I have come to America to write a novel. No. I have come to America to edit that last sentence and to craft the next, which is, at heart, all that writing is. America is not just the United States, I should be more specific. But then the sentence will suffer musically. How about: I have come to the U.S. to resolve a mystery. Better?

I am twenty-seven years old, but I have the strange affliction of feeling older. That’s not quite accurate. I sometimes feel younger than I am, mostly older–on the precipice of death–and I hardly ever feel my age. Inner confusion notwithstanding, I am twenty-seven and on a dogged path towards Writerdom.

I have achieved this goal only by title: Writer in Residence at the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery. Jo Handelsman, the director of the institute with whom I collaborated on her book A World Without Soil, has sponsored my visa and given me an office. There, I can conduct interviews with scientists and complete my mystery novel.

My office is perfectly inaccessible. Reaching it requires climbing eight sets of stairs, a key card, and a map of the building. Every side of my rectangular oasis is shared by science researchers in adjacent rooms. (The figurative wall that we so often speak about breaking down between scientists and laymen is literally to my right. Its frosted glass is scrawled with mathematical equations, Venn diagrams, and code.) Nobody passes by the 1-by 4-meter slice of glass that looks into my office–the mouth of my cave. This diary entry, if ever published, is the only window into my world.

Illustration by Aedan Gardill

Shall I rebrand my office an artist’s studio? A cabin in the proverbial woods–the universal writers’ fantasy of having a place where silence is protected by a moat of trees? A less grandiose image comes to mind–that of the bird nesting in the tiniest crevice of my roof in London. This sparrow and I have both made rickety, unlikely homes in the expansive, established homes of others. But I think that sparrow felt more confident to nest in my roof than I do nesting among scientists. (I would feel confident too if I could launch myself off of buildings and boss the imperceptible terrain of air.)

You have to be stubborn to write fiction. Especially at the time of life when you could be doing so many other worthwhile things that pay (anything/) more, come with benefits, teammates and structure. I am stubborn. Perhaps to the point of idiocy. I sometimes watch myself in a kind of horror-filled marvel as jobs/prospects rebound off of me, as if in slow motion, as I walk steadily on towards the ever-elusive horizon: Writerdom.

People close to me suggest that I am courageous to forgo the comforts of a stable-income life. They say I possess grit. I disagree. Cultivating those noble qualities requires making the braver choice in spite of challenge. But, to me, there is only challenge and no choice. Just as we know that a boulder thrown at a particular angle and initial velocity will land up at a known location, I know that I will end up a writer. This knowledge, though, does not make throwing boulders any easier.

What I reckon with are feelings of inadequacy and irrelevance. Inadequacy because writing fiction is difficult, and I am reminded of that with every sentence. This makes writing a novel a quasi-masochistic endeavor–imagine every sentence is a diving board from which my self-confidence somersaults spectacularly in any damned direction. Novel writing also requires a level of self-belief and skill that I am not sure I have. If only I was less of a perfectionist, I tell myself, but perfectionism is the only way I ever wrote anything I liked. And why do I feel irrelevant? Aspects of who I am are out of fashion (I am more analogue than digital) and oppressive (I am steeped in whiteness). Writing fiction is a form of replicating myself into the world, and do I want to be responsible for that?

But, I am also just an unknown fiction writer on the top floor in the middle pod of an interdisciplinary science institute who has tasked herself with writing a middle-grade science mystery novel. Without knowing the answers, reasons, or way I’ll make progress. Because progress is a work in progress, just like everything else. So, I’ll climb the eight flights of steps to my nest made of labs and computers, and I will discover the stars and the moon–my navigational points of reference–as time unravels me.