Well, that happened. I did some plotting for a new thing this summer while I was working on something else, and properly started writing the new thing on October 21 (I started logging my writing days this summer because I kind of couldn’t believe I was writing as fast as I was writing), and today I hit 58000 words on what I will definitely be claiming for National Novel Writing Month.
It’s not the novella-into-novel expansion of BEAT. That was already pretty much done, and this one is not quite done, but it’s really close. And given that it is only November 10 I don’t know what I’m going to do with myself for the rest of the month except, I guess, fiddle with TAKE EVERYTHING.
Where does it all come from?
That’s a serious question, by the way. I have no idea. A lot of times, it doesn’t feel like I’m inventing these stories. It feels like I’m finding them. I conceive of the characters, and place them in the story universe, and then ensues some ‘who does what and when and where and why’ (i.e. plotting). But almost everything I’ve written since May 2018 has come this way: I put the characters in a situation and they tell me what happens next. They tell me why. Some of them have horrific back stories that I want to apologize for - to them, not to the reader. It’s as if in order for certain things to happen, these people need to have these past experiences.
Then there is the challenge of writing realistically and respectfully about things I haven’t experienced myself. It’s fair to say these are not research-heavy books. I write romances, and the romance always takes center stage. Letting an exploration of emotional trauma, or addiction, or violence overwhelm the romance is not what I want to do. I need to put just enough of it on the page to help the characters’ actions and dialogue make sense. So I do the amount of research needed to ground the events, and then I move on.
This latest new novel is definitely a romance, but it’s about mental health. So I did have research to do: my own issues are relatively trivial, mostly situational (or hormonal), and transient. That is to say, I do not have an issue that I have struggled with on a daily basis for years and that I expect to continue to struggle with. Both heroes of TAKE EVERYTHING do.
Any clinician will tell you that love does not actually heal all wounds. Loving someone, or being loved, will not solve anything. But love does have the potential to lead someone to the help they need, to support someone in a troubling time, and to give someone hope. That’s what this book is about.
I might publish TAKE EVERYTHING on New Year’s Day. In view of the traditional ‘new beginnings’ aspect of this arbitrary date, I think it would be appropriate.