Spines
The making of books requires a spine. A book’s spine holds the pages together. It’s clear when a book has been previously opened and/or read by evidence of a cracked spine. The damaged spine is easy to spot in paperbacks, while in hardback books, the tell-tale sign is the book’s need to fall open at certain pages. A careful reader will take extra precautions to not bend a book open so wide, the spine cracks. Still, cracking it open is a way of claiming the book as one’s own.
Outside the book proper, the writer’s spine is needed to persevere in getting the book written. In one sense, I mean the metaphorical spine—the will and courage—to work truth onto a page and let it stand no matter how “encouraged” to shape it otherwise. At the most basic level, the spine, the actual bony support of the back, must hold itself upright or be held up to support the weight of the head while steering the writer through the physical work of writing.
This last one I’ve been having trouble bringing to my work. I’ve tried to ignore an increasing disability in my back and neck called scoliosis. Remember that strange day of doctors eyeing us while we bent forward with our backbones exposed? Scoliosis is what they were checking us for, curvatures in the supposed-to-be straight lineup of vertebrae.
I remember classmates locked into elaborate body braces meant to straighten the spine the way dental braces straighten the teeth. I did go through the rapid miss-it-on-a-blink test. Somebody must have blinked. Nobody caught the curves.
The effort it takes to make any weakness into a strength can feel overwhelming, but what in life isn’t overwhelming when viewed from outside the moment?
Jump to 2011, when the diagnosis came down based on an MRI required to find the source of my mysterious back pain and growing limp. “It will stop itself,” became my mantra for twelve years while the two lateral curves, one in my mid-back and one in my lower, joined by the forward curve of the whole spine progressed, degenerating discs as it went.
Barely can I do my hurdy-gurdy walk for two minutes without having to sit for the pain of it. Something needed doing.
I did it. Finally decided to have the surgery required to straighten my back up to fifty percent and decrease my pain by, we hope, seventy percent.
Why not do this earlier? Because if you’ve had back surgery, this is more an ordeal than a fix-it-up job. They start on a Wednesday. Going through the abdomen, the neurosurgeons repair the discs. Thursday is for MRI’s and tests and walking. On Friday, they go in through the back and using screws, straighten the bones as much as they can. Transfusions during surgery are guaranteed. One hundred percent chance of complications. Three weeks in rehab. Six-months to full recovery.
Terrified? Yes, I am. Grateful? That more than the terror. This is a privilege not everyone gets, the doctors and the resources to accomplish this kind of procedure. I am lucky and I know it. I’m aware it’s a tough surgery. The pain levels afterward are epic. I’ll get through it. All the better to get better, my dear.
I tell you these details because my back is essentially going through a rigorous revision. It will hurt like hell, like pulling out 250 pages of a 300-page novel when I realize those pages don’t work. The effort it takes to make any weakness into a strength can feel overwhelming, but what in life isn’t overwhelming when viewed from outside the moment? We revise one page at a time for stronger stories, to earn our stories the book-spines that those who love our books will happily break at their favorite places. All this takes backbone, no matter how you define it.
Writing Exercise
Write about the most demanding challenge you’ve undertaken to this point in time. What made it difficult? How did you handle it? What did you learn? How did you change? Bonus Points for fiction writers: Write a character who is enduring the same challenge in a dramatized scene. What changes in how you see your challenge when it is happening to someone else?