Hermit Notes, 2023. Courtesy of Patrick Cottrell.
In the late summer of 2023, I kept a log of process notes, so I could keep track of what I was writing and chart my frustrations. I had suffered from writer’s block for several years, but there were moments when I experienced true lightness and clarity. Some of them are described here.
July 14, 2023
At the beginning: The memorial gathering on the five-year anniversary of my brother’s death + the new mystery
At the end: The person disappears and you can’t bring them back
July 16, 2023
Each day is pain/writing and yet I see myself writing new things and trying to add dimensions in order to justify this pitiful book but all i can hear are the doubts and critiques about WHY was this necessary, WHY am I doing this—“He’s repeating himself.” “He’s rewriting his first book, but trans.” “Sorry to Disrupt the Peace II: The Sequel No One Asked For.”
But i remind myself RC opened Kudos with the same opening as Outline—Kudos might even be a slight rewriting of Outline with its workshop/lit conference/panel scenes.
And then there’s AE—she has written books about the same relationship/affair/obsession with a man. One relationship written across multiple books?
July 29, 2023
Derailed by a tooth that has a cracked root fracture. Has to come out. Each day is so awful. A sense of stagnation and stillness when what I want is for the book to open, open, open into something expansive and true.
July 30, 2023
Need to think about all the threads—maybe the idea at the end is it’s not a big memorial, it’s just a small dinner at my father’s favorite restaurant
August 11, 2023
Took a long break. Came across Colson Whitehead’s The Intuitionist in Cruel Optimism. A really great reading by Berlant. It reminded me how at Hamline as an undergrad, I was supposed to give a talk on Whitehead’s John Henry Days. I don’t know why I didn’t read the paper I had written. Instead I tried to do some kind of comedic meta-performance talk and it BOMBED. It was so embarrassing.
One can’t always skate by on charm (however thin).
My tooth is healing. Now I’m back.
The more I think about it, the more I think the festive gathering/memorial needs to be a simple dinner at a restaurant.
August 14, 2023
I have this sense I need to get Dan Moran out of the house sooner than later.
Thinking about Woodcutters and how the core of the book is about the narrator’s development as an artist—also Extinction, which actually “feels” the most novelistic of all his works (Limeworks an outlier).
August 21, 2023
Had the thought of someone (not me) writing a trans version of Andrew Martin’s Early Work.
I don’t want to write it but I want to read it.
I need Dan Moran to go to the address 212 Alexander Lane—new house/new dimension
August 24, 2023
Read somewhere (Jules Gil-Petersen’s substack?) that there are two transmasculine narratives:
I have become a man (P Carl)
I am worried about becoming a man, and resistant to it, but ultimately, I have become a man (Cyrus Dunham)
I have become a man, man
August 25, 2023
Today I made little progress. I feel like I could be halfway through this draft.
Halted by the thought that this has been done before (by me).
August 28, 2023
If I can figure out what’s happening at 212 Alexander Lane I can figure out the entire book.
Sarah says the voice seems more “mature.”
It’s not as focused on shitting.
Hermit Note, August 28, 2023. Courtesy of Patrick Cottrell.
August 29, 2023
Today I was feeling weird about 212 Alexander Lane when I realized the problem was it’s NOT supposed to be a house—it’s an apartment building.
September 1, 2023
Nap dream I am out to lunch and see RC at a Panera Bread-like cafe. Nowhere to sit but an empty spot at her table so I sit down (rude) and I tell her I am a big fan (very rude) … I am giving her too many compliments. I ask her how she’s had such longevity in her career.
How did she keep going even when she felt things were doomed? She’s smiling at me and I’m aware of how much I am flattering her, how overboard I am going, even in my dream I am too much of a fan.
She keeps smiling enigmatically, eager to answer my question, she’s about to tell me her secret—I am so excited, my heart is racing, I can feel how excited I am in my dream, she’s about to divulge her secret—
September 4, 2023
Nothingness and deep depression.
In bed all day.
I don’t think I’m one of those writers who has verbal diarrhea.
September 5, 2023
Reading W. G. Sebald and I looked up the doctor at Norwich Hospital who knew the whereabouts of Sir Thomas Browne’s skull.
In Sebald, there are two eccentric academic figures—Michael something and Janine Daykins (I think) who are both obsessive about different things (Ramuz and Flaubert).
Today in academia, people aren’t as eccentric.
September 7, 2023
Need to think about last third of the book—can feel it’s almost over.
September 10, 2023
The threatening smiley letter—who sent it to him?
Don’t answer this!!
You don’t need to answer this!!
You need to write the book in such a way in which the answer simply DOES NOT MATTER!!
September 15, 2023
Today a breakthrough re: the end.
What was written on my brother’s hand the night he died—like the revelation at end of The Intuitionist—it’s a little joke
There were three names on his hand
But when I asked my mom about them she could only remember her own
September 16, 2023
What did my brother do all day?
How did he spend his time?
Some people don’t do much, she said. I swear, some people really don’t do much at all.
(that’s what Dr. Schwarz told me when I asked her.
she was going through a divorce.)
Patrick Cottrell’s second novel, Afternoon Hours of a Hermit, is now out from Ecco.