On writing and mortality

A hopeful perspective

Hi friends,

If you’re in the Ithaca area, please join Holly M. Wendt and me on Sunday for a conversation about their debut novel Heading North!

Sunday, November 19, 4:00 p.m.
Buffalo Street Books, Ithaca, NY

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This week—today in fact!—I finished the first draft of my novel-in-progress! I’m celebrating quietly at home with my cats, a hunk of chocolate halva, and a huge sense of relief that this story has found its way into existence.

It’s always a gamble writing a novel. You have an idea and it grips onto you and refuses to let go. You fall in love with it and begin dreaming about it and buying new notebooks and imagining how this time you’re really going to write something good. And then you begin and it doesn’t read quite like you were picturing in your head, where it was nothing short of perfection. A bit of fear sets in that you don’t have what it takes to actually write the thing. But you keep going, hoping it will work out anyway.

At least this is how it goes for me. Every time. Writing a novel is an act of faith and discovery. I have to trust that months or years of writing and tens of thousands of words will lead me to splendid and interesting places, that my ideas will develop and grow into a whole world with whole people with complex desires. And two voices seem to whisper over my shoulder the entire time — one sewing doubt that I’ll ever be able to write it and one encouraging me on, fortifying me against that fear.

Only when a first draft is done do I seem to breathe and feel the tremendous relief that, even though it may not look like my Platonic ideal of the novel, there was indeed a story in there to tell. And once it lives, so does my hope that I can make something decent of it.

I admit I love this feeling. This pre-revision, pre-banging-my-head-against-the-wall-for-months feeling. It’s so full of promise.

But as I get older (I’ll be fifty this March), it also comes with the nagging anxiety that writing and publishing a novel often take years. I began writing seriously in my late thirties and published my debut novel Endpapers about ten years later. I still have so many stories in me and, at this rate, I worry I won’t have enough time to tell them all. When I wrote the words “The End” earlier today, I couldn’t help but think of my own end too. So morbid, I know! But we’re all going to die someday, and I imagine I can’t be the only older writer who thinks about it in relation to the colossally slow speed of the publishing industry.

As a result, I’ve observed that my tendency lately is to want to rush. To finish, finish, finish and get stuff to my agent and push it out the door to editors. But what I’m learning is that this anxious strategy doesn’t make things go any faster. Stories take the time they take to get right.

Full stop.

So I’m learning to let my joy in the writing be enough for today — and every day until my next book finds its publishing home, and then every day beyond that. Because that’s how I really get to live my most fulfilling life, full of storytelling and reading, not to mention love, family, friends, and all the important things that enrich us.

So, onward I go. Though I’ve reached the end of this draft, it’s actually a beginning. This is when the real work starts. I’m excited to turn this draft into another, better, shareable draft and to take my time to be fully present for all of it.

Wherever you are in your writing journey, I’m sending you good wishes and hoping you can take some time to slow down and enjoy the process. Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate!

Yours,

Jen