The Pleasure of Writing Novels
Even after 35 years
Another atmospheric river washed over us in Southern Oregon this weekend. My tai chi teacher just emailed to say they couldn’t get out so class is cancelled for tonight. We had more than 5 inches of rain in two days, and wind gusts that shuddered the house on repeat for what felt like weeks. Local law enforcement was on Facebook urging everyone to just stay home until they could deal with the landslides and flooded roads.
This morning, the sun is out and we all poured out to the beach to revel in it. I smelled the glut of washed-up blue sailors before I got down there, but leapt over the lines of them down to the tide line. Mostly bits of wood, a lot of tiny bits of plastic (living by the beach will cure you of any plastic habit you have), rocks and string. No dead birds, which was a bit miraculous, honestly.
I’ve been in a rare and delicious place the past month—working on my new book. Nothing strange about me writing this time of year—I’m always writing a new book in the winter and spring, editing through the summer and fall.
But this book is a bit of a shift. It’s something I’ve been wanting to tackle for nearly three years, and just couldn’t find a window to do it. When the main character kept inserting herself into the last book I wrote (coming to you July 29) , I realized that either I took the time or she was going to go find someone else to tell her tale. I couldn’t bear that, so I gathered my courage and told first my agent and then my editor about it.
I thought they would nix it out of hand—it really is quite a bit of a departure from the contemporary women’s fiction I’ve been doing. Instead, they supported my deep hunger to explore this material and gave me the green light. I was so happy that day that I actually felt teary.
Which just goes to show how much writers love the books they write. I’m reluctant to tell you too much at this raw, ripening state, so I will leave you with a hint—it ties into my passion for art, for history, and for big, epic love stories. When you read The Last Letter of Rachel Ellsworth, you might guess at little more, and I promise I’ll drop more hints as time goes by.
For now, I am surrounded by stacks of research materials on dozens of different topics, a fact that delights my geeky little brain to no end. My husband has known my attachment to this subject for quite a long time, so I have many books he found on various hunts, and packages keep appearing on my doorstep.
What I have been thinking of as I geek out on the pleasure of immersing in such a gigantic task, a book that will stretch me to my limits both as a writer and a researcher, is how much fun writing novels is. People moan about the pain of it, and it’s not ever easy, but one of the reasons I wanted to be a writer is that it would always be challenging. You can’t really master it. Over and over, a new aspect arrives, inviting you to peer more deeply, to think about it. In my case, I obsess over character revelation and depth, over how memory works and shifts and shapes us, how places influence us. It’s challenging, and it’s thrilling to capture something that’s been just out of reach.
There is also the glorious pleasure of just diving into this other world to see what’s going to happen. It’s like my own personal movie, and I get to stay here for months and months.
Remind me that I feel this way in about three months, when I’m over my head in all of it, trying to swim through an ocean of ideas and characters to bring home a good story. Because that’s my bottom line—no matter what the subject matter, I’m always hoping to tell you a rip-roaring good story. When I have to make a choice, that’s the direction I go.
I’ll drop more hints over the coming months, but for now, I hope you’ll trust me to tell you a story you’ll enjoy no matter where my imagination takes me. I think you’ll love it as much as I do.
In the meantime, the reviews coming in on Rachel Ellsworth are excellent, and I’m thrilled. Pre-order so you get the best price—and yes, if you go through bookshop.org, you can get it at any bookstore. (If you want it on ebook, that’s only Kindle.)
If you’re a reader, does it make you anxious when an author shifts direction, or are you willing to follow? If you’re a writer, have you found yourself changing horses once in awhile, or have you stuck with the same genre/sub-genre for your career?