So six years ago, before If I Must, before Keeping Promise Rock, when I was writing The Little Goddess series and The Bitter Moon Saga in the time I squeezed out of the rock of teacher-mommy-hood that was my life, I wrote the poem you’ll see at the end of this blog post.
It’s an angry, bitter poem.
I had so little time, right? And the writing was paying—but it wasn’t my livelihood. What was I doing spending my babies’ spring days writing? What kind of mother was I? What kind of wife? My house wasn’t clean (it’s even worse now!) and my career was falling apart (because I was miserable in my staffroom) and my children were decidedly… nonconformists in the land of public education.
This act of creation did not seem to be doing any of us any good.
But I kept at it. I couldn’t help it. Writing had taken over everything that was inside me. Pulling my head out of my book was terrifying for me. My book was safe—it was my creation, and no matter how awful the events therein, it was mine, and so it was good. (Yes, those of you who remember your Stephen Crane, I was feral and squatting naked, eating my own heart, why do you ask?)
Creation, art, obsession, can be a great and terrible thing.
I often write about the different sorts of writing a genre fiction writer can do—there’s writing for sex, and there’s writing for money, and there should be no stigma on one or the other because they’re both valid, and they both produce thoughtful art.
But the sexy writing—that is often the stuff that consumes our soul. That’s the stuff that we’re hammering away on during a beautiful spring weekend while our children need food and diaper changes and for mom to fix the plumbing before the standing water gets to the electrical system and kills us all. (Trust me—when you get to the poem, you’ll understand.) The sexy writing is the stuff that kills marriages, estranges children, leaves the writer alienated and bitter and sad.
There is a balance—on my good days I’ve found it—and part of it comes from finding happy places outside of our art. Stephen King wrote eloquently about how “Life isn’t a support system for art. It’s the other way around.” Part of being a successful writer—one who doesn’t burn out, doesn’t let the critics destroy her, doesn’t let the spring days get away without a fight for her children’s happiness first—is developing and sustaining the life that art needs to support.
It means that sometimes—oftentimes—the art needs to come second, or it will self-annihilate.
These thoughts—and obviously I’ve been dwelling on them for a long time if I could pull this poem out of my April 2006 blog archives—are at the root of Immortal.
Our artist, Teyth, is not a bad guy, really. I think most of us can identify with him. Is there anyone out there who has ever been involved in a long term project, who has ever lost time, who has ever said, “Just one more…” minute, hour, sentence, row of knitting, section of woodwork, bolt on a car, increment in the project to show progress, anything, something for the spring day or hot dinner or time playing with children that was sacrificed to this great endeavor…
Anyone?
Yes. That is Teyth. He is the obsessed one, the one with the vision, the one with the secret injury, the driving hurt that can only be soothed by the final product, the dream, the act of creation…
And not the lover, waiting in the sidelines, begging, “Oh please, just once make me come first. Just once, love me more than that dragon consuming your heart. Just once. Oh gods… just once… love me…. Love me with the passion you show that thrice cursed benighted fucking lovely creation that I will love, adore, obsess over too, because it’s the only piece of you that I have…”
And that is Diarmuid. We may identify with Teyth, but we bleed for Diarmuid. He’s the victim of our madness, the casualty in our war with ourselves. He can only survive as Teyth’s man because he loves Teyth’s obsession too.
So enjoy the poem—and enjoy the story. I do love all of my stories, but with Immortal, I told a terrifying piece of myself on that page. I shall leave you with this poem, written when my youngest children were very small, and let you wonder which parts of Teyth were me, and which parts of him were my creation.
And which parts of him you should fear most in yourselves.
The Dragon in My Blood
Bastard child of reading and dreaming and anger and angst,
Screaming for mind-milk, shrieking for me to change his shit
At the worst possible moments.
I’ll feed you in a moment, the dragon is calling,
Your diaper can wait, the dragon is calling
I’ll pick up the trash on the floor when the dragon stops calling
Water is backing up, flooding my ankles, don’t step in it
Don’t worry about it you can wear dirty clothes and clean
The house yourselves, choke through the dust do your own
damned laundry because Christ, can’t you hear the dragon calling?
He’s screaming my name, his filthy claws are ripping the flesh around my heart
His teeth are gnawing at my throat and my voice is harsh with his roars
The best parts of me, the humor, the wit, the lovely spring days
Consumed by his hunger for me, his unyielding demand for my soul.
Can’t you hear him can’t you see him can’t you feel him
are you up to your ears yet in his synasthaetic stench?
JESUS, YOU FUCKER WOULD YOU LEAVE ME ALONE?
I’m sobbing I’m angry I haven’t pissed in all day…
But it’s no use.
I can beat his ugly snout with a 4×4 until we’re both
bloody and splintered, but he’s there, he’s howling,
Gouging chunks of my liver and spleen like a crow on steroids
Until we vomit my life force on the page.
Even then, when he retreats to the cave between ventricles,
He’s not still in rest. He lays dreaming, grumbling,
Urging me to fix this, re-forge that, continue to twist
The DNA of the terrible egg he wants planted in your brains.
Come read me, come dream me–doesn’t that sound fun?
Don’t you want a dragon of your own?
