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.

Seasonal Drama

by Jean Roberta

“All the leaves are brown, and the sky is grey.”

Alas! Our Mother has died of grief, and we shall die too. The Lord of the Dead stole her daughter, and now the Mother is too distracted to feed her human children. Death has conquered the land of the living.

Why do we have to go to work when the temperature is 40 degrees below zero? Why did anyone ever think the Canadian prairies were fit for human habitation?

In Northern climates, we celebrate some holiday near the time of the Winter Solstice to comfort ourselves. The hours of daylight are short, it’s cold, the land that once grew crops is covered with snow, so we party hearty to compensate. We’re probably insane.

The missing university student has been found. He had some drinks with friends in the campus pub, then decided to walk home. He passed out on his way, the snow covered him, and when the search party found him, it was too late. He will sleep off his hangover forever, and his family will never be the same. All the other students (and many faculty members) are relieved that it didn’t happen to them. And we’re all keeping their fingers crossed that it never does.

Finally! Almost all the snow has melted, and there are buds on the trees! It’s a miracle. On the ironically-named non-holiday called Good Friday (a day to spend away from work or school, not celebrating), Christians have traditionally contemplated suffering, death, the winter that comes to every life. Then on the following Sunday, they go joyfully to a church decorated with lilies, and come home to eat candy and boiled eggs with their children. Presumably, Christ has been rescued from his suffering, and has been granted eternal bliss: springtime forever. Believing in this requires a lot of faith.

Like survivors of trauma whose memories are unreliable – or who bury the event somewhere below the level of consciousness – we tend to forget, over and over again. When the green leaves of summer change colour, we admire the canopies of red or golden leaves overhead, and try not to think about what they signify: the death of plant life as the weather grows colder. We watch the Canada geese organizing themselves for their long journey, then rising into the sky in chevron after chevron, heading south. So many Canadians imitate the geese by catching planes to warmer places that they have a label: Snowbirds.

If we have to wait out the winter, we use every available means to stay warm and distract ourselves. We avoid considering the fact that humans aren’t very tough compared to other mammals (including bunnies and gophers), and low temperatures can kill our vital organs after our extremities (fingers and toes) have been destroyed. Some of us have a minor condition that mimics the death of the extremities. It’s called Reynaud’s Syndrome, and it usually seems to affect little old women (short, relatively thin, over 50) who have lived in the North for so long that our blood takes it time returning to numbed fingers and toes. So while we huddle in blankets indoors, we can watch our waxy-looking fingers or toes slowly recover feeling and life.

Many of us have had close calls, but we survived. We’re all right, Jack.

Spring brings amnesia. The Mother is alive again! Her daughter has returned to her! We can imagine Demeter and her girl Persephone frolicking in the green wheat, blessing the newly-planted gardens and waking up the perennials that lay dormant all winter. The sun is bright, and the air is growing steadily warmer. Our Mother loves us again.

Summer is too much of a good thing. The sun blazes, flowers bloom, people who are stuck indoors turn on the air conditioning, and those who can get away rush to the nearest large body of water. If there’s no ocean nearby, a lake or even a river will do. For a few months, it’s hard to believe that all the green lawns, fields of grain, and dusty vacant lots were ever covered by snow. Threatening weather now takes the form of thunderstorms that can produce hailstones the size of golfballs. An hour of these things pelting a wheat field can flatten a large crop, which is the main reason why farmers buy crop insurance. For anyone who isn’t a farmer, thunder, lightning and hail are dramatic events that punctuate a summer of outdoor fun. The sting of icy little hailstones can even feel refreshing after the heat of the day.

Too soon, the air turns cooler, the leaves start changing colour, then they fall to the ground and form crunchy carpets. The cycle continues, and we discover, once again, that the conditions we’ve grown used to never stay the same.

It’s probably just as well that when the livin' is easy, most of us seem unable to remember the times when we thought we might not make it.

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