The in-between season
A magical nuts thing happened while revising my novel.
I turned in my novel draft. It’s true! When fall classes wrapped, I turned immediately and full throttle to the novel, which is why this letter is so late in coming. Forgive me! It was a spectacular and strange thing to return to this landscape I’d built after so long away, and I admit that a part of me felt, even after all this time calling myself a professional writer and publishing a book, that I might not be able to do it. I was afraid that not having written for four months (teaching new classes at a new university, planning a wedding) meant I was no longer a writer. Some people would have been able to write through these life things, but I am not some people. I wasn’t able to.
But I was able to return to the novel, to hop back into its funny little corners and vacant spaces. Not all at once, but little by little. The first day I just touched parts here and there for an hour or so, the second day I was able to sit for two hours and write some new paragraphs, but by the third day I was using my concentration blocker (I use SelfControl) and really able to sit in there for three hours or longer.
The problem my novel was having, that I was taking this in-between season to tackle and revise, was this: who was speaking? Who was telling the story? I had written most of the novel’s early drafts in a close third person that moved between the two characters, but then, all of a sudden this first person voice showed up. The voice was older than my characters, from another time, though also a queer woman. She seemed to know all about my characters, but also all about herself, about the time they were living in and about a time before they had lived and after it. She had history, she had context. It was possible she was dead, speaking from beyond the grave. I wasn’t sure. I turned in my last novel draft to my editor with this voice, half realized in it, but hedging. Who is speaking here? my smart editor asked. I didn’t know.
I had a choice then. I had a deadline to meet, a limited amount of time to devote to the revision. I could buckle down, button up, excise the troubled and troublesome thing. Cut the strange voice. For to go towards that voice meant a big overhaul draft, the kind that calls for printing out the whole manuscript and re-typing it from scratch. I didn’t have time for that. I wanted this book to come out so I could move on with my life.
But something else was talking too, my gut saying: do it. Listen to this wise older lesbian who will ruin your life and who might be dead. See what she has to say.
And so I tried. I tried not to push but to listen and a very strange thing happened which has never happened before. One day as I sat at my desk I had, not a dream, but a vision, I guess you could call it: I saw my two main characters below me in a pool of water and I felt that I was standing above them on a rock of some kind. They were urging me to jump and I was not able to jump. My characters wanted me to get down in the water with them (I realize how nuts this sounds) and I felt somehow sure that I wouldn’t be able to finish this novel if I could not get down in the water with them. It was nuts and it took a while of me visualizing it, over and over again, and a lot of FEELINGS and crying and talking about it in therapy. But eventually, I’m not sure how (do we ever know how change is accomplished? even these small moments of feelings or creative change?) I was able to see myself jumping down into the water. That “I” voice that had been talking—was me. Not me me, but a kind of voice that mirrored the relationship me the person has with these characters. A voice outside the story who had something to say. I printed the novel out and re-wrote it.
For the next six weeks until this past weekend, as spring semester begins tomorrow, I’ve been at my desk everyday, submerged. This was my in-between semesters season, but January often feels like an in-between season to me even if you have no relationship to any institution of higher learning. The holidays are behind you and promises of spring flowers are far away. What is there to look forward to?
I remembered again, while submerged and listening to this new voice which was both me and not me, that the thing I have to look forward to is that feeling: being so down deep in a writing project that the space of the project becomes alive, potent, and then that alive and potent feeling spills out onto your regular life. When I’m submerged and writing, soup tastes better. Fires crackle louder. Gilmore Girls is funnier (yes I’ve been rewatching now that I live temporarily in Connecticut). I can hear what the project is struggling with, and hear it answering back: the project is a problem and its own solution. The writing, when you really surrender to it, is what we have to look forward to.
On TikTok
Another weirdly big thing that is happening in my writing life and life life is that I have given myself to TikTok. TikTok and I are married now, and we are very happy.
It’s weird, I think a lot of people my age (millennials) and folks who are Gen X, boomers, and up too, are either afraid of TikTok or dismissive of it. I think I was too because I didn’t understand it. I thought it was for synchronized dance videos, but I was wrong. Basically, during and right after the pandemic, TikTok experienced a transformation and it’s no longer for synchronized dance videos. It has arts and culture and HGTV and cat videos and BookTok (bookish TikTok) is now huge. It’s sort of like watching a television show curated just for you, but you do have to put in some time to teach TikTok about yourself and what you like. When you first get on it, it can feel so huge and random.
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One thing I didn’t know, but that I learned from the novelist Leigh Stein’s class on TikTok for writers, is that TikTok is not a social media app like Twitter or Instagram where you interact with people you know or people those people know, you interact with strangers. For a writer who hopes their work will reach strangers, TikTok can be an incredible tool. I’m having a lot of fun getting book recommendations and posting book recommendations there and participating in silly trends and there are very few literary writers on it so it feels like a strange and wide open space to reach readers. I will say though that I could not have dived in without Stein’s class, and highly recommend it.
In addition to the above TikTok which was books I re-read while revising my novel, here’s a TikTok inspired by people asking me if I’ve seen The Whale (I haven’t and don’t plan to, this is what happens when media about fat people is written by non-fat people) that is a list of novels about fat people written by fat people:
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News
I wrote a piece for Mother Jones about the character trope of “the lesbian best friend.” It’s about Hulu’s adaptation of Sally Rooney’s Conversations With Friends and the fine film Blue Crush. “Though these characters began cropping up in the early 2000s, we have seen an explosion of them in the past 10 years. It’s a trend that, on the surface, might seem like progress. But ultimately, the trope does more harm than good, reinforcing the idea that queer storylines are only legitimate when they’re in close proximity to straight ones.”
I'm expanding my editorial and creative coaching services. Books are open for February 2023 and beyond! Current and recent clients include Kazim Ali, Wendy Ortiz, Amy Brady and many more.
What I do:
-- Read manuscripts (nonfiction & fiction) in progress & offer feedback
-- Read short work (essays, stories etc) in progress & offer feedback
-- Work with writers as a developmental editor on book proposals & more
-- Help writers with the process of querying agents & other career moves (I've worked with a lot of poets looking to make the leap to nonfiction lately)
-- Creative coaching, goal setting (series of Zoom sessions)
More info can be found here, my full rates are here, and some nice words from a couple recent clients are below my signature. Thanks for reading & let me know if I can ever support your work!
that’s all from the in-between season.
yours,
Emma