For the record

I've been consolidating some old journals and for the past three years have been keeping a recent one, and what strikes me is how often a journal entry will cover something I've totally forgotten. Sometimes the entry sparks a memory--it is still there, though I haven't thought about it in years. Other times the memory stays lost. I might discover I went to a party on a certain night when I was 22, but still remember nothing about that party.

Writing captures so much that we might otherwise forget. I make a note today that the snowdrops are blooming now, a harbinger of spring--a small detail I'm sure I would never be able to date in the future without my journal. It's a choice, of course, what to record and what to leave out. Of all the moments I lived through today, I will capture only a few of them. I polished an essay, took a walk with a friend, noticed the snowdrops, ate a turkey sandwich. I don't know which of these details might matter to me in years to come, and we can't live entirely for the future anyway, can't preserve everything. 

So I write down the first things that come to mind--sometimes from world news, usually from my personal life. Sometimes major, sometimes trivial. I strew bread crumbs for my future self to follow. But it isn't only about the future. The act of jotting a few notes each day makes me pay closer attention to the present. It requires me to stop and observe, at least for a few minutes.

A bend in the road

I was struck by the section in Anne Morrow Lindbergh's Gift from the Sea where she talks about midlife--with its changes, emptying nest, closing of some avenues--as a time less of decline than of potential. The time we often call a crisis is one she likens to adolescence, another time of change and often turbulence. She speaks of midlife as a "second flowering" whose changes may be "signs of growth" rather than decline. We may grow into "a new stage in living when, having shed many of the physical struggles, the worldly ambitions, the material encumbrances ... one might be free to fulfill the neglected side of one's self. One might be free for growth of mind, heart, and talent, free at last for spiritual growth ..."

I certainly have felt this shedding and these changes as a time of preparation, of making room for some new phase. L.M. Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables always spoke of a "bend in the road" when faced with uncertainty in the future (as opposed to those times when our next steps lie straight ahead, clearly foreseeable). I identify with that, too: midlife can bring a bend in the road, and it's possible to approach it with enthusiasm as well as trepidation.

Are you having any fun?

If you're like me, the responsibilities and the to-do lists never end. Even when I reach the end of one list, there's always something else I could be doing. Like getting a jump on the next to-do list.

But the chores will never end. So it's important to throw the list out the window every now and then. Or add to it something fun. Something that has no purpose other than pure amusement or relaxation. A day at the beach, or a museum, or a talk with a friend. Skiing, or playing that video game, or just curling up with a book you want to but don't have to read. A movie, a walk in nature--whatever it is, it's time.

I've never believed that life must be all drudgery and work. Even the proverbial ant should get to be a grasshopper now and then.

The journey and the destination

"... I was sure my big break had arrived.  ... but again, it wasn't exactly the launch into stardom that I thought it would be. That's the thing about turning points: Facing a new direction doesn't mean there's not another long road in front of you."
--Franchesca Ramsey, Well, That Escalated Quickly

So many times we think we've "arrived." Now the magic begins! Now we'll be reaping the rewards of all that hard work! 

And often we find ... there's another whole patch of hard work. The "arrival" wasn't all we hoped it would be. But it's a sign of progress, at least. It's hard to know where we are on the journey while we're still in the middle of it. So we enjoy the milestones, and keep moving ahead.

(And if you're looking for a fun, thoughtful read on activism and social media, I recommend the book I've quoted here, which I obtained via library.)

Making room

We had snow over the weekend ... only about an inch, but it's been cold enough since that it has lingered many places.

So we walked through the woods, enjoying the light of sun through pine branches, the blue shadows of tree trunks striping the snow, the quiet. Winter is a great hiking season if you like peace and solitude.

It's a fitting season for weeding out old files, which is what I've been doing. So many decisions--do I need this? Where should I keep it? And to my delight, so many papers I can get rid of. Papers I once needed, or thought I needed. It's slow going, but I've set a goal to go through a few files each day. (I get through fewer when I hike, but then hiking's worth it.)

I want to make room. Room for what, I don't know yet, and that's partly the point. Room for the new and unexpected.

Rethinking The Secret Year

The political situation the past year or two has me thinking about my first novel in a new light.

I wrote The Secret Year during the mid-to-late 2000s; it sold in 2008 but didn't appear on shelves until 2010. At the time I wrote it, I thought of the events in the story as occurring at any time from 1996 to 2006. It was just before the internet and smartphones became ubiquitous, when a family landline was not as endangered a thing as it has become today. Were I to rewrite it for a 2017 setting, I would probably tweak the technology a bit.

But if I were to write it today, I think I would probably have to address politics, even if only briefly. The fictional town where my characters lived was based on real towns I saw in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, New York, and other states. It was a town where blue-collar work had once brought in a good enough living for people to buy their own houses, but where the old industries had since collapsed. Where the American dream had come true, but then vanished. I wrote of the abandoned houses, the unemployment, the money squeezes. And I wrote of the wealthier people who had moved into the town and built their fancy houses on the highest ground with the best views. I wrote of the clash between these two groups of residents.

I didn't imagine the kinds of clashes that would play out in national elections. And I find myself thinking back on that book now, asking myself who my characters' parents would vote for, and why, and what new divisions might appear in the community. Sometimes I wish I could rewrite the book now to explore some of those questions, and sometimes I'm glad my story appeared before it could be viewed through the lens of current politics. 

The third book

The second book is supposed to be the tough one. Fraught with pressure and uncertainty, with the glow of first publication wearing off, it’s a notoriously difficult hurdle ... and yet it wasn’t that way for me. My second novel (Try Not to Breathe) was, and still is, one of the pieces of writing I’m proudest of. And it was, if not easy, less difficult to write than most of my other work.

For me, the third book carried all the baggage and trouble that the sophomore effort usually does. I despaired over every editorial letter. Many nights I left the computer thinking, “I quit; it’s over,” only to try again the next day. For that reason, for a long time I saw a shadow over that book. Remembering the struggle, I thought of it as lesser than its siblings. 

And then, at some point, I reread Until It Hurts to Stop. And I loved it. I reconnected with the characters, with the theme that had driven me to write it in the first place. My behind-the-scenes anguish was not on the page. The pages reflected only the outcome of the editorial decisions, not the doubts and debates that happened before those choices were made.

It reminded me that people don’t see what you leave on the cutting-room floor. They don’t see the endless drafts, the revision letters, the raw notes. A scene that took you a month to write may be gulped down by the reader in a few minutes. Its smoothness is possible only because of the trouble you took; it’s the product that counts. The reader doesn’t know that your dog died during the writing of Chapter Five, or that your kid had the flu and you wrote Chapter Eleven on no sleep, or that you rewrote Chapter Three seventeen times. The reader never saw the two characters you deleted and the twenty pages you lopped off at the end. 

The story—thank goodness—has a life apart from all that, a self-contained existence between its covers. It has been polished to its best form.