DIARY
Evaporation, right?
It’s funny how you have to work for years sometimes to discover what’s been true from day one.
I’m giving up on this novel.
For now at least.
Not for good, I hope.
You see, in order to continue writing after I’ve been pulled away by other commitments for so long, I’ve had to go back an reread the three-hundred pages written in the two years I’d worked on the novel’s second revision.
And I’m horrified to discover that much of it’s very poorly written.
I can say that objectively now; I stand at an objective distance.
Moreover, I can objectively say that I haven’t acquired the time or energy, but most importantly the skill to fix mistakes and errors I’ve made even very recently.
Urbantasm is everything I described in the last post: political, religious, and mathematical.
My God.
And I started this as an 11th grader.
The only thing that separates me from most other artists in this regard, frankly, is stubborness.
Because most other writers would have dropped this project after one year… not the eight that I’ve sweated over it.
Something else. I often imagine to hear John Bridge, the narrator, to be speaking to me, he is so very real to me. And often he has gotten irritated at the lack of progress in Urbantasm and expresses reservation that he chose me, of all people, to write it.
Perhaps this is what he saw coming a long time ago.
I will continue to write about John Bridge.
I will write about Michael Loss, and Selby Demnescu, and Lucy Banner, and May Dunham.
I will write about Arkaic, Michigan and X Automotives.
But right now, I cannot… I cannot finish this project as it needs to be finished.
I do have the benefit of extensive notes and years and years of experience.
It may be that in my thirties and forties I will draw close to my teens once more and be able to complete this sparkling, translucent work of art I started as a shattered-feeling seventeen year old reeling from the end of a bad relationship and taking barefoot walks in the rain.
Until then, John, May, and all of you… the very best of blessings and wishes. I love you all. And I am confident that we will meet again one day. Stay out of the sewers. Wash the glass from your toes. And don’t forget to come in from the rain.
Yours for ever and ever,
Connor