Project Galileo Update II: Looking Back, Moving Forward
It’s been a tremendously messed-up time. I find it increasingly difficult to focus. To think. To breathe. Making sense of it all is surely a sick joke. This isn’t the norm – in situations where going for a cup of coffee can’t kill you, we writers relish in those rare moments of silent solace. However, these are anything but normal circumstances, and I’m not sure how we’re going to move forward. All I do know is that we’re going to get there. Someday. It likely won’t be until the grass is green but hey, it’s something to look forward to.
When you’re a writer, at first you appear as barking mad to everyone. Eventually, however, someone lends an ear. If it’s the right ear, just maybe, they’ll bring others into the fray for a listen. It’s a laborious task but not impossible. Understanding what I was really trying to achieve with this novel – requiring a deeper understanding of my own emotions – was what I needed amidst this chaotic, nightmarish year. The book is now better for it. And wow, is 2021 ever looking bright with this new perspective, even if we still “can’t go outside.”
Asking the Hard Questions
It goes without saying that A: I’m terrible at keeping a regular posting schedule (largely thanks to this year’s stresses) and B: writing a novel during a pandemic while balancing another career that actually pays is a serious challenge. The latter isn’t for the faint of heart or weakest of plotlines – you damn well better commit. Or crumble.
Gratefully, Project Galileo has made it through these circumstances largely unscathed – if anything, it’s evolved into something that leans more on moral sensibilities than first planned. Who are we, when we’re faced with ourselves in the silence? If we can’t make sense of our emotions but also are committed to a relationship, how in the hell do we walk the ever-thinning tightrope, reaching the end before it’s ripped out from under us? How fragile is the glass pane that separates us from an end? Do we dare push against it to make more room for the here and now? Or will something push back from the other side, whether in the form of the past, present or future?
These are questions I’ve been asking myself and, by extension, the book’s cast. The young and stubborn, the old and complacent, the middle-aged and manipulative to make their own luck – no one was spared from my line of questioning. Did you deserve to exist in these pages? Do you mean anything? Of course you do, I subliminally tell these fictional individuals as they stir within the dozens of chapters set before me. Everyone matters – that’s the whole point. Whether others notice or understand that value, well, that’s another story. I really have the pandemic to thank in this respect; it forced me to delay the book’s completion and, as a result, I feel as if it has a shot. Maybe. I sure as hell can’t seem to get a short story accepted for publication but hey, that’s a whole different beast to slay. At the very least, I get another excuse to revise and try something new, so I really owe thanks to those many “not right at this time” letters. That first, razor-thin wedging of foot into door is an especially difficult goal to accomplish, but we’ll get there yet.
Where Things are Headed
To summarize, I don’t have a plan. I’m just going with it and enjoying the ride, and what a trip it’s been. For those fed up with waiting for news on whether I landed a deal and when they can read this novel, well, I don’t know either. That’s the real work to be done on my part. Right now, my focus remains on doing this story justice – it’s not dedicated to me, after all. The main goal is to prove to myself that I can do this, that readers don’t pick it up merely out of sympathy or some other nonsense I don’t ask for, and that it can help folks understand the need to be good to one another. Especially in these strange times when we’re more like strangers than ever before.
There’s a grammatically incorrect phrase that I keep hearing from my youth – “hope like hell.” As in, I’d better hope like hell that I get this right. To me, this take on “run like hell” has a slightly more optimistic tone to it, yet its slang is even stronger. Does it represent doing your best, despite settling into a comfort zone that acts as your own prison? Does it mean that one needs to simply hope for the best rather than taking action? So many people have told me to “hope like hell” for various reasons over the years – over whether my homework was correct or if I really did all my chores (lest enjoy a slap), for instance – there’s this strange, dark undertone to the phrase but it’s balanced with an optimistic feeling. The hope in the phrase, specifically, alludes to our freedom to make the change that we wish to see, that our fate isn’t solidified like concrete – or at least, that’s how it comes across to me.
I’d better not give anything else away. We’re nearly there and I anticipate the first draft will be done within the next month or so. Much like that silly half-assed phrase, being able to speak so freely while making sense of this process somehow instills a sense of comfort. Like I’m onto something.
For the sake of my focus readers’ sanity, we’d better hope like hell that I am.