I'm Not Telling

by Annabeth Leong

I always dodge when people ask me what books I want to write. I even dodge when people ask what I'm currently working on. It's not that I don't have ideas—I've got a file of snippets, beginnings of things, and even more detailed maps and outlines. And of course I'm always working on something.

But these are my rules. I never publicly discuss any work that's not under contract. Even privately, I never discuss any work that's not at least halfway finished. Most of the time, I won't even tell my partner what I'm working on. The only reason I make private exceptions is that it's sometimes useful to talk it out when I'm stuck on something. When I was working on Untouched, I had frequent discussions with one trusted friend. He helped me work out plot and pacing issues, and I'll be forever grateful.

Some of this is superstition. I believe on some level that if I talk about something I want to write, I'm cursing it. I'm pretty sure I have never finished a book that I talked about beforehand. A few years ago, I blogged about a book I was working on based on the story of Persephone. I was really excited about it, and I'd gone through the whole process of outlining (which for me is quite extensive). I thought I was committed to seeing the project through.

Not so. I've got three long attempts in my files. The story just wouldn't work, and I couldn't stick with it, and I felt humiliated because I'd said I was going to do it.

That brings me to another reason I don't talk about works that don't yet exist. Talking about my work publicly, even in the wish phase, makes me feel boxed in and constrained in a way that I don't like. I'm a very productive, prolific writer, but part of what I think fuels that is that I feel free to make abrupt changes. I take things that are supposed to be books and turn them into short stories. I turn short stories into novels. I write 30,000 words, abandon them, write a different book instead, and then go back to those 30,000 words. I change straight pairings into lesbian pairings and back. I weave disparate works together and rework them into one thing.

My writing process is nonlinear that way and it breaks a lot of supposed rules (especially the one about staying faithful to a particular manuscript until it's done—I'd be nowhere if I tried to force myself into that sort of fidelity). I don't like feeling as if I've created an expectation that I'm about to produce anything in particular.

I'm not generally a fan of Stephen King's writing advice (I use adverbs just to spite him, and I revise my work while the printer ink is still steaming hot). I think he's the one, though, who first gave me the idea that I shouldn't talk about work I hadn't written yet. If that idea does come from him, I'll still swear by that one.

King (I think) explained that by telling the story to someone, you prematurely gain the satisfaction of having written it. You get the pleased reaction, the oohs and ahs of excitement, and all that stuff screws you up if you actually then go and try to write it. The thing feels dead, and if something that person got excited about doesn't turn out to work, you don't know what to do. You're not alone with the work anymore—there's someone else in the room.

There's another reason I don't talk about the books I want to write. There are ideas and then there is true, naked want. Getting to that second thing is a process for me, and I don't have access to it off the top of my head.

When Joe from Sweetmeats Press asked me to write a novel for him, he asked me what was near to my heart, what I really wanted to write. My nature is that I always have a lot of things flying around—I have a lot of ideas about everything, and I get excited easily. What I really want is a harder question. It takes work for me to silence myself enough to discover it.

I took a day to sit and plan and freewrite. I love Joe, and I love the work he draws out of me, and I wanted to answer him as best I could. It took me the whole day to get to the seed of Untouched, and it didn't involve looking in my idea file at all.

It wasn't until a good six months into the project that I began to understand why I really wanted to write that book, what there was about Untouched and its characters that I needed to express. When I did, it tore my real life apart for a while. I've said before that my creativity is way out ahead of me as far as self-awareness goes, and that was very much true in this case. I found myself reevaluating many, many things that I thought I knew about who I am as a sexual being.

Because of that, Untouched was an unusually difficult book for me to write—it went much deeper into raw territory than I usually allow myself to go. I like to work a little in the past, with realizations I've already become comfortable with. To finish Untouched, I had to grow as a person and as a writer. The book was a bit beyond my wisdom and my capabilities.

This is not to say that my other work isn't meaningful, or that I make a habit of dashing things off. But I like a little distance between myself and my work—it's easier to work with things I've got perspective on, and it's easier to work when I'm not bleeding from a major artery. I prefer to mix a judicious amount of blood and soul into my ink, not just spew. I'm reserved that way.

Untouched will be out next month, so I've dodged by talking about a novel I already did write. All this to say, though, that the next time someone asks me what's near to my heart, what I really want to write, I'm going to understand that they are also on some level asking what is raw and fresh and dirty and painful and so ecstatic I can't bear it. I'm going to think twice before I answer.