I started writing again last week. Despite more than a year of trying to convince myself otherwise, I've come to realize that I've been on hiatus from fiction writing for about the last 18 months. That's not to say I wasn't trying. Over that time, I started and was pretty vigilant in maintaining this blog...well at least until last May or so. I also rewrote--admittedly in fits and starts--most of Atimus, my first novel, and worked, if haphazardly, on a few chapters of my next book. The entire time I was on this "break" from writing, I was pushing myself forward, even if only in tiny steps.
I kept my head in the game, like a "real" writer is supposed to do. Stressed out at work? Trouble at home? Have an impossible registration exam coming up on which you've seemingly staked your entire career? Tough. A "real" writer shuts those things out for an hour each day and puts words on the page. I get that, and despite all of those things--and about a dozen others--happening in various combinations throughout the last year and a half, I struggled to keep at it. I didn't get behind my keyboard everyday--or even every week--but I always fought to stay with it. I pushed out the distractions often enough to keep my head in the game, but what I didn't realize until recently was that my heart just wasn't in it.
My most productive stretch of writing ever was the fall just after my daughter was born. She was born in May, and over that summer my wife and I rapidly discovered the truth of just how much having a baby dominates your life. By the end of August that year--just as the two of us were starting to approach tolerable sleep cycles again--part of me believed I would never write again, and that the book I'd started in the months before Erin was born would just languish on my hard drive forever as four sad little chapters.
With that fear present in my mind, I fought exhaustion, stress, and self-doubt away as I squeezed in writing time anywhere I could. I wrote every day at lunch, sometimes adding as little as 200 words to the story. I spent every minute of every nap time behind the keyboard of my trusty HP laptop. Kim would often help me out, taking shifts on weeknights to watch Erin on her own, while I strapped on the headphones and stepped into Ahearn Mour for an hour or two.
I finished the book by the end of October, naively believing I'd surely be in bookstores by Easter. My stress level has never been higher than over those few months--although it was stress for a good cause, and I imagine we handle that in a much different way than, say, stress over the oil payment--but I never wrote faster or with more determination. I kept my head in the game over those months, but I also kept my heart in it as well. I loved writing, and I loved the story I was telling. The characters were constantly in my background thoughts, and when I climbed into bed at night--in the blissful few hours our house was not filled with shrieking--all I thought about was the next scene I was going to write.
I've fixed a lot of things over the last several months; things that were making me unhappy, and, to be honest, leaving me in a place where it was very hard to love what I was writing. In doing so I recognized the problems I was having with my writing, and began to understand that with so much in the way, I couldn’t write the way I wanted to. Without being able to tap into what I loved about writing, without giving it everything I had, I felt myself disconnect from the work.
A couple weeks ago, with many of these distractions finally gone, I dusted off the files I had stored for my second novel. I'd been away from that world for so long that it felt like a strange homecoming. As I read through what I'd written so far--the draft is only about a third of the way finished--I was struck by how much I had forgotten about the characters. Not just the minor plot points here and there, but the subtle flaws and secret fears each one of the major players had. I'd completely forgotten why I had so urgently needed to write this story in the first place.
I started to worry that it had been too long, that I wouldn't be able to find that place of deep empathy and love for these people again. But, as I said, a "real" writer pushes through fears like that. Getting out of my own way, as one of my new favorite writers is often fond of saying, I parked myself behind my laptop and picked up where I had left off.
I'd be lying if I said it all just snapped right back into place. There were a few writing sessions of awkwardly pushing the story forward, quite unsure of how much of what I was writing would survive my first rewrite. Still, I had faith that I'd find that spark again. That I'd understand these people I was writing about on the level I once did. That I'd soon be going to bed at night, tossing and turning because I knew they were walking into a trap and still didn't know if they could get out of it.
Last weekend, I took my MacBook out onto our porch--probably my favorite place to write--and started to write a brand new chapter. My writing session that afternoon was filled with more than a few distractions as Erin (now four years old) sat on the floor enthusiastically setting up Little People in their carnival playset. I'd promised that once I hit 1,000 words, I'd stop and play with her. The bargain sort of backfired on me as the next two hours became inundated with interruptions about which Little Person I wanted to be and what ride I wanted him to go on first and was I done yet?
Through the distractions, I wrote out one of the first scenes I had imagined when I first began dreaming up this story. It was a simple scene. One of the main characters takes his sword--which he'd never actually used--out from his dresser--where it had pretty much sat since the day he got it--and heads off to find his friends before they go off and fight the big scary thing. My main goal in writing the scene was to introduce the sword, which was of a unique design that I had hoped would give the story some charm. All the time I was writing the scene, which came in at just under 1,000 words, I was sure it was going to be cut the first time I did a serious rewrite. I mean, showing off a cool sword to the reader might have sounded like a cool idea in my outline, but here in the context of the story, I couldn't help but ask myself again and again how any of this was relevant to the plot.
The next morning I read what I had written for the first time (I tend not to reread what I've written right away). I expected to find a mechanical, lifeless scene about this guy taking out his sword and looking at it. Instead I found in its place, a passage--nice and tightly written, if I say so myself--where my main character struggles with his fears and doubts over the scary thing he's about to do. Obviously it needs some polishing, but the scene really worked, and it did an amazing job of setting up the emotional context of what was going to happen next. I just sat back, looking at the screen. Where the hell did all of that come from? I didn't remember writing any of that.
In that moment, feeling this guy's trepidation--and knowing what he was about to face, even if he didn't--it happened. I cared about him. Suddenly, it all came back in a rush, and I cared about all of them. At some point during that last writing session, in between goofing around with Erin and beating myself up about how lame the scene was, something clicked. Without being consciously aware, I'd found my way back into the story and once inside was able to fill in the frame of my outlined scene with some substance--you know, actually write. More importantly, though, writing became something I needed to do again, not just something I knew I wanted to do.
It feels good to be back here, and while I can't say I'm not a little angry that I let myself stay away so long, I am ready to make up for lost time. Coincidentally, I think I'll finish this book--and by that I mean the first draft--right around the end of October again. And while this time, I understand that means I can begin a likely six month rewrite cycle instead of looking to start finding an artist to do the cover, I am no less excited than I was that fall after Erin was born.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I've left some friends in Stoneport, and I believe they might need a little help at the moment.
