I really have no idea what precipitated my sudden
inspiration to jump into a writing project that took me back to London in 1892,
but there it was. Or is, rather. It’s what occupies my days now.
“You’re rebounding,” said some of my friends when they heard
about the book I am working on. It just seemed so weird and out of character.
(more about that later)
“Rebounding?”
“You know,” they
said, “you fall in love, invest years of your precious time in a relationship,
and then BOOM, it’s over. You took the easy way out. Instead of sitting with
the suffering and reflecting on what went wrong, you leapt into a new
relationship.”
See, I wrote a book last year. A long one, one that involved
reading eighty or more books and hundreds of hours of internet time, looking at
images, old newspaper articles. My book had over 100,000 words, and was
growing. It had about sixteen characters, all of them fascinating. To me, at least. It was a
magical-realist adventure dystopian comedy. Of sorts.
It was about subjects I felt very deeply about, the genocide
of American Indians, nuclear testing, the Vietnam War. You know, cheerful
subjects. There were times when I considered calling the suicide hotline, just
to talk.
Long story short, I put the book aside, and not just because
it had no plot and all those interesting characters running around, either. It
just wasn’t going to work. I didn’t see it at first. Finally, a brutally honest
friend put me and my book out of misery.
“Shoot it,” he said, “and move on.”
So I did.
I hear it happens to every writer, sooner or later.
The good news was this: The
book that never was, was behind me now.
I’m almost positive.
