The Graveyard

I call myself a writer which means I have a mound of unfinished drafts as high as the ceiling in the corner of my room. The ones on the bottom cry out in pain as I add carelessly to the pile. I never pay them much mind, but this morning was different. I sat at my desk and cracked my knuckles, about to start a new project. I did my obnoxious pre writing ritual, nodding to my Jane Austen and Virginia Woolf paperbacks, reading a scene here and there and thinking intelligently about form, mood, structure and phrasing. Before I began writing, I allowed myself a little fantasy. This project would start off like all the others but something would change and it would start breathing, living on the page. Beautifully-turned phrases would tear out of me, being drawn out by some holy, noble muse. I’m no longer a scrub sitting at my desk tapping away on my keyboard but an artist, forging ahead. The work, when done, is magnificent, devastatingly funny, yet spare and serious and just right. This is too good for online baby, this about to PUBLISHED, you know? I can finally show everyone that my flying under the radar for most of my adult life was actually all part of the plan. Just a modest introvert who put genius on the slow burner, letting it simmer into a fever, waiting for the right time to break through her cocoon, a bright artistic butterfly. How will I pose in the author picture that will be on the first edition hardcover? What will I tweet when Obama puts my book on his top ten reads of 2020 list? (Note: tweet should attempt a mix of the incredulous and the modest) Best of all, when I’m interviewed as of course I will be, how shall I position myself? Writer-activist is more my style but I wouldn’t say no to writer-philosopher or writer-thinker. I sigh and begin drafting my piece in my notebook, making wild slashes with the pen, plotting and underlining earnestly as Hemingway did (probably).

For some reason I look up from my notebook and my eyes are momentarily drawn to corner where the draft pile is. I start. The corner is bare, the floor where it sat an irregular gleaming shape edged by a layer of dust. So that’s the colour of the floor. In the wall, there is a small door, just like in Alice in Wonderland. I abandon my desk and crawl through it into what is unmistakeably a graveyard, with vines falling from bony, wretched trees and marble headstones gleaming white in the gloom. Here a headstone for a story I began when I was on fire after reading Shirley Jackson for three days straight. There, the think piece about Higher Education in State Universities. All around for miles, I could see what was once the growing pile in the corner of my room, laid out in state, at rest, dead. I walked among the gravestones looking nostalgically at pieces that I’d once loved but which I’d given up on when they became a chore or didn’t meet my expectations. There were stones for stories where the mood had vanished or when the baby had cried or the pressure cooker whistled or my real boss walked in. I walked for miles and miles, my emotions stirred like water in a high wind. I felt no peace. I felt like a failure and it was a feeling I recognized as too familiar, the feeling of doom that guts me at my lowest, darkest point. I was near the edge of the land now and I saw it from a distance: the most persistent of my ideas, the one I had come very, very far with. I have about ten thousand words of this draft. It’s grave was grander than the rest and I immediately knew why. This was my big one and despite it going horribly and taking unmanageable turns, I still believe in it and I still think it has to come out of me before I die. The sky above the graves was letting up: in this alternate world inside my bedroom wall, it was about to be dawn. I looked at the polished marble of the headstone of my big idea but there was nothing engraved on it. Puzzled I squinted at it and then looked up and gasped. There, on either side of the grave were Austen and Woolf dressed in period appropriate clothing, their faces 3D and pale (they’re white so duh! For some reason I NEVER think about their race when I read them. Hello! This could be a great essay). Woolf looks bored but Austen smiles. Then sunlight floods the sky illuminating the clouds and the stones crumble and explode. The ground beneath my feet lurches and heaves and fragments of white rock fly in every direction. I put my hand up to shield myself and in an instant I’m back at my desk. It’s quiet and the time is 11pm.