the working life

I haven't been doing all that I really want to with blogging lately, which I've been reflecting on over the past couple of weeks.  when I started blogging again five-ish months ago, I had a few goals.  I'd been a prolific blogger in the past and I was horrified that the first four years of family life had been left undocumented.  It was time to rectify that, plus to reconnect with old friends and readers and maybe connect with new ones.  And I am completely aware that writing requires practice, and regular writing, no matter how disconnected to larger projects it might be, is still exercise.

But a major goal when I started blogging again was to write about writing the book.  So far I've completely failed at that goal.  Even worse, the last few months have been so completely occupied by the book that there hasn't been enough leftover energy/creativity/whatever to put in here.

So I thought I should start trying to at least weave this thread in.  Maybe eventually the book will be a separate blog, but first I need to actually write about it.

For the last three or four years, I've been working on a "young adult" (YA) novel.  The tragic thing about this is that I wrote almost the whole thing, then scrapped it.  I had to go back to reading in the genre and figuring out what I really liked before I could rewrite it from scratch.  This fall I got on track with the new plan and this winter finished the first draft.  The crazy thing is that, as flawed and messy as the book may be, I think it's at least taught me how to write a book.  Three years ago I was paralyzed in so many ways;  today I have three other novels in brainstorming stage and I'm not scared of trying to sketch out a story the way I once was.

I guess everything is like this--something feels completely impossible at first, and then once you dive in you start to figure it out, and then once you've done it for a while you start to feel like it could be kind of ok to keep doing it.

Tonight a friend was telling me that if I had to write a book in today's publishing market at least I chose YA, which is supposed to be an expanding market.  I told her that I don't think I have the maturity to write adult fiction.  I don't know how to have adult thoughts, much less capture adults in writing.  My favorite books are all from the young adult genre these days!  My PhD student self is rolling over in her (literary) grave, but I think YA is the perfect space for me.

Anyway, these last few months I have had the quite amazing experience of coming out of writing sessions blinking in the sunlight of reality--i.e. having been so immersed in the world of the story that real life was confusing.  That is an experience I hope everyone gets to have in their own way and own genre.  For the lucky, like my husband, that experience is called your job.