Between Drafts

Writing, a wedding, and a water leak

It is dark in the mornings now. I switch on the lamp before bed. This turn of the year always sneaks up on me—though it isn’t sudden at all. The days shorten, as they always do, but I fail to keep track until the cold insists on a coat for the morning dog walk.

If you’ve wondered where I’ve been, a few notes:

— I finished a draft of the WIP, a massive thing that consumed every waking moment. Ten days late, thin on the back end, but it had to go to my editors. The draft went in, imperfect but alive, and I’m expecting notes any day now.

— My son got married last weekend, under sunny skies in LA. Their story is not simple—it’s one of resilience, hard roads, love arriving against the odds. Emily danced a hula for the groom, her family tradition, and I wish I could upload the video, but it is quite long. My ex-husband and my brother shared a rare conversation, my mother glowed as she joined in, and I threw myself into grandmotherhood—swimming with Arya, dancing with Séamus, and listening to Amara deliver her thirteen-year-old philosophies with all the conviction of youth. It was heaven.

My ex, my brother, my two boys; me and the girls; the new happy family

— And of course, life intruded: a water leak. Three thousand gallons a day pouring into the ground. The meter reader knocked, and there I was—wild ponytail, ratty sweater, bleary-eyed from the draft—when he said, “Might want to shut it off.” Now there are plumbers and jackhammers and holes in the concrete. But the book got finished anyway.

This isn’t the first season I’ve lost. I remember once, in Pueblo, stepping outside on a blistering August afternoon. The flowers I’d planted in spring were in bloom, but I had no memory of tending them. Summer had passed me by while I lived in the pages of a book. That one turned out to part of a trilogy about three brothers, one of which won a RITA. The flowers faded, but the work endured.

I must have attended barbeques and picnics, dug in the dirt, laughed with friends, as I have this year. But the deeper current carried me elsewhere—into the work. This is the pact, the process. To serve the page, to give myself as conduit for the story. However imperfectly, this is the shape of my life.

Writing is my choice. Always. Not to the exclusion of the people I love, but sometimes at the exclusion of a season. That trade can look sad from the outside, but it isn’t. It is simply the cost of devotion, and I accepted it long ago.

Now autumn leans closer, the mornings darker, the evenings cool. What about you? What new things have bloomed or withered since last we spoke? What books have astonished you? Tell me. I want to hear.