On Uncanny Delays, Endings, and Dionne Brand

Last summer I moved houses briefly to work on my novel. A friend was leaving the country for a few weeks and I gladly left my little apartment to take care of his place and write. I came well equipped with everything I needed to knock out another draft of the elusive novel: cables, midi controller, chocolate. Yes, I need those for writing. And of course, notebooks, a tonne of books, and my beloved laptop. 

After a longed-for bath, I opened up my laptop and the working file for my novel was nowhere to be found... Though I had backups, I’d made significant progress in the past month but hadn’t backed it up. I still haven’t been able to figure out how it happened. I was in disbelief and denial. Why did this have to happen to this particular file when I finally had a plan and space and solitude? I cried really hard. I couldn’t muster up the courage to write during those weeks, but I decided to read. One of the books I had with me was Deborah Levy’s Hot Milk, which I’d been meaning to read for several years. In the opening pages, the protagonist Sofia drops her laptop at a beach bar. She says, “My laptop has all my life in it and knows more about me than anyone else.” I cried again. I called my friend across the country. He had lost a file that same night, in similarly Sargasso-sea circumstances. I pulled a card from the Tarot and got the Page of Cups, the same card I got the previous summer, when I lost my phone at the beach. The universe was clearly trying to tell me something.

A couple months later, I got another chance to work on the novel in an uninterrupted block of time. I would have to be in my little apartment, but I knew I’d have the chance to be alone for a couple of weeks. I made a plan again: an allotted number of words per day with a timeblocked schedule for work and reading. I even scheduled my own little walks to treat myself like the dog of my dreams. I did meal prep. I was serious. Then I got sick the night before I was supposed to begin and my laptop crashed repeatedly when I tried to persevere. 

2023. I bought a new laptop. The same thing happened a few months ago: I made a detailed plan and got sick the day before I began. I could not believe it, but one must draw logical conclusions: the universe did not want me to complete this particular draft… But I was happy! I was well! I was not scared of writing! I actually wanted to finish it – any possibility of unconscious or conscious self-sabotage (if these were indeed reasons for illness and missing files) was not plausible. I was ready to write – I was so ready. Though I’d been writing in spurts in between, I’ve only ever been able to complete a draft in an uninterrupted block of time. I decided to listen to the universe and concluded that this draft was not meant to be. What was I going to do now? I was not going to read, I was going to live! I was going to do what I wanted to do. I accepted love. I got on flights. I continued writing in spurts.

In Theory by Dionne Brand, the narrator is a PhD student working on her dissertation. She repeatedly complains of the various interruptions to her dissertation, some of which are her lovers. She says, “There are multiple reasons why I find myself in the situation of not having completed my dissertation; on the other hand, I believe one ought to take stock of one’s own bullshit.” This is in a footnote that serves as kind of prologue to the novel (what an opening!). The novel then details several relationships she’s had; each of the first three sections is dedicated to a lover. At the novel’s close she says that she thinks of her lovers “not as hindrances, not even as transit points to myself or as the lessons of my life – but as the life itself, the theory of my life. They and I are not made of nothingness.”

After I chose to carpe diem, I understood that I would not have been able to finish my novel if these delays didn’t happen. If I didn’t experience what I did when I chose to do what I wanted – when I chose to welcome what I had previously considered to be “nothingness” – I would not have been able to see my draft through the end. In fact, I did not see the end of the novel at all. If I’m being honest, I don’t think I wanted to see it. Now that I do, I am very grateful for those delays.