Blank Pages in my Bathrobe

I am lost without my looming, wordy novel to keep me company. For the past three months, I sat for hours each day, talking with my characters, preferring the world they inhabited to my own. I created obstacles for them and myself. I transcribed their feelings and followed them on their journeys until, together, we approached the end. They carried on, dancing their way through their imaginary lives, and I stepped back. The lights faded out on the scene, and I faded with them.

Now I am my novel's disgruntled ex-lover, who feels that we broke things off long before our relationship ran its course. I sit around in my bathrobe, thinking about my novel, too depressed to get dressed because what's the point of the world anymore? How can I go on without a never-ending project to tinker with and perfect, picking at the novel's shortcomings and insecurities until our once-happy relationship is reduced to arguments and bouts of self-loathing?



I try to continue the pattern of living the novel and I once shared. I get up every morning and sit at my computer, now devoid of my partner. It was easy to awake with the sense that something comfortable, something I knew so well, was waiting for me, begging me to spend time with it. Now I sit here alone, trying to make new friends with the little ideas that float through my head. I'm bad at making new friends. I exchange numbers, I promise to call the ideas when I'm free so we can get together. Sometimes I even follow through and spend a night with them, transcribing what these new ideas wish to share with me, but it doesn't feel the same. And it's too much effort.

I resign myself to watching old stand-up specials online and catch up on all the British panel shows. I create elaborate YouTube playlists, mostly comprised of sad jazz. A recording of Radiohead's 'Karma Police' by the Bad Plus is a favorite, aptly conveying my mood in a way that only a jazzy, instrumental cover of a Radiohead song could.

I make lists of literary magazines who might take an interest in some of the new ideas, avoiding the larger and more prestigious ones like the Paris Review and the New Yorker. I'm not ready for those. I stick to the ones marked 'FLEDGLING' on the duotrope.com site. Someone at a fledgling literary magazine might take pity on one of my sad little ideas and offer to give it a home.

Last night, I started a new list, one entitled 'Things to Add During the Novel Edit'. It's blank. After an hour of staring down at the paper, I inked a large number 1 on the top line. I thought that might offer me an incentive to pen a sentence to follow the number, so it didn't look so lonely on the page. It didn't. 1 remains alone.

I'm not ready to revisit the novel yet. My plan was to start the edit tomorrow, but I'm not ready to peer at my past love with an evil and critical eye, analyzing and decompressing all the nonsense that seemed so fun and brilliant in the moment. I'll give myself another week to sit in my bathrobe, scrolling through YouTube videos, trying to build new relationships with the new ideas. I want to return to the novel and wallow in its comfort, but it's not ready to invite me back. So I'll wait, and busy myself with other things and pretend they're as important as they novel, until we're both ready to see each other again.