It has been my practice for the last 15 years to write every day—even if I only had a few minutes to spare. I was of the opinion that things get rusty if you don’t. I teach this to my students and I practiced what I preached. But in the lead-up to giving birth to my daughter late last year, I decided I would take a break. It was a conversation with a fellow creative type about some frustration on the business end of my career that steered me toward the trial and I thought, well, it’s a great time to see how I go without writing. Maybe I won’t want to do it anymore. Maybe I’ll be cured and I can move on.
In preparation, I worked furiously to finish the draft of my new novel, THE PATRONS, which I had begun back in 2008, then put down because of some holes I couldn’t seem to plug up. I had to salvage the book; I had to solve the problem and make up for all that lost time. I immersed myself in the kind of rich, rewarding research that sparks unique connections, the only way I know to bring seemingly disparate entities into a gorgeous, unique symbiosis, to tell a story that appeals to a wide variety of people. I read Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, The American Patriot’s Handbook, and The Art of War by Sun Tzu, La Dame aux Camélias, Zola’s Nana, and The Courtesans by Joanna Richardson, and The Future of Freedom by Fareed Zakaria. As my stomach swelled and my office slowly but surely became a nursery, the story came to a natural completion. I did too much editing (as usual), and wrapped up the copyediting, cover art, and proofreading. I was slightly relieved to close my computer and pack my hospital bag.
But at the hospital, after a couple days in the maternity ward, my mind began its familiar whirl with the inspiration of new experience (a hospital around all these new lives, yelling their heads off, mums with zero sleep, zero privacy, emotional rollercoaster), and I typed up some notes. Couldn’t help myself. But then the milk came in, and with it, no sleep, and I was glad for the break from work. I could barely see straight, much less work.
When I got back to it, the start was slow, sluggish. I chose a KINDLE SINGLE to start with; I’d been wanting to do one for a long time and I thought a shorter project was a good way to get myself acclimated to the fiction world. It was daunting. The first start turned out to be good writing, but extraneous, finding my footing stuff that I wouldn’t use. Would I have made this mistake without the hiatus? It’s hard to know. But I did recognize almost as soon as I sat down to it again that this material I’d written was relegated to character notes and not the story itself. Perspective: this is what I gained through my break. Yes, I got rusty. I forgot a lot of stuff that previously had been at my fingertips. However, after the sabbatical, I found I’d taken those things for granted and now came at them anew, and with a fresh take once I reacquainted myself, I could better articulate and apply them. It has come to feel like a gathering of my approach, a hard-won bit of perspective that has helped me to consider commercial application and return on time investment.
Which is important for a midlist author today. The self-publishing, or hybrid author (a mix of traditional and self-publishing) route is full of possibility and while publishers are shrinking advances and investing mega-conservatively—if at all in the midlist category—this is the only opportunity for many midlisters right now. For more on my self-publishing experience, CLICK HERE. I will follow up with some hard numbers and dollar figures in the coming months, as I’ve been documenting my experience in a way I never did with incomprehensible publisher income statements that came in six-twelve months late (nevermind the same cover letter I’d been getting for 15 years “I am pleased to enclose this statement for which there is no money due”); and some might say this alone makes this leg of the journey worthwhile. Artists don’t have to be starving. But if we want to change that, we have to do it ourselves. And we can’t treat money as a taboo subject, the way we always have.
Here are some books and websites that have inspired my writing re-immersion. Let me know what’s inspired you!
The Mystery of the Cleaning Lady is a key bit of research for my novel in progress, THE BOOK CODE.
Page turners always inspire me; thank you The Girl on the Train.
Random used bookstore adventures led me to A Boy of Good Breeding, which does an excellent job letting readers experience a specific psychological condition.
Also for research on THE BOOK CODE, and both terrifying and fascinating: Hitler’s Private Library.
On the business side, there’s The Hybrid Author, The Book on Facebook Marketing, and Let’s Get Visible.
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