It’s been awfully quiet on the Making Things front for a while, and with good reason: I spent the first part of last year writing a book, then the last part trying to decide what to do with it. No, let me be more specific: I spent most of last year trying to come to terms with my decision to do nothing with the book I wrote. Creatively, it was the equivalent of a wet blanket. Looking back, I think I had to mourn The Book That Wasn’t before I could move on; it just took longer than I was expecting.
My memoir was (tentatively) going to be called My Life in Other People’s Clothes, and it was an exploration of identity (and identity-making) through the lens of my experiences with thrifting. I’m proud of what I wrote — first and foremost, of having written it at all. Much of it was deeply personal and, believe it or not, I am not someone who is usually comfortable sharing deeply personal things. It encapsulated everything that is at the heart of this blog and all of the things I’ve been writing and sharing for the last 15 years. The decision not to move forward with it was the right one for me, for several reasons, but it was still painful. It’s only recently that I made peace with it — more or less. For a while, I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to give up the book and still continue this blog, but … well, here we are. I figured out how to make it feel worthwhile to still write and share the blog after deciding that the book wasn’t.
Let me rephrase that: it’s not that the book wasn’t worth sharing. I believe in its merits. I didn’t feel the battle to try to (maybe, one day) get it published was worth it. Memoir writing is a tough category to break into, especially when you’re a random nobody without a huge social media following, and that’s after accounting for the fact that the publishing industry is generally difficult to crack. It would have taken significant resources — in terms of time, effort, and money — to even attempt it, without any guarantee of success. (And we are talking about success in respect of getting a literary agent, much less getting published, and even less so making any money out of it.) I did contemplate it for a while. I connected with a professional editor and paid for an editorial assessment of my working draft. The response was positive and encouraging, which did give me wings for a bit. But the reality was that it still needed some work, and working with the editor (who was amazing and with whom I still hope to work someday) to get the draft into good enough shape to ‘shop’ around to agents would have cost at least $4,000. To make that kind of investment, I would have had to believe VERY strongly not only in my own writing, but in my chances of getting even close to some sort of publishing deal. And that was the hurdle which, in the end, I simply couldn’t clear. It wasn’t just a question of odds; it was a question of my willingness to do everything I might need to do to get it done — above all, the willingness to put myself ‘out there’, with my own name attached to extremely personal writing.
Sidebar: I read somewhere recently that one of the telltale signs of AI writing is the prolific use of the em dash (–) and I felt incredibly attacked, lol! Hello, have these people ever heard of Emily Dickinson? If this is how I find out that I am nothing more than a computer simulation … well, I guess it could be worse? Probably? I feel like the world lately has been doing nothing but proving how much worse (than we think) it can get, so … yeah. Ahem.
But this post is only half about The Book That Never Was; the other half is about a different book, whose fate remains to be determined. After moping around, creatively stymied, for the better part of 6 months, something inside me just snapped. OK, that sounds more dramatic than what actually happened. Around Christmastime, a few things … how can I put this … converged. That’s probably the best way to describe my creative process in general: convergence. Random thing A happens just close enough to random thing B (and, sometimes, C and D and so on) to spark an idea. In this case, random thing A was re-reading a bunch of my Golden Era mystery classics, including the complete works of Georgette Heyer and Dorothy Sayers. Random thing B was re-watching (and writing about) Jane Austen adaptations. Random thing C was finding an old notebook in which, years ago, I’d begun sketching out an idea for a murder mystery. The last, and not so random, ingredient was the fact that the world felt like a dumpster fire from which I found myself trying to disassociate with increasing frequency. What, you don’t find yourself writing entire scenes of dialogue … for a cast of made-up characters … caught in the throes of some exciting conflagration … in your head when you’re trying to disassociate?? It’s fine and good to read and watch things but sometimes, well, you want to be the screenwriter. And the director. And, ahem, the actors. And then your brain screams at you “this is GOLD, pal, you better get it all down!”.
Anyway, yeah, I’m writing a(nother) book now.
It’s a romance/murder mystery (I’ve tried and failed to come up with a cute portmanteau word for this genre, feel free to give it a try) in the vein of Heyer, whose overall approach hits my own personal sweet spot as a writer. Let me explain what I mean by that. I read a lot of (straight up) romance novels last year and quickly realized that I don’t have what it takes to write in that genre because (a) I find sex scenes extremely cringe, both to read and to write, and (b) it’s difficult to come up with plots focused primarily on romantic relationships that fill up an entire book, without resorting to silly melodrama. I have also read a lot of mystery novels over many decades and know that I’m not cut out for that genre either because my brain doesn’t function in a way that would allow me to come up with really complex and ingenious murders that would generate a whole book’s worth of suspense. A romance mystery, on the other hand? Best of both worlds! The mystery element provides the dynamic engine of the plot (and sufficient excitement to preempt the need for sex scenes), while the romance element provides distraction from the basicness of the mystery. You might be thinking, but Adina, that sounds like the boringest possible combination of those two things, and if you are then I direct you to the oeuvre of Ms. Heyer. Read just one of her murder mysteries (maybe not Penhallow, though!) and tell me you are not charmed and delighted. Go on, I’ll wait.
[Also, look: I’m not saying I’m good at this, ok? Georgette Heyer is probably spinning in her grave right now and would very much like to be excluded from this narrative. I’m just trying to explain the GOAL here, not the result.]
Unlike my previous effort, which was written very much with a public audience in mind, this one is being written for an audience of one: me. Yep, I finally got to experience that magical thing that people call “writing for yourself”. The writing itself is entertainment because it feels like I’m watching a drama, in which everything unfolds precisely as I want it to … because I’m calling all the shots, duh. It’s fun! Most of the time. I’ve had a few wobbles, here and there, when I felt what I call “productivity mindset” creep in and try to spoil the fun. Productivity mindset is premised on the idea that nothing in life is worthwhile unless it results in some tangible product (or monetizable content). Through that lens, the time I spend writing this story isn’t ‘useful’ unless and until there is a product (book), preferably one that can be monetized; whenever I give in to this mindset, I find myself starting to think about weekly word count targets, timelines, and other such nonsense. I stop enjoying the writing process as an end in itself and start seeing it as a chore-like means to an end. Capitalism is a disease, I swear! I’ve had to claw my creative joy out of its maws more than once since I started this project, and it’s something that seems to require constant vigilance.
The other thing threatening this project is my ADHD which, for purposes of this explanation, might be best described as a magpie who loves shiny objects. The problem being that there are other shiny objects lying around, including other story ideas floating around in my head at any given time. The problem further being that it takes longer to actually write a story than to think of its bare bones plot. MUCH longer. (Side note: instead of AI, can we invest resources into finding a way to brain dump? That would be extremely helpful, thanks.) I have managed to stay the course through nearly 19 out of (currently) 30 chapters, which I feel ought to put me into the ‘safe zone’ in terms of commitment to actually finishing this story. But you never know. Let’s talk again in a few months and find out.
In the meantime, stay creative out there!
