I am afraid of my backlist.
I blame a lot of things on the fact that I have ADHD/an Aries moon/am enneagram Type 7/the Wizard Howl/a slither-outer, but the honest truth is, I run from discomfort. And my backlist makes me uncomfortable.
I don’t know why, not really. This discomfort doesn’t come from a place of shame; I’m proud of my work. I’m proud that I did the best I could with the skills I had at the time, and I was also rewarded with external markers of success. Wintersong hit the New York Times bestseller list, I earned out my advance before it even published, I sold translation rights in multiple countries, and I still receive regular royalty checks, etc. But the one thing I’ve never really considered was whether or not my debut is good. And by good, what I really mean is whether or not Wintersong succeeds as a piece of art.
For the past five years, I have been struggling with why I write, but at the root of it all, it comes down to a question of what I want from a story. What am I consuming in a narrative? What is that which I want to put into the stories I write? What is the point of what I’m writing? What is the point of writing at all?
— The Point, 17 Feb 2022
I’ve had enough distance now from both my previous work and my career as a whole to contemplate whether or not I have an artistic voice. I don’t really take myself as an artist very seriously, although I take my art very seriously.
And I think I do. Have an artistic voice, that is. There is a theme, a subject, a wound, a narrative that I keep exploring over and over again in my writing, a question I am forever trying to answer. I think all art attempts to resolve a deeply personal, unanswered question, and that the artist is forever trying to have a conversation with the wider world about it.
The impulse to share is, I think, a deeply human one. It’s not about the compliments; it’s about the connection.
— Bella! Where the hell have you been, loca? 21 Jan 2022
I don’t start writing from the place of my artistic wound. I generally start writing from a place of joy, of fun, of play. I write because I want to create, it’s honestly just as simple as that. I write because I want to make something, and then enjoy the fruits of my making. Sometimes I just want to make a fancy meal, and I enjoy the making more than the meal.
Because I enjoy the making more than the fruition, I’m constantly interrogating why I want to be published at all, but I also think think this is why I don’t often look back at previous work. It’s done, isn’t it? I’ve said my piece, you can take it or leave it. And that would be enough if I weren’t genuinely interested in connection and conversation. If I weren’t invested in making art.
If you had asked me even six months ago whether or not I was creating art with my writing, I would have laughed and said no. But I think I would have been lying to you, even as I was lying to myself back then. It’s easier, sometimes, to frame answers through a capitalist lens because then I don’t have to wrestle with discomfort. Am I creating art? What does it matter if I’m “successful?”
We measure success by capitalist markers, but rarely do we measure success in philosophical ones. Artistic ones. Whether or not I was able to effectively communicate the ideas and themes I was examining through the medium of writing. In short, whether or not my audience “got it.”
And what is “it?”
I am afraid of being incomprehensible.
In this collection of essays I’ve slowly been accumulating on my newsletter in this past year, I keep circling this idea — this persistent fear of being misunderstood. Perhaps this anxiety stems from the fact that English is not my milk tongue, or the fact that the stigma of the manic pixie dream girl clings to me like some sort of noxious perfume. My outlook in life runs askew to the norm — not parallel (separate) nor perpendicular (in opposition to) — and I often find myself on the outside of understanding without truly comprehending why.
Even the title of my newsletter speaks to that artistic wound: and she abandons her mind to obscure arts. My monthly round-ups are called “lexical gaps,” which refer to the places where English lacks the words to describe a feeling, a concept, an idea, a notion. I am always searching for meaning in the liminal spaces, to give name to the unnameable emotions and claim them as my own.
So then, Wintersong.
If I were to answer the question of whether or not I think the book succeeds as a piece of art, then I would have to answer: yes.
Is that pretentious? Yes. Arrogant? Probably. Looking back, all my books are about something in that they explore a theme, or the Point, if you will. In Shadowsong, it was mental illness. In Guardians of Dawn: Zhara, it is goodness. But because I don’t start writing with a Point in mind, these things only become clear once I’ve finished. Once the story clicks into place. Once the story is right.
Wintersong, simply put, is about the joy of creation. The making, not the meal. So much of Liesl’s inner angst comes from a desire to be understood, a feeling that she mistakes as a need for recognition or validation. It’s strange to see my own artistic journey unconsciously mirrored in something I wrote seven years ago. This desire to be understood is the basis for all her relationships: her irritation and annoyance with Käthe, her attachment to Josef, and of course, her attraction to the Goblin King.
