Scenes from My So-Called Life

Hello friends,

It seems ridiculous to write about anything at the moment in the face of the systematic destruction of the foundations of our democracy, when friends in other parts of the country are living in a war zone and/or in hiding. Art’s purpose is to interrogate as well as entertain; like good religion, to comfort the troubled and to trouble the comfortable, even in a fascist regime. I don’t know the intricacies of the law or how to effectively debate. I cannot do anything useful, like fix a fence or a toilet or a broken leg. I don’t know how to do anything other than get people together to sing, to write, to talk about their feelings. But sometimes gathering people to make beauty, ponder stories, craft words has the power to fix things we didn’t even know were broken.

I am just now emerging from the longest break I’ve had from novel-writing since my seven-year hiatus from 2005-2012, when I was busy gestating, delivering and corralling two babies. As I wrote previously, in November, I sent the Big Idea novel to an editor who would have it for three months. I’d been so miserably stuck with that long book. I had people telling me to just submit it—that someone was bound to love it. But something deep inside of me kept stopping me. Was that just plain old stupid fear? Or some deep Inner Knowing force? In any case, I promised myself I would listen to this editor’s suggestions, to be willing to let things in the novel go to get its word count to a reasonable number (it’s currently at 129K. Aiming for <99K).

…the willingness to be confused, I now realise, is a prerequisite for a good life. Wanting things to be [the way you want them to be] can become a kind of prison…because you end up staying trapped inside how you want things to be rather than embracing how they could be. You end up shutting doors to so many possibilities …You arrive in the act of leaving. Of staying open, always, to the possibility that … things we tell ourselves may be all wrong.

––from The Life Impossible by Matt Haig, pp. 184-185

As my editor read my manuscript, I re-read it. I could see the book has a lot in its favor: many excellent scenes and a strong story arc, killer lines and of course the soundtrack we’ve been working on for a decade now. But it also has some boggy parts, some questionable scenes that I keep taking out then putting back in, and wildly unevenly shared narrative stances (one character narrates much of the novel, while some have only a few chapters). As much as I’ve loved writing all the different points of view, even I felt like there were too many.

As I expected, the editor, who got back to me last week, said as much. No more than two characters get to narrate. She also suggested a radical change: keep the timeline to just one calendar year.

So I am joyfully back to work on the book. There’s nothing like taking a vacation to give me some fresh eyes for the manuscript. Already, I’m seeing the ways streamlining it will actually strengthen several of the plot lines and character arcs. Also, the soundtrack is very nearly finished. I can’t wait to share it with you.

Upcoming: the March Equinox retreat is on sale for the month of February!! Yeah, yeah, the groundhog saw his shadow and we have six more weeks of winter, but spring is truly unstoppable. It will be here in Northampton, and I hope you will be here, too. Maybe we can even have a fire in the fire pit outside. Do you have a project you keep promising yourself you will take some time to focus on? Do you want to start something new? Do you want to hang out with other writers for a weekend and feel like you’re understood when you talk about how reading The Correspondent made you want to start writing letters to all your old and new friends?

Sign me up for Equinox Retreat

The Correspondent. Wow, OMG I loved this epistolary novel so much. Each sentence was so perfectly crafted, the character of Sybil Van Antwerp acerbic and brilliant and heartbreaking. She is seventy-three at the novel’s beginning, and we get to see all of her struggles and insights through her letters—she is a dedicated letter-writer—and also through the correspondence she receives. It’s one of the best books on grief I’ve read. Because I liked having a septuagenerian hero to follow, I’m now reading Matt Haig’s The Life Impossible, which I quoted from above.

Also, Tom and I saw Hamnet––AMAZING––run don’t walk to see it yourselves, and bring tissues. It’s based on the beautiful novel by Maggie O’Farrell.

Now we are watching Slow Horses. I loooooooove Gary Oldman. Ever since Dracula.

Finally, thank you to all you amazing writers who join me for Morning Seeding & Tending on weekday mornings. I love seeing your faces and getting small glimpses of your life and work. Morning Seeding & Tending is open to all paid subscribers to this newsletter, and the rule is come whenever it suits you, be it daily or once a year or anything in between.

Love to each and every one of you. Thank you for reading.

Nerissa