Sitting with the dark for a bit...
Earlier this year when I was writing a first draft of a horror short story about religious trauma, the process had me working myself near panic almost every night. I was revisiting recurring dreams and memories from my childhood. It was horrifying, but I had to keep coming back to the story because it felt like I was finally pulling things out of me that had been left to fester for too long.
If you peeked into my apartment during that time, you’d see me lying down with my laptop propped on my stomach typing away while my eyes were closed and my breath was heavy. I would be able to get through an hour or so of drafting like that before my body was so overcome with anxious energy that I felt like my skin would separate from my bones at any minute.
As a result, a lot of that bone pain and body horror was integral to the story. Here’s a snippet for you:
My fingers ache against the wall, and it takes all my willpower to keep them from curling away… curling inside of myself. When a jolt of pain travels from my nails to my elbow I instinctively pull my arm back, and I am anchorless without my wall as my guide. As I panic, the pain pulses through every joint where my bones hinge together.
When I would close my laptop for the night I would pace through my small apartment, fidgeting in every possible effort to self-soothe. As I curled up in bed, I could barely sleep some nights with the images of these dreams still flashing beneath my eyelids.
Eventually, the story was finished. I remember I shared it with a few friends that night without even mustering up the energy for another read-through. My emails to them read, “This is such a rough draft, but I need this to live somewhere else besides my brain and my laptop.”
For months those friends keep asking me if I’ve made any progress on editing it. I finally reopened that document last week. Now, despite the terror and fear, I will keep sitting with the dark and see what emerges.
So what’s the plan?
The plan is to tear it apart. No, but actually. This part of this paid corner of this newsletter is a way to go deeper into my process and offer a space for other writers to share where they are in their editing process.
So here’s the list of to-dos and what I am hoping to accomplish:
[x] Send to a beta reader (no friends) for objective overall feedback (I did this last week and it wasn’t as scary as writing it so I’ll take that win)
[ ] Edit for plot & pacing improvements
[ ] Remove redundancies and overemphasis — respect your readers and try not to beat them over the head with some of this imagery
[ ] Line editing because you know how you cling to certain sentence structures and words WAY too much
[ ] Final read through
[ ] Search for a home for it (Also known as a journal that may want to publish it)
[ ] Prepare for rejections
I’ll see you in a few weeks. Until then, I’d love to hear about anything you might be working on right now in the comments!
Happy writing in the dark spaces (figuratively and literally).