On the liminal space between book projects, taming the ideas, and embracing the wait

All my creative ideas have crawled out from under their mossy rocks and are batting their eyes at me asking if it’s their moment yet. They want to be fed and watered and dusted off. They want their time in my lap. It’s exciting and overwhelming—both at once—to think of all the book and story ideas hiding under all these rocks.

Why have my ideas awoken? I recently made it through an enormous effort on a big creative project. Around the same time, I also finished a busy academic year of teaching in-person and online. There’s space in my brain again. There’s silence between my ears. There’s opportunity. I haven’t reupped my adjunct classes at the big university for next semester even though I enjoyed teaching my courses. I haven’t returned to the low-res MFA program where I taught and advised some incredible students. I don’t know what I’m doing next. Writing that down here is alarming. At the same time it’s exhilarating. I’m open in a way I haven’t been before, and what I work on next will have something to do with where my life goes.

A month ago I turned in a big revision of my novel to my current editor. Since then I’ve done all the usual things that writers do after turning in a manuscript: shout from the rooftops that you did it, obsess over unnecessary details, grow insecure and question absolutely everything, have mood swings between feeling awesome and feeling scared and full of doubt, then put it all away and try to keep yourself busy so you don’t spiral. (Cue loud crash of dramatic music.)

Simply put, writing this particular draft and getting it to reach my new vision was an intensive and not necessarily enjoyable process. This is part of what happened: At some point after the first draft I had an idea for changing the way the story was told by shifting how the character was positioned at the start, and making this inside/out switch was more complicated than I’d realized. It changed plot points, perspective, and intention. Many, many new pages needed to be written, a new prominent character emerged, and so much of what I wrote before was sent to my graveyard. (That’s the file where I keep lines and scenes I cut.) Then, to make it harder, my first attempt wasn’t hitting the way I wanted, and I had to start all over again. But as I tell my students: If you know in your gut that there’s a drastic change you want to make to your novel that would involve a lot of work and would be easier to ignore… and yet you can’t stop thinking about it, you can’t stop believing in it… if something in your subconscious is urging you to do it, well, you know who to trust… This means you must try it, even if it involves a drastic rewrite. You will only know if you put the work in. I put the work in.

During the process I would lie down on the rug in my writing room to rest my back and stare at the cycling ceiling fan and just beg for this to be over. But I was begging myself. I was my own obstacle, always have been. Then back to the writing desk, back to it. I revise as I go and just can’t shake that from my process, so this draft involved revising every chapter multiple times, writing different iterations of scenes and moments and dialogue exchanges and trashing them until I found the right one, then when I had a whole new draft all put together, it involved reading the manuscript aloud—all 333 pages—to get a bird’s eye view of what I had. I read it aloud to a generous audience of one (my other half, E) over a span of four days, discussing each chapter in turn, getting a ragged sore throat from reading 50-60 pages at a time, asking him questions, embracing solutions, revising again with his feedback, and only after all that did I send it in.

(Cue celebratory screaming. Cue collapse.)

Students and new writers often ask me this question: How long does it take to write a draft of a novel? That question will be answered differently by every writer who responds to it, and I might answer it differently depending on the time of day I’m asked and the mood I’m in. (Does writing a draft only involve the writing part or also the part where you’re dead-eyed and staring at a blank page?) Truth is, I don’t know how long it took. It took a long time to write this draft on the calendar due to some personal obstacles that made me unable to write for weeks and months at a time, but I healed, and I kept going, and even when I couldn’t write I was thinking about the writing. I was living with the characters. I was exploring the setting in my head. So you could say it took a year for that rewrite. Or you could say it took six or seven months. It took a furious flurry of hours. It took the blink of an eye in the scheme of things, really. If you’re a worrier, it took forever. If you’re an optimist, it took a while but that’s okay because there will be a published book at the end of it. If you’re a realist, it took as long as it took and that’s that.

Now it’s done and the book is in… And so I wait.

