When we start out writing something new, it’s impossible to know if it’s going to work. To begin with we’re writing into the dark and sometimes it’s too dark to see the stars.
I’ve had a few black, moonless nights with my latest project, in the main prompted by hearing other writers vehemently declare this is not the time to write a ‘pandemic novel.’ D.J.Taylor, a writer I admire, who I met once and found to be very generous, wrote, ‘There are novels to be written about the coronavirus but they probably shouldn’t be written yet.’
Happily for me he went on to say – that the best novels of WW2, written at the time, were those where the war hung in the background, underplayed. Phew! That was a relief then! As I’d suspected and hoped, I was not writing a ‘pandemic novel.’ I was writing a novella in which the virus had shaped the inciting incident and then quickly faded into the landscape of the story. It was a story that could easily have been written without reference to the pandemic.
There were other anxieties, there always are for me. Here’s one – am I writing the same book over and over, telling the same story? My story. There is no mother in this novella which is classic for me, there is a troubled adolescent (more than one in fact) in a wide landscape, there is exile, loss and the powerful kindness of strangers – I think the answer is yes.
So I take heart in reading Ann Tyler, ‘I always say when I’m starting a book, this one’s going to be different…About halfway through I say, ‘Oh darn, it’s the same book over again.’
And as I don’t have a title for it yet, which is unusual for me, (though I’m really enjoying writing it) I might just call it, ‘The Same Book Over,’ for now anyway.
