an agent, it could be the crowd at the coffee shop, it could be your colleagues or your boss at work. Even if the thing that you have delivered is not what people expected or wanted, it does not necessarily mean that the initial creative impulse was wrong. And, it might even mean that you get to do something completely new.
Starting over means that you have permission to let go of that “future-day fantasy,” which ironically, often is a thought or dream from the past that we hold onto without wavering. We may be telling ourselves that, by this point in our lives, we should have a certain job title or salary, car or house, family and kids, or a certain number of books, movies, deals… whatever. We may even tell ourselves that until we have those things, we really cannot get started doing the next thing that really matters because we have to do first things first.
Well, if you can never get started again until you are finished, where does that leave you? If you cannot be happy, relaxed, satisfied, or free until you are done, then you never can be happy, relaxed, satisfied, or free with the moment you are given—and the only moment we are given is now.
When I finally accepted that the suggestion to rewrite Memorial Day was an invitation, I asked myself two questions: First, why have I been so resistant to doing something that could be good for me? And second, what is the single thing I want all readers to take away from Joe DaSilva’s story.
To answer the first question, I spent a week writing in my journal all of the reasons why doing a complete rewrite made no sense. Honestly, the only thing that seemed remotely plausible was that the point-of-view I had chosen (third-person objective) had been so torturous for me to write that I could not imagine putting myself through that again. Then I had to ask myself, why would I do that again anyway? If I’m doing a complete rewrite, I can choose any point-of-view that works! Oh, and by the way, why had I chosen the objective point-of-view in the first place?
That was when I realized that I had chosen the objective point-of-view to keep Joe DaSilva at a safe distance. Honestly, I was too scared to start over with a subjective point-of-view because I was afraid of what I might learn from Joe about myself. I had a plan for him, for his life, for his story, and I was going to have to let that go if he was going to tell his story for himself. That meant that eventually I also was going to have to account for why I held the both of us back for so long.
Then there was the second question: what is the single thing I want all readers to take away from Memorial Day? It’s simple. “It’s okay to talk. Nothing is going to happen.”
It’s the opposite of the mantra that kept Joe alive as a prisoner of war, but that he could not let go even after he returned home: “Keep your mouth shut, and nobody gets hurt.”
By living like that-- not talking, not sharing-- Joe remained stuck in the past, refusing to let go of the thing that he imagined one day would set him free.
That was when I realized that the only way to set Joe free was to start over.
And with that, I was free to start over, too.
I would love to hear your stories about “starting over” professionally, personally, and creatively. Re-post or re-share this blog entry, and hit subscribe at the bottom of the page on brendanwalshbooks.com.