Closure - Occupation

[qos]

Not the same as my vocation or my day job, Occupation is the name of my unfinished novel.

For the last several years I have picked it up, resolved to find some way of finishing it, worked at it in fits and starts, and then put it down again. The biggest problem was not that I didn't have ideas, but that I could no longer enter that world from the same perspective or with the same passion.

For a long time I ascribed this inability to finish as one of the symptoms of the hibernation of my creative passion. That was true in part, and for a long time.

Now, I have released Occupation and any thought of finishing it for this reason: it is the story of a girl who is growing up, being tested, and comes into her power as a sovereign and priestess. I wrote it to explore issues of power, responsibility, growing-up, love, duty, and sacrifice that I was grappling with in my own life.

But that is not my story any more. Trying to finish it would involve immersing myself in a place and a state of being that I have moved beyond. However much I love the story and the characters, I can no longer live with them.

But I will always cherish the memories of the happy hours spent writing in that world, and the insights I gained in the process, and the collaboration I enjoyed with the friends who shared it with me.

Comments

[royalbananafish.livejournal.com]

I am very impressed that you can definitively put such a project to bed. (It's so logical. Even not knowing the work, I get it.) I wish I could do this for my own projects.

[qos.livejournal.com]

Thanks, but I've been drawing this out for years.

I started writing fantasy episodes, just for fun, before my daughter was born. I'm not sure when I realized I had more than just isolated incidents, that there was a complete story arc in my mind, but I've been "working on the novel" for a good many years, and struggling with whether to finish it or release it for the last few.

I certainly feel regret that I didn't finish it back when I was still immersed in it -- but even as I type that I wonder if it was possible, given the exploratory nature of the work. It wasn't about creating a beginning, middle and end, it was about exploring Seonaid's challenges and how she dealt with them, and discovering what wisdom I could startle myself with from the voices of her allies (and enemies).

That gives me an extra measure of peace, writing that. It was never really about "the novel" (indeed, when I focused on writing for a hypothetical audience, it completely ganked up my creativity), it was about Seonaid and me learning about ourselves. That purpose has been achieved. She is greine, not only in the eyes of her people, but in her own heart, and I've come to a similar place.

[southernselkie.livejournal.com]

*smile* Love you, seester