I was recently honored with title of Author of the Month for a Book Review Bloggers group. Part of this was making myself available to answer questions posed to me about writing and myself. Below, I’d like to share one of the exchanges.
QUESTION: Which book did you most enjoy writing and why?
I don’t know if “enjoyed” is a word that applies. Writing a book, for me anyway, is like raising a child. The beginning is always that wonderful mix of scary and exciting. You have all these ideas about how things will go. You can see it all in your mind, step by step, each little bit and moment. How you will soothe and smooth, putting things just as you imagine them, and watching as it grows into the something wonderful you believe it to be.
And then, it shits all over you.
Everywhere. On everything. And you kinda panic but not really and you try to laugh it off and you think, okay, maybe things won’t go EXACTLY as planned.
Six months later, you haven’t slept more than a few hours per night. You can’t remember the last time you showered. Nothing is good. This, this was a terrible decision. What the hell? Why? Why would anyone do this?
But then, just as you’re thinking you can’t do this, a good day comes along. A moment. A blessed triumph where things line up and this thing you’ve created not only surprises you, but shows you something you never even dreamed of. It’s wild and different but lovely and unique. You laugh and hold it close. And it giggles. And you smile.
And it shits all over you.
But it’s okay, because this time, you’ve learned to both lean back, and keep wipes handy. You get better. Well, some days you get better. Other days, you fail in ways you didn’t know you could. You spit and rage, then go to bed strung with guilt. So the next day you make it pancakes and remind yourself of the good times, knowing that more are ahead, if you just let them come.
Trudging forward, you hold out through the rough, bathe in the calms, run with it when it wants to run, cuddle with it when it wants affection, shower it, clean it, nourish it and do everything else, for better or worse, until one day, one blessed day…
It shits in the toilet instead of on you.
And then, THEN things start to get enjoyable.
FOLLOW UP QUESTION: So both books are pretty much equal?
They’re as different to me as two people. Their process was different, their time in my life, their style, their struggles.
FRIGHTFULLY EVER AFTER was an exploration into the depths of my imagination. It was a story that oozed and crawled out of me, but it was complex, thick, overstuffed with useless things. It morphed and changed so many times that the final product has almost nothing left of the original ideas.
PULLING STRINGS was like building a complex Lego set with a set of instructions that had been sufficiently soaked in a spilled cup of tea. It was demanding of not just my attention, but of a laser focus. It wanted to be precise and clean and measured, and if it wasn’t, it let me know its unhappiness.
In the end, I love both books for what they are. I believe PULLING STRINGS is the better novel, if only because I improved as a writer after FRIGHTFULLY.
They were also written at different times in my life. FRIGHTFULLY was during a time where I was desperate for escape and release. I was in denial about being unhappy with my life, my relationship, the choices I had made. It became a way for me to leave that world and feel once again that I could control things, I could create in abundance and allow my mind freedoms that I couldn’t find in life. I used it to explore my inner demons, and found them to be closer to me than I thought, so I ran.
PULLING STRINGS came later, as my bad choices caught up with me, and as the denial ended and reality came crashing in. My marriage completely fell apart, though I stupidly put my all and everything into salvaging it. I came out tired and beaten and angry and spiteful. It took me a long time to move past it (I did, and I’m happier now – truly happier – than I have been in over a decade) and that book is the churning lump of negative emotions I felt at the time. But there is hope within those pages, and strength and drive toward the good. I made characters into allegories for myself, and treated them poorly just to watch them rise above, so I could remind myself that I could do the same. I used that book to beat back the evils within me, and in the end I won.