Timing and Truth: Hearing the Voices That Matter

Sometimes, it just isn’t the right time.

During my thesis defense, committee members said, “Get it out there. Move on.” I decided my thesis needed vast improvement.

I was speaking to someone this week about how I’d let the voice of perfectionism take control and had chosen to try to hone the piece into something better.

After some time fighting with the manuscript’s weaknesses and in the throes of a painful home situation, I lost my will to write at all. I threw the many “redlined” pages away and closed out that part of my life permanently.

My insecurities over my capabilities were not the only reason I gave up. Constraints demanded by my then-spouse on what and how I wrote, as well as on my potential marketing methods, contributed to the frustration greatly. If I couldn’t be a writer my way, then why be a writer at all?

When my marriage began its final, headlong plummet into the grave, I began writing poetry again, and I began writing it my way: passionate, intimate, vain, and sometimes, downright obscene. My general take: “Fuck him and anyone else and their rules about how I’m supposed to behave.”

Recently, I spoke with my thesis advisor about employment, writing, and perfectionism. My advisor, once again in his solid, supportive mentor role, said, “Get that novel out and finish it.”

I have always thought that perfectionism was my greatest bugbear. It probably is when couched in terms of fear and wanting to remain comfortable in my bubble and accommodating to others. However, through the encouragement of a good and kind friend, I have been revisiting all my writing, not just my poetry. So, today I opened that long-closed Scrivener file and began to read.

Is it good? I am told it is. I am unable to judge that. Is it worth pursuing? Yes.

What struck me, as I began to choke back tears, was not the writing style or caliber but the realization that I gave up my novel not because I was being a perfectionist, or at least not solely because of that, but because I was not writing what I wanted to write and not writing the truth the novel demands.

When I say “truth” I don’t mean that it is a non-fiction piece or that it reflects my reality. I mean that the novel demands the truth about the characters.

I think back to comments made by classmates about one of the main characters; they did not like her. They couldn’t really express why they didn’t like her, but they found her grating. That was somewhat hurtful because she was based on me. Her loves, her pain, and her anxiety all stemmed from this heart typing those words. I realized then that the main reason she was so unlikable was less because of who I am and more because of who I was protecting. I put all of my pain and anxiety into her, but I also put the anxiety and frustration of my marriage into her. In addition, as per the understanding with my spouse, the character’s spouse was presented as amiable and harmless. Minor squabbles between them in the novel were easily blamed on her failings, therefore, her flaws were solely of her own making.

The Character of My Words

When my husband and I moved one final time and not long before I threw away my book, I sorted through my many journals from twenty-seven years of marriage. Before I destroyed them, I flipped through a few of them and found my main character in them. The woman writing those journals was in great psychological pain but blamed only herself. The woman writing those journals filled them with phrases like “my poor husband has to deal with such a [fill in the blank with self-deprecating word of the day]” and “I don’t know why he tolerates me.”

I hated that woman.

The woman writing those journals believed those things. The woman writing a character based on her view of herself carried those beliefs into her work and made the character entirely unlikeable.

I still struggle greatly with negativity and self-deprecation, but I am much more self-aware now and am making a concerted effort to change my negative attitude. I also recognize that I did not come by those feelings in a vacuum. I saw this as I destroyed those journals. I saw it later that day when my spouse cheered my decision to remove the evidence that we were anything but happily married and that I had been anything but joyous in said marriage.

I’ve regretted that decision for many reasons, but that’s a bell that can’t be un-rung.

Two things happened in the last two days to shift me from a place so dark that I can’t adequately express the hole I was in:

1) A friend reached out to me and offered his help in the field in which I wish to work, and

2) from the optimism of that offer, I looked at that novel with clear eyes and saw not the hapless and pathetic antagonist no one liked but the woman that needed to be uplifted instead of cowed with condemnation and control.

If there is one thing I can do to make that manuscript better, it is to reflect the character’s painful influences and growth accurately and lift her up.

If there is one thing I can do to make myself happier, it is to stop listening to the voice my ex trained me to use against myself and start listening to the voices of the people around me, like those of my former advisor and my friend, that lift me up.

I have said it here before, but it bears repeating—if for no other reason than as a reminder to myself—I must also maintain the boundary with those who would attempt to reinforce my ex’s training.

It has taken me a year to get here. It was a necessary year and a frightening year at times. I got here in fits and starts and some days I feel I’m really done with the negativity only to be smacked back down a few days later. The words on the screen from that long-ago attempt to write from the mind of the woman I was, had a shocking impact. I hope this time is the right time and I will hold on to this optimism.

I hope that when I hear the voice of the woman I was, I can tell her she is not what he (and others) claim. She deserved to be heard, but she deserved to be healed long before now.

Last Updated on April 2, 2023 by Lee Ellis