Well, it’s been a crazy-ass year already. I can’t do politics right now… I mean, I protest and phone and write to my senators and try to have hope and faith in tomorrow… Enough said.
I finished George Glass, my fourth novel. I started writing him in 2016, a love letter to my son, I guess. I mean, I was inspired to write about the love between a mother and son because my son was eleven, and my dad had just been diagnosed with cancer, and I was in that place where I know it’s inevitable that I’m going to lose both of them–in very different ways. My son had to become his own person and take flight. He wasn’t going to need me for much longer, and my dad was fighting a battle with age and cancer impossible to win.
It was a very personal novel for me, and when it was finished or I thought it was finished in 2020, it was rejected by over 60 editors, and no one really offered criticism as to how I might make it better or undeniable, and I guess that’s because only I could figure that out, only I could reach that conclusion. After all, it was my love letter.
Fast forward to this year, something hit me. George made sense. My son is on the verge of turning 21. A decade has passed since I started the novel and like with so many things, with time comes clarity and revelation: With the first novel, I had been trying so hard to capture the idyllic nature of youth, of eyes wide, of innocence, and the harder I tried to do that, the more false it read. What I realized and finally put on the page was the truth. We are beautiful in our missteps and mistakes, our falsehoods and failings. Our fallibilities. All the f-words.
When I stopped trying to idealize George’s childhood, George was able to have a voice and be a real boy.
I haven’t sold George Glass yet, but I’m not worried about that. He is undeniable. He is hope incarnate.
And, oh yeah, my second Women Writers’ Retreat was held in February, and it was a major success. There were eight of us, and we all got a lot of writing done and felt inspired, which was what we needed. I, in particular, got fantastic plot advice from my the brilliant Lydia Netzer, who helped simplify a major plot point with George Glass.
