First Drafts and NaNoWriMo
So, I was talking to some awesome students (Titans, Hawks, & Bengals writers) at Tinley High School in Illinois earlier this week about how first drafts can feel scary because you set up this expectation to be perfect, like a writing superstar in your first draft. And I was trying to explain that even published writers aren't perfect in their first drafts.
I realized that maybe the best way to do this is to show one of my National Novel Writing Month projects (for this year). So, here goes. This is what it looks like unseen, unedited, raw.
Spoiler alert: It's not perfect. :)
I first started hiding in my bedroom closet when I was four, I think.
It wasn’t my first hiding attempt. That began when I started to see. When I was born they thought I was completely blind. It wasn’t for months before they realized that I could sort of see, just in a blurry way where there were four copies of everything, four versions of the same truth, I guess. I never knew which one was real.
Before my eye operation, I’d push myself against walls, crawl behind the couch or toddle there, feeling the scratchy fabric behind my hands. It happened at night too. I’d get in my bed after Mom kissed me goodnight and I’d pile all my stuffed animals around me and then pull the covers tightly up over my head.
“I am a nothing girl,” I would whisper. “I am nothing. Nobody can find me. Nobody can find me.”
I thought that this was a genius hiding space when I was four, and that makes sense because I was young and stupid, but what doesn’t make sense is how I sometimes still hide there, sometimes.
When I was four and murmuring
In the closet
Because it was darker than the bed
And safer
With walls around me.
My mother’s voice
Rattled through the house
Hysterical
Hysterical
Calling my name
Screaming it eventually
Panicked beyond belief
And I sat there behind the clothes
Dangling down
Hand me downs
Of other kids' better lives.
She found me
Of course
I made a noise or something
Giving myself away
And she found me there
Huddled up and crying
“Why are you crying, honey,”
she screamed, no she sang, no
she whispered. “Why are you crying.”
“I’m a nothing girl,” I whispered,
no shouted, no spoke, no screamed.
“I’m a nothing.”
And she bundled
me into her
arms and said, “No,
no you’re not,”
which of course
was exactly the wrong
thing to say.
There are certain things you are supposed to be afraid of when you’re little - normal things, right?
Spiders.
Dead people.
Spiders coming out of dead people.
Dead people coming out of spiders.
But I was afraid of being - just being - being alive - being noticed. Being.