Lindsay Gurka

So, I had been working on a gothic novel for my graduate thesis, and it got put away for a while. At first, I thought maybe it was from the burnout. I had worked on this thing for so long, thought about it constantly, and ended up with the first five chapters completely polished, topped with an introductory essay that was almost the death of me. It was a big undertaking and I thought maybe a little bit of time away would revitalize the excitement I had for the story. It was a couple weeks that turned into a month, then a few months, and here we are over a year later and I just can’t open the document for chapter six. I went back and reread the first five chapters and it hit me. I hated my protagonist.

Now, she’s nice, she’s a bit flawed, deeply set in her melancholy and has run her life into the ground because of it, but the backstory was all over the place, the tone, and even the way she just had things happen to her. She didn’t feel like she was a character in her story, more like a cardboard cutout that other people were controlling. I needed her to do things so I knew where she was going next. I wanted her to take control, any sort of control, do anything.

During one of my many doom scrolling sessions after I decided to pitch the entire story and start from scratch, I stumbled across this video of Amy Lee. She was talking about how she’s not actually a depressed, super down person in real life. I love Evanescence so I kept watching, and she said she gets all of those feelings out in her music. Then I’m thinking about my thesis and how I read that horror is actually a place for people to face their fears and to find a place to heal from their own issues.

So, I started to write, and this new character, this new Tilly, is so different from the first. She’s hurt, yes, but she’s a character I’d want to spend some time with now. I want to see her go from this place in her rock bottom, to the hero of the day, and I’m actually excited to sit down and work her story out. I wonder if because it was for school, because I knew it would be read and reviewed and I’d have to talk about it in an academic setting, if that left me putting up some bubble wrap around her? Maybe I was worried what other people would think of me if they read something like this. It’s still a gothic ghost story, but this is way darker than I had initially intended it to be. This initial page and a half scared the crap out of me mostly because she was so raw, broken, and reactive and I’m feeling a bit vulnerable putting her out into the world.

Anyways, it was scary putting my name out here, it was scary to put my name to the stories and poems I’ve written, and it’s going to be scary to put out this work when it’s done, but I’ve reached the point where I am so done giving into the fear and not going after this in an authentic way. I’ll be posting updates as I write and work my way through this process. I’ve written a first draft of a book once, but that was Nanowrimo and fueled by I don’t even know what. This is a no-deadline, first to be completely finished, holy shit, what am I doing, beast of a writing career kickoff.

If anyone has any advice on getting this first draft done, I’m all ears. 🙂

Love,
Lindsay