Of Cakes, Climaxes and Index Cards

It's now 10:50 a.m. and Letterlady has succumbed to the dark side of insomnia: the mid-morning nap. Those of you who know her know that this is highly unusual behavior.

Because I didn't come with her clearly articulated goals of being "finished" with a novel, I don't feel the same pressure that she does. On the other hand, she came with 27 chapters in various stages of drafts, and has been rewriting, revising, excising (80 brave pages into the Cut file on one day.) I am still in the first round of drafts, so my story is still half woven in the loom, while hers is stretched out and pinned, damp, to the finishing board. She's busy knotting and hiding all the loose and dangling ends.

I'm at the point now where the two women's stories have largely intersected. It's getting harder to designate a chapter as belonging to one or the other. I woke up this morning and lay in bed for an hour trying to figure out the timing and sequence for their stories' separate climaxes with regards to their relationships with the men. Both culminate in awful betrayals and permanent damage, and yet they are each involved in the circumstances of the other, so the timing is intricate and hard to plot out.

I am a visual learner. I have index cards taped to the left kitchen window, outlining each woman's story-line, in chronological order with dates (month and year) in the corners. Their stories don't start at the same time, but they merge, so keeping the timing straight is important. On the right window, I have taped individual cards for each chapter, for each woman, numbered in sequence, summarizing the events of the chapters. On the kitchen table, I have a grid of cards detailing the climaxes that I have yet to draft, and that were only broadly sketched in the original outline. I have approximate dates and locations for the events, but things have a way of taking on a life of their own once I begin to write, so a lot of this could still rearrange itself.

Having said all that stuff earlier about not having a self-imposed deadline or goal, I do worry that once out of this miraculous state of isolated, uninterrupted, 'constant composition', I will lose momentum, lose the thread of the stories, the voices of the characters. I worry that after these two intimate weeks with the muse (may She be blessed and honored always) I will turn back into a pumpkin, and the business of life will creep in and taint the business of writing. That the lure of the laundry and the television and the mundane tasks of being in the world will ultimately condemn my efforts to a forgotten drawer, much like the half-knit sweater I started three years ago and have yet to finish.

It is hard to have faith in oneself, in one's ideas, in one's world. It is hard to believe that we will be capable of creating our own creative miracles even when surrounded by ordinary, every-day life.

I choose to believe that the beauty of this place and the gift of this time allowed us to find in ourselves the discipline and creative energy that we needed to accomplish these tasks, but that neither is required for their completion. I choose to believe that these stories are asking to be told, and that they will not sit willingly, quietly, forgotten in drawers under bills and day-camp registration forms. I believe they will harass us until they are done, much like the buzzer on the stove does not turn itself off and take the cake out of the oven, but hollers persistently until the baker completes her task and sets the sweet reward on the cooling rack to share.