Owned It

Welp. I did it:

Done and done!

Boydoll asked me if I was going to have my story made into a book. 'How many words have you written so far?' He was really excited about my accomplishment, and was blown away by the sheer volume of pages that were saved in Google docs.

Aside from my immediate family and a few internet friends, I didn't tell anyone that I was participating in NaNoWriMo this year - well, aside from the fact that it's big as Dallas up on my blog, but still. The truth is that my story isn't very good. It's not that it's poorly written, although as a first draft I am loathe to let anyone see it. It's the subject matter.

What started at first about a teenage girl whose mother is hospitalized for depression - which in itself is hardly uplifting, has turned into a novel about five different accounts of child molestation that take place over three generations. It was a really intense experience, and there were several places where writing about it pretty much sucked.

Some of the writing I am enormously proud of. The pace and phrasing in several places came together really well. I had an eerie, third-person experience while I was reviewing my story on Saturday prior to the deadline: I could actually visualize reading some of the plot development in a real-life book, as if I had not written the words myself. There are parts that are poignant, charming and funny. But there are also parts that are really hard to read and pretty horrific.

In truth, I am still kind of reeling from writing it. I mean, what the hell? In any format I have ever been apart of, if the topic of child molestation comes up, it's as if the air is sucked out of the room. No one wants to read about children getting sexually assaulted. I know I wouldn't purposely seek out such a novel to read in my leisure time. 

I guess it was a story that I needed to tell, even if no one sees it. The irony of that statement is not lost on me: I should be okay telling this story. Writing my novel was enormously cathartic, even if I hardly want to be the poster child for surviving a horrific childhood experience. 

"And that's all I have to say about that." Forrest Gump