Shifting the Story

What Prose Taught this Poet

Photo by Max Vertsanov on Unsplash

For most of my life, I’ve been trying to convince myself that I matter. It started when I was seven—searching for connection, catharsis; I would scribble my feelings in a pink notebook, rip out the pages, and shove them under my mom’s door, an awkward and emotional way to be seen and understood, to translate my wounds and wonder. I was trying so hard to say: This is me. I am here.

Over the next three decades, my method became more sophisticated: poems, short stories, and essays documenting each emotional rainstorm, as I grappled with identity.

In my twenties, I felt perpetually lonely and overwhelmingly unloved. I wrote: If I write something beautiful enough, maybe someone will love me. It was one of the most brutally vulnerable things I had ever written. For years, I turned the idea over in my mind, smoothing it like sea glass. Is this why I was writing? To be loved? In my thirties, I revised the thought: If I could write something beautiful enough, I might finally love myself. Now, in my forties, I think I meant writing is how I love myself.

The act of writing, finding a place to translate all that’s churning inside, is one of the most authentic (and sometimes painstaking) ways I show up for myself. It is how I survive the tenderness and teeth of this world.

Last year, after two poetry collections and shoving my feelings under so many doors, I set out to do the impossible: write a novel.

If poetry is a love affair, making you feel wind-in-your-hair alive, offering a single breath-stealing moment of grief, longing and forgiveness, then writing a novel is a march, a marriage—a deeply complicated and time-consuming long game, it is the long division of the psyche, traveling deep into the trenches to examine the best and worst parts of humanity (and yourself).

The thing about writing a novel is that you don’t just write it; you shift inside it. The seasons cycle around you. Like being stuck in a hall of mirrors for years, you stand alone, oscillating from terror to technique to the occasional triumph. You sit in a room alone, asking the hardest questions and feeding the hungry mouth of time. Unlike a poem, you can’t share it easily, you cannot explain its nuance, you can only believe—believe and keep on writing.

My first draft was 140,000 words written in 5 months. The next draft was 90,000 words in 5 months. Neither of these drafts includes the 100,000-200,000 words I wrote and then erased. Wrote and erased.

The more you stay inside a story, the more momentum you gather. The more interrupted you are, the harder it is to dive back in. Long-form story is not a poem you can easily pick up and put down. It only took a few months of stopping and restarting to learn; I needed to shift my process. As I pulled the Hermit tarot card three times in one week, I knew that if I was really going to write the book I wanted, other aspects of my life would need to a halt.

I kept my momentum. Said no to endless invitations, hopeful my friendships would hold. I went to bed late, rose early, worked when others slept. I put my phone down—stepped away from social media. How could I think deeply in a world that wanted me to keep scrolling? Posting? Basically, besides my family, I disappeared into my book. I listened to myself and my characters, knowing sometimes to build one world, you must quiet another.

Six days a week, I sat down and wrote, often putting 2,000-3,000 words on the page: when tired, when hungry, when my heart was pounding with anxiety as questions catapulted through my brain, pounding like a fist at my heart: What if I suck at this? What if it’s never published? What if it’s published and never read? What if I locked myself away for nothing?

I still don’t have the answers, but what I do know is that writing is an act of faith. So is living. To become who you want to be, you must be wildly intentional with your time, emotions, and energy. You must leap and keep on leaping without promise of the ground. You must let your body sail through the air, your words passing through you.

These days, tragedy is a 24/7. Genocide, corruption, and natural disasters that never stop. It is hard to love this world without losing yourself. I’m not saying to ignore what’s going on. I am saying to ask yourself if the life you want, who you want to be, is the loudest voice in the room? Can you hear your own wants, your own dreams, above the roar?

How will you love yourself this year? What will you have to turn off or step into to get there? How can you build a cathedral of quiet? Make focus your church. Commit until you disappear into what matters. To stare hard, dig deep, churn the soil until you believe or bloom.

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A quick update on my Substack moving forward.

I’ve always prided myself on doing it all: poems, essays, fiction, workshops, Substack, social media. But, for me, this is a year of radical revision. I must make space to “finish” my novel and my second poetry collection, Future Tense, coming in 2026 from Alice James Books.

I love the community we have built on Substack, but I’m branching out into new opportunities. In February, I have three spaces opening up for new coaching clients.

I’m also excited to teach a new generative four-part workshop, Sharpening Surprise: Add Energy and Edge to Your Writing outside of Substack. Sign up before 2/7 to get 20% off.

As for Substack, I will continue teaching craft workshops, but only once a quarter. Paid subscribers will still get access to workshops for a fraction of the cost I normally charge.

Our next workshop offered to paid subscribers will be on March 15. Join us for “The Direct Address: Increase Impact and Intimacy in Your Writing.” Hope to see you there.

Until next time, sending oceans of gratitude.

Shine on,

Kelly

PS. What shifts are you making this year? I would love to hear about them in the comments.