Gave Up the Novel - again

 Maybe the damn thing doesn't want to be written.  I got triggered in my novel writing class last night and realized that I don't have the cojones to take on the felt experience of personal criticism (ie, the implication that I am a bad person).  

By Evelyn Clement on Unsplash

I won't share the details with y'all because as it was revealed to me, one may not now as a white person, ethically use the negative language of the past in the mouths of the people of the past -- I was being asked to Hollywoodize my language for two reasons:  1.  to respect the feelings of someone of an oppressed background to be injured by the word  2.  because "those words" are shortcuts.

The way some of these comments were made they were accompanied by "that" tone of voice -- "mi sainted mither's".  The one my deeply Irish-identified mother used when I'd done something "bad."  Many of my reader [singular intentional] may have had such a mom.  She could be so loving, so fixing.  And she could also explode in a rage or use a sharp tone (my sister can also use that tone) that triggers a strong defensive response or invites me to run in terror.  So that tone was used by one person to suggest that I didn't care about the oppressed.  And of course to call something a "shortcut" with a different tone of voice -- the tone that suggests 'only a slacker would take a shortcut' - is a MORAL point of view that is pretending to be objective criticism.  Oh, and the tones in which I was laughed at for grabbing at the name of someone I have used as a model who was called 'an old white guy' when half of me is an old white guy and there's an "old white guy" in the class.  

Well, it's a challenge to act with love toward everybody, isn't it? 

And Will sitting in the other room without turning on the light as the room grew darker and darker and the only light in the house was the stage light on my face.

And all this going on ON A SCREEN in front of me -- so the whole thing takes on the quality of unreality (" a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination.")

I will own that all of my sudden strong emotions were MINE.  Fuck.  I've taught that for years.  I got triggered and I had a long talk about it with my therapist.  I also sent three emails too many to my poor teacher.  At the time I was still so shaken that I wasn't able to stop the outpouring of words.  I've had to deal with "that" student - the crazy one.  But I couldn't pull up my empathy when faced with the cinema of the moment.  I wasn't strong enough.  Oh, well.  I am staying in the class to give support to my colleagues, including the one who said that bad words like "fuck" are also a shortcut.  Happily, another student said, yes, use the word "fuck".

I taught for 30 years and know about not using the word.  But now I will use the word "fuck" because it's part of my vocabulary and this in my fucking blog I'm writing overlooking a gorgeous river in a stupidly managed tourist town in the high desert that everyone else thinks is so fucking beautiful and I just fucking want to fucking run AND I fucking won't. 

But I did quit the book.  I'm going to graduate school, after all.  And long form fiction is just hard work.  So is living with someone who is dying.  I decided I couldn't do both if there would be such personal triggers when the work was finished while I was doing the promotion thing.  I know my limits and dealing with people "inadvertently" being mean to me is one of them.  That happened to me through my childhood (as my older sister said, "I wasn't trying to kill you.")  That's a hard "NO!" Nope.  Not going there anymore. "Not gunna duit"  I've been taught to like myself and set boundaries by some fine therapists.

So, my therapist tells me that she'll be teaching me how to set boundaries in my relationship with grief this coming week.  I look forward to that.

I won't quit the novel writing class.  I owe feedback to those in the class who gave me great feedback.