I'm Thinking in Novels Again

Back in the first ten years of the 2000s, I was trying to figure out the art of the short story. I mostly read novels, so I mostly “thought” in novels, too. All my story ideas came to me as novels. I read excellent short stories in my writing group and I wanted to crack the code of this form. But most of my short stories ended up on the long side, turning into novellas about fifty percent of the time.

Then I had my first child in 2017, and I couldn’t manage anything more substantial than a journal entry or a blog post for the first two years. In 2019, I began writing fiction again. A short story! I had barely finished it and was wondering where I might go next when I found out I was pregnant again. Desperate to keep writing, I began a new short story in my third trimester. That “short story” turned into a novella that took me over three years to finish.

But! As I was writing that novella, ideas kept coming to me — as short stories! I kept a list. The short stories all examined relationships and parenthood through the lens of science fiction and fantasy. I was excited that maybe I was finally GETTING IT. I was excited to devote the next couple years while my kids were in part-time and full-time school to creating this collection of short stories and continuing to improve in this genre to which, at forty-four, I am still very much a newcomer.

I was perfectly happy with this direction for my writing life. I wasn’t really expecting what happened this summer.

Last spring, I wrote an essay about a pivotal time in both my writing and my personal life, a trauma to my internal landscape that had reverberations for years to come. Writing that essay shook something loose inside of me. It allowed me to revisit the writing I did in my early twenties, the writing I had always been the most passionate about, the characters who had been most beloved to me. After the personal upheaval in my mid-twenties, I “broke ties” with these characters and the words I had written about them. I felt that my investment in them had become unhealthy (it had) and that it was dangerous to return to. I packed thousands of scribbled words in dozens of journals up in totes and I moved it from my apartment to my house in the country to my first home and then my second home with my husband. I barely wanted to acknowledge that it was there. But after working through what had happened in the personal essay, I felt ready to return. I opened the tote. I began reading what I had written all those years ago. I saw it with new eyes, as someone who had experienced many of the things I had only imagined through my characters at the time. I realized that there was something there that was still worth exploring.

And I started seriously thinking about and planning for a novel about these characters that had occasionally popped into my head over the last ten years. And I decided that I’m going to go for it.

The summer tends to be a time when I get lost in my imagination a lot. With the kids home, I have less time to devote to my writing and so all that pent-up creative energy manifests in daydreams while I’m hanging clothes on the line or freezing fresh vegetables or watching my kids at swimming lessons. This summer, I furiously made notes for my upcoming novel and did a lot of impromptu research. I was halfway through this process when I realized —

Less than a year ago, I wasn’t sure I would ever think in “novels” again.

I thought my life was just too chaotic, too disjointed, too full of distractions and interruptions for me to sustain the buildup and development of a novel, to juggle more than a handful of characters, to balance plot and subplot. I thought that part of my writing life was on hold indefinitely. While I had faith that I would return to revise my previous novels, I wasn’t sure when, if ever, I would write a new one.

And yet, here I am.

When I started my substack, I chose the name “Writing My Way Back” because before having children, being a “writer” was the most solid part of my identity. In my children’s early years, I felt like I no longer had the right to claim that label. I wanted to find my way back to that part of my identity. Being able to write a novel again was never the finish line, never any sort of end goal. And yet, I can’t help but feel that I may be very close to “arriving” at the person I was trying to get back to.

I’m a writer again. I’m a mother. I will be both for the rest of my life. And rather than one detracting from the other, I’m coming to see that they can inform and enrich one another. And that’s a “getting back” even better than where I thought I was going.