Back In the Saddle

The last piece of writing I worked on was a screenplay for my novel "The Wanderer." After receiving feedback for the first draft from a talent agent, I reworked and rewrote the screenplay from scratch. Honestly, it was a really satisfying experience in a lot of ways. It's the moment where I learned that there is always room to grow and change, and I tackled a hugely intimidating rewrite after briefly thinking, I guess I'm done, this is as far as it goes. I took a few breaths and a few days to accept the new task and I rewrote it, turning out a much better story as a result.

I can't even recall off the top of my head how long ago that was or which state I was living in at the time. Details aside, it was the last time I became heavily immersed in my writing. Unfortunately (though not surprisingly,) nothing came of it. Largely due to the fact that the draft was unpolished at best. I just wanted to try my hand at something different. I wanted to prove to myself that I was still a writer despite the time away from my keyboard. Ultimately, I decided that screenwriting wasn't the direction I wanted to go with my writing. I still had a lot to learn and a long way to go, and I'm just too much of a rambler to writer less while still being able to say more. I felt too restricted, and for me, novel writing gives me the flexibility I need to put it all out there and illustrate a three dimensional story with words alone. Screenwriters go into the art knowing that the director and actors are who will really bring the story to life. As much as I loved exploring a different form of story writing, at my core, I am and always will be a novel writer, not a screenwriter.

A number of years have passed since my exercise in screenwriting and I had tried my hand at applying the story changes I made to the screenplay to a newer draft of the novel. I'm not sure how many authors have found success in completely reworking or rewriting a novel, but for me this proved to be like preserving the soul of a person and successfully transplanting it into a more perfect and satisfactory body. Without blemishes, without flaws, and with all of the best insight from a past life going forward to make a pristine version of a life that had once been terribly ordinary and imperfect before. Sounds depressing doesn't it? To think that a story's "imperfections" makes it somehow unworthy of love. I imagine this is what made a complete rewrite so futile for "The Wanderer." There is just no way to remove the soul of a book and put it into a new body without killing it. Not for me anyway.

I would change so much about my previous novels if I had the insight while writing them that I do now, but the fact is, I didn't. Each novel is the best version of itself based on where I was when I wrote it. Each provided me with growth and a foundation to build upon and to try and uproot them would be a great injustice, so I do my best to embrace them as they are.

By the time 2020 came around, I had been considering a few ideas to start writing again, albeit being stories well out of my wheelhouse. As much as I enjoy a good fantasy story, it's not a genre I can see myself successfully writing in. One idea after another came and went with little more than a few pages for a scene I couldn't even begin to build a story around.

Then one day, while visiting friends at their river house in Virginia, a story unfolded so naturally, characters forming so organically in my mind, it seemed as if they'd always been there. I just hadn't noticed them until that moment. I started jotting down ideas on July 16th and finished the first draft the first week of October. After giving myself some time to decompress before diving back into the story, I went on to apply two separate large scale edits, adding and changing a lot with each pass over.

As I continue to polish this latest novel and prepare it for query and eventual publication, I can't help but look back on the years that have passed since my last publication and see all of the work I have put into my writing despite a lack of public proof of it. I have truly undergone an evolution of sorts, a maturation of my literary voice as well as how I approach novel writing. Where I had once been too impatient to wait for certain stages to be complete, I now see that anything worth putting out is worth waiting to get right.

I can't know what my writing career will look like going forward, but what I do know is that I'm really excited to see. I'm happy to be writing again, with new ideas and a new hunger for writing. I find it much easier to balance and fit in time to write in my day than I used to when my children were younger. This process has been a humble reminder for me that you can put something down and pick it back up. That just because you're not writing, it doesn't mean you're not a writer. Each stage of the journey is important, and sometimes we have to take a break, but with the right amount of grace we will come out the other side rejuvenated and ready to take on more than we ever dreamed we could before.