This Writer’s Life—Purpose

by Melissa Corliss DeLorenzo

Photo: Revati Upadhya

This week, I am winding down on my recent manuscript. I am reaching the end of this novel—it will be completed by January 30th. (Cue the beam of light from above and the chorus of angels, à la Warner Brothers cartoons.)

As the story shapes itself, I wonder, if it has significance, heft and substantiality. I wonder if it has anything real to say. The question that arises: what is my purpose? And the greater question: when I know what it is I’m trying to say, will I be able to tell the story or will it fall short?

We read for pleasure, to pass the time, to learn, to gain understanding, to be transformed. I set my goals at transformation, which is both lofty and, I imagine, presumptuous and arrogant. But the novel that exists in my mind, unformed and vaporous, is broad and full and transcendent.

And yet I know that all books cannot be all things to all people. I’ve spoken of my love of The Shipping News and how some people cannot bear that novel. I personally cannot read Joyce Carol Oates—I have tried time and again to read her and although I know she is a great writer, there is a wall in my brain that does not allow her work to penetrate. Something in the cadence of each writer resonates with me or does not. Content and setting matter, too. I love The Shipping News in part because I adore anything set in the cold waters of the Northern Atlantic. Proulx writes about “seal flipper pie” and describes water in such ways as: “The ocean twitched like a vast cloth spread over snakes.” Anything about the shoreline, the open ocean, boats and I am hooked.

My book is set in 1987 and chronicles an important year in the life of a fourteen year old girl and her mother, who is dying from AIDS. This content is going to appeal to some and repel others. My writing style, my voice, the words I choose, the ways in which I choose to punctuate will have the same affect.

Literature is collaborative—the reader will bring her tastes, her experiences, her prejudices, her hates, her losses and her loves. There is the all-important factor of connection which cannot be planned and probably could not in many cases even be fully deciphered. That is nothing over which I have control. So (again), Melissa, do the work—stop thinking about what it might mean, how it might fail, and find the courage to do it. Purpose will reveal itself in time through the connection and engagement with the reader.

So, this week as I complete my novel, I will try to keep all this in mind and write from a place of authenticity knowing that the right story—the only story I can tell—will rise up.

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