Lost in BookLand
The strange and wonderful and exhausting few weeks before a deadline
Yesterday, I tried to ask my husband to bring me a fork. I gestured, considered, pointed, “You know, the thing. With points.” I have lost all my words to the book in progress.
The novel in progress is due to my publisher at the end of June. This will only be the first, hopefully halfway decent draft; it will go through a number of edits, then copy edits, then proofreading before it is actually finished.
But this few weeks, the three or four at the end of a first honest draft, is always one of the weirdest for me. It’s a wild sense of sliding between worlds, sometimes living here in my own body, but often sliding over into that other place, where there are a hundred dangling threads and unfinished plot lines, and the narrative is hurtling toward whatever end the girls in the basement1 give me when I get there. I often think I know, but I am mostly wrong. I have terrible aphasia for objects in this world, but I can come up with the word “fork” easily when I’m working.
I’ve lost count of how many novels I’ve written, but it’s a lot. My vow at the beginning of every single one is, I’m going to time it so that I am writing in a normal 1000 words a day at this point. Everyone in my world, who has heard me declare this a million times, pats me on the head and says, “yes, dear.”
After so many books, you’d think I would recognize that is is my process and it is not going to change. I could have five years to write a book, and I’d still have to write the last part like this, immersed in the world and transcribing what I see and hear and feel. I do it because it takes a long time to build up the world, detail by detail. It takes this long to really know the characters (and I will still learn more in revisions), know them well enough to understand what exactly they are supposed to be learning. It’s never what I think it is. In When We Believed in Mermaids, I didn’t realize until the very end that it was Kit’s story, not Mari’s.
At any rate, that’s where I am right now. Lost in BookLand. It’s hard to spare creativity for meals or anything else, but some days I’ll end up in a kind of fugue state in the kitchen, trying some new recipe that caught my eye on TikTok, and the problem I’ve been gnawing on in the book will suddenly resolve. I am not present enough in my own body to socialize, but my husband drags me out to meals or to wander around the dock, knowing I need fresh air. He’s good at listening to me talk out the book, although he has never once read one of them (and he knows me so well that I am glad about this—too much of me is revealed in my books) I take a lot of walks. I collage, but can’t really paint. I listen to music.
I don’t really like this stage of the book. It’s hard. It takes all the mental and physical energy I own, and it does every single time. That I love writing and especially love writing novels, which I’ve been doing since I was twelve, and it is absolutely my dharma, doesn’t change that this part, this six weeks at the end of the first full draft, is bloody demanding. Think about how many details there are in a book. Every fork and button and weather pattern and passing car, every memory of every character remembering, all the peas-and-carrots characters uttering their lines—all of those come from somewhere. They have to be organized, and they have to be somewhat fresh and somewhat original and most of all, they have to be true to the people in the book, to this singular story.
It takes a lot of hours. By the end of the day, I stagger out of my studio, blinking at the light like some underground creature. I often need a nap before I can do anything else.
My aphasia and trouble functioning in this world will get worse and worse before I finish. Then I’ll email the book to my agent and editor, and collapse in a dazed heap. This year, my family is coming to visit, both sons, their wives, and all three grandchildren, which will be an absolute delight and a good way to get back into my body and my own life and let these people go on to theirs.
By the time I start the next book, I will forget all that labor and be so excited to get moving on the next book that I’ve already started collecting research. I’ll tell everyone I’m really truly going to write a 1000 words a day at the end. And I’ll mean it.
In the meantime, I’m off to savor, to live with these three characters quite closely for a little longer. I hope you’re savoring and connecting with your life and projects, too. Anything good you want to share?
PS My next book is arriving in stores July 30.
My name for the muses, stolen from Stephen King’s boys in the basement
Thanks for sharing this! I appreciate reading about your process, and what it demands of you. I'm writing the eighth draft of what I hope will be my debut, and it takes a lot out of me too. I can't imagine writing too many novels to count. What and accomplishment! Sending you good vibes to get you through the final push.
I'm making my husband read this, Barbara. He has used the term 'fugue state' on me many times. I'm line editing, staying close to my story, no distractions, and intolerant of the world outside my office. He needs to know he's not alone. Wishing you fluidity and ease on the last push.