Unplugging

Used to be I was so wrapped up in my first book and its characters that I thought about it all the time. You could call it obsessive. The other day I suddenly realized– while explaining the gist of it to a friend who hadn’t read it– that I couldn’t remember some of the characters’ names. Could have been a senior moment. But I’m really not that senior. Sleep deprivation? Perhaps. In my defense said book came out 4 years ago, almost. Then I thought about the book I wrote last summer. Had another lapse in memory. Not of an MC but an important secondary. And the book I just finished a few weeks ago?…sort of blurry around the edges. Why don’t I think this is a bad thing? A wise friend once told me that once your book is published you have to let it go and live on its own. You don’t sever the ties of course, but it’s out there, existing, without you. Probably the same sort of thing I’m going to go through with my children at some point. I guess I understood her, but it was my first book and I loved it so. I couldn’t help but think about it all the time. It seems like months before I was able to stop gazing at it (like Narcissus and the pond) and get to work on something new. Now I have a book under contract and another one with my agent, and I’m working on the next thing (though half-heartedly because I need a wee break) and I just got a fabulous idea for something else, and scribbled down a bunch of notes about it. Maybe because there is quantity (more things) my attention is spread out and I can let a finished book be and re-direct my energies to the things I can control. You know, like writing and re-writing. Which brings me to the other reason I find I enjoy the fuzziness. The revision process. If I keep working, moving forward, finishing one project and going on to the next, then when the time comes to revise, I’ve gotten some distance. Experts always tell you to put your WIP aside for 6 months and then start polishing, but I have never been able to do that. Much too excitable. Without even trying though, that is what has happened. Can’t revise until I get my editor’s notes and those aren’t coming until late spring. Can’t just sit on my hands. What to do in the meantime? Write a book. When I turn my attention back to the novel, there’ll be some pages that give me pleasure (ones I can’t remember writing) and there’ll be many more, I’m betting, that make me wince but I’ll be able to fix them because none of it will feel quite so personal. It’ll be a piece of writing (as opposed to a chunk of my yearning soul) and I know what to do with that. Make it better. Perhaps the fuzzy memory sharpens the eye to all the flaws and clumsy bits. Maybe its the harder, rational side that has to come out to do justice to a good revision, and you can only get to that place by detaching yourself from the work and all that juicy emotion you pulled from somewhere inside you and becoming more…professor-y about it.