For those who don’t know or those who need to be gently reminded (hi), waiting is a part of the process when you’re an author in traditional publishing. If you want to be an author in this space, you need to get used to waiting and finding a way to occupy your mind during those limbo lulls. If you’re an impatient person who can’t even stand on line at the pharmacy when there are three people ahead of you taking their sweet time (aargh), this is going to be a special kind of agony, and that can be all the more true when people keep innocently asking when your book is going to come out. This means deflections and distractions are the way to go. To me, my manuscript may feel like my be-all-end-all, my one-and-only, my heart… but it’s in a pile among all the other hearts and now I need to wait my turn. So what can be done in the waiting room? That’s what I’ve been finding out.

For those of us who tend to write one book at a time, and especially for those of us who get so completely consumed by one novel that everything you encounter is a sign from the universe about your story or a symbol or a piece of fodder to include in your work, it can be a jolting experience to shake out of it and not be thinking about it 24/7.

There is an in-between place of existence between finishing one novel and starting the next. Technically this moment will come when edits are done and the manuscript heads to copyediting, but my brain believes it’s close and so space has made itself available. Inside my subconscious, new things are starting to wriggle awake. Stones are being overturned. Half-formed misshapen little creatures are coming out to stare at me.

At first, in the first few days after turning in my draft, I rested. I printed out all my pages and felt the satisfying weight in my grasp. I gathered together a short list of questions I want to ask myself for final revisions and left it color-coded and ready on the top of the pile. Then I stepped away. I hid it from view. I turned my attention to other things. I cleaned some of my messes. I wrote some student recommendations. I danced with some of my doubts and then let them go as best I could. I had a deadline, so in the immediate days after turning in I finished and then rewrote a short story due for an anthology and that was a nice palate cleanser. I read many books (some favorites: Our Share of Night by Mariana Enríquez, Walk the Vanished Earth by Erin Swan, The Guest by Emma Cline, The Adult by Bronwyn Fischer, Earthlings by Sayaka Murata… the first one and the last one were especially disturbing!). I let myself imagine. I dreamed.

As the days pass, my mind has calmed and steadied. It’s opened. I have a Scrivener for all of my ideas—novel ideas, short story ideas, TV show ideas, online class ideas, ideas for this very newsletter/blog, ideas that could take many shapes, ideas that are long shots, ideas that are barely more than a line. I won’t live long enough in this lifetime to fulfill all of these ideas, but here I am in a moment when I can choose what’s next.

In the waiting room that’s what I’ve been doing: I’m excited to say I picked a novel idea and I’m exploring voices for it. Playing with first lines. Describing details of the setting. Gathering research. Basically allowing myself to start building what may be next because my imagination has told me it’s ready to immerse itself in something new.

So, hello, ambitious novel that will stay secret for the moment even though it’s been keeping me up at night.

And hello to other things as well.

Hello, YA novel proposal for the second book on my contract, awaiting a conversation with my publisher when the time comes.

Hello, short stories to revise and start sending out on submission in the fall so I can one day reach my dream goal of publishing a short story collection.

Hello, burgeoning creative project with beloved co-writer, something we’ve wanted to do together for a long time.

Hello, new notebook for all of these ideas and more.

When I’ve spent so long warring with one novel, and drained myself dry to write it, I do worry I’ll have nothing left after it’s over. When it’s especially hard and I’m scared of what’s next, I do question things. I think many writers secretly angst that there could be a day we run out of viable ideas, or—and this is real and this has happened to a few very talented authors I know—we realistically worry that we’ll lose the desire to keep doing this and being a part of this industry. But all the ideas gathering at my feet tell me this is not so. I’m still in it. There are more stories I want to explore. I think I’m going to keep at it for a while.

So I write these words from the waiting room. I’m eager to finish my book and let it set sail. But in the meantime, my imagination has assured me there will be life after it.

What’s next, what’s next, what’s next? Anything. Everything. I’m in the room between rooms and I have every idea.