the small & unguessed life

One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time. -- André Gide

'Tis the season of graduation parties, balloons on mailboxes in the neighborhood, cakes frosted in school colors, Pomp and Circumstance...
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And if you're like me, it's time to squint at the year on the calendar and count backward a few... did I really graduate from college four years ago? Four?? (Which puts high school at eight, shockingly enough. Let's just move on ...)

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It is so funny to think back to May 20, 2006 and college graduation. I was doing the bold thing, the crazy thing: abandoning my goal of five years for an idea I'd had that February. Instead of going into editing, I decided to come back home to my parents' house and try to write a novel.

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It felt so big, daring, and grand. Write a novel? At age 21, do you really give up the prospect of steady employment for the sake of a novel idea you haven't had yet? It felt gutsy, and it was.

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I'd give it a year, I decided. Sounded safe enough: a whole year to see if I could "make it work." I told everyone, I received tons of support and encouragement, and I moved back home. Fired up my computer. Stared at my quiet, blank screen.

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Fast forward four years to my life now, and let me tell you: this isn't what I thought my life would be like in 2010.

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Not even a little bit.

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In my mind, 2010 had two options. Either I had miraculously proven my ability at writing quick, brilliant novels (an oxymoron, at least for me), and I would be making a living at it... (Yes, we can all say NAIVE, all together class...)

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Or, by 2010 I would have shelved the whole business, in favor of making dependable money at a publishing company. Probably wearing a cute array of business suits. Listening attentively at meetings. I'd have a desk, with a little name plate on it. And everyone could point to me and say exactly what it was that I did. (Luxurious thought!)

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Either I would be a writing success or a publishing success. Those were my options.

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I thought those were my options.

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Certainly I wouldn't still be living at home. Working on the same book. That would be a small, slow life, and it wasn't what I had in mind.

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Four years later, I'm starting draft four of the same novel that I started the summer after graduation. I'm also planning its sequel: I hope to "break ground" on that draft in late August. And I had a November fling with a completely new story idea.

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So four years later, I have three books in my head and heart, two of them in draft form.

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Small, my graduation self would have said. Small and crazy. And I would not still be at home at age twenty-five!!

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But now I wonder if it's my graduation self that had the small vision. That had narrow views of success and how fast it must be achieved.

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I don't always know what I'm aiming for now--they aren't the bright, definable goals I used to have: A better draft. Snappier dialogue than I wrote yesterday. Clearer insight into my characters than I had last week. A more open heart. A calmer spirit in the face of ongoing uncertainty.

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Some things are the same: My computer screen is sometimes blank. I have moments where I think I'm crazy. I have a lot of my former idealism, and a healthy streak of naiveté, which keeps me chasing my work. And my family still believes as much in my writing as I do--and often they find more belief in me than I have for myself.

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But sometimes, though I hate to say it, I'm still my narrow, 2006 self, measuring success in terms of calendar squares instead of the many victories won from my writing chair.

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So I still have a lot to learn. But at least I'm revising my idea of small. By next year, maybe I can abandon that term altogether.