Writing Diaries, the writing life #1

Writing a novel can be painful

Herewith a confession: as a writer I’m a lazy bum.

Writing a novel is a daunting task for most writers. In fact, the writing life is a lonely one spent facing a computer screen for weeks on end. But the feeling of accomplishment when the book is finished to your satisfaction is sheer euphoria.

Each day I wake up intending to buckle down to work on my novel-in-progress. But somehow getting other things done too often seems more important. Or should I say, easier.

Writing a novel is a daunting task. And even if you finish one to your own satisfaction, the chances of finding a traditional publisher are low. That’s what happened to the first novel I finished in 2016, a mystery called The Fury. I even found an agent willing to take me on and she shopped it around for several years but failed to find a taker. Publishers didn’t find anything wrong with the book but I was an unknown writer and they didn’t want to take a chance on it.

Never mind, I thought, and started working on a sequel called Blood Ties, but I didn’t attack that project with the same dedication I’d put into The Fury. What’s the hurry, a little voice in my head keeps asking? It’ll probably get rejected, too.

Wearying of my heroine, with whom I’d spent more than a decade by now, I started working on a memoir, Elvie: Girl Under Glass, for a change of pace. The writing moved like sweet, cool water over river rocks.  I didn’t have to create a world, invent characters or worry about plot. I finished it in a year, and soon after I found a small, independent publisher interested in it. I thought I’d burst with happiness when it appeared in bookstores and on the internet. I’d dreamed of becoming a published author since childhood.  

That done, I urged myself to finish Blood Ties. But now that I have fulfilled my long-time dream, getting Blood Ties done doesn’t seem so urgent. Years have passed since I started it and although I have a third draft, it still needs a lot of work. Maybe the mystery genre is the problem? Maybe I should tell this story as a family saga or a love story or a comedy?

But I’m reluctant to abandon all the work I’ve done on it. Some powerful force within me keeps sending me back to the world I’ve created, to the characters to whom I’ve given birth and who inhabit it. There’s visceral pleasure in that. The challenge lies in getting the myriad pieces of the story to fit perfectly into each other in a way that makes the whole thing sing like a marvelous choir.  

I’m the type of writer who has to do a lot of rewriting, a lot of polishing. I have to mine my brain to find the right words, the right images so they say exactly what I intend. I wish it were otherwise. I wish I could be like those people who only have to tap their fingers on a keyboard for stories to come out nearly fully formed.  Writers like May Agnes Fleming (1840-1880), Canada’s first international bestselling author.   

I’ll tell you all about this marvelous woman in my next post.