Delirious Notes on Endings Deciding You

For the last week, I've been stuck in what I hope to be the last 24 hours of the book for this stage—not just finishing this revision, but hoping to externalize it to the realm of the untouchable from now on. I'm thinking a lot about determining endings and hindsight bias and the Cormac McCarthy quote from All the Pretty Horses about the patterns we make.

Making meaning doth exhaust, and as a novelist, there is no escape from it. (I resonate heavily with Haruki Murakami's thoughts on the physical and mental fatigue of writing, which is also backed up by science—right now, I'm producing so slowly but each day is an absolute marathon I can only do alone. Hit the wall again and again and again. For some reason, being at "the end" slows my brain down to about 10% of its operating capacity. The closer you get to the end, the more impossible everything feels.)

I’m in hermit mode now. I have been for this ending stage, and it's practically mandatory for how I operate, what I value, and what I'm devoted to doing. Editing this round has been oddly, personally confrontational, to say the least, and I could only process all that by myself. A book takes the time it takes. Luckily, I could (and do) spend ages by myself without getting bored or lonely. Otherwise, I could not be a writer in the way that I am; whatever that entails, my specific blend of literary strengths is reliant on having enough room to maneuver. My friends are supportive, my process is steady, and I trust the muscle and necessity by now.

But there’s always this point—this peak of exhaustion and triumph—that just feels bad. This stage, no matter how many times I pass through it, always makes me wish for someone who would just...get it. How it feels to keep going, going, going long after you’ve shut down everything else. Not even tunnel vision anymore, but the walls you hit by yourself. Not to stop the motion or fix the feeling or to share the load, but just to be there and recognize it from experience. Many people do hard things, but I have the sense this specific flavor of endurance is different. It does occasionally make me feel more distant from others, or unrelatable.

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I am so, so proud of myself. I know others are proud of me. But I think feeling a little more mirrored or understood in this would let me feel that more deeply.

And I know I am very loved too, and so grateful for that. But this point is probably the only time I ever feel lonely for quiet, genuine understanding. There is so much of this process I relish doing alone, and so much that I have to do in solitude. But.

Personal trials are valuable because you can undergo them alone, but I'm starting to suspect that maybe being seen by others still helps you honor the impact of them more. I think often about contrast and self-sufficiency, so this is self-sufficiency in contrast. I want to feel understood enough in this moment to be able to rest.

Left to my own devices, I've woken up every night after a few hours, brain spinning enough over the weight of THE END to keep me up but without enough sleep to let me work. I frequently describe this section of revisions—or more accurately, facing the turning it in readiness—as a mixture between having a constant, low-grade fever (just painful enough to be constantly aching, but not enough that you can justify feeling as bad as you do) and being haunted. I need a long, long hug and perhaps an exorcism.

The first time I finished and turned in MOUNTAIN SOUNDS, I slept for the full day and night after. I'm sure that will happen this time, and I wish...

I'm almost done. I'm almost done saying I'm almost done. But fresh eyes are hard to come by when you can't rest enough to see what's in front of you.

In a semi-funny parallel to this (as this exact feeling is so prevalent throughout the narrative of my book, which is why it somewhat unintentionally served as a buffer, I wrote an exact moment embodying this into the book that I've always loved: someone silently reading beside the main character, which lets her finally actually sleep. The power, the fatigue, the satisfaction and necessity of paying a price nobody else will ever fully know—yet shifting into catharsis or peace when someone else sees you thoroughly enough to lend you the presence that allows you to let go. Witnessing your solitude? Honoring your absence? Trusting your return? The quiet sanctuary of acknowledgement?

Again, here we get into what it means to call yourself finished. Done. On a more philosophical level, when do I get to call myself "done" with a narrative that only belongs to me? The ending makes the pattern—but are you the one deciding it, or does the ending happen only when you re-emerge into the land of the living i.e. once your absence (disappearance into something meaningful) no longer belongs to just you?

Is it the sleep and sleep and sleep that's the resolution, or the someone there when you wake up? (Whether that's literally or metaphorically—up to you. I've thought a lot about earned beauty and individual journey and need for contrast lately.)

[I specifically meant not to write tonight, but I am rather delirious. In summary, I guess: rest is very different from sleep, and I have a newfound appreciation for the occasions in which others' acknowledgment of your fatigue somehow, mysteriously allows you to. I also have written/mused a decent bit about satisfaction vs. relief within Mountain Sounds, and when we're craving either. Maybe I'm full of the former and longing for the latter.]

To sleep, perchance to dream, etc,. etc,. I am looking forward to tomorrow's coffee.

this was a full TWO revision cycles ago, but I'm somehow still a fighter

and this is a photo I discovered from 2018, when I wrote my first draft.

Update: Finished. Turned in. So tired. Maybe over? Cue something about finishing something you can only do alone. Earned beauty, what you return to, what’s supposed to be easy, whether or not we deserve anything, who actually cares. Emphasizing the need for an exorcism, hug, etc,. All of this sentiment and then some. Nowadays, I know what the ending will feel like each time.

I miscounted how many times I’ve rewritten this book—it’s actually eight. During this specific round, I reread my book five times. You have to love it. You have to give it everything, and I do. It's not the doing that kills me. It's that it always takes longer than I want it to, and I have to show up anyway, even slow.

So I could do it again, but I hope I won’t have to (at this stage of the process.) I want to sleep, rest, stop. Would cry if I could, but probably shut that down several revisions ago. And if I get more edits back again, at least that email cannot possibly gut me the way it did last time. And I can do this, alone, again. Hopefully faster. Tired, a step closer, etc,. Want to sleep. Hopefully rest.