Sweet Sorrow of Good-bye

I’ve decided to write another book.

I know. This isn’t news. I’ve been working on a second novel since 2017, when I finished THE WOLF TONE and won the award from the incredible Elixir Press.

In fact, I’m several drafts in. But this summer, I hit a wall. I labored from June through most of this month really getting to know my main character. Inevitably, this brought up personal questions, classic second book questions, as it turns out: What kind of writer will I be? What kind of books do I want to write?

I’m a little embarrassed to be asking such self-indulgent questions. At my age. But the questions worked. Answering them led me to upsetting news: my main character had gotten away from me.

This is not uncommon for my main characters. At some point in the process, I will find them digging in their heels and throwing tantrums. They morph into unrecognizable creatures with thick, reptilian skin. They are monsters, in fact. Their triumph is my failure: I couldn’t make anything bad happen to them. They are strong and tough, like I wish I was. They are invulnerable.

Alas, such people do not make the stuff of great, or even good, fiction. Stories cannot be told about people who cannot be hurt. When characters become larger than life, all the prose written about them also feels puffed up and untouchable. You read it and you know you are reading a Fictional Character. And you don’t care. Well, you do. Some part of your brain does, the part that likes easy puzzles. You might read on to see how it all plays out.

As an example, this is how I read the Kinsey Milhone mysteries by Sue Grafton. They have a few surprises here and there, but Kinsey’s world and her trouble are knowable. The temperature of all that Kinsey gets up to stays lukewarm. Like bathwater. Even when she’s in danger, I know she’ll get out of it. She must or the series would be over. And there’s a whole alphabet of books. In fact there are dozens more books like her books. Books I can read without getting too worked up, without getting scared or breathless or sweaty.

I like reading those kinds of books. Sometimes. Less often, the older I get. The less time I have. I can’t be futzing around with stuff I don’t really care about. And if I don’t want to read those lukewarm books, you can bet your ass I don’t want to write them.

Well. This happens to my drafts. I’ve learned this. They can turn into, even several years in, ornately written outlines. They skim the surface. I am writing them but I am not doing any shoveling of earth. I can feel this. It feels like when you go to a yoga class and you do yoga, but you aren’t really doing yoga. You’re doing the poses but you aren’t stretching any muscles. You aren’t even breathing deeply. You are like a photograph of yourself in the pose.

The fiction that means something to me to write is fiction that stretches the muscle. It even hurts a little. There is something at stake for the characters and thus, there is something at stake for me. Part of it is the language I use. In order for me to write carefully crafted sentences, I must know what I want to say. And until I write those shell-like, surface drafts, I don’t know what I want to say. It takes a long time for me to get to know and trust a person in real life. Why would it be different on the page?

Some of you may be aware of NaNoWriMo. National Novel Writing Month. November is NaNoWriMo, and has been for many years. This is not something I’ve paid attention to before. It wasn’t for me. Working on such an arbitrary timetable felt like blasphemy to me. The Artist must sit and toil quietly day after day. After fucking day. The Artist must be there when inspiration decides to strike.

Well. I’m doing this. The past week I’ve spent getting my engines fired. Getting a running start. Here, in my NaNo prep, I discovered that my protagonist had become a beefy bulldog. A reptile. A caricature. So, I’m blank paging her. The whole thing. This morning, I opened a new document. In layman’s terms: I. Started. Over.

Now for the hard part. I’m closing the blog. I don’t take this lightly. I have lots of reasons, in fact, but I’m skipping straight to my message to you, readers. I don’t want us never to meet again. You are important to me. Without you, I’m nothing. I write to be read, after all, and you’ve been my audience for nearly ten years as I stumbled through the book writing process. And parenting and reading and grief. To me reading is the highest form of listening and I thank you. I am grateful.

Know that I will continue to carry you with me. I know now who you are. You’re the people I’ve been talking to all my life. I was maybe nine years old, walking home in the dark when I caught myself narrating for the first time: Then she turned the corner and headed down the dark hill into the unknown. She started whistling (whistles jauntily).

I was writing to you then and I’ve written to you every day since. I was writing to you when months passed and I didn’t post to the blog. I’ll be writing to you every day of November. And even after that.

You may or may not see me on social media. Social media makes me feel bad. Every source in publishing tells writers they must have a platform. You won’t get published if you don’t have a platform. Agents want to see that you have lots of followers. This reeks to me of popularity fears that crushed me when I was in middle school. I was witness to them again, with even more pain, when my own kids were in middle school. And readers, I can’t do it.

You’re going to have to trust me. I was narrating before I knew what a narrator was. I’m always telling stories and I’m writing them as fast as I can.

When we meet again, let it be in the pages of my next book.