Posted on August 29, 2009 - by sarahsamudre

Psychological Hiccups

In a flash a heart is slain
you have to ask in all this pain
Was your heart too soft?
Was your love in vain?

- Copeland, “Love Affair” Eat, Sleep, Repeat ♫ http://blip.fm/~cipry

(a post about the psychological struggles of the middle of this novel)

So while this book has been 6 years in the making, for a while, between year 4 and 5, it stalled out. Everything paled, I put it aside, and lost my way. I had reached a psychological hiccup in my plot and every time I approached the story, I cringed. I didn’t know why I cringed, but I was beginning to detest my own creation. Something had gone awry.

This book started as an analogy for the church and my generation (or really any generation in their twenties, as I’m closer to my thirties than when I came up with the concept). The parties and the two older women involved were symbolic of the church’s primary function, the ancient traditions recorded in the book of Acts, and the more anal traditions of the generations that came after- the generation that always seems to safeguard any institution since the raging fire of the early church cooled and coalesced into the traditions and trappings that come with any institution. Chloe, the protagonist, is inspired by the past of the latter woman, and oppressed by the former, who can’t stand to see the ideals of the past reinterpreted in a relevant way.

The premise was good, but I couldn’t go forward for some reason. Vasant and I, at that point, had been looking for a new church for a year and half. We basically gave up in August 2008, because every church we went to seemed to be posturing from the pulpit that Christ took political sides. It was nauseating. Whether it was about the national election or gay rights, we decided we’d worship on our own until the political nonsense the church allowed itself to be swept up into died down.

But that’s when it occurred to me: I’m not in the church anymore. None of my friends are. Lots of my formerly ardent Christian friends are actually atheist now, and many others are just doing what Vasant and I are doing: worshipping on our own. We all got sick of the condemnation for being young, different, passionate to interpret the message of Christ in ways that spoke to our generation. We got tired of people in their fifties telling us that Jesus looked down at the way we did things, when we knew He didn’t. But whether or not you know in your heart that the Lord of All Creation cares about you and thinks what you’re doing is fine…. it really gets too much when the keepers of a particular institution tell you the opposite.

So if this book was meant to be an allegory about my generation, how people who are different fit into the church, and how the church lets tradition get in the way (century after century) of a real revival of meaningful ideas, then it had to end badly. The book had to change, and be heartbreaking. If I feel personally that the church is in trouble (USA Today published a study in 2007 that said 70% of Christians under the age of 30 prefer to stay unchurched), then the book needed to reflect a dire message.

But I’ve run into another psychological hiccup. The middle of the book involves Chloe getting excited about uniting the community, throwing the big parties her Grandmother threw, in her own way. It involves the utmost optimism and passion, for the ideas of reinterpreting an event that changed the town. There is no shadow in her mind that adults will bristle if things aren’t as they remember them. There is no thought in her young mind that they will snub some of her guests. She has no idea that being good-hearted and well-intentioned doesn’t mean much to people who only care if you show up on time and perform per their expectations. She has no idea that the second something goes wrong, she will be labeled and libeled.

I can’t write it.

….

I can write it.

I just don’t want to.

I’ve wrestled for weeks with why I can’t write the middle of this book. The end is done, the beginning is done, but the middle, the bridge from the introduction of the parties to the destruction of them, that’s difficult. Writing with cynicism in my heart translates to the page. I’ve realized that nothing will go onto the page the way it needs to unless I can immerse myself into the feelings of Chloe’s youthful passion for change.

But how do you undo your own heart? How do you induce amnesia, trip back into the innocence of youth, and recapture, without any trepidation for the future, the passion of the young to change the world? Especially if every time you remember your own past, it’s the lack of trepidation for the future, the lack of cynicism that I repudiate myself for?

Everything about this book, for me, is a psychological gauntlet. This is the big push through the spikiest part of that gauntlet. To be naive and hopeful, rather than who I am now, wiser for the wear, and hopeful. Because I am still hopeful.

I wouldn’t be writing this damn book if I wasn’t. I still believe I can make a clarion call to people my age. It just took my heart being eviscerated over and over to understand the only way to reach those who have been disenfranchised by the church is to be disenfranchised myself.

So from the outside, I travel into my heart, question myself, and try to recapture the emotions of a 21 year old version of myself.

It’s hard, it’s ripping me apart. All I want to do this morning is write the end of the book, over and over, in 15 different ways. But that’s not what’s needed. What’s needed is to explore the middle, to make the reader feel what I once felt: blind, boundless hope.

Meanwhile, this song keeps coming to mind: ♫ http://blip.fm/~cipry

Copeland, “Love Affair” from Eat, Sleep, Repeat

Fell past a cheekbone hill
To a piece of her floor
The hope of the world
in an awkward spill

Oh she’d lie on her bed
and stare into harsh white light
and think that her heart’s not right

‘Cause love took her hand like a thief
took her heart like a robber
and the feelings that scare her
become her relief

Just let me run where I want to run
Just let me love who I want.
Just let me run where I want to run
Just let me love who I want.

In a flash a heart is slain
you have to ask in all this pain
Was your heart too soft?
Was your love in vain?

Was your kiss too weak?
Were your eyes too tight?
And much too young to be in love
Much too young to be in love

Just let me run where I want to run
Just let me love who I want.
(repeat twice)

There are no rules for this love
Just keep your head and don’t give up
Like all the fools who play it smart.
Lose your head just for your heart, just for your heart.

*

Sigh. I feel better for writing it out. And I’m daring myself to be courageous and post a bit of the process on my website. This is a VERY edited version of the psychological exposition I performed on myself this morning. But I think it’s important I share more about why I’m writing. At least, important maybe only to me, but still. There it is. “Out into the void” as almost every tech-addicted Nora Ephron heroine seems to say…

Back into the fictional fray.