I’m all wound up with no place to go. I turned in my W.I.P. (work-in-progress) this week, nailing my deadline despite an army of obstacles to get there. It’s been one of the most challenging books I’ve ever taken on, which means I’ve often had to grind harder than normal, pushing myself to hit my word count and stay on schedule.
I can already hear some of you saying I should have stepped away. Sure, it’s so nice to do that when you’re exhausted or lost, maybe take a few days or weeks off, but when you’re a working writer with deadlines and a family to take care of, you often have to push through. In doing so, I uncovered a second wind that took me to wonderful places as I raced toward the climax of the book.
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Where the middle gave me all kinds of problems, the end coalesced as if I actually knew what I was doing. With each page, the four points of view weaved together tighter and tighter till they nearly became one at the end. My mind stayed a scene ahead of my fingers, seeing exactly where the story wanted to go, and that, my friends, is a glorious place to be.
I’m proud of what I turned in and eager to share this book with the world next year.
While my courageous developmental editor wraps her head around my story, I have three weeks off (-ish).
What do I do with this nervous energy, this feeling of needing to get back in my chair and keep typing? I need to harness it.
I need to settle in and not necessarily do anything about it. Though the season of brainstorming new stories is here, I don’t NEED an idea yesterday. What I need to do is turn that grinding inner hurricane into a healthy steady power, a whirling dervish. Time to let life recharge me, let the Boo meter rise back to full.
What does that look like for me?
My wife and son, for one. As much as I can get of them. I went up to my son’s room yesterday and said, “Wanna hang?”
“Sure.”
“What should we do?”
“I don’t know; anything.”
So much wisdom in that idea of anything! We ended up making lunch together, nothing groundbreaking, but we were super present as I taught him how to make sauteed spinach, peeling and dicing the garlic, etc. How wonderful simple moments can be, right? His suggestion of anything meant: as long as we’re together, who cares?
Along with hanging with family, I’m doing a ton of reading, watching movies and tv shows, walking and sitting in silence, listening to music, eavesdropping, and napping. Lots of napping.
Meanwhile, story ideas are buzzing ‘round. I’m not trying to grab for them all; I’m simply noticing them right now, like fish nibbles on bait. I’ll know when it’s time to set the hook.
What I don’t want to do is try to force a story, despite that nervous energy feeling like a hole that needs filling.
The only other book that’s nearly broken me was The Singing Trees, which funnily enough has gone on to sell more copies than any of my previous novels. Maybe there is truth to that idea that the most difficult to execute are often the best, if you can wrangle them.
It’s interesting how the story of The Singing Trees came about. I’d been invited to pitch a couple of book ideas to a prospective publisher (Lake Union) and had promised them something by the end of the week. Let’s just say it was a golden opportunity, my ticket to freedom.
I had one idea in the bag, that of An Unfinished Story. I couldn’t wait to write it, as I felt the protagonist in my bones, and the premise was rock solid. But I was coming up empty for a second idea. Of course, it didn’t help to have the pressure of a deadline on top of knowing how big of a chance this was for my career.
I beat my head against the wall for four or five days, scrambling for any seed of a story that might be hiding around a corner, attempting to wrestle them into submission. Stress set in, and the story ideas grew worse. I can only imagine how much cortisol my brain was producing. With a day left, I was in tears, so mad that I didn’t have what it took to be a writer, that ability to be creative under pressure. It was a debilitating feeling.
I’ll never forget the moment when I gave up. Not in an ugly way, but in sweet surrender. I happened to be in Naples, Florida visiting my in-laws, and I remember plopping down on the couch, saying to myself, “Welp, I surrender. I’m closed off and need to stop trying. Where’s the fun? Where’s the boy who fell in love with words years ago? Where is my connection to my higher power?”
Amidst a week of intense pressure and stress, a bubble of serenity surrounded me.
I swear to you, not a minute later, my mother-in-law sat down next to me and started telling me a story. Totally unprompted. She wasn’t feeding me an idea, only making conversation. Turned out she was sharing her coming-of-age story, because it so happened that someone she knew had passed away that day, and the news had stirred up old memories.
As she told me her story, it was as if every dead cell in my flattened body came back to life. I knew with all of me that it was time to set the hook. I said, “Nonna, I need this story! How have you never told me? Please, may I pitch a version to this publisher? But here’s the deal, I want to change names and settings and draw out the drama even more. Basically, I want to dramatize your past.” She said yes, and over the next year, we wrote that story together, and it’s sold nearly a half-million copies so far.
So there you go.
I’m opening myself up to new stories now. I literally said out loud this morning to whomever was listening, “I’m ready for a new story to land.” I’m not going to force anything though. If I feel like rummaging through the lists I keep of new story ideas, then I’ll do that. If I feel like scribbling down a few premises, sure. But I will not become frustrated with the tension of being in this place of not knowing what’s next, because I might as well dig a hole and bury my creativity there.
That place of not knowing can have a feeling of a free fall, as if you’ve leapt out of a plane. And we can choose whether it’s exhilerating or debilitating.
I have some control issues, so it’s hard to be a passenger and not be steering the ship, to be along for the ride and not know where I’m going, to be in free fall and unsure if I have a parachute, but I know which path I’m choosing: exhileration.
This is a time of nurturing, of embracing love, of being, of taking my shoes off and feeling the earth rise up through me, of sitting in stillness, of letting my senses go wild with discovery.
Ah, there’s such beauty in this place now, and I mean right this minute. I wish you could feel the energy swirling through me. Very soon, a story will alight on my shoulder, and it will be time to face the blank page of my sixteenth novel. In the meantime, I’m cherishing this wonderfully limitless, safe place; this free fall into the unknown.
Perhaps what I’m most reminded as I write to you this morning is that faith and enjoyment are our doorways to making our best work. Faith, because we have access to tremendous power and magic (however you may define your magic) if we open ourselves up to it. And enjoyment, because stress, blockages, and cortisol die under enjoyment’s blue skies.
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