In Which I Write Something: Part II

A few months back, just after the shooting in Tucson, I wrote this blog post, about being there in the shopping center. About how I felt the need to write something, but words were inadequate. That I didn’t know how to write something, or, at the time, anything.

But then a strange thing happened. Just after all this, in the spring, I wrapped up a revision for a book I’d been working on for a long, long time. I suddenly found myself projectless, which is a place I hate to be. I feel uncomfortable in this space, with nothing to work on, nothing specific to write. And I started to mull over what my next book would or should be.

I had a lot of ideas. (I always have a lot of ideas!) I played around with some opening chapters, did a little research on random things. I went on vacation with my family. I read The Hunger Games trilogy. In between all this, I did normal mom things, took the kids to swimming and ran errands, and in doing so, I kept driving by the Safeway. Yes, that Safeway. I drive by it a lot actually. A few times a week, I find myself in that part of town for one reason or another. And every time I drive by, I think about what happened. I can’t drive by without thinking about it, really. Every so often, I’ll turn and say to my husband, if he’s there: “I can’t believe what happened there.” Every time the disbelief feels fresh; all those old feelings from January come pouring back.

Then, some time in the beginning of June, I drove by. I was stopped at the light at the intersection, and I looked over. The shopping center was very crowded. It seemed not at all the way it did that morning. People were just there, doing normal things, living life. Life had somehow moved on. I need to write about this, I thought.

I quickly pushed the thought away. You couldn’t even write a blog post, I reminded myself. How are you going to write a novel?

But the characters came to me right away. I held them in my head for a few days, not wanting to let them out or talk about them or even admit to myself that they existed, but I couldn’t stop thinking about them and their stories. So I slowly started to write them down. They are fictional characters, but in a lot of ways their stories are my own and my city’s and maybe anyone else’s who followed the events that day.

I’ll just write the first chapter, I told myself. Just to see. Then I thought, I’ll just try adding in one more point of view. And then, maybe, this other one. I’ve told a few people about the novel and its origins, but I keep qualifying it with, I’m not sure if I’m even going to write it. Or, if I should write it. But then every morning I find myself sitting down at the computer, and more of the story comes out. And suddenly nearly fifty pages seem to have appeared, almost magically, in this document I keep minimized on my laptop called “untitledsomething.” (catchy, yes?)

Sometimes books are gifts. They come as they are, and you can’t ask questions. This doesn’t happen very often – at least not to me. Okay, it has only ever happened to me once. But that’s what this is beginning to feel like to me now. It is scary and sad and in a way, empowering, for me to sit down every morning and tell this story. But now it has become a story I have to tell. So maybe the least I will do is finally admit it to myself: this is the book I’m writing next.