Coming Home to You

My assistant shocked me last night by saying the difference between my early writing and the current publications is as though they were written by two different writers. There is a connecting thread and a hint, but it’s in no way the same person writing it.

It didn’t shock me because I disagreed, mind. It shocked me because no one had ever seen it before.

Sometime around Draw One In The Dark — though not showing fully in that book, yet, because… well, because I was severely concussed WHILE writing it — I stopped holding the prose and the story in a death grip.

… So, okay. Everyone here knows (probably) I have a driving phobia. (It set in around the time of the most recent concussion, about 12 years ago, and I assumed it was a matter of “getting over it” until very recently. Recently my husband has become convinced it’s a matter of my eyesight. Though the astigmatism and nearsightedness can be corrected, my visual acuity is more or less gone. It never was great, mind. I’m talking about the ability to, say, see a bird against a tree. That ability was never great in me. I sometimes could only see such things when they moved. (Like a cat, yes.) But over the last 15 years, since night blindness became absolute, I have trouble with things like seeing a red kindle cover against BROWN wood. Similar colors blend together. We keep running into situations where my husband thinks I’m a ditz because I lost something, coming to help, and realizing I’m actually “blind” and can’t see the thing right in front of my eyes. Not was in not noticing it, but not seeing it, till he lifts it from the background. So now he’s not sure I SHOULD be driving, as this worries him terribly.

But that’s a digression.) The thing is I learned to drive at thirty five. And the first few times I went out alone in the car, I held the wheel in a death grip. And I did truly lamentable things, like braking too suddenly, or being terrified of deviating an inch from the center of my lane. And don’t talk to me about passing. Heck, I got in a lane and was in that lane forever. I might make right turns to avoid changing lanes. By the time I hit my head the last time, except for night driving which was already very scary, I was fine with driving. I drove the kids to things. I drove myself to things. I drove to places I got lost. And the thing is, while I paid a lot less attention — I once set off to North Colorado Springs and ended up in the outskirts of Denver, because I was trying to plot in my head — I drove a lot better, because I had internalized the process.

Writing is kind of like that. You start off all tight and trying to control everything. Like if you woke up tomorrow as a centipede and tried to walk.

Add to that, it took me almost 14 years to break in with novels (12 with short stories) and it’s more like my first years learning to write, I was in a car with the world’s most cryptic instructor. “THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUBMISSION. WE’RE NOT INTERESTED.” “Was that my sudden stop? Did I not pay enough attention to the changing light? Was it the sudden turn? Did I cut someone off?” Or if you prefer “Was it my characters? Was my plot too silly? Did I use strange vocabulary that betrays I’m not a native speaker?”

By the time I actually broke in, I was not only a nervous Nelly (more like a nervous JELLY) but I’d internalized a lot of rules that I don’t think actually exist. Stuff like “The outline must be detailed and fifty pages long at least.” And “I must research everything, even things I know.” And “I must remove anything that doesn’t advance the plot.”

I mean, these might be rules for SOMEONE, but they’re not good rules for me. By doing that, what I did was prevent the sudden gaps into which magic falls. In No Man’s Land when Brundar promises Skip his first born, I sort of knew how the book ended, but I wasn’t thinking about that. It was just a silly overreaction on Brund’s part. He’s exuberant, you know? And yet, it’s one of the things that makes the novel feel TIGHT and properly foreshadowed.

In fact, my obsession with removing anything that didn’t advance the plot meant I removed ALL foreshadowing, until Dave Freer pointed it out.

And I went on like that for a long time. The constant threat of “most careers are three books long” and “This could end at any minute” and the fact baby needed shoes didn’t help. At various points people accused me of being scared of success. I never was. I might not like some side effects of success, like fame, but baby needed shoes. However, I was terrified of failure, and terror is not good for artistic expression. (See, Maggie, I’m admitting it.)

And then about the time of Draw One In The Dark, I formed a resolution as to my career. “I” (meaning my career) “Won’t die, even if they kill me.” (Again, meaning my career.) It’s been largely true, btw. And also, it gave me the back bone — stuborness mostly — to keep going, and to…. let go of the wheel. Slowly. Learned to hold it normally, not with white-knuckled fear.

Draw one in the Dark I committed the great act of courage of not removing an unnecessary but charming scene: the one with the three guys in the car. If you read the book, you’re going “But that’s essential to character development.” Yeah, I know. Now. But just a year prior it would have been ruthlessly cut. The people who tell you any story can be improved by being cut to the bone aren’t right. They’re people who like a certain type of story, and also who write long and florid. I write excessively lean in first draft. My revisions, as I gained confidence, started being “put ins.” As in “Oh, dear Lord, no sensory input for a chapter.” Or “Oh, I forgot to mention.”

And slowly, slowly, the books became mine. Like the Darkship Thieves series.

Which I think is what my assistant is seeing. The language became more natural. The characters became more themselves, not cartoons….

No Man’s Land? Well, that’s a horse of a different color. It was my first, real indie novel. Yeah, I know Witchfinder. And it did very well. But Witchfinder was “my indie novel while my main income came from trad pub” so I was still trying to be…. I don’t know, respectable? Maybe? Trying to …. uh…. my older DIL keeps threatening me with a sign that says “As far as anyone knows we’re a perfectly normal family.” Like that. I was trying to be a perfectly normal writer. Then there were Deep Pink and Another Rhodes, but they are very short novels written while I was profoundly ill.

No Man’s Land was where I went “Screw normal” kicked off my shoes and went into a dance without knowing any moves, and without caring what people thought.

Terry Pratchett said the way to be successful was to be yourself as hard as you could. Is it true? I don’t know. But I feel a lot better about my work when I am.

What lies ahead? I don’t know. But for the first time in many years I — at least when I’m not sick — am excited when I sit down to write. Every workday is an adventure. And for the love of Bob, I’m writing song lyrics. And they’re not bad (she says immodestly.)

So what is all this all about? I don’t know. But if you’re out there, feeling like you’re working as hard as you can to keep up a facade, unless that facade is absolutely necessary to keep your job or not to get killed (and even then, find a place and a time you can take off the mask and let the skin relax. And remember who you are. Trust me. It’s what will give you the strength to go on) dare to let go.

Take off your shoes, and join me in this new dance neither of us knows. Yes, our feet will get filthy and people will laugh at us. But we will be more alive than we’ve ever been.

And if we produce art, maybe, just maybe, it will be our best work.

Trust me.

On the count of three, kick off your shoes.