I haven’t written a single word of my Next Novel*. Not one.
I first had the idea a couple years ago and made all kinds of notes, littering my digital desktop with files bearing names I’ve long since forgotten and my literal desktop with scraps of paper that may have disappeared during a recent, apartment-wide clean-and-purge effort meant to stem the tide of a growing existential unease.
It’s a good book idea. Maybe a great one. And for some inexplicable reason, I’m reminded of it every time I wash my hands in my bedroom sink. Yes, I have a bedroom sink. Two, actually. The master bedroom in my apartment is an en-suite arrangement, but with far less “suite” than “en.” The vanity resides in a shallow alcove between my closet and the cramped toilet/bathtub “room” that has a separate door to keep claustrophobics from showering too long.
I only use the right sink. The left is reserved for the long-abandoned hope of a partner who might also have also found her place on the left side of my queen-sized bed. On the rare occasions when I do lift the handle on the left, the faucet gurgles and offers a little cough just to remind me it’s there and that it still matters.
My Next Novel does that too.
It’s been vying for my attention since the idea first came to me. But what began as incessant, insistent hack-and-wheeze “Look at me!” faded quickly into a polite throat-clearing cough after my son died six months later. Monumental loss changes everything. It rips out all the carefully-organized wires and simply leaves them hanging there in a tangled mess.
Understandably, I started ignoring the book idea’s attempts to get my attention. I also stopped posting on social media. And exercising. And talking to people I didn’t have to talk to. I pretty much stopped everything except the things I couldn’t (like raising my granddaughter and editing other people’s books so I could keep paying the bills).
After sharing about my unintentional vacation from writing, well-meaning Twitter-friends encouraged me to take all the time I needed to grieve before getting back to it. But here’s a hard truth: if I took all the time I needed, I’d never pick up a virtual pen again. This kind of grief doesn’t go away; it merely changes shape.
In the past 18 months, I’ve thought many times about walking away from writing for good. Here’s another hard truth: That would be perfectly fine. Despite all the stories in my head longing to be free, I don’t have to write another word. If my grief never morphed into a shape I could write around or through, I’d accept that. I might not like it (I’d hate it), but I’d accept it.
I can’t write today. I don’t expect I’ll be able to write tomorrow, either. But the Next Novel idea hasn’t given up on me yet. It’s still there, still trying to get my attention. We’ll see.
Meanwhile, I think I’ll try using the left sink tonight.
*I do have a completed novel you haven’t read yet, too. That one’s called Beautiful Sky Beautiful Sky and if I can find the time and energy to publish it, you might see it this fall. I’ll let you know.