“There is music in your soul. A wild and untamed sort of music that speaks to me. It defies all the rules and laws you humans set upon it. It grows from inside you, and I have a wish to set that music free.”
He had heard me sing with the fruit-sellers. A wild, untamed sort of music. I’d heard those words before, from Papa. Then, it had seemed like an insult.
The first time Liesl meets the Goblin King again as a young woman, he names her wound and turns it into a thing of beauty. How often have I yearned for this exact same thing? The too-muchness of me that so many find perplexing, off-putting, arrogant, pretentious, and overwhelming, how often had I wished I could be seen and accepted as who I am?
Yet at the same time, recognition can be unbearable because recognition can also be isolating. I never know what to do with the compliments given to me — I gingerly accept them like bouquets of flowers after a performance, then frantically cast about for a place set them down lest I prick myself on hidden thorns.
Listening to him play was hearing my mind made tangible. [. . .] The Goblin King interpreted me, and showed me a vision of Liesl I had heretofore not known. He played me.
It hurt. Hearing my music like this, played in the hands of someone who understood me so completely — in a way not even my brother had known — hurt.
As a child, I was praised a lot by both my elders and my peers. I was a quick learner, with a modicum of talent in multiple areas. Teachers frequently cited my work as an example of a “job well done,” while my friends often marveled at my ability to draw or make them laugh with my wit. As validating as this recognition was, it also set me apart. Being singled out — being singular — is about as far from connection as one can get. And I wanted nothing more than to be a part of things, to be included.
I found rejection wherever I went, even among the goblins.
And I thought for the longest time that the only way to be included was to make myself as ordinary as possible, to downplay that which made me unique, different, special. I’ve been “special” most my life, and it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.
It’s evident in the reception my work gets. The people who understand me, understand me, while the rest are left baffled at best, repulsed at worst. I live in the liminal spaces between meaning. Not a lot of people fear being misunderstood, it turns out. I am frequently lost in translation.
And maybe this is why I’ve avoided evaluating Wintersong as a work of art for so long. I, like so many others, am afraid of failure. But failure for me isn’t getting a bad review or even producing a flop; it’s that fear of being incomprehensible again. That I am speaking a language no one else understands.
Lonely lonely lonely whale
이렇게 또 한 번 불러봐
대답 없는 이 노래가
내일에 닿을 때까지
— BTS, Whalien 52
Lonely, lonely, lonely whale
I’ll try singing once more
Until this song with no reply
Reaches tomorrow
The thing is, I don’t think Wintersong is a failure in that regard. I don’t think it’s a failure so much as...cringe.
Shameful.
There is a scene where Liesl takes the boat across the lake Underground toward the chapel where she is about to be married, when she listens to the Goblin King play her own music back at her, and she “cringe[s] to remember the moody, melancholy maiden [she] had been.” And that is precisely the reaction I have to rereading my own work. It feels so naked to witness a part of yourself laid so stark and bare upon the page.
It is great because it is shameful, the voice inside me said again. It is great because it is true.
I don’t like earnest emotion. 간지러워. It tickles, so I slither away whenever possible. As the boys I went to middle school with would attest, I am particularly ticklish. Wintersong is, in many ways, an open nerve. But it is an honest nerve, if such a thing could exist. Raw. Sensitive. It’s not exactly painful, even if it makes me flinch. I know it won’t hurt, yet I can’t help but be skittish anyway.
It is, of course, far easier to focus on the things that are frivolous and fun about my debut. David Bowie, Amadeus, Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, Phantom of the Opera, fairytales and folklore, all the influences that went into the writing of my book. Putting the fun in profundity, am I right? ㅎㅎ But I’ve been doing that for the past five years, and I think it was, if not past time, then the right time to examine the profound vulnerability that had gone into Wintersong.
I don’t mind being vulnerable. I’m just not very practiced at it. I’ve never been punished for vulnerability, it’s just that engaging with it tests my limits to withstand being tickled. I’ve never had a very high tolerance for discomfort, after all.
Well. Practice makes perfect, I guess.
So there you have it, a retrospective on my debut novel, five years after publication. Apologies for the tome I’ve just dropped in your inbox, by the way. Oops.
미안,