#003 Heart of Stone was a spite novel.
Or, what motivated me to write it, and inspires me to release it now.
A few weeks ago (nay nearly two months), when this post was first written, I had a good amount of time to think about what I wanted to say, regarding the conception of this book. Whereby this point, my husband and I will have revealed that I’m pregnant, which has come with all of the unpleasant side effects of headaches, nausea, and food aversions being the worst of my symptoms. Having been sick for three of the last four weeks (hence why no timely Monday post, or anywhere else for that matter for a while), there’s been a lot of contemplation.
I call this a spite novel, taken after the concept of the spite house or wall1, a practice done since practically time immemorial. Usually, it’s done as a way of giving a middle finger, so to speak, to a neighbor related to a land dispute. Spite fences are more common than houses, and usually, it’s to block the view or irritate the neighbor as part of grievance for a variety of reasons.
This book was inspired from a deep anger and misplaced frustration at my high school English teacher, Mrs. M. Seems a bit petty that I wrote a novel out of spite, but it was a good outlet for a lot of angst and other issues going on at the time.
In high school, for my senior year, I signed up for AP English, which was more of an expectation rather than a need.
At home, there were high standards for performance, and as I’ve assessed in my adult years, Love was often conditional on the part of my dad, less from my mother. Homelife was dysfunctional and a bit chaotic at the best of times, with spending on the upswing and saving/income on the down. Several times in college, I was called upon to pay my parent’s mortgage, something I’m not sure was common for most of my peers or my family members.
During those four years, my dad’s parenting tactic was to compare me to my siblings — my three brothers were all in the top ten of their class, with one tying for valedictorian with two other students. My occasional friend-often-rival was a frequent individual of comparison, as she was also in the top ten like myself and always on the honor list. While I can’t really remember my dad saying he was proud of me, I can often remember the harsh criticism when we had a fight or when I mouthed off in anger in my angsty teenage ways was often, “I love you Rachael, but I hate the way you are.”
My refuge from a pretty nasty parent was what he accused as “escapism”— lots of tv, early Youtube, movies, and lots and lots of books. Books were my favorite refuge. To paraphrase a character from Tanith Lee’s YA Novel “Wolf Star Rise”, Venarion Yllar Kaslem-Idoros, the secluded bookish potential second love interest, tells the MC that he need never leave his palace as books transport him to the most amazing places that he’s never seen. This doesn’t really compare to actually seeing the world, but it was, for me, a way out of a dysfunctional situation.
In my own little corner
In my own little chair
I can be whatever I want to be
On the wing of my fancy
I can fly anywhere
And the world will open its arms to me— In My Own Little Corner, Richard Rodgers, Rodger and Hammerstein’s Cinderella
As high school carried on, I took that AP English class my senior year. There were the pressures of taking the SAT so that I could get accepted into a great school (my decision was made for me because I was a nice tax write-off to my parents and it was a way to control me from leaving home), continuing to earn straight A’s so I could keep my spot in the top ten and earn scholarships to help me get into the college of my choice (I earned none, to the surprise and chagrin of many of my teachers), and earning the affirmation and love of my dad whose hypercritical tough-love approach added intense pressure to doing well. Doing well meant very little however, since I was not really allowed to go where I pleased.
Throwing myself into my studies was difficult because I, like many humans, procrastinate like crazy. To this day I don’t like working, even on posts for something that I love. I’m not sure if that’s a character flaw, part of the nature of being a melancholic person, or a badly ingrained habit still carried over from a harsh childhood. All my higher level classes were the ones I felt competent enough to take—so I skipped on AP Chemistry (Chem II) and Calculus, and stuck with AP Statistics, a math I surprisingly loved and understood for once in my life, and the English class.
As part of a rigorous curriculum, Mrs. N., the senior AP English teacher, had a plan to prepare us for the grueling AP English exam and SAT at the same time. While we read classics like Oedipus, Frankenstein, Pride and Prejudice, etc, every week during one of our class periods, she would give us a mock SAT essay prompt, and for the 90 minutes we were in class, we would write an essay. Once graded, we’d take the essays and peer review in class what we did, then have to take them home and rework them. Every. Week.
On top of our regular homework and AP test prep.
In March of 2008, Mrs. N., pretty, with a short, curly bob of midtone brown hair, ask me to stay after class to review my work. This wasn’t uncommon, but I hadn’t been expecting it. As she sat behind the desk, she handed me the paper and asked me what was going on. I must have responded, because her next comment was to tell me that my work was shoddy and slipping, that it “isn’t the level and quality I expect from you Rachael”.
I was crushed. I was exhausted. And I was tired. Of late nights, studying and working to get perfect grades to impress a parent who routinely called me lazy and selfish (to be fair I could be), belittled and mocked me, and character-assassinated my mother for a host of failings. I dealt with bullies who shit on me for liking classic rock and roll from the 1960s-80s, fellow students with problems at home who could tear you down for the slightest offense. Cheating classmates in the top ten who openly bragged about how the teachers didn’t care — they still do it by the way, according to teacher friends.
Some little part of me just snapped.
During the many nights of insomnia I had as a teenager, I’d often lay awake in bed fantasizing exciting adventures while trying to fall asleep—I was a superhero, a princess, a spy—inspired by my love of cult movies and the fantasy novels I loved to escape in.
A few nights before the conversation with Mrs. N., I’d been lying in bed envisioning a scene where a prince witnesses an act of sexual assault, and considering how it would impact him as a person, especially if it was someone he either cared about or was romantically interested in. How would he interpret the actions of the perpetrator?
The next few nights, overstimulated either by too much screen time or as an escape from my dad’s bullshit, I started creating the layers of this new world—the people, the customs, the religion, the culture, the story, character motivations. And it was exciting and freeing, and incredibly difficult.
Over the next few days and weeks, turning eventually to months, conceptualizing and writing that story became my escape from the escalating pressures of teachers, parents, and personal expectations.
Was it/is it the best novel ever written?
I don’t know. But it was a labor of love in reaction to one more criticism from a person I didn’t really like, who had no idea what was going on at home, and made an excellent Guy Fawkes in the fire of mind to disprove once and for all that I could do the work, had the dedication, and wasn’t a slacker. Since that time, now that I’m 33, I can recognize that while she didn’t make my life harder on purpose, it was probably because Mrs. N. saw that I did have good potential as a writer, even at 17, and in her own way, was doing her best to encourage me, though it didn’t emotionally feel very good at the time.
She became the scapegoat to my hatred and anger about an interpersonal situation that I didn’t have the maturity or skills to handle better, or the financial means to escape from. That didn’t come till much later, until several years after my father died.
What started as a spite novel with a great deal of misplaced anger turned out to be a catharsis to help me mentally and emotionally escape from an abusive situation, even if it took me eight additional years to finally leave on my own.
If you or someone you know is in an abusive situation or a domestic violence situation, here are some resources to help you in your journey to recovery. Thanks for joining me as I work on and release a project that was, for me, the first time I could prove to myself I could do something without being coddled or prodded with threats, intimidation, insults or put-downs to my intelligence and work ethic.
If you or someone you know is being abused or in a domestic violence situation, here are some resources to pass along:
National Violence Domestic Hotline: 800-799-7233
For housing, food, and community resources: AuntBertha.com
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spite_house
Rachael Varca is a pre-licensed therapist and writer of more than fifteen years experience. She writes at The Practical Therapist and Inking Out Loud, a collection of essays, poems, and home of the serialized novel, Heart of Stone.