pegkerr | 52 Card Project 2022: Week 14: Writing

Sometimes these digital collages come together really easily.

This was not one of those cards. I spent about two hours on an approach that I ended up scrapping altogether and then spent another two hours coming up with this.

This is entirely appropriate because it is about something that has given me fits of agony for more than the last quarter-century: writing.

After I finished The Wild Swans, I made several attempts to start a new novel, without success. One attempt was the Ice Palace Book, and one was a sequel to Emerald House Rising. I agonized and flailed and wrote scads of entries on LiveJournal and Dreamwidth about my writers block, but I never figured it out. It's not surprising, really: I was attempting to work full time, raise a family, and manage a household (of which the three other members all had ADHD). And write. My back brain just didn't have the bandwidth to do anything creative. And so after a lot of grief and self-flagellation, I effectively put my writing away (picture it locked away in a trunk) and didn't attempt again to write anything publishable for almost twenty years.

The Alternity Game helped. That convinced me I could still write. Soul Collage and this digital card project helped, too. That showed me that I still have a creative side.

Several years ago, I extricated from a pile in my office the four chapters I'd written that were meant to be a new Piyanthia novel:

Chapter One

Reynardo was correcting student exercises when Bevan paid an unexpected visit to Freneca Hall and asked to see him. That must have been the reason, he decided later, that he was foolish enough to be glad that his old schoolmate had come.

An apprentice directed him to the south solar, where Bevan had been ushered to wait. It overlooked the garden, and he was standing at the window when Reynardo opened the door. It was a fine clear morning in early summer, and just below the window outside, bees were making a low thrum in the yellow patch of sweet lord’s buttons that Master Lionel tended so faithfully. Whenever Reynardo thought of the interview afterward, that was part of the memory: the warm, heady perfume of the garden in full flower, and the drone of the bees in the background, soporific and faintly menacing.

With some diffidence, I passed them on to Delia to read. "Mom! You should do something with this. It's really good! I want to see you finish it." I thanked her, and didn't do anything about it, but that raw encouragement continued to lurk in the back of my mind.

For the last several years, I have been having coffee every Friday with three other writing friends: Eleanor Arnason,

lydamorehouse and

naomikritzer. When the pandemic came, we switched to meeting over Zoom every Friday. They have all published more books than me and certainly have had more successful writing careers; we've had different life paths. But they did me the great courtesy of still considering me to be a writer too and gently encouraged me to keep revisiting the idea of writing--for publication or simply for fun. Lyda formed a writing critique group last year and assured me that I would be welcome to join.

And so I did. I dusted off those four chapters and ran them through the critique group, where they were well-received. But I wrote those chapters twenty years ago. How could I pick the book up again, particularly after failing so miserably the last time? I had no idea what happened next.

Then Lyda and Naomi told me that they were getting together an hour a day four days a week, on Zoom, simply to write. No talking. Just showing up and clicking keyboards. Would I like to join? No pressure. Just show up if you want, and if you can't, no sweat. The invitation was out there for several months. I kept making excuses. I got a concussion. I needed to recover. Ack, could I do it?

This past week, for the first time, I showed up.

I have written 1,231 new words on a book I began twenty years ago. Here is the opening of the new chapter I started this week:

Chapter Five

Of course, joining the players involved a certain amount of negotiation—and wrestling with his inner pride—over one issue: money.

“You will share in the profits, of course,” Tavia said briskly, “after a month, once we’ve had a chance to see that you will settle in well with us.” And I’ve had the chance to determine that you’re useful was the clear implication.

Reynardo swallowed. “Am I to eat during that month? I fear my hose will be hanging quite loose if I cannot. Hardly a look that would appeal to the audience.” He offered her his most blinding smile. “And I always make it a point of pride to appeal to the audience.

Tavia’s lips thinned, and he could sense that she was suppressing a sigh. Perhaps profits had been rather low lately. “I will stake your belly during that first month. No alcohol, though,” she added quickly. Drunken louts, clearly, were not useful.

I still have no idea whether I can finish it. I have no idea of my way through. But now I am 1,231 words closer to the end.

You have NO IDEA what a big deal this is.

Image description: Background: a sketchified picture of a pathless forest. A crossroads sign stands to one side, but the markers pointing in various directions are empty. Lower left foreground: an open wooden trunk. A woman (Peg) stands beside it, peering inside. Behind the trunk and the woman, overlaying the forest hovers a semi-transparent image of a woman's hand holding a quill pen, writing. Upper edge: individual thumbnail images of three women on Zoom: Naomi Kritzer (left), Peg (center), Lyda Morehouse (right).

Writing

14 Writing