Finishing the Shape

Did you know that every book is the answer to a question? I'm serious. Every book is almost like a very in-depth Jeopardy question: 

Q: "This is what would happen if a whaling captain had a really long-standing vendetta against a whale that ate his leg."
A: What is Herman Melville's Moby Dick? 

Q: "In this uncharacteristically short tale, a guy started to mysteriously lose weight, but looked the same, until one day he is weightless."
A: What is Stephen King's Elevation? 

Q: "This story is a first person narrative account of horses that could talk to each other and also have feelings."
A: What is Anna Sewell's Black Beauty?

The whole process of planning a piece of writing, whether it's a multi-book series, a standalone novel, or a short story, actually reminds me of something I did in first grade. Our teacher would take a blank sheet of paper, draw a line, shape, or squiggle on the paper, and make a copy for every kid in the class. The rules were simple: using that black mark as a jumping-off point, make a picture. We had to use the whole page, and it was an exercise that I loved. 

Writing is much the same. For the short story I posted the other day, the question was "what would happen if an introverted bibliophile thought she was the last person on earth, and took it upon herself to save all the books she could?"

Writing can be such a daunting process, for me at least. Sometimes the initial idea for a short story or novel pops into my brain fully formed, almost like giving birth to a baby only to realize it has a full mouth of teeth and can walk. Sometimes it's trickier, and the pieces of the puzzle come together more gradually. Sometimes I think I know where I'm going with it, but end up feeling like I'm building a car while I'm driving it down the interstate. Parenting is much the same, honestly. 

The really hard and exciting part is grinding it out. Realizing that you saw the black squiggle on the page, and decided what it's going to be. Then you have to get your crayons out and use the whole page. The good news is that it can be whatever you want it to be. I'm in the thick of this process now a few chapters into my third book, and I'm realizing that despite a pretty exhaustive prep process (more of that in a future blog post), sometimes I come up against a carefully planned storyline or character that just will not stay in the little box I have written them into, and it's going to change the entire plot. And you know what? I couldn't be more fine with it. 

What's a good book you've read lately? Hit the comments section, tell me what question the book answered for you. I'm always looking for good books to add to my list. 

Happy reading!

First of all...

I haven't kept track of the number of books I've read in my lifetime. In 36 years I'd say it's well into the thousands. My earliest memory of reading was in kindergarten, watching my little index finger glide across the page, the syllables forming like pearls in my mouth. Each word, each line building up momentum; it felt like learning to ride a bike. "The little brown cat jumped. It was fast." Look at me go! I imagine that sensation is akin to what Egyptologists feel when they translate hieroglyphs on the fly. Reading is its own kind of archaeology. A special kind of magic that belongs in the everyday. 

I started reading in kindergarten, and never stopped. My parents chalk up my general poor sense of direction to the fact that I never watched where they were driving. I was always in the back seat, my face buried in my latest temporary acquisition from the library. To this day I mostly never have a clue where I am, and my audiobooks are often rudely interrupted by Google maps telling me in her politest tone that I missed the last turn. Again. In two hundred feet, make a U-turn. I would have fared poorly on the Oregon Trail. 

My love-affair with words could just as easily have ended there, with the occasional trip to the library. An intimate knowledge of every Nancy Drew book ever published. A tall stack of secondhand books on the table by my favorite reading chair. Something pivotal happened, though, when I was in the eleventh grade. 

My aversion to numbers in high school (subjects like algebra, physics, and accounting made me feel rashy) was only equaled by my love for words. In my eleventh grade creative writing class, I turned in a short story about a girl named Evangeline. My character's name choice was an obvious nod to the fact that I'd finished reading H.B. Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin a week earlier. I cannot recall the storyline exactly, except that, in my mind's eye, was set in a high school that looked suspiciously like my own, and involved a love-interest that I don't remember. I'm certain that if I could excavate a copy from a box of other relics from my teenage years, the reading of it would produce a cringeworthy visceral response much like you'd get from re-reading your adolescent diary, but that's not the point. I turned in my short story about Evangeline, and a few days later the teacher pulled it from the top of her stack, held it up for the class to see, and said "This. This is good writing". She read it to the class, not mentioning who had written it, and I sat there in the second desk from the back, glowing. I felt incandescent. I didn't just love to read stories, I loved to write them, too. 

Years went by. I moved to another country, lived another life, and was with my toddler son at a playdate when another mom, a writer herself, mentioned she was starting up a small group for other mothers who wanted to try to write a book. I cannot write a book, I thought. I don't have time to write a book. I don't even know where to get started. The truth is, though, that the idea of writing a book wouldn't go away. It wasn't necessarily a pleasant thing - the thought stuck in my brain like a popcorn kernel would lodge itself between two molars. I joined the writers group, and thought why am I doing this? I cannot write a book. And then I wrote a novel. 

It took me months; small increments of 30 minutes here, an hour there. Staying up too late or waking up too early. Losing myself at my desk during my son's preschool mornings, weaving characters in my imagination while folding loads of laundry. When I wrote the last line it felt like I'd birthed another baby, and the cursor on the screen just kept on blinking at me, waiting hungrily for more. I wrote an entire second novel during the pandemic, and it came out much better than the first. Second pancakes are often superior in quality to first pancakes, I've found. Before I had finished the second book, a third started to creep into the periphery of my brain, another stubborn popcorn kernel. 

And now here we are, dear reader. In short, this is a space I've created for myself. A spot to come and share my writing. Maybe some excerpts from projects I'm working on. Snippets of books already written. I hope lots of short stories will live here, too. The belated offspring of the tale of Evangeline that I wrote in the eleventh grade. 

One big thing has stayed the same since that eleventh grade creative writing class. The writing makes me feel incandescent, lit up with possibilities, and I hope what I write here in this space throws a little light into your life, too. 

Happy Reading,

DCK