Up Through the Well

I'm nearing the end of my first major revision of THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES. This time, I gave the shitty rough draft to a group of trusted beta readers to get feedback on the general structure of the thing before I tried to make it any good. They  helped me see what I should add more than what I should take away. Cutting is so easy. Adding, for me, is harder.

I've found despite my Internet publishing job and my years working with software development, in the end, I still write best longhand. I sit in front of a screen all day long, and trying to write at night in front of another glowing screen is very difficult for me. It feels like work. Printing the manuscript out and editing it by hand, referencing different notebooks with extended scenes is just easier. I wish I'd known this while working on THE OBVIOUS GAME, but, well, it's like anything else -- you have to fuck it up a few times before you figure out what works for you.

One of my writing professors told me once revising fiction is like pulling it up from the bottom of a well. At first, you can just see there's something there, then gradually as you haul on the ropes, the details emerge, until at last the water pours off and the thing in its entirety is visible. I can't completely see THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES yet, but this past week I've been working on it hours every night, and I can finally feel its emotional compass. Knowing it's a story that ultimately will matter only to me doesn't feel as maddening as it did before. THE OBVIOUS GAME was a story I had to tell, because I thought it might help the people who email me, desperate to hear what helped me recover from my eating disorder. This novel is different -- it's a story. I'm trying to capture what it feels like to be nineteen and on the cusp of your life starting and not knowing where that will take you. The moment when you realize no one really knows what they are doing and the house of cards on which you hung all you know to be true wobbles. The day you choose whether that knowledge will turn you jaded or ambitious. 

As I transcribed my shaky handwriting from notebook to StoryMill tonight, I felt excited. I felt alive. 

I like remembering what it was like when I spent my days and nights asking myself the big questions, before I got caught up in making sure the leaves didn't kill the grass and whether I've volunteered enough for the PTA. I'm still that girl who corrected the grammar of the school behavior manual during suspension. I haven't forgotten the pain of realizing no one would ultimately look after me but me. I remember the day I realized I had to value myself enough to demand the respect of the men I dated, to not accept careless affection as love.

I wouldn't go back to being fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen for anything. God, it was so hard then. But do you remember how alive you felt when every emotion exploded like fireworks over the ocean? 

I do. I still do.