Between Books

It feels great to finish writing a book.

Then it doesn't.

It's a strange letting go of a family that's taken residence in one's mind for months and welcoming a new one in.

Being in the midst of writing a novel is like being gainfully employed -- knowing what you're going to do each day.  Having purpose.

Finishing the novel is like being unemployed.  Laid off.  Thank you very much for your services.  There's the door.

I remember hearing Jodi Picoult say as soon as she finishes a book, she begins a new one.  That same day. 

I wish I could do that.  I can't.

After I've given all my energy to a book, I'm emotionally spent.  Empty.

The time between books is for refilling, for noticing stories and great character names and connections between things I care about.  It's time to let ideas light up my mind.  To take furious notes.  To read piles of books, hoping to be sparked by inspiration.

The time between books is for reconnecting with friends, taking long walks, spending time focusing on my family's needs, doing mundane jobs I've long neglected at home. 

But the time between books is sometimes uncomfortable. 

I want to be productive.  I want to write every day, but I'm not yet ready.  I have to fill the well, gather momentum and the willingness to lose myself in another family's story -- a family that will feel so real, I'll worry for them, lose sleep over them and root for them even though I know the odds are against them.

I'm more like Linda Sue Park, who finds herself trolling the want ads for teaching jobs when she's between books.

Writing days are hard sometimes.  Frustrating other times.  And sometimes they are smooth sailing with fat page counts.  Sometimes filled with exciting discoveries and heartbreaking happenings.  Sometimes they are slogging through the muck of a sluggish mind.  Other days, the fingers can't fly fast enough to keep up with the story. 

Writing days -- good, bad or ugly -- are where I belong, where I'm always headed.

The days spent writing are the ones I feel most at home with myself and with the world.

Postscript:  I wrote this post last night.  This afternoon, my agent called with brilliant revision suggestions for Death by Toilet Paper.  So, it looks like I'm happily employed again.  For now.  

The Truth About a Writing Life . . .

It’s 4:21 a.m.  There’s a pain behind my right eye.

The damn thing’s woken me up again.  My novel-in-progress (or lack of progress), that is.

Because even though I’ve published three novels and been writing professionally for over twenty years, I have no idea how to write this novel.  

There are fragments.  Scenes I absolutely adore.  Characters ready to burst out of my brain, Aliens-style.  But I don’t know where these bits belong.  Why they belong.  How they fit into the whole.

I wish some writer could give me a neat, EASY answer.  

For now, I’m grateful for those who are honest about the hard parts of this process.  

While there are authors who make this novel-writing thing look as easy as throwing a cake together (apologies to cake bakers), I appreciate those who share the sweaty, anxiety-ridden truth about the messy, mysterious, maddening process.

There’s Jacqueline Woodson . . .

She wrote:  “You’re writing, you’re coasting, and you’re thinking, ‘This is the best thing I’ve ever written, and it’s coming so easily, and these characters are so great.’ You put it aside for whatever reason, and you open it up a week later and the characters have turned to cardboard and the book has completely fallen apart. That’s the moment of truth for every writer: Can I go on from here and make this book into something? I think it separates the writers from the nonwriters. And I think it’s the reason a lot of people have that unfinished manuscript around the house, that albatross,” which Laurie Halse Anderson shared on this blog post. 

Later, Jacqueline Woodson tweeted, “My book is falling apart. I should keep writing but grabbing a towel & heading down to the water. Maybe the answer will ebb in with the tide.”

There’s Sherman Alexie, who, during a talk in front of a thousand people at an S.C.B.W.I. conference, admitted to waking in the middle of the night with insomnia because of his struggle with the words. 

There’s Sharon Creech, whose books I so admire for their simplicity and their heart.  She shared this wonderful photo of the reams of paper/vision and revision/perhaps 4 a.m. wake up calls that were required to produce her latest effort.

 This is what she wrote about that photo on her blog:

“three years of work

six drafts

of one book:

The Great Unexpected

(due out 4 September)

By the time

I reach this phase

it's a bit like having been pregnant

for ten months

maybe eleven

and I am thinking

I did the best I could do

I love it

but

GET IT OUTTA HERE!”

Thanks God for honest writers! 

Because at 4:19 a.m. (It’s 5:33 a.m. now) with this pain behind my right eye that’s slowly fading, it feels like I may never find my way through this elusive tangle of words. 

But I’ll gently remind myself to breath:  “Breath, damn it!”

I’ll remember I’ve been in this uncomfortable place before.  (It’s why I hesitate mightily before beginning each new novel.)

When the book is finally written and rewritten – because it will be – I’ll relish the feeling, no matter how fleeting . . . until it’s time to write the next novel.  And the next.

And it’s all exactly as it should be -- this crazy, wonderful writing life.  Even the messy, uncomfortable bits.  Maybe especially those bits because they are what make us human.  

Back to it now . . . because sometimes the only way is to write your way though.