Patiently Waiting for a Turn of the Season

I've been thinking a lot about the writing process lately. I think there are some people who can get up in the morning and write steadily until they hit a word goal, or a certain time. I wonder about their relationship to the words they write. Are they happy with them immediately? Do they work over them until they're satisfied, before moving on? Do these people know the structure of their story before they begin? If so, how? I envy their abilities.

For me, the process has always been to write in chunks. I write scenes a lot first, especially immediately after they happen. This scene-writing often takes the place of note-taking, which is bad for the fact-checking process, because it means that the writing itself is the note. There's usually a single paragraph that is a really important description of a place or event that morphs a little over time but usually survives until the final version of the piece. I doubt a reader would even notice these graphs, but they are my lodestar. The chunks are not always in order. In fact, they often aren't. They are definitely not written in order. I do a lot of chunk-writing and then I figure out how those chunks go together. This means I have to do a lot of connective-tissue writing later on. Even later, I have to make sure all of the chunks include all of the elements they need. Right now, for my book, this means every chunk hits the right emotional notes and also connects to the bigger story I'm trying to tell, while at the same time the chunk is clear on its own. Each chunk serves three narrative threads. It's incredibly difficult.

Maybe what I write are not chunks so much as swirls, like falling leaves around me in the autumn, and I just have to wait until they land and settle and the pattern becomes clear. At that point, I often have to rearrange them. I go back to restructure chapters after other chapters have already been written. I am very, very anxious for autumn in the real world, for the brief fire of changing leaves, the shedding of the old, and a break in the heat.

When people ask me how far I am into my book, there's no real answer. Almost done hopefully? It's taken a long time. It has firmly settled now, on solid ground, in a way that is very clear to me, and in a way that it hadn't before. It's a second-to-third draft. Maybe a second-and-a-half draft? I've turned about half of it into my editor. This is the worst time because it gives me an opportunity to worry that it is really, really bad. I think I've written about this before, but John McPhee has written about how torturous the writing process is. I don't know if it makes me feel better or worse that it seems to stay that way despite experience.

On top of that, it's been really emotional for me, revisiting stuff I'd left behind a long time ago. It's a very personal book. Making sure that level of emotion on the page is difficult. I spent some time last week just feeling really sad. I let the heaviness of that emotion sit on me, and I felt its contours for awhile, getting used to it so that I could carry it through the rest of this process. I think this is why I surround myself with animals; their unadulterated joy in life is light and uncomplicated. In the country, I've let my dogs become wolves and I haven't worn a bra in a really long time. I'm going to be honest; it's going to be hard to return to civilization.

What I've Been Writing:

Not much that anyone can see yet! I wrote a piece last year about efforts to organize around eco-tourism in Kentucky, maybe my favorite place in the world. I also wrote this profile of Elizabeth Warren in 2012, and I think it holds up. It's interesting to revisit now.

What I've Been Reading:

Also not a lot, because I find it hard to read while I'm working. But I've been really impressed by Covering Climate Now, a coalition of news organizations working on pieces about climate change. I also read Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder earlier this year. It won a Pulitzer in 2018, and it so deserved it. It's a biography of Wilder, but it's also a story about America, myth-making, and the frontier. It is politically very relevant today, in surprising ways. Also, this op-ed on how important it is to spend some time doing nothing continues to comfort me because, try as I might, I cannot make myself work every day of the week.

What I'm Recommending:

Sometimes you come across a classic that you've never heard of that changes your life. For me this year, it's been The New Vegetarian Cooking For Everyone. It is my new food Bible, and it's given me a ton of ideas and helped me discover new, delicious foods.

Cute Animal Pic:

Boy, do I have so many of these. Best for now to stick to a portrait of a dog we recently sent to live with my sister in Brooklyn. When this puppy was about 5-6 weeks old, she was dumped in someone's yard, sick and dying. This still happens a lot in rural America, especially in states with almost no animal welfare laws, which is part of the reason nearly 2 million healthy animals are still euthanized every year, which is what you should keep in mind when you read this thought-provoking piece. The woman who found her, who lives at the end of a road where a lot of people dump dogs, had already been taking care of other abandoned animals. She posted on a Facebook group that she didn't know what to do and didn't have money for a vet, so I offered to help and started a GoFundMe. They wanted to keep her, but realized they had to move and couldn't afford a pet deposit, and asked if I could help finding her a home. She lived with us until she got healthy, and my sister and her boyfriend saw her picture and wanted her. I think they're still adjusting to life with a dog, but how could anyone resist this cuteness? She is called Rochelle Rochelle, but we called her Shelly Belly because she had the warmest, fattest belly of any puppy I've ever met. I woke up this morning really missing her tiny presence, her belly snuggles, and her sweet energy. But she needed a good home, and in her case, that was not with me.