Is this an epilogue?
I have a roommate for the month, Fran, and also her little tuxedo cat Jelly, who is sweet to me but not so much to my cat Cracker. I like the idea of them becoming best friends and snuggling together in all their tuxedo-ness but it doesn't look like that's going to happen anytime soon. But Fran and I get along well - if I must room with someone, let them have a day job but also let them have an MFA - and it has been nice having someone to talk to at night. Otherwise it could be days and I never would talk to a soul, except via the internet.
Because I am in it now, in this book, and not much matters besides it all day long. It rounded the corner just like that. I figured out what was going on. Why it was hard, why it would continue to be hard. Why my brain was making little crunching noises every day when I sat down to write.
Short answer:
Because writing books is hard.
Long answer:
It feels - as it should - different than other books I've written. In the beginning I usually allow myself to just have fun and write whatever the hell I want. Everything with this new book has felt much more purposeful, that it had to be purposeful. My usual mantra when I start a book is: Just write it and you can fix it later. And that was just not working for me this time. I was afraid to move forward until I knew exactly what I wanted to do.
With the first book I had no clue what I was doing, I was just emptying my brain onto the page, and through the editing process it got pulled together.
For the second book, I still had no idea what I was doing, but the story was kind of bigger than me, and it had to be told, those characters were rousing and loud and demanded to be heard. I would say mid-way through writing the second book I got control of it.
With the third, I really felt like I knew what I was doing at the beginning, and then I went batshit at the end and wrote something really crazy, like a new kind of book for me. And I loved that book. I was glad it existed. And then I went through very quickly and killed off all the characters I had invented for the last half of the book and started over and wrote something completely different
I feel like now, particularly after that last process, I kind of have a handle on what it means to write a novel. It was the first time I truly realized a novel could go one way or another, that I could control it. That it wasn't just about listening to the voices in my head - and that is really such a huge part of it - but that I could choose what kind of book I wanted to write.
So there I was for a while, hovering, trying to make a choice. And now I think I've made it.
But I still think this book is going to be hard to write. I've got a ways to go on it.
(09/11/08)